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Willie Nelson — 298, 297

ALBUMS: Willie Nelson’s Greatest Hits (1981); Always on My Mind (1982)

MVC Rating: Greatest Hits 4.5/$$$; Always 4.0/$$

My early memories of these go back to my graduation from Auburn University, my marriage, and my first career-like job as special correspondent to the Birmingham News.

I worked out of a house I rented on 15 acres of land on Nesbitt Lake Road in Jacksonville AL. Rent $250 a month. It got cold out in the country with only space heaters.

I lived there with my newly wedded wife, Catherine. (H.S. College sweethearts. Still sweethearts.) My dog, Maggie, a Border Collie/Shelty -like dog, smartest I’d ever had. (No offense Lucy, Molly and Gus.)

I was out in this idyllic corner of Calhoun at the behest of my employer, The Birmingham News. We put up a rope swing on a hill in the front yard. We were still kids, Cat and I. And having the time of our lives on a weekly paycheck of $169 (After deductions).

My beat as a reporter was Calhoun, Etowah and Talladega counties. And it was a hard scrabble living for many who lived in this area. (Writer Rick Bragg grew up around these parts and he later bought his mother a house on Nesbitt Lake Road (after we left.) I later worked with Rick at the Birmingham News building downtown on 4th Ave North and 22nd Street.

But before I end this little pre-history, I have to say living out there could also be cold and lonely and very real and alive with insects, wild turkeys, deer, stray dogs, and occasionally a loose farm animal, like a pig who had wandered from across the street. One night we stopped at the closest establishment, a little restaurant and beer joint at the end of Nesbitt Lake Road, not far from town. We noticed some young people playing cards — nothing harcore here, it was UNO, a mindless popular game at the time. We took notice because we knew the game well.. The participants included soldiers from nearby Fort McClellan. We stayed a while watching them and talking.

Next day we found out a woman in the group shot a man to death at the table they were playing cards on, the result of a lover’s spat, the police said.

In this beat out in rural Alabama, I covered murder investigations , including Audrey Marie Hilley, dubbed the Black Widow because she killed her husband with arsenic, and tried to kill her daughter and other relatives by the same method. She disappeared after being charged and lived under aliases in different states for years before being brought to justice. She died of hypothermia in the woods near a prison she had escaped.

That was one of the wildest crime cases I remember covering. I believe one of the Birmingham’s Tom Gordon covered the trial. I did cover another case of Billy Wayne Waldrop, who thought it would be good idea to carve his initials in the body of a person he killed: BWW.. Waldrop was sentenced to death and was executed about 20 years ago.

There were other stories, the infield hijinx at the Talladega 500, the body of and unidentified teenager on the side of the road in Talladega, a visit to the abandoned house where a family was all murdered years ago. The door creaked open when I pushed it. It was empty. There was and old dusty calendar on the wall opened to the month and year the slaughter had occurred.

I also met and spent some time with an ambitious deputy prosecutor from Gadsden (or near Gadsden). His name was Roy Moore. Yep that Roy Moore, the former federal judge who became famous initially for his placement and then refusal to take out from the Federal Court building a large stone carving of the Ten Commandments.

I still have a 45 record Moore gave me of some Christmas music he had recorded.

For all of this, I worked hard learning the trade that involves asking questions and communicating to readers in a most timely fashion.

On my turntable nearly every night was Willie Nelson, his soothing but pleasant voice making everything all right. Occasionally, on the weekends, I’d put on the Stray Cats. Updated 1950s music. My two albums, one a two-record greatest hit, just about covered the highlights: On the Road Again, Whiskey River, Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain, Angel Flying too Close to the Ground (where he beats the hell out of his bass string on his guitar.) The guitar — Trigger — with the hole in it from wear. Of course his hit at the time was ‘Always on My Mind.’ Since it wasn’t on the Hits album (too new) we bought ‘Always on My Mind,’ album. it was my wife’s favorite song at that time.

Later when I moved downtown to Birmingham, I went to see Willie play at the Alabama State Fair. I was on the second row with about eight people from the Birmingham News.

The front row, at this outdoor concert with chairs. sat, wrapped in all sorts of leather, a biker gang. We tried hard not to spill any beer and cheap nachos on them.

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The Nerves — 299.

A live album from 1977 by power popsters The Nerves.

ALBUM: The Nerves Live! (Recorded 1977; Released 2009)

MVC Rating: 2.5/$$$$

It’s apropos that I throw this in after describing Northern PIkes, the Canadian band, as sounding like some of the power pop music coming out of So-Cal. Specifically I mentioned the Plimsouls, the Beat and The Nerves. All of whom had some shared members such as Paul Collins and Peter Case.

I rarely buy new vinyl, I’m a bargain hunting sort of collector and I have a hard time paying $25 for a a record. Especially after getting some amazing records in the $1-5 range. It’s a little more work, sure, but that’s part of the fun.

So I splurged when I saw this Nerves record, a record of lost live tapes on violet vinyl I had the Plimsouls; I had the Beat. I enjoyed that music.

So this seemed a natural Christmas gift to myself two years ago, I believe it was WUXTRY in Athens, Ga. I don’t regret the purchase but and there is a but. This record sounds like hell. Like they only had one microphone hanging from the ceiling in a loud juke joint. You know why it sounds like that? Because it was recorded with one microphone hanging from the ceiling in a loud juke joint.

This is for archivists and completists, which on this one I took one step closer to becoming. I know many of the songs on this record already so I could pick them out and it was fun to see them in a setting in the wild like this. But for those interested in this genre, should probably start with some other albums by Peter Case or the Plimsouls or Paul Collins.

However when the inclination is just right, and you turn this up to about 9, you will be transported to this noisy bar called the Pirate’s Cove in Cleveland Ohio, May 26, 1977 with a noisy and melodic band power pop band called The Nerves.

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Daily Journal, Oct. 28, 2019, Life in the Food Chain

I told my wife, Catherine, it has been a wild ride the past few weeks, and I’ve been emotional. (I can get my shoulders rubbed with that.) Lots of life events. First a friend died at 58. It’s a sad sad story. She was my wife’s maid of honor in our wedding — and they were like sisters in high school when I started dating Catherine. Carole even lived with Catherine when her parents moved and Carole wanted to stay to finish her senior year in high school. I included a tribute in my lyrics post. I went to her memorial. I brushed away a tear or two.

A 3-year-old was found in a dumpster. I used to cover the cop beat and courts. I’ve written about vile acts and unfathomable cruelty. But like the proteins killing my brain cells, these stories are taking a toll on me over time. I ranted a bit in a column that I think shows those internal struggles.

I wrote a memoriam to a colleague whose birthday is tomorrow. He died 10 years go come Nov. 29.

I went to a wedding in Tallahassee where beautiful Megan was married to her longtime sweetheart. I had all three of my (grown up girls, a boyfriend and husband and my wife. We all crammed into a big rented van (seats seven) and sang our way all the way to Tallahassee.

Stairway to Heaven, Four Non-Blonds “What’s Up” “Free Bird” ‘Earl Must Die’ and “I Shall Be Released” as done by Kevin Kinney drew the loudest singalong response. Megan and her family had been back door neighbors in Florida. The girls used to talk through the privacy fence — that’s how they became friends. Next they started using ladders taken from each garage to climb over and play. Finally Jim, their father, and I said enough. We took a saw and cut a door out of the fence, added hinges and a latch which they could open from either side by use of a screen and, voila, instant two-home compound. It would not be unusual to wake up in the morning and find one of the girls from the other house going through refrigerator or vice versa. “Help yourself,” I’d say, rubbing sleep from my eye. Of course I cried at the wedding, but not as much as I wanted to. It took a manly effort not to. Stupid gender rules.

I get feedback from time to time that people don’t see my stories. One thing is most of my stories are online only and not in the newspaper, so you won’t see me much there — just occasionally. The other factor is I write a lot on my blog which you are reading right now: www.myvinylcountdown.com . Some of these blog posts go on to AL.com posts or vice versa. Good Idea to put that website address on favorites and check every day or every other day for new content. But then also every week I publish in AL.com and sometimes that post is on my blog and sometimes it’s not. One way to check for that is go to the ‘search’ button at the far right top of the AL.com website screen and type in my name Mike Oliver:Al.com. It should give you a list of recent writings of mine.

Thanks for everybody’s support. I feel like I’ve been distracted from my music by other blog posts . So I’m going to jump on those. I finally am out of the ‘M’s’ unless I find some stragglers.

Couple other things. It was reported that Joe Henry, one of my favorite recording artisfs has Stage 4 prostate cancer. He’s my age. I don’t have him on vinyl thus he has not made my list. But now, maybe for my birthday I’ll get what I can that he does on vinyl. I have about five or so of his CD’s. My favorite I think is Trampoline followed closely by Scar and Kindness of the World.

So it’s been quite a week. I also filed the 12th and latest story, a fun, hopefully funny dystopian serial series that is at once silly and dumb. And to top it off it has no redeeming value. Gotta read it now, I hear you thinking. Must start from top, the first one and read in sequential order otherwise it’ll make even less sense than it does now. You can find them all in the website bar at the top that says Hisicanes and Hurricanes (A Serial Story)

I dedicate this post to Challen, a colleague at AL.com, who emailed me this morning to say he had Tonio K.’s ‘Life in the Foodchain’ cranking and thanked me for recommending it.

You know Challen, it’s kind of like carving the turkey, it’s kind of like mowing the lawn, everything gets to a certain dimension, winds up on the customer’s plane and then’s gone …

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His and hurricanes (Part 12 of a serial story)

SCENE: Prosby woke up feeling fuzzy headed after dispatching a killer bot into Alexander Springs. The head pool of the spring was about the size of two backyard pools.

Prosby’s first thought was relayed to him by his face. It was planted, face down of course, in the sand.

His second thought was relayed to him by his upper shoulder. It had been sliced by the circular saw on the robot’s arm and it hurt like a mother$%#$#@.

“Hey man, stay down! We are trying to help you.” Prosby’s eyes came in and out of focus. He had lost a lot of blood.

“Hippie Chick,” he said without thinking, looking deep into the pools of black dilated eyes, tinged with ocean blue.

It appeared she didn’t have any clothes on as her honey brown hair nearly touched her knees. While confirming that observation he suddenly he realized he was naked. And he had no hair to use as cover! He started looking around.

‘Relax Robot Hunter. Clothes aren’t used much here. Your closes are dirty, torn and bloody. We will make you new ones.” Hippie Chick seemed to have a bevy of hippie chicks.

Prosby’s head hurt. They were in a small clearing covered by a canopy of trees. It was warm. It appeared as an outdoor cathedral.

Hippie Chick brought him something to drink. “This will help heal you” she said.

He drank it and fell into a deep dreamy state but was awake. He asked what they gave him. The nectar of honeysuckle, ground nutmeg concentrate and oil of budding yellow primrose, said Hippie Chick.

“Let’s get you to camp where you can recover,” she said. He felt for his right shoulder using his left hand. He felt wet dirt.

“Gray clay,” she said.

“It wounds all heals,” she said laughing, running away. “Stay here, they will bring you.”

About 10 naked hippie chicks were laughing; He was not sure if they were laughing at him as he stood up in all of his glory? Or the joke Hippie Chick made before running away?

They took him to see the men, hippie dudes. They sat in a circle and urged him to sit in the middle. The women came and sat next to the men. He started to daydream, thinking of Burnese and how difficult it will be to rescue her. He imagined running away with her and being safe as they live out their years together. He thought of Burnese saying: “And how long did you stay in the woods with the naked women while I was near death?”

This snapped out of his reverie. The hippies were laughing. They talked into the night sipping Elderberry wine.

He spent a day or two healing. He practiced WoW with them. The hippie colony had a meditative spiritual focus on the word ‘WoW. At around midday, they would gather in a tent revived from long ago. And they all said WoW. Not in unison. They would just walk around and say, ‘WoW.’ WoW, WoW, I mean WoW. It was the perfect word, they said, it was their word for creation. It was the same backward and forward. It was WoW that opened the universe to their beings, their souls, they said.

Wow. Just WoW.

Prosby actually got into it a litle bit. Making your lips shape the WoW was kind of funny after a few hundred WoWs.

HIppie Chick took an interest in Prosby, and snuggled up against him around the communal fire pit, But Prosby told her his story and said he loved another woman. She kissed him on the forehead and said, ‘Go rescue Burnese. She’s a fine woman. I’ll always be here.’ She smiled and disappeared into the darkness. He was off.

He didn’t look forward to this leg of the trip.

The Hippies persuaded him not to use Alexander Springs because every time someone uses it as a portal, it draws unwanted attention. One time after three assassins went through the portal and killed a rising young politician J. Effum Kaye, the government attempted to plug the spring shut with cement. The Hippies plagued the shut-down efforts with diversion tactics and nighttime raids. Finally the government gave it up.

So Prosby took it to the road, onward to Auburndale, which was near the coast now as Tampa and St. Petersburg were underwater. The air will likely get worse as Prosby approached the area. It’s as if Florida residents had retreated and huddled up, millions of them around the Auburndale area. Underground was the desirable place to live and breathe, above ground you need masks and a protection from the bounty hunters, rabid, vicious animals, diseases, and of course the ever-present drug gang wars. In the Underground, you had restaurants, fitness gyms, health care and decent employment if you don’t mind being part of the History of the World Project, rewriting and documenting thousands of pages and computer drives of tedious information. All other employment consisted of services such as cleaning, cooking, waiting tables, and a few entertainment jobs but you could only play songs approved by the government. The elite rulers knew the power of music.

To Be Continued …

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Northern Pikes –300

ALBUM: BIg Blue Sky (1987)

MVC Rating: 3.5/$$

There’s a lot of good things going on north of us. Canada has consistently over the years produced some fine rock artists. Such as?

Well, Gordon Lightfoot, Alanis Morrisette, Bare Naked Ladies, Neil Young, Beat Rodeo, Jeff Healy, Bryan Adams, Joni Mitchell, kd lang, the Guess Who/Burton Cummings, Crash Test Dummies, Leonard Cohen, Rush, Bruce Cockburn, Bachman-Turner Overdrive — and I could go on. (In fact I would be interested in hearing who your favorite Canadian artist is. (And Anne Murray and Celine Dion — God bless them, they have their good points– aren’t really very near the Rock/Folk/Soul/ that I’m focusing on. But if those are your faves, that’s cool. We are inclusive here. Oh, forgot a good one: Most of The Band (Robbie Robertson).

I received this Northern Pikes album from a Canadian relative; it was their first studio album with a major label. Since its inception in 1984, the Northern Pikes have put out about 10 albums and charted many times in Canada. But as far as I can tell virtually unheard of in the states.

I have to admit I haven’t followed them and I don’t know my own album very well. One of those that gets overlooked when thumbing through hundreds of records to play something.

I was pleasantly surprised. It took me back to the jangly guitart sound of the REM-styled New Wave and the power pop trip of the Plimsouls, the Nerves and the Beat, which were California groups that shared members over time. But none, I think are still going at it like the Pikes who are still cranking albums and playing live.

Here’s a video of Teenland off their first album, followed by one of their highest charting songs called She Ain’t Pretty.

teenland sounds like plimsouls

80s sound but not the bad synth stuff good Cars-like guitar

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My Vinyl Countdown trying to heal with love of the common people

One thing about going down the rabbit hole, sometimes you find a rabbit.

That’s all well and good. But what do you do with a rabbit?

Readers of this column know the plan for me. I will continue to count down my vinyl records until this degenerative brain disease — Lewy body dementia — won’t let me.

I embarked on this incredible journey into my life through my records after I was diagnosed about three years ago. I call this public awareness campaign ‘My Vinyl Countdown.’ My 678 vinyl recordings spent nearly three decades unused in boxes after I purchased them as a music-loving youth in the 1970s and 1980s.

People ask if I have CDs. Heck yeah. I had a carousel that held 300 discs at one time. I embraced the digital age, and bought an iPod that holds thousands of songs. But when I was hit with this diagnosis I resurrected or reconstituted an idea I had a long time ago: Start a blog and one- by- one chronicle my albums and possibly link to eBay to sell. I thought of that 10 years ago and never did it.

But now it’s up and running where I iintersperse my reviews with other stories about basketball, family, and music. Of course the way it turned out, from a readership and marketing standpoint, is much better. Now I have a cause — Lewy bodydementia awareness. Now I have a deadline. And now I have drama.

Much better than just talking about my records with no other context. Not that I would have selected this particular method — actually getting the disease — just to raise awareness. But now that I have this disease, I feel like making something useful out of it. With about 300 to go, I’m more than halfway there.

FOR REST OF STORY CLICK

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November Group — 301

ALBUM: Work That Dream (1985)

MVC Rating: 2.5/$$

I never thought I’d say I would like synth-disco music. And I’m not going to say it now.

It is synth disco and probably well done, I just don’t have strong feelings about it, one way or another. My idea of using synthesizers is like the Who’s use of synths in “We Won’t Get Fooled Again.”

But if you are at a disco with swirling lights and turquoise blue drinks and this comes on, I’m sure you’ll want to dance.

I admit it ‘s a taste thing. If you love Eurythmics, ABC, 80s loopy synthesizers you may like it. Allmusic.com said: “Work That Dream stands as a professional and entertaining set of sounds from an ’80s band that deserved international airplay.”

And that ‘set of sounds’ should be kept in the confines of a discotheque, I say.

I probably should have given it at least a 3.0 but couldn’t quite do it.

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Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels — 302

ALBUM: ‘Wheels of Steel’ (10-inch 1983)

MVC Rating: 4.0/$$$

A rare 10-inch record, the Mitch Ryder and Detroit Wheels album ‘Wheels of Steel.’

Yikes we are still in the ‘M’s. I believe this Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels record is the last one. That was a lot of M’s, but we need to keep going so I’m lining up my N’s — for artists like Neutral Milk Hotel, November Group, Harry Nilsson, and and others.

Remember I’m counting down my records — which when I started about two years ago– stood at 678.

Going with M for Mitch (alphabetizing the band not just Ryder).

For Ryder and band I have a 10-inch “collector’s” edition featuring the group’s best known works. ‘Devil with a Blue Dress/Good Golly Miss Molly’ — said to be the best one-two punch combo in rock. Other raucous party tunes are ‘Jenny Take a Ride,’ the always fun party dance tune, ‘Shake a Tail Feather.’ Here’s line-up:

Side One
Jenny Take A Ride
Sock It To Me Baby
Little Latin Lupe Lu
You Get Your Kicks
Side Two
Devil With A Blue Dress On/ Good Golly Miss Molly
Breakout
Shake A Tail Feather
Too Many Fish In The Sea/ Three Little Fishes

Ryder was a real deal hard rock blues guy from Detroit –and possibly a little underrated.

According to AllMusic (which calls Ryder “the unsung hero” of Michigan rock and roll), Ryder withdrew from music after experiencing throat trouble,[1] moving to Colorado with his wife and taking up writing and painting. In 1983, Ryder returned to a major label with the John Mellencamp-produced album Never Kick a Sleeping Dog.

Interesting footnote from Wikipedia: Ryder was the last person to perform with Otis Redding, they performed the song “Knock On Wood”, on December 9, 1967, in Cleveland, Ohio, on a local TV show called Upbeat. Redding and four members of his touring band, The Bar-Kays, died in a plane crash near Madison, Wisconsin the following day, December 10, 1967.

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Puzzle? It’s my MVC Daily Journal, Oct. 18, 2019. (Got a clue? edition. )

My little puzzle appearing in my post on song lyrics Saturday is still unsolved — at least officially. Some people have indicated they now know the hidden theme. So, if you do klnow the answer, I say you need to either post it on comments on the lyrics story, Tweet it out (make sure I see Tweet), FaceBook it — or somehow get the word out what the secret theme is and how you found it hidden in my story.

ADDENDUM: There’s a 2nd level complexity to this that I don’t believe most will understand so I am asking for those who have uncovered the hidden message (1st layer), to let people know (or challenge them to find it.)

A curtain rises on someone thinking in concert.

As for the lyrics story itself, here’s some postscript suggestions from guitar man, Willie Moseley of Vintage Guitar Magazine.

 Last verse of “The Boxer” 

“In the clearing stands a boxer, and a fighter by his trade
And he carries the reminders f every glove that laid him down 

or cut him till he cried out in his anger and his shame
‘I am leaving, I am leaving’ but the fighter still remains”

————————————–

Third verse of Billy Joel’s “Miami 2017”

“They sent a carrier up from Norfolk and picked the Yankees up for free

They said that Queens could stay, they blew the Bronx away

And sank Manhattan out at sea.”

(I recommend the live version of “Miami 2017” on Joel’s Songs in the Attic album)

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Daily Journal, Oct. 16, 2019

A rare, gentically ‘mutated,’ Yellow Cardinal was spotted in Florida. Experts have called the Cardinal wearing yellow feathers instead of its traditional red garb is a one-in-a-million.

This is still another clue. I believe in signs from nature and I was talking yellow cardinals in a column Saturday.

Here’s how I start. : This is an opinion column by Mike Oliver, who writes about life and music while living with Lewy body dementia. In memory of CMES, may she find her yellow bird.

These are all clues. To wake up to the news of another yellow bird sighting knocked me for a loop. As I had dedicated my column to a loved one lost — kind of like Casey Kasem used to do. Asking her if she found her yellow bird.

FILE photo. Yellow birds symbolize your one true love.