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I don’t really have a list, at least not one written down. So that number is a ‘guesstimate.’

But this one I have to write down: I woke up this morning and my dog was in my bed, just casually lying there.

Gus, a small, slightly overweight, 15-year-old Golden Doodle (subset Psychodoodle), isn’t supposed to be able to scale the heights of our bed, at least since we got a new one recently.

Gus used to be a regular when we had a much lower bed.

We bought the new bed about three months ago and it’s a good 3-feet off the ground. And Gus, we have noticed is getting older and more unstable with his feet. Like me.

Gus recently was unable to jump up into the car to go to the beauty parlor where my wife, Catherine, tells Kimberly, the proprietor of Bark, Bath and Bubbles, to cut it close.

Now Kimberly is a professional and could gussy up Gus to look like Cinderella (or maybe Prince Charming) if she wasn’t under orders by Catherine to give it a crewcut. He looks like a large rodent now. Nothing wrong with the rodent look, it’s very popular in the hot summertime. And it’s a great conversation piece on daily walks.

“What kind is that?” asks the lady with a perfectly coiffed standard poodle while widening her distance on the sidewalk

“A Golden Rodent,” I would like to say, but refrain.

I am getting off track, however.

The fact is my 15 year-old dog (about 78 in dog years) was lying on my bed looking at me with those expressive eyes when I woke up this morning. About 6:30 a.m.

Gus? How did you get up here? I said it more with astonishment than anger. Gus has a sixth sense about oncoming storms and often runs around looking for a safe place. At this early in the morning I did not hear any thunder or see lightning though. It did look like we were in a turbulent weather pattern. (It later hailed).

My whole point here is that… that… well Gus is going to die. And I, who am 61, will likely succumb earlier than planned due to my Lewy body dementia.

Now dogs are smart but I don’t know what they think about mortality. Do they know they are going to die?

I was in the room the last two times the family dog died. The last one, Molly, a yellow Lab, was very sick and had to be euthanized. Just before she was injected, her eyes, before they fixed, seemed to say, ‘Where am I going?’

Gus and I are watching each other, I believe. Like his sixth sense with the weather, Gus will probably know the time. But until then Gus is going to enjoy what he still can.

Even before the bed jump, I noticed Gus was running around puppy- like, in recent days, playing with his rubber doggie bone and generally being frisky.

Maybe it’s because it is Spring, renewal (and pollen) in the air.

Well Gus inspired me. Catherine, Gus, and I went on one of the best and most strenuous walks I’ve been on in a while. Though drained, I felt stoked. I had more energy, all inspired by Gus.

I’m going to rub behind his ears —his favorite thing— a little extra tonight.

UPDATE NOTE: After Saturday’s 3 a.m. lightning and thunder shelling, guess who was back in bed with us, for the second night in a row.

ALBUMS: The Deep End (1981): The Swimming Pool Q’s (1984); Blue Tomorrow (1986); World War 2.5 (1989). Single Little Misfit/Stingray (1981)

MVC Rating: The Deep End 3.0/$$$$; self entitled 4.5/$$$$$; Blue Tomorrow 4.0/$$$; World War 2.5/$$$; Little Misfit/Stingray 3.5/$$$

These little misfits started in the deep end and could never figure out exactly what sound worked best for them. They came out of Atlanta and obviously were exposed to a lot of Athens, Ga. music at the turn of the 1980’s. Songs like Big Fat Tractor, Stingray and Little Misfit. These songs fit right into the sound of songs like ‘Rock Lobster and ‘Private Idaho’ by the B-52’s.’

In a small theater hall on the University of Georgia campus I saw the B-52’s and have to admit didn’t know what to think of them. The Swimming Pool Q’s were the opening act.

The Q’s on their major label debut showed off an array of guitar driven songs tempered by the awesome voice of Ann Richmond Boston. Their two A&M albums were the best. You had several radio friendly songs in Celestion, Now I’m Talking ‘Bout Now,’ Blue Tomorrow, Some New Highway, and She’s Bringing Down the Poison and the Bells Ring. They were good musicians — Bob Elsey was and is an understated underrated guitarist extraordinaire hear it on ‘She’s Looking Good When She’s Looking.’ Jeff Calder was also a fine guitarist and believe he played keyboard as well.

Calder and Boston tempered each other or should I say Boston tempered Calder. Without the female voice of Boston, Calder’s voice came down like a sledgehammer and so did his songwriting. World War 2.5 had some good guitar but also a big swing into hard punk that made it hard to keep on the turntable.

Still, as a group they are one of my all-time underappreciated groups from that era. Their experience shows the fragility of success and the thin line between being multimillionaire rock stars — B-52s and R.E.M. (to name a couple of Athens, Ga. bands) and a group with some equally great songs that never caught on.

It’s not fair but neither is life.

ALBUMS: Let it Be (1984); Pleased to Meet Me (1987); Don’t Tell a Soul (1989); All Shook Down (1990)

MVC RATING: Let 4.5/$$$$$; Pleased 4.0/$$$$$; Don’t 4.0/$$$$$; All 4.0/$$$$$

The Replacements were nicknamed the ‘Mats’ short for the Placemats as they were called by some.

They were a mess. They were boozy and druggy. Their live performances were wildly different depending on who was mad at who or how much the guitarist had been imbibing or they just felt like doing KISS cover songs that night.

Their third album, ‘Let it Be,’ captured this reckless energy and is considered by many critics to be one of the best punk/alternative records of them all. (I’d like to put it up song-by-song against ‘And Out Came the Wolves ..’ by Rancid for best punk rock albums.)

The Replacements had something. Much of it to my older years I now find it to be a touch noisy and less connective to where I am in my life right now. I do still like some of their mid to slow tempo pieces. Like ‘Skyway,’ ‘Can’t Hardly Wait, ‘Sadly Beautiful and ‘Achin to Be.’

Paul Westerberg’s vocals, even the screamed ones, sound like he’s under control while systematically pushing out the angst.

I was amused to see a recent article on Variety.com about Baby Boomers and their harsh feelings toward making the word vinyl plural — as in ‘vinyls.

‘You can buy or play a record, but you can’t buy or play a vinyl,’ the argument goes. ‘There’s even a popular T-shirt that reads: The plural of vinyl is vinyl. 

Well I call B.S. on this feigned outrage.

It was (us) old people who started in with the ‘Internets,’ a derisive joke making fun of President George W. Bush’s use of the word. Soon it became a phrase used by many with a wink wink, nod nod.

And for no extra charge, I’ll give our youngsters who say vinyls even more information/ammunition.

The word ‘album.’

I grew up where an album meant a multipage book with pockets that you slid photos into, or a stamp album that displays many pages of stamps. Everybody had a ‘family’ album.

But that word has evolved to mean everything from a single 33 and 1/3 vinyl record to a compact disc with songs on it; or even a cassette. ‘What’s you got on tape? Oh I have the new Replacements album.’

I think the word mutated with the advent of LP’s. Before them were 78’s, which were made of thick acetate and usually had one song per side. These records often were sold as ‘albums’ in which multiple records were placed in sleeves into what looked like a book.

Variety says it seems the Gen Z crowd is behind the vinyls. Well Gen Z-ers now you have a counter to the Baby Boomer ‘outrage.’

ALBUMS: The Best of Otis Redding (ATCO 1972); The Best of Otis Redding (Atlantic 1984)

MVC Rating: Both are 5.0/$$$$$

The best soul singer of all time. And I don’t say that flippantly.

I am a big fan of soul as performed by Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, Smokey Robinson, Wilson Pickett, Little Richard, James Brown, Diana Ross, Janis Joplin, Tina Turner, and Al Green, especially Al Green.

I like the Stylistics, Sly and the Family Stone, Mary Wells, Ray Charles, the Delfonics, the Temptations, Michael Jackson (Jackson 5), The Four Tops, and so on. I own records from most of these.

I do this long list of randomly associated performers to see who Redding was up against. Make no mistake about it, he was the best.

Redding who was influenced by (and played in a band with) Little Richard. James Brown was also from Macon.

Redding, who wrote many of his songs, sometimes sharing credit with Steve Cropper, the legendary session man.

Another session man Eddie Hinton, who worked out of Muscle Shoals did a pretty amazing Redding styled vocal, but Hinton succumbed to alcohol abuse and died young.

Redding died too young as well in a plane crash in 1967, leave a legacy of some great great songs ‘Hard to Handle,’ R-E-S-P-E-C-T,’ ‘I’ve Been Loving You for So Long’ ‘Try a Little Tenderness,’ and of course (Just sitting) on the Dock of the Bay, one of the greatest songs ever written. It skyrocketed to No. 1 but Redding never got to see that. His plane crash came just after the song was recorded and not yet released.

Dock of the Bay marked a departure from the deep soul in its sound and Redding’s singing. He pulled his big voice back a bit and delivered what is considered (by me) to be the most poignant blend of lyrics and music ever recorded. I know I said that about ‘Me and Bobby McGee written by Kris Kristofferson and performed definitively by Janis Joplin.

Both are wistful songs that tell a story of despair and loss. Pretty much a story we all live through as humans. Janis sang ‘Down in Salinas Lord, I let him slip away. He’s going to that place and I hope he finds it.’

Otis sang: ‘Sittin’ here resting my bones, this loneliness won’t leave me alone. Two thousand miles I roam just to make this dock my home.’

I don’t mean to take anything away from Redding’s other songs. I just wish he had lived so we can here what he cooked up to follow that one.

I see them.

In blankets all ruffled up. In bushes, trees, paintings — anything where there are patterns. I see faces, usually smiling but sometimes projecting some other emotion like fear or concern or, even anger.

This is going to be tricky to explain but what I suspect is my Lewy body dementia is supercharging a condition called pareidolia. Most dictionary definitions of this call it a ‘psychological phenomenon’ in which persons see an image, usually a face, in random objects.

Nearly everybody has this to a degree. Puffy white clouds often prompt viewers to see faces, animals or anything the mind can imagine. Famously many people thought they saw Jesus on a piece of toast.

That is not unusual. It’s the brain’s way of giving you information that might be helpful — like autofill in a document producing app.

But I think my situation is unusual. I believe it is connected to my Lewy body dementia which last year sent me deep into mind boggling hallucinations. These faces, I’ve been calling remnants of that full immersion hallucination.

These faces and sometimes entire figures with legs, a torso, arms and a head strike my vision sometimes when I walk in a room. The coat on the couch with a hat nearby and shoes on the floor all connect into a visual human-like figure.

It doesn’t bother me because since finding the right balance of medications and adding NuPlazid, an anti-psychotic, those days where I was ‘living’ inside the hallucination have been absent (going on at least three months now).

But I definitely see faces. Some of the faces are of the same people — people I met when I was hallucinating big time. They are so planted in my memory that I’m positive a sketch artist could draw them based on my memory.

Another part of my pareidolia: I can make the images change. For example if I see a pareidolia person’s head and face staring at me, I can look away and it does turn away. Although I don’t see it moving. Looking closer, shaking the pillow out or ignoring it makes it go away, as well.

Scientists are studying this phenomenon for clues on how the brain works.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22649179/

I believe our memory and imagination fill in the blanks of random visual stimuli, initiated by a prompt: three rocks in a Frisbee suddenly becomes two eyes, a mouth and the head. This is accelerated — or accentuated — in some people through an imbalance in the brain, I believe.

One would naturally link the abnormal proliferation of alpha-synuclein protein — the suspected cause of my kind of Lewy body dementia — to pareidolia.

More science is needed. I think a direct study on just Lewy body patients and Parkinson’s with psychosis patients would be in order as these neurodegenerative diseases seem to be a hotbed of hallucinations.

NOTE: Since posting Friday I came across a few more articles discussing this through the Lewy body lens.

ALBUM: The Big Heat (1986)

MVC Rating: 3.5/$$$

This is a little over-dated featuring clunky synthesizer. That means the synth (or organ) fills sometime sound like they stopped the music and banged a couple big wrenches together. CLUNK. Followed by the door of a bank safe slamming shut.. CHUCLUNK.

And speaking of hitting the wall, Ridgway was the lead singer of Wall of Voodoo which scored a hit with ‘Mexican Radio’ in 1983.

Voodoo introduced Ridgway’s distinctive voice and narrative style songwriting. The problem is the song-stories don’t always work. They do on the title song,

‘The Big Heat,’ and on ‘Pick it Up and Put it in Your Pocket’ and ‘Drive, She Said.’

This will not be profound. I want to take this post to provide both updates and downdates.

First off, from everything I have read there is no added risk for persons with dementia getting a flu shot. This is how rumors get started.

I received the first of a 2-shot vaccination today at the Birmingham airport in a rainstorm that was intermittently heavy.

(I successfully resisted booking a flight to Cancun while I was at the soggy airport.)

My arm hurts a teeny from the shot.

I think the workers out there standing in a parking lot did a great job of making it as efficient as possible. Although there was a steady stream of cars, there was virtually no wait except for the 15-minute hold to make sure there was not a reaction from the shot.

I had made an appointment for the shot. I go back in three weeks for the final shot. My vaccination was the Pfizer brand. I felt a little drowsy after lunch, but that’s not all that unusual. I’ll keep you posted.

Countdown update

If you’ve noticed I have cut into my 678 countdown number of albums substantially recently with multiple albums by Bruce Springsteen, Rod Stewart and Lou Reed.

Remember the number next to the artists’ names in the title of the post represents where that particular album is in descending order moving toward zero.

Right now I’m at 150.

I’ve been swimming in a river of R’s. I thought I had squeezed the last drop of R’s weeks ago and, and so started on my S’s. But the R’s kept popping up, a stash here and a pile here. There R a lot of R’s. So, I’m working on both S’s and R’s as a group. The T’s promise to be almost as abundant as the R’s and S.

Health update

My health has been overall not bad. Slight increase in tremors on some days — makes it hard to work the keyboard. Hallucinations have been practically nonexistence since the new medication. I believe too, my strategy of eating right and light, exercise (nothing major. I walk, ride an indoor bike when I can’t walk) and keeping my mind stimulated by doing this blog and reading.

I still get inquiries about the ‘hallucination’ post. It is still here on MyVinylCountdown.com. You can scroll down the website or use the search button.

Or, you can get immediately to the blog post clicking here.

ALBUMS: Velvet Underground White Light/ White Heat (1968 )Transformer (1972); Lou Reed Live (1975); New Sensations (1984); Mistrial (1986); New York (1989)

MVC Rating: VU 4.0/$$$$$;Transformer4.5/$$$$$; Live 3.5/$$$$$; New Sensations 4.5/$$$$$; Mistrial 4.0/$$$$: New York 4.5/$$$$$.

Punk, hipster, gender bending street crawler. Lou Reed was quintessential New York City underground. His band Velvet Underground sold few records when they got together in the late 60’s but remain guiding influences for punk/alternative music. Lou Reed left the band after just a few years.

He kicked off his solo career withTransformer, and opening line ‘You’re so vicious, you hit me with a flower.’

‘Walk on the Wild Side’ touches on transgender youth, sex and drugs and the scene where this flourishes. In that song Reed introduced millions to his talk-sing streetwise voice as an edited version hit the radio and charts.

Holly came from Miami, F.L.A.
Hitch-hiked her way across the U.S.A.
Plucked her eyebrows on the way
Shaved her legs and then he was a she

She says, “Hey, babe
Take a walk on the wild side”
Said, “Hey, honey
Take a walk on the wild side”

When rap came along it wasn’t lost on Reed that he had been doing a Beatnik style rap since the 1960s.

Hip hop gonna bop till I drop.”
Watch out world, comin’ at you full throttle
Better check that sausage, before you put it in the waffle
And while you’re at it better check that batter
Make sure the candy’s in the original wrapper

That song like his other 1980’s songs maintained a biting commentary edge. But he seemed less angry than when he was ‘Waiting for the Man.’

In New Sensations he rides his motorcycle out of the City to a country place where he mingled with the country folks — and he enjoyed it.

There were some country folk and some hunters inside
Somebody got themselves married and somebody died
I went to the juke box and played a hillbilly song

‘Ooh oooh, new sensations…

New York was the last album I bought of Reed’s, and it is excellent with ‘Busload of Faith,’ ‘Dirty Blvd,” the ‘Last Great American Whale’ and, my favorite, ‘Strawman,’ a rocking rant that opens:

‘We who have so much to you who have so little to you don’t have anything at all ... Does anybody need a million dollar movie.

‘Does anybody need another million dollar star. Does anybody need another billion dollar rocket, does anybody need a $60,000 car. ..‘

ALBUMS: ‘Hang Time’ (1988); Easy Street, a 12″ single from And The Horse They Rode in On … (1990)

MVC Ratings: 4.0/$$$; single 4.0/$$

This came out as CD’s were beginning to take hold and, thus, this was probably one of my last vinyl purchases. I can’t remember where though. I probably bought it from Chuck when he was selling records at the Birmingham WUXTRY.

Folks who have been following this know that I bought a good chunk of my collection in high school in Athens, Ga. at WUXTRY where Peter Buck, the future REM guitarist worked. So did Chuck Connelly who by coincidence wound up in Birmingham at the same time I did and opened a new WUXTRY.

Soul Asylum is a band straddling the hard rock of the 1970s and the punk of the 1980’s. The 1993 song ‘Runaway Train won a Grammy and was praised for raising awareness of runaway teens. It was a mainstay on MTV.

My favorite song on this album is ‘Cartoon.’