?>{"id":762,"date":"2012-09-10T09:30:25","date_gmt":"2012-09-10T16:30:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.late2theparty.com\/?p=762"},"modified":"2014-08-05T13:02:19","modified_gmt":"2014-08-05T20:02:19","slug":"hot-106-5-stairway-to-heaven","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.late2theparty.com\/?p=762","title":{"rendered":"Hot 106 #5: Stairway to Heaven"},"content":{"rendered":"

The\u00a0Hot 106<\/a>\u00a0is a list of 106 \u201cclassic rock\u201d songs that should be banned from radio airplay forever. In an effort to be fair, and to flaunt their quasi-musical, quasi-snobbiness,\u00a0Kent<\/a>\u00a0and Jen have tasked themselves with finding replacements for the overplayed tunes.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

(We didn’t skip Hot 106 #4<\/a>, by the way — we discussed it randomly some time back.)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Kent: No change.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Nothing to see here. This one stays on the list. It is the national anthem of classic rock radio; ubiquitous but never superfluous. You always stand and take off your hat for “The Star-Spangled Banner”, and you always rock out to Stairway, no matter if you are an elitist member of the rock-and-roll cognoscenti or Beavis.<\/p>\n

Like “The Star-Spangled Banner”, “Stairway To Heaven” wasn’t born into the high status it is known for today(our national anthem started out in life as an English drinking song). Too long to be released as a single, it only became the anchor of the album several years after its release (my favorite songs on the album, “The Battle Of Evermore” and “Going to California”, anchored many critic’s disdain for the “hippie” direction the band had steered toward. That those two songs are my favorites is also a shorthand way of saying, “I’m gay for the mandolin and am also just plain ol’ gay”).<\/p>\n

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Totally fabulous!<\/p><\/div>\n

To me, the best seal of approval is the one given by Frank Vincent Zappa, a brilliant musical satirist that did goof versions of songs in the majority of his concerts. But even though many think Zappa was taking the piss when he did “Stairway To Heaven”, he is actually on record as truly liking the song, and, save for a few sound effects peppered about, usually played the song without irony sometimes adding his own bitchin’ guitar licks. Yes, they would sometimes “reggae” it up, but so did Led Zeppelin during rehearsals, mainly because Robert Plant got sick to death of it.<\/p>\n