Editor’s note: This article was first published September 15, 2014.
I recently discovered Led Zeppelin, the English rock brand of the 60s and 70s purely by chance or accident. I went into this Vancouver (my current home base) record store, one sunny Saturday afternoon, to look for some original record to add to my collection (I love music and suspect I was a musician in another life or incarnation but that is neither here nor there).
Anyway, I ended up chatting with this store clerk that started talking about Bob Marley and rapidly segued to giving a lecture about what he called "this crazy and tormented English band" that rocked the world for decades. He asked me to go home and listen to them. I did and was hooked.
I don’t know what Led Zeppelin fans think about the group’s fantastic Kashmir song, but I see it as a haunting and agonizing funeral song or dirge, one of the greatest artistic creations of all time. It is indeed, in my opinion, a great work of poetry filled with heart-breaking sounds to make you want to weep or at least make you sad. That is if your heart is not made of stone.
I am not the only person that loves Led Zeppelin. There are millions of Zeppelin fans out there. The group had won tons of awards and honoured in various ways. President Barack Obama gave the surviving members an award in 2012.
I would therefore most humbly like to dedicate this piece to the government and people of Sierra Leone as they confront the most difficult scourge in our country’s history (Ebola). Here is Led Zeppelin doing Kashmir:
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