ALBUMS:The Great Twenty-Eight (1982), The London Chuck Berry Sessions. (1972).
MVC Rating: Great 28 5.0/$$$$; London Sessions 3.0/ $$$
What I have here are two Chuck Berry albums. One is his worst. And the other is his best.
The worst: ‘The London Chuck Berry Sessions’ features the song: ‘My Ding-a-Ling.’
My what?
My Ding-a-Ling
No, not mine. It’s his …bad little sing-along, ding-a-ling song and he has to live with it or would be had he not died earlier this year. RIP.
For the good stuff, we go to the ‘Great Twenty-Eight’, a two-record compilation of the best songs from the man they say invented Rock ‘n Roll.
“The Great Twenty-Eight” has classics, ‘Maybellene,’’Brown-Eyed Handsome Man,’ ‘Roll Over Beethoven,’ ‘Johnny B. Goode,’ and ‘Sweet Little Sixteen,’’
Rock stars around the world have stolen Berry’s guitar riffs. Guitarist Keith Richards alone has a loaded rap sheet of lifted Berry riffs throughout the Rolling Stones’ catalog.
‘My Ding-A-Ling’ is not one of those sampled songs.
Funny, or not so funny, is that of all of these great songs Berry wrote and performed, “My Ding-a-Ling,’ a 1972 novelty tune (a cover at that), was his only No.1 hit.
Seriously makes you question the wisdom of folks in the USA. The rest of London was mediocre live music.
Maybe, just, maybe “My Ding-a-Ling’ could been nominated along with ‘Bread Butter” and “How Do you Do” as one of the best worst songs of all time. But alas, that contest is over.
So, I’m sticking to the Great Twenty-Eight.
All songs on it are, indeed, great. ‘Brown Eyed Handsome Man’ a subtle rock commentary on racism, is one of my favorites.
Counting down my 678 vinyl records before I die of brain disease.
ALBUMS: Highway Call (1974), Dickey Betts and Great Southern (1977)
MVC Rating: Highway Call, 4.0/$$$; DB and Great Southern 3.5/$$
I have here a Richard Betts record, and a Dickey Betts record.
Two records. Same guy.
But the bands are different and the music is a bit different, well maybe a teeny bit different.
I believe I like the Richard Betts better.
Whatever he called himself, Betts is one of the founding members of the Allman Brothers Band and these albums were side projects, which sound like Allman Brothers musicians doing side projects.
Betts along with Duane Allman became known for their twin guitar approach often running into extended, melodic jams with a jazzy blues home base.
This is a guy who won the Grammy for his beautiful instrumental, ‘Jessica.’
Highway Call gets my nod between these two because it, and this may sound strange, seems a little more tossed off. Kind of like a live set on the front porch in Macon, Ga. But you know it’s not tossed off when you have band members such as fiddler Vassar Clements and keyboardist Chuck Leavell. They just have a way of making music that goes into the wind and comes back in all the right places.
‘Highway Call’ is one of several standout tracks with a little country swing and nice piano from Leavell.
Dickey Betts and Great Southern strives for that feel but is a little more produced. It definitely has a more rock sound, e.g. ‘Run Gypsy Run.’ Both albums have some extended instrumental jams, conducive for relaxing.
And that, as you get older, is a good thing. And gives these records shelf life.
But if you are starting off on Southern rock, first go see Allman Brothers’ ‘Brothers and Sisters’ or ‘Eat a Peach.’
These are records I certainly bought used at Wuxtry in Athens, Ga. during my high school years.
Counting down my 678 vinyl records before I die of brain disease.
Here’s how you’d imagine Betts, just picking and singing on his front porch in 1974:
Here’s Allman’s w/Betts doing his Grammy winner, Jessica.
These brave women (and men), who have stared down death, have a lot to teach me and all of us with diseases that have no cure.
The video features a Bellamy Brothers song that is not even on the Restless album. Restless is good for those who like their country music smooth as Woodford Reserve Kentucky bourbon. But the music is a little less rootsy than I care for in my country. I do love some of the lyrics; the singing is fine if not slick; and the music playing is doggone good. Since my diagnosis of Lewy body dementia, I realized I see things differently, probably with a heightened sentimentality. But if they are all about raising awareness and promoting research into a deadly disease, they are all right by me.
The song on the video, we’ve all hummed a thousand times over the years and probably tried to get it out of our heads a thousand times more. It is the Bellamy Brothers biggest hit, but over 40 years they have had a stream of country hits and crossovers. Everybody with a radio is familiar with it.
Well the song suddenly became profound to me, if not for a minute:
Here’s last verse followed by the video.
It’s the season
Let your love fly
Like a bird on the wing
And let your love bind you
To all living things
And let your love shine
And you’ll know what I mean
That’s the reason.
Counting down my 678 vinyl records before I die of brain disease.
I was a sucker for these Rhino Records compilations of obscure and semi-obscure music.
The company put out ‘best of’ compilations of records by one or two-hit wonders like the Left Banke and Beau Brummels. I will review BB here but wait for the ‘L’s” for Left Banke. Rhino also picked up obscure but good original albums – not just anthologies and greatest hits. One of those was the Beat Farmers, which I earlier reviewed.
‘Laugh Laugh’ is Beau Brummels’ biggest hit and arguably, their best song. It has a sweet little melody driving along bittersweet lyrics:
Don’t say you can get any boy to call Don’t be so smug or else You’ll find you can’t get any boy at all You’ll wind up an old lady sitting on the shelf Laugh, laugh, I thought I’d die
Funny laugh laugh, right? No not really, but they’re working on that irony thing.
This was a big hit and deservedly so, I suppose. They get compared to the Beatles a lot but I’d put them more in leagues with the Kinks, in their early British Invasion stage. They seem like they could have done one of my favorite Kinks’ songs, ‘Nothing in this World Can Stop Me Worrying ‘Bout That Girl.’
But surprise! The Brummels were from San Francisco. And their later stuff starts turning toward a little psychedelia-tinged country.
Their songs are from a different time and place. ‘Laugh Laugh’ and ‘Just a Little’ and ‘You Tell Me Why,’ are songs you probably say you don’t know. Then you hear them.
Then you say: ‘Well, yes.’
Then …”well maybe.”
Counting down my 678 vinyl records before I die of brain disease.
Yesterday, Saturday Nov. 4, 2017, I was playing in my weekly Old Man Hoops game and I did a wrap-around-the-back fake pass on the way to a left-handed layup attempt. That’s right attempt. I blew the layup.
Million dollar move, 10-cent finish as they used to tell me on the playground.
My basketball buddies, however, are used to seeing my wrap-arounds, and my elbow passes, and my nutmeg dribbles through the defender’s legs.
Showing these ‘trick’ plays too many times, as I certainly have, diminishes the surprise factor and thus the play’s effectiveness. My percentage effectiveness is about 50/50 and that may be way generous to myself.
In real coached basketball if you did a move like an elbow pass and it flies off into the bleachers, the coach would give you some bench time for sure.
But in the relatively uncoached version of Old Man Hoops, of which I am the oldest player at 57, I’ve got the senior citizen greenlight card that allows me 100 percent interest free validation for anything I do, stupid or not. Of course the ‘playground’ consequences of failing to complete a trick play or two means your teammates may quit throwing you the ball.
Winner Mike’sMadness to raise money forthe Lew Body Dementia Associationn was UAB’s team. Average height was, oh, 6’8”. Me out front in the middle (the short guy) am 6 feet tall so you can see that height estimate was no exaggeration. My team never played UAB though, guess they heard about my wraparound.
But back to yesterday’s around the back wrap. I can’t even remember who was guarding the play, a fast break, whether it was James the doctor or Owens the DJ or Justin who works with me at Alabama Media Group. (Or Dan or Dennis or or Rodney), I can’t even remember who was on the other team sometimes.
But anyway I wrapped it around the back, which makes the ball invisible to the defender for a nanosecond. The hope is to make the defender think you are throwing a behind-the-back pass and force the defender to commit to another player who is hopefully streaking down the court beside you (hopefully 2 teammates, one on each side for options.)
Anyway, as I have said, I cleared some space with the fake, put it up with my left off the backboard, but it bounced off the front of the rim, no score.
A play that was very forgettable.
But it led to me today to thinking about another play long ago that I still remember in vivid detail. Probably because it replays in my head all of the time.
It was the time I juked Chris Gatling, a former NBA player who was in the league for more than a decade.
The first round pick in 1991 of the Golden State Warriors, he averaged about 10 points and 5 boards over his career. One year in Dallas he was 19 and 8.
So I’m living in the San Francisco Bay Area and working in Oakland. The date is fuzzy but probably 2004-ish. I was working at the Oakland Tribune, which as a benefit helped subsidize a membership to Club One Fitness. It was a really nice gym a short two blocks away from work. I saw Danny Glover there a few times and Billy Joe Armstrong with Green Day. But not on the basketball court.
There was a game every noon hour during the week. Occasionally you would see current and former Golden State Warriors players like Jason Richardson, Chris Mullin, Adonal Foyle or Chris Gatling. Most like Mullin and Richardson were working on shooting or other drills. Others like Foyle and Gatling would come play in the pickup games, which were at times very high level from my perspective.
Foyle was a Colgate graduate and an NBA center, whom I talked to several times. He was intelligent and fun to play with as he would do all the things his Warriors coach would never let him do, like shoot three-pointers and dribble the length of the floor. Always laughing it up. In reality he could have just stood under the rim and dunked the whole time.
Gatling on the other hand was kind of aloof, didn’t talk much. I remembered him from when he played as the guy who had a steel plate in his head, apparently from a childhood accident.
OK, that’s a lot of build-up for a play that happened more than a decade ago and lasted all of 3 seconds.
I do have to say here that I was in my mid to late 40’s and probably in the best basketball shape of my life as I played full-court basketball outside and inside about 3 or 4 times a week. I also could shoot fairly well which made up for other deficiencies and got me into games I didn’t have any business being in.
Anyway I got in a game and Gatling was playing on the other team. I had the ball on a fast break, a teammate of mine filling the lane on the right but no one is on the left. Gatling, somehow, had beaten us down court and was basically waiting for us, looking to swat whatever ‘weak ass shit’ I was going to throw up. (That’s what he looked like he was thinking anyway, I’m not sure he actually verbalized those words. He didn’t have to.)
Did I mention that he was 6’ 10” tall?
I was dribbling with my left, watching my teammate to the right out of the corner of my eye.
I turned my head to look at my teammate while simultaneously picking the ball up and going around my back. Gatling bit and committed to the guy he thought I was throwing a behind-the-back pass to. That split second the ball goes behind your back, the defender is confused. Where is the ball? Did he just throw it to his teammate behind his back?
So still with my head turned to look at the guy I was using as a decoy, I kept the ball. It went from left hand, around the back to my right hand which touched it to my left hand for a lefty lay-up. Gatling’s ball swatting arms never really got close.
Some of the small crowd of ballers waiting for next game fell out laughing and whooping. I snuck a peek at Gatling jogging back down to the other end. He seemed unperturbed as was his demeanor, thankfully.
Did I mention he was 6’10”?
And that was it, one of my hoops dream memories. I will post more here from time to time.
I’ve done 25 album reviews now. And overall post count is 32.
BTW, my last post about the Beatles was a little joke. I actually am familiar with the Beatles. I have other Beatles discs and I am planning to review them. It’s hard because what’s left to say about the greatest and most influential rock band ever? I may save them for last or later in my ‘B’ category.
Mike’s records
If you didn’t see it, AL.com ran a piece on my Best Worst song bit .It contained an informal poll and last I looked Bread and Butter was winning. The comment section contains numerous best/worst candidates.
ALBUM: Live at the Hollywood Bowl (first released 1977)
MVC Rating: 3.5/$$$
This is a live album from a group called the Beatles. Seems like a decent enough band, kind of a cross between the Dave Clark Five and the Flaming Groovies.
Too much screaming by fans to tell if these Beetles are the real deal, though. NOTE: There’s aparently another re-mixed version from 2016
Counting down my 678 vinyl records before I die of brain disease.
So did hundreds of others after (and before) the services at First Presbyterian Church of Birmingham on Oct. 29, 2017.
It was the Rev. Shannon Webster’s retirement service followed by potluck with fried chicken and more pasta salads, fruit plates and macaroni and cheese than you could shake a big spoon at. The abundance was threatened by appetites and attendance.
After more than a decade here, Shannon will be soon leaving Birmingham with his wonderful wife, Lou Ann, a social worker, for his beloved home-state New Mexico. See AL.com story.
Tears flowed as tributes were made.
The church stakes claims on it being the oldest church in the city of Birmingham with roots going back to the 1850s before settling into its current place at 2100 4th Ave. North in the late 1800s, and I couldn’t believe that my first attendance was only about two years ago.
I’ll soon be a very regular attendee as my wife, Catherine, begins working there as interim associate pastor. She’ll be working with the Rev. Catherine Goodrich,acting head of staff.
Trust me when I say that they will be one dynamic duo.
Like Shannon, the two fit right into the historic church’s legacy of pursuing social justice causes. Shannon and the church were a big factor in the battle against unfair payday lending practices. The church started the women’s shelter, First Light, on the same street.
Social Justice is in the church’s DNA. .The mostly white church stood up for civil rights in 1963 and paid a price for it, including the pastor, Dr. Edward Ramage’s job. Ramage was one of the clergy Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. addressed in his letter from Birmingham jail. The letter was like a revelation, an epistle from Paul, Ramage said. Clashes within ultimately ended Ramage’s tenure there.
Shannon, a guitar playing, singer songwriting, New Mexican, wrote a song about Ramage which was featured on handouts with music and verse on this day, his last Sunday. Here’s part of ‘Peace of the City’:
Generations down the years have steadily accrued, both the faults and fears of ancestors and the gifts and good they knew
So the prophets still call us to God’s will and its of their names we sing Shuttlesworth, Ed Ramage too and Martin Luther King
So, on this special Sunday I was thinking about the irony that I was once again at the intersections of 4th Avenue North and 22nd Street (and 21st St. N. There’s actually two intersections and adjacent blocks but i’m using the ‘city block’ as a literary device).
This city block is the place where my journalism career began, the place where I started playing basketball at the downtown YMCA and now the place where I have found solace in my church home .
After living (in order) in Maryland (born), Texas, Alabama, Minnesota, Indiana, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, California, and now Alabama again, I realize something keeps calling me and my family back.
And it’s not just the state, it’s this city block.
Like the canyons and mountains of New Mexico are calling Shannon and Lou Ann.
Shannon, here are some words to a song by your favorite theologian, Kris Kristofferson, to take us out of here, then listen to Kris sing it..
Was it wonderful for you was it holy as it was for me
Did you feel the hand of destiny that was guidin’ us together
You were young enough to dream I was old enough to learn something new
I’m so glad I got to dance with you for a moment of forever
