SCENE: Shaking off the effects of the drugging, Prosby learns a little more about what his captors want.
The frightening grinding gears noise he heard before he lost consciousness reminded him of Lou Reed’s vintage 1970s ‘Metal Machine Music,’ which was named the top album of all time during the Sinking Years in the 2200’s.
Prosby preferred other Lou Reed music, but then he never seemed to correlate with community tastes or standards. The music was inside his head anyway, the result of the rather harsh drug his water had been laced with.
He was now waking up in the back of some kind of truck, hand and feet bound.
“I’m sorry Mr. Prosby, our water has quite a kick, don’t you think.
It was Neon Lady again. Jim Prosby was starting to get angry, a very unusual emotion for him. Not that he didn’t have anger. It was just corralled for use when needed.
Jumpsuit woman’s name was Dani and she said she would explain his mission. That it involved going to Orlando and bringing back Burnees
Prosby sat up straight. He knew Burnees. In fact he knew her well. He hadn’t seen her in years. He had been searching for her for years. She was once (and maybe still is) the love of his life. He just never understood why she went away. Sounds like he was about to get a step closer to finding out.
I’m pretty sure I bought this new as freshman in college at UGA. Maybe after all the Rolling Stones, Who and Allman Brothers blasting from my Reed Hall dorm room, I was trying for something a little more sophisticated. Joe Jackson was Elvis Costello with a piano.
Whereas Costello’s voice was tinged with irony and anger, Jackson’s voice had an undercurrent of irony and condescension. A little Steely Dan in there.
He had some hits, notably ‘Is She Really Going Out With Him’ (not on this album) and ‘Stepping Out’ and ‘Breaking Us in Two (both on this record). The album is jazzy. ‘Stepping Out’ is the sound of tinkling champagne toasts in Manhattan, which come with promise, but disappear after midnight.
“We are young but getting old before our time, we’ll leave the TV and radio behind,’ Jackson sings.
Nominated for a Grammy, this record’s another bargain in the used market. I saw it for $3 the other day.
He was a contortionist in the family circus at age 4. Based in Albany, Ga., he did fancy trick horseback riding up until some horses tried to trample him, only to be saved by his mother’s pony. All this on his Wikipedia page.
He went on to become a band leader and his band was the first to back a young singer named Frank Sinatra.
Musically he was well-respected for his technical prowess on the instrument. My album is great. I have to admit that when I play jazz it’s usually one of my Blue Notes or Chet Baker or even Teo Macero. But I’ve had my James record on the turntable for several days now, and it is fabulous. It is sweet sounding, transports you to another time without being maudlin. It’s the sound of tinkling glasses, a post-war giddiness and a Cold War caution.
The liner notes give an interesting history of the trumpet itself and its place in music.
The vinyl is rigid and thick and says “unbreakable” on it. It’s sort of in the mode of the heavier vinyl used in new pressings. For you old-timers who may remember, the circus he grew up with was called the Mighty Haag Circus.
Some songs: Autumn Leaves, Moanin’ Low, If I Loved You, How Deep is the Ocean.
This is not an expensive record and could probably be ordered online at $5 to $10 plus shipping,
I heard the song ’96 Tears’ for the first time as it was sung by Garland Jeffreys. It got my attention. I later I found out it was a cover by Jeffreys of the 1960’s song by ? and Mysterians (That’s Question Mark and the Mysterians.) Great song. By both.
But firmly planted in my head — that’s how it works — I had Jeffreys’ name, and when I saw a record of his in the cutout bin, I jumped.
Another good inexpensive purchase. Jeffreys, who used to hang out with Lou Reed, is more mainstream than Reed. He comfortably shifts from soul, pop and reggae. He addresses issues like race as in the title song: “Here comes the One-Eyed Jack, sometimes white and sometimes black.”
An homage to his hero Jackie Robinson. Good record that has big production but didn’t do so well. Maybe there is a bit of a strain to be commercial here that backfired. I see Phoebe Snow, of the multi-octave voice, and my man David Lasley, among the back-up vocalists. Dr. John is on keys.
Look for it in record stores, it’s a good, overlooked record.
Newer music from Jeffreys in the form of a 2011 album called the ‘King of In-Between’ was given an ‘A’ by critic Robert Christgau, who does not grade on a curve.
Jimi Hendrix died at 27, one of many rock stars whose lives ended at that sweet young age.
Big Chief Ellis, a blues piano player of the highest talent, died in Birmingham on this date — Dec. 20, 1977.
He was 63.
Not many folks know today his the anniversary of his death. He was a self-taught piano player, professional gambler and ‘rolling stone.’
As he sings in the attached recording: “I do love to drink and gamble but I stay broke all the time .”
His piano playing is effortless, rolling and rocking.
I definitely want to learn more about this blues great. I found Ellis on a spreadsheet posted online. It is Wikipedia’s “List of deaths in rock and roll.”
There’s a bigger story here. In our culture of celebrity worship, where Elvis is king, and thousands pack Graceland on that Aug. 16 anniversary, there are a lot of great musicians who die in obscurity. For every Jimi Hendrix and John Lennon who lived and died with millions of fans there are those that played great music, died too often it seems, tragically.
Elvis was 42 when he died in 1977, of heart failure due to years of prescription drug abuse.
Other examples:
On the night before Christmas in 1985, Tommy Blake, a rockabilly pioneer, was shot to death by his third wife, according to the Wikipedia list. (Steve’s Dead Rock Stars and thedeadrockstarclub are also resources.} Blake was 54.
On Christmas Day in 1954, Johnny Ace (real name John Marshall Alexander Jr.) accidentally shot himself in the face while goofing around. Blues legend Big Mama Thornton saw the whole thing. At 25, with hits on the charts, Ace’s life was cut short. Witnesses said he was drunk.
I am writing this as I listen to Big Chief Ellis play some tasty blues. Ellis is now singing.
“I do love to drink and gamble but I stay broke all the time.” He sings the line twice in the blues tradition.
He sings more: “You know my life has been just like a rolling stone, until I find someone who loves me I just keep on moving on.”
He was born in Birmingham taught himself piano and traveled extensively in the 1920s and 1930s, according to an Allmusic.com bio. He settled in New York City and was known in blues circles for years there and later in Washington D.C. He came home to Birmingham and died at 63 in 1977.
The title of this post comes from poet, basketball player and former heroin addict Jim Carroll, who with his rock band wrote and released’ People who Died’ in 1980. (The writings that inspired the book, The Basketball Diaries, also was made into a movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio.) The Jim Carroll Band’s ‘Catholic Boy is coming up quick on MyVinylCountdown.com
‘All the people who died,” Carroll sings in the punky-pop song which is built around a list of friends who died. “They were friends of mine.”
That led me to the Wikipedia list, and I was struck by the number of rock stars who died tragically or prematurely.
Jim Carroll’s Basketball Diaries was made into a movie featuring Leonardo DiCaprio.
I was also struck by how many of these deaths I had either forgotten about or never heard before.
There is what appears an outsized number of tragic deaths associated with the show business industry, especially rock stars. If true, maybe it’s because they put so many hours on the road that the law of percentages kicks in.
Plane crashes have taken out some of our biggest stars. Several members of Lynyrd Skynyrd, including key writer and leader Ronnie Van Zant, crashed in Mississippi. Buddy Holly, Big Bopper, and Richie Valens died in a plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa. Otis Redding and four members of the Bar-Kays died in a crash in a Wisconsin lake flying from Cleveland to another gig.
And there was Stevie Ray Vaughn, one of the all time great guitarists, who died in a plane crash near East Troy, Wisconsin. And Patsy Cline died March 5, 1963, in a plane crash outside Nashville. Jim Croce at age 30 died in a plane crash in Louisiana on Sept. 20, 1973.
The list also raises the question of whether being an entertainer or rock/poet may put you at greater risk for depression and substance abuse. It certainly seems that way anyway.
Or is that just a fallacy built on highly publicized overdose deaths of rock and rollers such as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison to name just a few
We aren’t going to prove that the rock and roll life significantly affects your lifespan here today. But I would like to look at this list and pluck out some musicians who died an untimely death, that is drug or alcohol abuse, plane crash, car crash or something else that would be considered tragic or premature.
Here are some deaths you may not have known about or may have forgotten.:
Danny Cedrone with Bill Haley and the Comets (of Rock Around the Clock fame) died June 17, 1954,from a broken neck after falling down the stairs.
Sam Cooke, along with Otis Redding, was among the vocal greats of all time, was shot to death in Los Angeles on Dec. 11, 1964.
Bobby Fuller, of ‘I Fought the Law’ fame, died under mysterious circumstances July 18, 1966. He was found dead in his car and the coroner cited suicide in his report but put question marks beside it. He was 23.
Brian Epstein, the manager/agent who ‘discovered’ the Beatles died of an accidental overdose at 32 on Aug. 27, 1967.
Brian Jones, the Rolling Stones guitarist, drowned in a swimming pool on July 3, 1969 at 27.
King Curtis, Grammy award winning saxophonist, was stabbed to death during an argument in New York City on Aug. 13, 1971.
Duane Allman, one of the most promising guitarists in his day with the Allman Brothers and Derek and the Dominos, died in a motorcycle accident at 24 on Oct. 29, 1971 in Macon, Ga.
Berry Oakley, also with the Allman Brothers, died in a traffic accident Nov. 11, 1972.
Leslie Harvey, with rock band Stone the Crows, was electrocuted by a live microphone while on stage in Wales on May 3, 1972.
Gram Parsons, member of the Byrds and pioneering alt-country artist, died of a drug overdose Sept. 19, 1973 in Joshua Tree, California.
Nick Drake, influential singer-songwriter-guitarist, died at 26 by suicide in England on Nov. 25, 1974.
Keith Relf, a member of the pioneering band the Yardbirds, was electrocuted by his guitar on May 14, 1976 in London. He was 33.
Marc Bolan, front man for T-Rex, died in a traffic accident, Sept. 16, 1977, in London.
Sandy Denny, folk-rock singer with Fairport Convention, died April 21, 1978 of a brain hemorrhage after an accidental fall.
Sid Vicious, key member of pioneering punksters, the Sex Pistols, died of drug overdose or suicide, Feb. 2, 1979.
Chris Bell, member of Big Star, died Dec. 27, 1978, in a traffic accident near Memphis.
Lowell George, Little Feat leader, died June 29, 1979, of a heart attack at 34. He had drug and alcohol problems in addition to being obese.
John Bonham, drummer for Led Zeppelin, died by asphyxiation on vomit (same cause as Hendrix, drug/alcohol related). He was 32.
John Lennon, of the Beatles, died by gunshot, on Dec. 8, 1980, at the age of 40.
Tim Hardin, died of a drug overdose, Dec. 29, 1980 in Los Angeles.
Bob Marley, reggae legend, died at 36 of Acral lentiginous melanoma on May 11, 1981.
Roy Buchanan, virtuoso guitarist, hung himself in jail after being picked up on a drunk and disorderly charge in Virginia on Aug. 14, 1988.
There are many more on this document who died untimely deaths: Karen Carpenter, Quiet Riot’s Randy Rhoads, Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys, Ricky Wilson of the B-52’s, Phil Lynott of Thin Lizzy, Ricky Nelson, Liberace, Cliff Burton of Metallica, Richard Manuel of the Band, Peter Tosh, Jaco Pastorius, Kurt Cobain of Nirvana,
Mike Oliver is counting down his vinyl record collection on his blog MyVinylCountdown which was created to raise awareness of Lewy body dementia. From that blog and other sources he culls material for weekly columns at AL.com.
This is an opinion piece from Mike Oliver who writes about life and health issues for AL.com.
Obamacare is not health care reform. It’s a Band-Aid at best.
You could call it an attempt at insurance reform. And it has helped some people who had no insurance obtain insurance. But who are we kidding? We have more than 28 million uninsured people in this country. The percentage of uninsured went down at first under Obamacare from about 44 million. But now the rate of uninsured is going up again.
Last Friday, a federal judge in Texas ruled the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional. And the case could go to the US Supreme Court.
But Medicaid expansion, much of what Obamacare is about, is not health care reform. Let’s get serious and move the conversation to something substantial.
I want to know what is the case against a single-payer system? I’d really like to know why a single-payer is not legitimately considered an option in this county.
I’m saying this as someone diagnosed at 56 with a fatal brain disease, Lewy body dementia. I’m 58 now, they say the average lifespan for this type of dementia is 4 to7 years or 5 to 8 years after diagnosis.
I’m asking as someone who has covered health care for years as a reporter and editor in Alabama, Florida and California, as one who covered First Lady Hillary Clinton’s health reform attempts as it went down in flames.
I’m looking for real reasons why a single-payer is not the way to go. Just so we are clear, the answer of the above question is not that it is socialistic or socialism. That’s an observation or opinion as to what type of government policy it is.
Medicare might be described as socialistic. The Department of Transportation might be described as socialistic. After all, we collect and re-distribute tax dollars to build roads and bridges. But we have decided as a nation of some shared needs so government heads up that multi-billion-dollar endeavor.
But there’s already too much government in our lives I hear opponents of a single-payer system say. I say: We are the government.
So, please, help me understand why it is a bad idea. I go back to Medicare. It, too, is a multi-billion dollar endeavor, making up something like 15 percent of the federal budget. In general Medicare (not to be confused with Medicaid) gets pretty good marks for efficiency. Most folks have seen their parents or grandparents on Medicare, and they haven’t joined the communist party.
In one version of a single-payer, we would open Medicare up to everybody who needs it regardless of age. It seems like this would cost more money initially, and maybe so, but in the long run we will have a healthier, happier nation and less money going to high percentage profits of the health care industry.
And that will ultimately mean less spending on health-care. (If only political leaders looked long-term.)
The truth is the United States has universal coverage right now. That’s right. It’s just that there are many who use the emergency room as their doctor’s office. Their unpaid charges get passed on to paying customers, a phenomenon called cost-shifting. So medicines and treatment rise for the insured patient. Even those with insurance often have high deductibles that deflate the incentive to make a doctor’s appointment.
They get treated one way or another. Others wait to get better but end up getting worse — a cancer that could have been stopped is now too far along, for example.
I was doing a ride-around with an ambulance service in Orlando, FL, years ago and asked the driver about the health care of the people they pick up to take to the hospital.
“Health care for people out here is calling 911 ” was his response.
I think there are two things that help to understand why this is such a sticky and difficult problem. Typical business economics behind health care don’t operate in the interest of the patients or their outcomes. Think about it. The institutional financial interest is to treat more, test more, scan more, prescribe more.
Now good doctors may be outraged that I would insinuate their decisions are financially driven. And I believe doctors should have as much freedom as possible to make prognoses and treat patients.
Here’s a case scenario: A hospital on one side of town — Hospital A — buys an expensive laser treatment for brain tumors. It costs many millions but they have the only one in town. They figure they can charge $10,000 per treatment based on how many will use the treatment. On the other side of town, another hospital notices the business that the laser is getting, so they buy one. All good capitalism and competition, right?
The problem is there is a ceiling on the pool of patients. So hospital A starts seeing less patients because Hospital B picked them off. Economically, the overall revenue is down so Hospital A must increase the cost of the treatment or increase the patient population.
What they need is a good brain tumor epidemic. That’s a horrible thing to enter the psyche of a hospital or health care organization.
The other anomaly about health care reform is that there are huge financial interests which work against significant reform. I covered Hillary Clinton’s attempt to reform health care. It was not pretty. Too many cooks in the kitchen spoiled the broth, as the thick document that contained the policy was seized upon and ridiculed, probably rightfully so. Throwing an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink document out there was a major mistake, politically. Holding closed sessions with myriad special interests and academic experts was another political mistake.
Many remember the infamous “Harry and Louise” ads, but even more influential in the demise of Hillarycare was former New York Lt. Governor Betsy McCaughey. She wrote “No Exit,” which was published in the New Republic. Although it was a skewed screed with the appearance of an academic critical analysis, it was timely ammunition for Republicans looking to scuttle the plan.
That’s old news now.
Hillarycare like Obamacare was not systemic health care reform anyway. It tried to please everybody from consumer groups to insurers, from hospitals to the pharmaceutical industry. The result: Hillarycare died.
And now Obamacare has been ruled unconstitutional.
I wonder why we can’t create some new news without one person’s name on it. Call it Peoplecare.
Most of us of my generation (age 59) have heard, intentionally or accidentally, the Isley Brothers.
Their hits are many, having put out radio friendly soul for decades.
I like the genre: the Stylistics, O’Jays and the Delfonics are a few groups I have enjoyed and have some mostly on CD.
This is a Motown Superstar Series it says on the cover, Volume 6.
Really? Volume 6? I don’t even have a Volume 6 number of songs on the Beatles. Given that this has 10 songs on it, does that mean there are — at least — 60 greatest hits?
Even if it is Volume 6, they left some good ones for this record. There’s: “This Old Heart of Mine,” “I Hear a Symphony,” and “Take Me In your Arms (Rock Me Little Baby).
A fun fact: A young Jimi Hendrix became a member and toured with the Isley Brothers in 1964-65. He recorded a few singles with the group including ‘Testify,’ — not on this album.
He then became a member of Wild Cherry just after they had a huge hit with the song “Play that Funky Music White Boy.’
After that stint ended, he went solo and scored with song that seems to just come out of nowhere in 1980: the anthemic ‘Ah Leah.’Great song with the volume cranked.
Chris Isaak has a voice that sounds like Roy Orbison singing for the lonely.
With a touch of Elvis, a generous touch.
I have his first two on vinyl. Both are excellent. I have his third on CD, that one, probably his most successful because of the song, ‘Wicked Game,’ a worldwide mega-hit tied to a David Lynch film.
But in terms of quality, folks should not forget those first two albums, ‘Silvertone’ and ‘Chris Isaak.’ They come with a sultry, anachronistic sound — especially good for snuggling with your loved one.
Prosby rubbed his head, wincing at the pain from the wound on the side of his head.
He was cold on the concrete slab floor. He wasn’t restrained.
“Again Mr. Prosby, may I offer you some water, or perhaps something stronger?”
The woman appeared to be in her 40s, wearing some kind of one-piece zip-up suit with lettering on the right side of her chest, like something an auto mechanic might wear. Only it was bright neon blue.
The lights greatly enhanced his headache and he tried to stand up. He fell to a knee, inviting laughter from the woman and others he could not see.
“What do you want?” he asked, giving up on trying to stand.
:Well, Mr. Prosby, the question is ‘What do you want? Actually and more precisely, the question is: Do you want to live or die.”
“We all die some time,” He snapped back quickly, with sarcasm.
‘You’re death will be sooner than the natural world would give you and, trust me, it will be much much more painful,’ The woman in the jumpsuit continued. “And I will personally see to that.’
“You see, Mr. Prosby, our deal comes with an expiration date. It’s not a pay as you go sort of thing. If you don’t accomplish this task, and bring us what we seek, by that certain date, you will expire.
His mouth moved to answer but he couldn’t hear a word he said because of the deafening metal machine music.
