In the Led Zeppelin circles, the only answer for the "Greatest Zeppelin Song"
The program director at WRDU-FM 106.1 in Raleigh was Michael Hughes and while he was doing his due program director diligence's in the station one day as I was working my weekly Saturday death shift (10am-3pm ruining every single Saturday), he cracked open the control room door and stuck only his head in.
It was funny and different and the smile on his face told me I'd like what he was going to interrupt my show for. He was one of us, even though he was an authority figure.
As I turned around and removed my headphones to see what he was up to, without a word, he stepped in with both feet, and stood proudly upright with both hands behind his back.
Out came his right hand and holding a "cart", which is what we played songs on back then. They looked exactly like the eight track tapes of the late seventies, but they featured only two stereo tracks, long enough to feature one song only.
Picture stacks of carts in a radio station control room, instead of stacks of albums or CD's. Compact discs replaced these carts around 1986. It was probably some sort of computerized software that played squashed .mp3's starting around 1996 and it's been the same since.
"What." I said, not asking.
“Here’s a lost Zeppelin track, I just got it, you can play it if you want.”
And he said it with his classic "you better be impressed or you're not worth the dirt you stand on" look. He tossed it to me, I caught it, turned it right side up and read it's typewritten label.
“Hey Hey What Can I Do”
A "new" Zeppelin song!
I waited until R.E.M.'s "The One I Love" ended and came right on and introduced a new Zeppelin song, actually one that could have been included on III because it was a "B" side to Immigrant Song in 1970 on the 45.
"The phones never exploded at lunch time on a Saturday, especially when there were no cell phones everywhere, but they did that day after the airing of 'Hey Hey What Can I Do' for the first time in Raleigh."
As I listen to it right now, it's the greatest Led Zeppelin song.
The only answer to the discussion of what the greatest Zep song is, the one you are listening to right now. And if you're not listening to one right now, it's the last one you listened to.
When I think back on that day and that moment, I can only remember how happy I was to be in the right place at the right time to play that song, being that I HATED being on every Saturday from 10am-3pm, and how it practically ruined every week-end for me.
"Come on man. Get me off Saturdays", I'd plead every week at least once.
"Nope. I gotta have my front line on a huge day-part" Hughes would say.
These stories are endless. Some happy, some sad, some pitiful, some unbelievable, and mostly all stories I can look back at and be incredibly happy I was alive, when the music was at it's "alivest".
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