“Stairway to Heaven”: A Reconsideration

It’s so cliched that it barely even registers anymore. In fact, even though I consider myself a Led Zeppelin fan (I own all of their albums except In Through the Out Door), I have generally spurned “Stairway to Heaven” as decent, but overrated and definitely overplayed (on classic rock radio). So great has been my disdain that I have not actually listened to the song in years, and come to think of it I’ve generally avoided the entire fourth album as a result, tending to prefer Houses of the Holy and Physical Graffiti instead, and I usually think of “No Quarter” as “Stairway to Heaven” done right.

Well, last week I was at a Joe Satriani concert, and his monster bassist, Stu Hamm, played a familiar snippet of a tune in his crazed, unaccompanied bass solo. I couldn’t place it but my companion identified it as “Going to California.” At that point, I realized I had shunned this album for too long. So anyway, tonight I am sitting here listening to some music on my headphones and I decided, “What the heck, let’s listen to ‘Stairway to Heaven.'” I guess the fourth album has just been on my mind lately. So… yeah. I’m kind of hearing the song with fresh ears for the first time since probably high school, when I actually did hear the song for the first time. And wow, it’s actually a really good song. Great compositional structure; I love how it builds up dynamically from beginning to end. Great guitar playing from Jimmy Page (even if a bit out-of-tune but, come on, how can you possibly sound in-tune when you’re playing along with a recorder trio?), unusually delicate singing from Robert Plant, John Bonham is is usual inimitable self, and John Paul Jones provides excellent bass and keyboard support, as always.

If you haven’t listened to it in a while, give it another chance. I’m glad I did. And now I’m listening to “Going to California.”

Obama: anatomy of a logo

OK, I will admit it. The first thing (OK, the second thing; his speech at the 2004 DNC was the first) that piqued my interest in Barack Obama was the sight of his logo on a sticker, way early on in the primary campaign (like, summer of 2007 early). It was clear right away that Obama had the best design team in the history of political campaigns working for him.

Let’s take a look at what makes this logo so great. Ultimately what it boils down to is that every detail is imbued with relevant meaning, and the overall result is very aesthetically pleasing.

First, it’s an O, for Obama. No-brainer there. It incorporates the requisite colors: red, white and blue. But what it does with them, and with a few simple shapes, is brilliant. The red and white stripes of the U.S. flag are there as well, blended into an unmistakable and powerful image: the sun rising over a rural American hillside (a cornfield, no less) into a perfect, clear blue sky. Now that’s “morning in America.”

On a related note, I’ll leave it to you to interpret the meaning of the logo’s appearance in a John McCain commercial.

On another related note, this.