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Jim is the new host of Music Challenge at Mindlovemiserys Menagerie. Jim says:

The challenge today is to focus on this song … an early rock and roll song that you like, or the first song that comes to your mind when you hear the phrase rock and roll … and … use it for inspiration in any form of creative expression.

Instead of “Rocket 88,” which is a Rock & Roll pioneer from the sounds of it, I’m choosing a selection from my #1 R&R band, Led Zeppelin. Led Zeppelin II (1969) is an album I played probably more than any other back in those days. It wasn’t a series of songs to me, it was taken as a whole. It’s difficult to think of it in pieces.

“What Is and What Should Never Be” is my song choice from it, which is the second track on the album, written by Jimmy Page and Robert Plant. I like the way it starts slow, then it rockets off towards the castle in the sky, playing with the words as we play in the sky with the clouds. Plant’s voice mesmerizes and Page’s guitar titillates as they pull us in and make us want to throw caution to the wind and soar. Then they slow down, pull back, and say it will happen only if we take our time. Then they do it again. They scream it out at the end to fix it in our minds and to carry us away. Plant and Page toy with the listeners. There is a mystical aura around this and many of their songs, like a spell is being cast.

Resonant Gods
Stroking our Rock &  Roll Souls
With Heaven’s Hand

https://youtu.be/00eN1t4iKCo

And if I say to you tomorrow
Take my hand, child come with me
It’s to a castle I will take you
Where what’s to be, they say will be

Catch the wind, see us spin
Sail away leave today
Way up high in the sky, hey, whoa
But the wind won’t blow
You really shouldn’t go
It only goes to show
That you will be mine
By takin’ our time, ooh

And if you say to me tomorrow
Oh what fun it all would be
Then what’s to stop us, pretty baby
But what is and what should never be

Catch the wind, see us spin
Sail away, leave today
Way up high in the sky, hey whoa
But the wind won’t blow
You really shouldn’t go
Only goes to show
That you will be mine
By takin’ our time, ooh

So if you wake up with the sunrise
And all your dreams are still as new
And happiness is what you need so bad
Girl, the answer lies with you, yeah

Catch the wind, see us spin
Sail away, leave today
Way up high in the sky, hey whoa
But the wind won’t blow
You really shouldn’t go
Only goes to show
That you will be mine
By takin’ our time, ooh

Hey, oh
Oh the wind won’t blow and we really shouldn’t go
And it only goes to show-ow-ow
Catch the wind, we’re gonna see it spin
We’re gonna sail, little girl
Do do do, bop bop a do-oh
My my my my my my my yeah
Everybody I know seems to know me well
But does anybody know I’m gonna move like hell
Baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, oh, Lord
Baby, baby, baby, oh, right now, yeah
No, no, no, no, no, come on, now
Songwriters: Jimmy Page / Robert Plant