This is my week for learning more about seventies rock. I took to Netflix the last few days to watch Bohemian Rhapsody, the fine docudrama about Freddie Mercury and the rest of Queen, and then Becoming Led Zeppelin, the new documentary about that band’s formative years.
A common denominator in both stories is the value of collaboration and how the contributions of all four band members creates a greater whole. Jimmy Page talked about the importance of being able to hear what everyone is doing as the songs were mixed. Guitarist Page and singer Robert Plant were the “front men,” but Led Zeppelin would never have been Led Zeppelin without bassist John Paul Jones and drummer John Bonham laying down the foundation.
And there’s a key moment in the Queen saga where Freddie goes off as a solo artist and comes back to his friends after it does not go as well as he hoped. He delivers a heartfelt monologue about realizing that he had become FREDDIE MERCURY because of the push-and-pull, the creative friction with his bandmates.
Somewhere in there I heard the observation that great rock bands don’t fail, they break up. These films about two great bands illustrate that dynamic — when everyone contributes as a unit, magic happens, as long as the individuals can keep their egos in check.
These two films tell powerful stories about the power of creative collaboration.
The end of my regular 100-mile round-trip commute last May had an effect I should have anticipated. For the past several years, most of my book reading was on audiobooks, and most of that consumption came during the two hours I spent in the car on the way to and from the office three to five times a week.
I’ve been logging the books I read each year since 1994. I read 31 books in 2025, 26 of them on audio — just half as many books as in 2024 and about a third of my average for the previous five or six years.
“When I retire, I’ll have time to read all of the books I’ve accumulated over the years.” Actually, most of the reading I’ve done has been articles that turn up during my scrolling on social media.
“When I retire, I’ll watch the movies and TV shows I’ve collected on DVD and Blu-Ray.” Nope — streaming services.
“When I retire, I’ll organize my ridiculous record collection and listen to an album or two every day on the turntable or CD deck.” Nope — Apple Music.
It’s all so damn convenient — except it isn’t, not really. I’ve just trained myself to settle for whatever turns up in the web surf instead of anything intentional or deliberate.
I could entertain myself for years with the books I’ve amassed, or by turning on the TV only to use the Blu-Ray/DVD player, or by sitting in front of the turntable and listening to my music collection.
It’s kind of nuts. I made these purchases along the way so I could revisit them at my old-age leisure, and here I am in my old age, letting them collect dust while I check out what’s new on Netflix.
I could save a ton of money by weaning myself from the streams and spending my nights with my stuff. The first week I could:
• Sunday: Watch Lawrence of Arabia;
• Monday: Listen to episodes of The Shadow, Gangbusters, X Minus One and the Jean Shepherd show;
• Tuesday: Listen to Rubber Soul, Kongos, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, and Bamboo, a band that played at Ripon College more than 50 years ago and whose record I still have not removed from the cover;
• Wednesday: Read a play by Shakespeare or Ionesco;
• Thursday: Finally watch Solarus, the Russian science-fiction movie that my late friend Wally Conger said is awesome but I still haven’t checked out years after buying the Blu-Ray;
• Friday: Watch two or three of the “50 Great Drive-In Movies” that I bought for 10 bucks back in the day;
• Saturday: Have a Godzilla marathon night with two or three of the 21 movies I own featuring the biggest monster of them all.
And after that first week, I’ve barely scratched the surface of the surface.
It sounds like a great plan, but I’m nearing the end of Season 2 of Homeland on Netflix, and I’m anxious to see what happens next. I think I might be more insane than Carrie Mathison.
For about 10 minutes in 2016 — well, actually, 13 weeks — I produced a podcast called 78 Revolutions Per Minute, in which I shared stuff from my rather prodigious collection of 78 rpm records.
I have somehow accumulated hundreds, perhaps more than a thousand, of these 10-inch bygone relics. This year marks the 100th anniversary of the invention of the electric microphone, which replaced the previous technology of singing and playing into a megaphone-like horn attached to a recording stylus which vibrated the sound directly onto a wax disc, which was then reproduced onto the brittle shellac records that had to be handled with extreme care.
My collection includes quite a few of those pre-1925 recordings, and sometimes I’ll listen to Harry Lauder or Aileen Stanley and ponder the thought that the sound of their voices is more than a century old.
Hard to believe the podcast was nine (!) years ago already. While I had fun with it, I am still waiting for downloads of 11 of those 13 episodes to hit double digits. I’m sure there’s an audience for 78 rpm music, but it didn’t find my little efforts back then.
One of the reasons I bought my fancy-schmancy Audio Technica turntable is its ability to play 78s, but it’s been awhile since I took advantage of that feature. I whiled away part of my Saturday afternoon doing just that. I hung around the 1950s for the most part — by then the technology had advanced to vinyl records that spun at 45 or 33 revolutions per minute, but companies continued to make 78s until almost 1960.
(In fact, 78s survived even later in some parts of the globe, and I’ve seen references to Beatles songs on 78. My beloved Nitty Gritty Dirt Band even released some promotional copies of “Mr. Bojangles” on 78 in 1970. I may hunt one of those down if I ever win the lottery.)
As my 71-year-old copy of “Rock Around the Clock” by Bill Haley & the Comets boomed out of my Bose speakers, I was again amazed at how good a well-preserved record sounds on the right equipment decades later.
I need to go exploring through my old records more often — it’s why I bought them, after all. Why collect old stuff if you don’t look at it or, in this case, listen to them? Who knows? Maybe the world is even ready for more episodes of 78 Revolutions Per Minute.
