Happened in first year, first term. I will always associate Led Zeppelin and the Grateful Dead with three people from Muk West: RR, RP, and DM. They were seniors and they were unspeakably cool in the eys of a futcha. Unspeakably. [Philip I got to know later. On second thought maybe he wasn't that cool. But he was mean to Madhu in humourous and creative ways. So that compensates.]
RR and RP were the quintessential rock n roll stoners. The first time I saw weed ["Drugs!" I gasped. They laughed. How was I to know?] was in Philip's room, on my very first day of college. I impressed them by naming more than half the Rock Gods on the wall - Dylan, the Beatles, Marley, Ozzie Osbourne, Jerry Garcia - the usual suspects. [The truth was I had just seen the entire BBC series Dancing in the Streets - a history of Popular Music - over the course of the past year.]
Not that I had heard most of them properly. All angle, even at the beginning.
RR had a very cool walk. He used to wake up every morning to the same song - Communication Breakdown - on full blast, so that he could here it all the way in the loo. So it got into my head.
Smouldering.
DM gave me Led Zeppelin I and III on one cassette, and II and IV on the other. I didn't hear anything else for days. Weeks. By the end of it I thought he had recorded them thats way intentionally. [Later I found out that it was a fluke.] I and III are dark, brooding: all brown and yellows - shadows and low flames. I and IV have that magic, that bounce: watery blue and night black, with tinges of earthy green. Tolkien.
So I liked them, yeah?
One of the first few times I got drunk, I was recorded grooving to Whole Lotta Love on top of my bed, with Ragu in the foreground attempting to match my moves.
Someone has that footage...
I heard the Grateful Dead in RP's room. he was with RR, who was pointing out some finer point in the music playing in the background. Perhaps I was being sent off to buy booze, I can't remember. He said "Now now check this out:", so I strained my ear. A cymbal played...and then it stopped. I felt rather thick. I didn't get it. Luckily Philip didn't either. Apparently the drummer hadto hold the cymbal to silence it that way. Uh. Okay.
RR told me that American Beauty was the most accessible album. How right he was! I was planning on proving him wrong, but this was the perfect step after CSNY. There's no denying that lazy morning music. The perfect entry into their acid hillbilly fantasy.
These guys were part of the wider Soundcheck gang. Soundcheck 42 was a great college band. While future engineers across India headbanged to that ridiculous Iron Maiden, Soundcheck 42 gave us healthy doses of Rolling Stones, CCR, Dylan - the occasional Beatles song. They even did a Strokes cover way back when. During the exams all of them would study till midnight, then gather in RR's room for a jam session. They would sing the occassional Dead song. They either passed out or passed (almost all of them, at any rate!), and their music passed to us, through osmosis. And the rest, as they say, is Philosophy [in second year].
It’s a hand-me-down, the thoughts are broken,
Perhaps they’re better left unsung.
I don’t know, don’t really care
Let there be songs to fill the air.
- Ripple, The Grateful Dead
Cast of Characters
Led Zeppelin - Communication Breakdown [mp3]
The Grateful Dead - Ripple[mp3]
