What I did instead

...of the 20 million things I was going to do this evening, was get stuck in the YouTube vortex, listening to music. And where exactly did I get stuck?

Here:

This is a Led Zeppelin performance from 1969. That same year, 3000 miles away, I was a senior in high school, singing Led Zeppelin covers (and Joplin and Jefferson Airplane) in a rock and roll band. A terrible end was frequently predicted for me by the school music teacher.

After graduation, I moved to the city and helped start the Manhattan Transfer. When, after a couple of years of singing together, we were offered a record deal, it was with Atlantic. Zeppelin's label! Eventually, and inevitably, our paths crossed at some industry party, and I remember having a surreal chat with Robert Plant about singing harmony, which he seemed convinced he couldn't do. Who at John Jay High School could have imagined such a conversation? Certainly not that teacher.

At the end of the evening, we in the Transfer had just settled into a limo to go wherever we were going, and were about to leave when the doors flew open. It seems Zeppelin wanted to be driven away right that second, and their people were committed to making that happen. We were "invited' to abandon all claims, and to jolly well wait for the next car. Which, as those people were big and determined, we did.

Still love the music, though... and here is a live performance of Kashmir. Turn it up.