Tuesday Tuneage
Led Zeppelin - “Communication Breakdown”
1969
Last month I got an MRI on my bum knee. The knee hurt when I walked on stairs, which was problematic given that I live on the second floor. I had spent six months in and out of various medical appointments, looking for relief. So on the Friday of Labor Day weekend, I ended up in St. Louis Park a stone’s throw from a Half-Price Books (pre-appointment vinyl shopping yessir) at an imaging facility. After stripping down to boxers and socks and putting on a gown and scrubs pants, the technicians tucked my legs into the MRI chamber. They told me to hold still for the next thirty minutes, and gave me earplugs and headphones and played a Spotify classic rock playlist for me to help block out the noise from what they assured would be a quite loud machine. Thirty minutes? I figured I’d get through seven or eight classic rock songs then soon be on way to the bus stop and a good book for the commute home. Turns out it was six songs:
The Hollies - “Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress”: Best-ever knockoff of Creedence Clearwater Revival. (More on them later.)
Todd Rundgren - “ Hello It’s Me”: Lately a top-five favorite. (This, the O’Jays “Back Stabbers” or “For the Love of Money”, and three others make up the top five.)
Steve Miller Band - “Rock’n Me”: Like most of the Miller Band’s seventies hits, this one surprisingly punches above its weight.
ZZ Top - “La Grange”: Decades ago, I was talking with members of my sister-in-law’s family from Illinois. I asked her brother-in-law where he lived there. He replied “La Grange,” then when he saw the smile creeping across my face threw in: “They got a lotta nice girls there.” Classic.
Pat Benatar - “Hit Me with Your Best Shot”: “There are three girls here at Ridgemont who have cultivated the Pat Benatar Look.”
The Band - “The Weight”: No matter all the raves and write-ups on the greatness that is The Band, their songs never do much for me. You know how The Band is always to referred to by their cult (I’d call ‘em “Band-Aids”, but Penny Lane already took that one) as “keepers of America’s mythic past, stoic traditionalists while society was breaking apart blah blah blah”? Well they sound zzzzz to these ears. Don’t come at with me with “Baby Don’t You Do It”, it doesn’t touch the Marvin Gaye original. As for The Last Waltz, you can count on that being trod out whenever your local PBS station is doing a fundraiser, as that’s the only time it will feature rock music. (Phones are ready.) Creedence Clearwater Revival was the keepers of America’s mythic past in the sixties-into-seventies era and they were 100% American, with The Band only being 20% USA-bred and the rest Canadian. Throw in that Creedence’s best-known songs were all three minutes long and bingo: They are who you play on the jukebox while you’re working on that pitcher of High Life and contemplating American Mythology. (Better yet, check out the incredible Travelin’ Band documentary-plus-concert on Netflix.) Thankfully a technician cut off The Band mid-song to inform me that my time was up. Being a true old man, I asked her if she could hand me my shoes as I didn’t feel like getting up off the table yet. She also offered to tie them for me. I declined, but like I said: Old man.
The MRI WAS noisy as f**k, just like the technicians promised. But what got me is that the noise the machine made the most frequently was one that replicated the noise Jimmy Page made at the beginning of Led Zeppelin’s “Communication Breakdown,” but whereas he did it for two seconds, the MRI machine carried on and on and on. It was funny, kinda. It would have been funnier if it wasn’t so annoying. But guess what song I played repeatedly on headphones on the bus ride home?
Postscript: After a consultation with my physician’s assistant, physical therapy, an X-ray, two consultations with an orthopedist, and this MRI; the diagnosis was that I have a small spot of arthritis behind the kneecap. The treatment? Ice and naproxen. Of course.