I’m Mike Oliver and I have a degenerative brain disease called Lewy body dementia. There’s no cure. It shortens my life span as excess proteins in my head slowly smother my brain neurons. It probably will not be a pretty end. I’m 62, hoping to make it a few more years at least.
I’m married to my high school sweetheart, Catherine, and have three wonderful (grown) daughters, Hannah, Emily and Claire, and a dog, Gus, a smallish rust colored psychodoodle who thinks he’s a person.
But this is background information to get to the bigger story. My passion is my family. My joy comes from the human relationships that bind us all to something bigger. The windows to these passions in my life are basketball and music.
String music, if you will.
As I said, I have Lewy Body dementia, and I’m going to tell you about that on this blog.
I will tell you in some blog posts what I’m feeling as my disease progresses. I will tell you this as killer proteins wage war on my neurons on the battlefield that is my brain. And I’ll try not to use so many war cliches’. (Even though I have War, the group, and Edwin Starr — good God!– on vinyl.)
I’ve been a professional writer and editor at various newspapers (remember them?) for decades and am recently retired from AL.com.
I have 678 vinyl record albums (remember them?) and I am going to review those albums one by one and post those reviews here. Some have interesting stories behind them, and good music on them. Some don’t. But these records, mostly but not exclusively from the 70s and 80s, mean a lot to me, otherwise I wouldn’t have saved them for so many decades.
The album reviews are the backbone of the content on this blog, obviously the supply line. They are also a sneaky way to tell you the story of my life and express gratitude to the people I’ve known and loved. I don’t know how long I have, but I vow to finish reviewing these 678 records.
NEW FLASH 2: I am editing this to reflect that I will have finished this blog in the next few days as I only have 3 posts to go as of Jan. 11, 2022. By Sunday I will have completed 678 reviews (all accessible on this blog) since starting in the fall of 2017.
I am counting these down in alphabetical order, more or less. The name of the artist will be the title of the post with an accompanying number beside it, showing you how many more before we get to the ‘1’ — the end of my collection, which will be a ‘Z’ record. Here’s an example from my very first post. The search on this website works well so use it if you are looking for some artist or, anything for that matter.
In high school, I bought mainly at WUXTRY used records in Athens, Ga., sometimes from a guy named Peter Buck (later of REM). For a time there was another used record store in town, a block away from WUXTRY. The owner there loved to play the Kinks, and I soon became a fan of that band’s rock ’n folksy British style. (Also hat tip to Chuck who sold me records at WUXTRY in Athens and establishments in Birmingham and Cahaba Heights, Ala..)
On this blog, I’m also going to write some about basketball. I’ve played pick-up basketball now for 35 years of my adult life. My basketball stories will be storified snippets of my fading hoop dreams.
UPDATE WITH NEW NUMBERS: I’m both humbled and proud that my friends and colleagues in July — for the third time in as many years — put together a 3X3 basketball tournament called Mike’s Madness and raised about $15,000. We have no paid staff or overhead so nearly every penny goes to research at UAB and the Lewy Body Dementia Association working hard to raise awareness of this disease.
Donatitons are appreciated year round of course. I believe you can go to LBDA’s website www.lbda.org
On this blog, I’ll also write about my job, my career I suppose, given I’ve been three decades in the news business. Is it a dying industry? I’ve got some insight.
Am I dying? Well, everyone is in line for that. I just may have to move ahead a few places in that line. I’ll keep the light on for you.
So put me on your favorites and check in now and again to see how I’m doing.
Gotta go. I’m on deadline.
It’s My Vinyl Countdown.
CREDIT: Home graphic, concept and design by Ramsey Archibald.
(To comment on a post, click headline and scroll to bottom.)