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My Vinyl Countdown’s top rated albums

I started this blog in September of 2017 on the premise that I would review all of my 678 vinyl records. I set myself a fairly simple deadline — my death.

Diagnosed a year earlier with Lewy body dementia, I didn’t know if it was possible for me to live long enough to fulfill that vow or if it would be easy-peasy.

Well it hasn’t exactly been easy- peasy but I am alive, and this morning I paid $250 bucks to extend my blog site and keep my domain name until 2027.

I’m optimistic.

The formula seems to be working. Do something I enjoy so I’ll keep doing it, exercise my brain and help people understand the disease inside out from someone who has Lewy body dementia. OK, now that I’ve been through all my records, doing a little write-up on each one, I’ll tell you what I found. First thing I learned: That’s a lot of album reviews.

Today, I am distilling that 678 by listing my highest ranked albums. My rating system is a fairly simple 1-5 rating, 5 being a top album, or classic even. A more detailed look at ratings here.

I do half scores: 3.5 or 4.5 e.g. Today I have culled all the 5-rated albums.

There are 50 in here that have achieved the ‘5’ rating. If that sounds like a lot, remember these are records I shopped for and paid for. I’m shooting to buy a ‘5’ every time. If somebody else came by and dropped 678 records on me, the results may not be so heavy with 5’s.

I think this would be a pretty good list for those starting a record collection. I’ve said before, I’m not a collector as much as I am an accumulator; much of my collection came from bargain bins. Some were bargain bins from 40 years ago. Here we go:

Joseph Arthur ‘Temporary People.’ One of several unknowns in my collection who deserves more recognition.

The Beach Boys Pet Sounds. I didn’t get what was so special about this album at first but then after repeated listens to ‘God Only Knows,’ I caught the vibrations.

Chuck Berry ‘The Great 28.’ The closest to the Beatles in terms of influence in his day.

David Bowie The Rise of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. A chameleon.

Buzzcocks ‘Singles Going Steady.’ Punk power pop.

Bob Dylan Biograph 5-record box set and ‘Blood on the Tracks.‘ Dylan has a number of albums that might be 5’s but I don’t have them. These will give you a nice sample of his though.

Van Cliburn Tchaikovsky Concerto No. 1. Some highbrow music from the tall Texan.

Sam Cooke Live at the Harlem Club. One of the best live albums ever.

Creedence Clearwater Revival ‘Chronicle.‘ Keep on Choogling.

Miles Davis ‘Milestones.’ Trumpet player about to bust out.

Derek and the Dominos Layla and other assorted love songs. Eric Clapton and Duane Allman hit it off.

Electric Light Orchestra Ole’/ELO. Greatest early songs.

Peter Gabriel. His first solo album.

Marvin Gaye Every Great Motown Hit. Among the best soul singers.

Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five ‘New York, New York.’

Dexter Gordon. ‘One Flight Up.’ Tenor sax player, one of the best.

Al Green. Greatest. After an extraordinary string of hits, he became a pastor and sang in church.

Jimi Hendrix, Greatest Hits and Axis Bold as Love. Revered by some as the greatest rock guitarist ever.

Joe Henderson ‘Our Thing.’ Saxophone man.

Peter Himmelman ‘There is no Calamity. From the severely overlooked artist from Minneapolis.

Chris Isaak. ‘Chris Isaak’ Smooth singer informed by rockabilly.

The Kinks. Lola vs. Powerman and the Money Go-round. Quirky, smart, rock and roll.

Carol King, ‘Tapestry,’ One of the biggest selling albums of all time.

Led Zeppelin. Fourth album with ‘Stairway to Heaven.’

John Lennon Plastic Ono Band. Pain heartache catharsis.

Bob Marley Legend. Reggae great’s music is timeless.

Mekons ‘Rock and Roll.‘ Raucous rock with the hard stuff and the melodic stuff.

Van Morrison ‘Astral Weeks,‘ ‘Moondance.’The Irish Bard.

The Best of Dolly Parton (1975). Parton has three major ‘hits’ albums, this one, at the beginning of her peak is best.

Pink Floyd ‘Dark Side of the Moon.’ ‘Wish You Were Here.’ Tricked you into thinking they were noodling progressives. Then smack you with well arranged, well played, rock with a touch of noodling.

Bud Powell Bud Powell! Influential jazz pianist on Blue Note.*

Elvis Presley Sun Sessions. Pivotal record in history.

Prince ‘1999’ ‘Purple Rain.’ ‘Sign Of The Times’ also could have made it.

REM ‘Murmur.’ The subtle but groundbreaking debut for the band from Athens, Ga.

Rolling Stones. ‘Exile on Main Street.’ ‘Sticky Fingers.’ ‘Hot Rocks.’ Legends.

Bruce Springsteen. ‘Born to Run.’ ‘Born in the USA.’ Singer songwriter with amazing live shows.

Richard and Linda Thompson ‘Shoot Out the Lights.’ Why does love have to be so sad? (See Derek and the Dominos.’)

Al Stewart ‘Year of the Cat.’ Beautiful sound and lovely songs.

Tonio K. ‘Life in the Foodchain.’ Criminally underrated.

The Who ‘Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy.’ They could see for miles and miles.

Neal Young ‘Decade’ ‘After the Gold Rush.’ One of America’s most important artists for 50 years. And he’s from Canada.

Zombies. Odessey and Oracle. A 1960s classic falls out of the British Invasion.

Remember these are from my collection. Sgt. Pepper Lonely Hearts Club Band would likely be a 5 but I don’t have it. I did buy and receive a number of albums over the 4 years I was doing this blog but for the most part, the rule was that this was a list of 678 bought before I started this blog. There are exceptions.

<Correction, originally had Powell down as drummer.>

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Put it on ice, willya?

I got nothing against ice.

I like ice cubes floating around in my iced tea on a hot summer day. Ice was among our first inhabitants when the world was being formed.

I raise this issue because I heard on the news a story about News Jersey pro surfer (Yes, they surf in Jersey.) This Ocean City man, Rob Kelly, has vowed to take an ice bath or swim in the ocean every day this year — part of a New Years resolution.

When the blizzard or so-called ‘bomb cyclone’ hit a couple of weeks ago, he could be seen trudging through snow covered beach, stripping down to his surf shorts and hitting the waves, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Rodrigo Torrejón.

I would rather have the eye fluid in my head drained with a hypodermic needle, with no anesthesia, than jump in 35-degree water.

I was a promising swimmer as a precocious 7-year-old living in St. Paul, Minn., We had moved North in the late 1960s from Alabama where I swam in lakes, rivers, creeks and community pools.

In Minnesota, I became part of the Red Cross training program. It had levels like Beginners, Advanced Beginners, Intermediate and so on. I breezed through the levels. All the time. I was aiming to get a Lifeguard certification, which was the highest level. But, alas, I was too young and too small to drag the weights from the bottom of the pool. And frankly I was too young to tell people two or three times my age to stop dunking the other kids or pushing them in the pool.

Now I can’t remember exactly what happened, but for some reason I began practicing my swimming technique in a Minnesota lake with a whole bunch of other kids, many Norwegian, who had a natural immunity to cold it seemed.

Now Minnesota is the Land of 10,000 lakes and woodchucks are abundant: “How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a wood chuck would chuck wood.’

I’d go into the water with my faded Alabama tan and come out as blue as a B.B. King song. I spent the rest of the day shivering.

This is a long way of telling you that I avoided swimming as a sport when I moved back to the South. Football, baseball, basketball yes. But full immersion in water colder than a warm bath, I’ve sworn it off.

Soaking in ice is considered therapeutic. It’s a trend among athletes seeking quicker recovery from sore and injured muscles.

Not me, you go jump in the tub of cubes. You’ll find me in a 180-degree sauna sipping a cold ice tea.

Which brings me to one last thing that may explain my cold aversion. I tip the scale the other way. Bring me the heat.

I can sit in a tub with water hot enough to boil shrimp. I can take a shower that melts the curtain.

It still makes me smile, slightly sadistically, when I hear my wife, Catherine, walk into the shower. I hear the water come on followed by what sounds like the yelp of a scalded dog.

After 40 years of marriage she still forgets one of life’s important credos: Never stand under shower head when you first turn on the water.

P.S. I did do the Ice Bucket Challenge a few years ago to raise money for ALS by signing up to have a large bucket of ice water (it took two people to lift the bucket) dumped on my head.

In that moment when the water (with cubes) drenched my body, my breathing ceased, and memories of Minnesota flashed before my eyes, one thought made its way to my head: Next time I’m going for the elective eye surgery.

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If you know what I mean …

Some things are said but never done.

If you know what I mean. And I think you do.

Some things are done and never talked about.

If you know what I mean.

We live life seeking pleasure and meaning. But we too often settle for something just slightly less uncomfortable. And more questions.

If you know what I mean.

We are fooled every day into thinking we are in control. When in reality, we are not.

If you know what I mean.

It’s hard to understand there are billions of opinions, laws, edicts, theories, declarations and warning signs. Each formed by human observation and experience over time. We build the tower of knowledge one brick at a time. With lots of coffee breaks. Thousand-year coffee breaks.

If you know what I mean.

It’s hard to believe that when you look up into the sky you are seeing the distant past, hundreds of millions of stars that don’t exist anymore. They burned out long ago.

If you know what I mean.

It’s hard not to believe that your own opinion is the correct one when in reality it may not be. Or, it may be that there are many correct answers to a question. Or, that the answer is that the universe is both finite and infinite

If you know what I mean.

It’s hard to believe our own star — the sun — will burn out too, and its light may be seen by someone, some being, (another version of ourselves), a million years later, a million miles away. Eating pizza. On a coffee break.

If you know what I mean.

We are billions, but we are connected. By the roar of the machines we make, by the blood running through our bodies, by the inexplicable violence against one another, by the definition defying qualities of love.

If you know what I mean.

And I think you do.

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This isn’t writing, it’s typing

I am doing that. Typing. And it is a slow, painful process. I’d have paid for somebody to stop me from writing this sentence.

I’m in a stage, late afternoon, sun going down, that messes with the minds and bodies of many of us with Lewy body dementia and other brain disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. It’s called sun-downing.

For me right now, it is that my hands are trembling. Another name for it is tremors. When nighttime slowly drops like a dark curtain, people with dementia may get confused, disease symptoms may be exacerbated. Some dementia patients are at risk of wandering.

I guess in the old days, folks went to bed when it was dark. But now we work until dark and beyond. We got light. We got lamp lights, overhead lights, street lights, flashlights, dashboard lights, spotlights, and refrigerator lights which turn off when you close the door. Or does it really?

Is it possible the refrigerator has been fooling us all this time, and nothing happens?

But I digress. Man, do I digress.

These tremors I’m having due to this sun-downing effect are hard to describe. It’s like a mind-over-matter thing. I can stop it if I focus directly on the tremor. There I just did it for 10 seconds — but then I started to think about this writing and in seconds the leg starts twitching, my fingers slowly tap the keyboard just like they did in typing class in high school. You put your two hands on the keyboard and your fingers still seem to magically find the right letter. Only now it is excruciatingly slow as some unseen force is holding them back. My right little finger twitches as I type. It struggles to hit the P.

I get flustered and know that if I push down hard on the laptop with the heels of my palms, I can go faster.

But right now I was going to ask a rhetorical question about how this technique works, but I had to stop to find the ‘question mark.’ It’s shift ‘back slash’ or is that a forward slash??????? (Please intersperse these extra question marks to sentences that need them.)

I’m doing all this, not because I like the torture of a million minor trembles, but because I have Lewy body dementia and maybe my experience as a journalist can give you an idea of how it affects the body. Plus, I think it really helps in slowing down the disease’s symptoms. Can’t prove it, but I absolutely think it works.

During day or night these bouts can come, but sundown is prime time. The best way to make it stop is to stop what you are doing, close your eyes and think of something that makes you happy. And breathe.

When in this agitated state of tremoring and tightening your muscles you focus directly on what your body can do to help. I know, your toes are tied in knots, your entire body is rigid and then you counterattack with more relaxation and body awareness, and rest. Try thinking about relaxing your feet. From the feet go up to your legs and focus on untightening and relaxing. and so forth up your body one area at a time.

LBD kills multitasking. Focus becomes difficult. Now I am going to tell you to do the opposite of what I just said about dealing with these tremors. That’s a way to keep the symptoms at bay. Now that we’ve learned some of those skills, it’s time to fight back.

Make the brain work to do what you want to do. Don’t ask for help in putting on that shirt. Type, knit, play dominoes, card games or anything that works out your brain messages to your body. Get your brain started again by working against what the alpha-synuclein proteins are inflicting.

Be hopeful.

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Respite. Now I’m back.

After fulfilling my goal of writing reviews of all 678 of my records, I’m ready to start posting again.

How frequently? I don’t know. About what? Not sure.

But I opened today my blog for pretty much the first time in a couple weeks and found something. A sign I think, that is nudging me to continue writing in this space.

Here’s what happened: First thing I did was go to the page which shows me how many posts I received broken down by days. Last full day was Saturday (Jan. 29), so I clicked on Saturday and it read (quoting verbatim): Saturday 1/29/2022 678 Views.

678 views.

That of course is the number of albums I’ve reviewed.

I got goosebumps.

I’ve posted nearly 900 times on here with my reviews and other items. I have never have seen that before. And here this number pops out at me on the first day back on my blog since its end. Wow.

Now I have encountered strange coincidences before.

Remember the Nun’s study and the MP3 music selection.

So I don’t know whether this means my number is up? Or, that it’s a reminder to keep going.

Given that this kind of thing has happened in the past, I’m going to interpret it to mean keep on going and pay attention to these ‘God whispers.’

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How to fight a fatal brain disease with vinyl records (slight return)

I just finished my vinyl countdown. And I’m alive.

Do those two things correlate?

Not obviously, but probably.

Five years ago, after receiving the diagnosis of Lewy body dementia, an incurable degenerative disease that has similar traits to Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, I vowed to review my 678 vinyl records in a blog before I died.

With my post today of ‘Tres Hombres’ by ZZ Top, I have fulfilled my vow. The blog is www.myvinylcountdown.com. This blog version (slight return) is slightly different than the AL.com version.

Three ways the blog helped me slow my progression:

1. Hand-eye coordination. Finger acuity. Using my fingers everyday to type helps my memory, finding the right keys and spelling the words right.

2. Finding music. Intellectual acuity. Hearing songs you had forgotten about or rarely played. Busting out albums still in the shrink wrap. Again a memory challenge as the past comes rushing in. Finding some hidden gems worth $$$. Listen to Sonny Rollins and Thelonious Monk.

3. Organizational acuity. Do you want to organize by alphabet, or genre? Abba to Zappa, or bluegrass to Northern soul?

Thinking back to the day I started this blog (Sept., 16, 2017), I can say I really never thought I’d make it. I wondered about starting an office pool instead — but that would be just wrong.

This is more than an assessment and accounting of my records. This is about using blogging or any hobby as mental exercise and posting publicly to bring awareness to this little known, but not rare, disease.

At the time I made this pledge I didn’t know how long I had before dying — and still don’t.

The numbers on average lifespan after diagnosis are different depending on which source is used, but I was working off of 4 to 8 years. The Lewy Body Dementia Association rightfully points out that every person’s experience is different and some die 2 years after diagnosis and others keep on keeping on for 2 decades.

So I’m at 4 years three months with the blog and about 5 years with my diagnosis. I’m thankful for each new day.

I’ve been through some tough times when hallucinations consumed me. There was a period of time, weeks, months in 2020 when I couldn’t post anything, and I didn’t think I would crawl out of it.

It seemed as if I was living in another dimension or universe.

In my hallucinations, my house was not my house. Depending on the day, it was a counseling center or physical therapy operation where amputees would work out. Then at night it would turn into a research facility where I was the subject of their studies in a room with glass walls for observation and sometimes it was a nightclub.

I was talking to invisible people telepathically. (Wow! I never in a million years thought I’d write that sentence.)

I got to know the other people, or beings, and would engage them in these telepathic conversations. One time I asked Tom, — my son-in-law, — who is British but not an alien, I can assure you — to clear out what I thought was a party going on in the basement.

I went down and began talking to a being whom I could see right through. I asked who he was, where he was from and who all the others are. (It was kind of like the bar scene in ‘Star Wars).”

He said they, like him, were travelers made up of organized energy from the universe; he said something about radio waves and virtual reality. It made total sense when he told me. Now I can’t remember what seemed so real, and what I do remember, I don’t understand. But the general concept was that through virtual reality machines, people could leave their body at home and travel the universe. (Wasn’t this the plot of the Matrix?)

I wandered around the basement-turned-juke-joint full of floating apparitions. An incessant din of bells and bellows came from the elaborate video arcade games. The furniture was alive. I left the basement and came back after a while and it was cleared out. I thanked my puzzled looking son-in-law for shutting it down.

That’s just a few of the hallucinations that made up my days, full immersion hallucinations I call them. I’d also get less complex hallucinations such as a mouse running across the floor, or seeing people’s faces in tree trunks. Once I saw what I thought were people breaking into my car, I ran out, nothing there. But then I looked up and saw them laughing from across the street. It was a hallucination.

I started to learn, or think separately when hallucinating, which helped me control them in keeping my sanity, I would tell Red John, my nemesis in much of this, that he is nothing, that he was not real. It would drive him crazy.

On the medical side of things I started using a new type of medication called pimavancerin, or its commercial name NuPlazid. For me, it was nothing short of a miracle drug.

But that’s only one part of slowing down these rogue proteins that are attacking my brain.

Once the hallucinations stopped I could better figure this out, continue to exercise and eat sesame seeds (supposedly good for brain health.)

I give a big part of my success at keeping the demons at bay with the blog. I can’t tell you how many times I have had to fight myself just typing these words. The Parkinsonian symptoms of the disease make it feel like there are hidden force fields. Getting out of bed being suddenly stuck in the force field and can’t move until I bring my mind back around so its focusing on the task.

Lewy body dementia, like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s with Dementia, involves the destruction of brain cells by a naturally occurring protein. The protein, called, alpha-synuclein, gets into places of the brain it doesn’t belong, leaving trails of dying brain cells.

But you have, by some accounts 100 billion brain cells, and many aren’t being used, brain researchers say. I’m working by just thinking about it. I imagine turning those brain cells into replacements or helpers to the ones I have left. Researchers suspect that’s what happened in the renowned Nun’s Study where they found extensive evidence of Alzheimer’s disease in several nuns, including Sister Mary, who showed no visible symptoms while alive. But Sister Mary’s brain was marked by lesions, a sign of Alzheimer’s severe enough that it should have affected her cognition. Yet Sister Mary continued her extensive reading, daily walks, knitting. She lived to be 100.

That’s what I want to do. (No not become a nun, but live to 100).

The symptoms of these diseases can be similar, making diagnosis more difficult. But in general, if your first and early symptoms include tremors, foot shuffling but no significant cognitive decline, you likely would receive a Parkinson’s diagnosis; if you are having hallucinations, night terrors, and significant memory loss you would likely get a Lewy body diagnosis. Another protein altogether is involved with Alzheimer’s disease, which also destroys the brain. I was first diagnosed with Parkinson’s before I got a Lewy body diagnosis.

What’s Next?

I’m going to keep the blog up indefinitely. I have a lot more to write about. I’m going to stay active raising awareness for Lewy, and maybe we’ll get past this COVID thing so we can continue our Mike Madness basketball tournament, which raised more than $30,000 in its three-year tenure before COVID shut it down. And my music? What to do with all these albums. I’m still working on that. Oh yes, and before I go I am reminded of a Blood Sweat and Tears song:

When I die and when I’m gone/ there’ll be one child born in this world to carry on, to carry on

I just found out, I’ll be a first-time grandfather in May.

My daughter, Hannah, and her husband, Tom, are expecting a baby boy.

How’s that for a reason to keep on keeping on.

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King Sunny Ade to ZZ Top

You are invited to peruse my 678 reviews plus about 100 other posts on a variety of topics. The countdown posts are somewhat arranged alphabetically from African musician, King Sunny Ade, to ZZ Top. The collection, heavy on the pre-CDs-era of the 60s, 70s, and late 80s covers a range of musicians and bands and genres from Led Zeppelin to Carole King, from George Strait to R.E.M. from Sting to the Scorpions.

Also there’s a button on my home page that reads: ‘His and Hurricanes.’ It’s my playful parody of what the world may be like in the year 2525 (if man is still alive, if woman can survive). I worked on it for about a year, dashing off silliness when I had time, until I stopped to figure out an ending. I haven’t resumed it yet so this may also be something to finish now that I’m done with the big ticket item.

Lastly, I’d like to give credit to AL.com data reporter Ramsey Archibald for the graphic that is my home page. He used albums from my collection to make that colorful collage of record covers.

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ZZ Top — 1 (Last One of 678 Listed in reverse alphabetical order)

ALBUM: Tres Hombres (1973)

MVC Rating: 4.5/$$$$

Well, if you had to guess what would be the last album on MyVinylCountdown list of vinyl records, as organized alphabetically, this would be a good guess.

It’s pretty hard not to be at the bottom of an alphabetical list when your name begins with not only the last letter of the alphabet, but with two of the last letter.

The bearded ones provide a solid bit of closure to this part of my journey living with Lewy body dementia. It is the 678th album, the final album, in my countdown to beat this disease.

I have only one ZZ Top album, Tres Hombres. When La Grange came on the radio, I turned it up. It was like nothing else, a crunching ear worm of a guitar riff and the ‘haw haw haw’ vocal knocked me out. Little did I know at the time that the song with few words was written about a brothel in La Grange, Texas, the inspiration for the Dolly Parton movie, ‘The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.’

I was also quite smitten with the bluesy one-two punch leading off the album: “Waitin’ for the Bus,’ and ‘Jesus Just Left Chicago.’ Heavy chorded blues riffs.

My parents are from Texas and I lived there when I was young. ZZ Top is thoroughly Texan so that’s where part of my affinity for the band lies. In my critiques, I tend to go a little lighter on Texas bands: Stevie Ray Vaughn, Buddy Holly, Freddie Fender, Nanci Griffith, Willie Nelson, Lyle Lovett and PJ Proby, just to name a few. (PJ Proby? Are you kidding me!!)

What the heck am I saying? Go lighter, go easier? These artists are amazing and need not be graded on a curve. Just coincidentally two of the band members, Billy Gibbons and Dusty Hill, sported chest-length beards. The other in the trio had no beard but his name is Frank Beard.

They never did anything better than Tres Hombres and La Grange in my mind, although they went on to widespread commercial success, fixtures on MTV. Tres Hombres was their third album, and it was the one that broke through to major success, as they cranked out such crowd pleasers as Cheap Sunglasses, Sharp Dressed Man, and Tush.

Maybe out there somewhere is a group in the genre of sleep music who will put out ZZZ as an album name just to beat ZZ Top’s status as last album in Mike Oliver’s collection. But until then, ZZ Top finishes off my five-year quest to write and post ‘reviews’ of my 678 records before I die of a fatal brain disease. I am doing it to raise awareness of a disease that is relatively common but has no cure nor name recognition.

As a writer I didn’t know of a better way for me to spend my final days writing. The blog has kept me occupied as this insidious disease slowly takes my brain. But I am going to continue to post writings even after this countdown has ended. So stay tuned … like Billy Gibbon’s guitar.

Aw, haw, haw, haw, haw.

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Six Hundred and Seventy-Seven Albums

I have one more to go to fulfill my vow to note and review each of my collection of 678 albums appearing on MyVinylCountdown.com

It took me 4 years and 3 months, starting approximately one year after I was diagnosed with Lewy body dementia. I literally didn’t think I’d live to see this day. LBD is incurable and degenerative.

Those of you who have followed my blog, which has received more than 270,000 clicks, know that I tried to do this in alphabetical order. Let’s call it a loosely organized alphabetical order.

If I had to do it over I would start with Z and go to A, therefore the reviews would stack up A to Z. As it is they stack up Z to A. If you want to read the blog from A to Z there’s a button on the home page that takes you to the top of the blog. Also on the home page is a Search button that works well. Type in an artist, an album or any topic and it will take you to that post. For example, type in the Replacements to see if I covered them. I did, about four albums I believe.

I’ll post my final countdown post on Sunday. Watch for it. Important note: I am not shutting down my website and I will continue to keep it going, writing about my ongoing experiences living with Lewy body dementia.

For those not familiar with how this all started, check About Me on the home page.

NP

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Warren Zevon — 3, 2

ALBUMS: Stand in the Fire (1981, Live); Sentimental Hygiene (1987)

MVC RATING: Stand 4.5/$$$$; Sentimental 4.0/$$$

I met Warren Zevon backstage at a little hole-in-the-wall nightclub on Green Springs in BIrmingham. Oh, it must have been about 1984, or so.

Birmingham News writer Bob Carlton was entertainment writer at the time and had developed a rapport with the singer-songwriter that led to me and a few other Newsers meeting in a tiny backstage room at Norm’s after the show.

I remember asking Zevon if he knew who Tonio K. was because Rolling Stone writer Dave Marsh used Zevon as a comparison to Tonio K. in a review of Tonio K.’s ‘Life in the Foodchain.’

I couldn’t remember exactly what Marsh wrote, and Zevon became persistent. He wanted to know what the Rolling Stone guy said. I felt like I had backed into this. I kind of stammered something about how Tonio K. has similar traits, acerbic lyrics and troubling subject matter. I was dying on backstage.

Tonio K. aka as Steve Krikorian was a favorite of mine but relatively obscure.

No I’ve never heard of him, Zevon said. Awkward moment of silence until one of his bandmates chimed in and said he had heard of him. Redeemed, partly, of my stupid-question-to-a-celebrity moment.

Anyway the concert was great, and I would say we had great seats but I don’t think they had seats at the now defunct Norm’s –at least not during this show.

Zevon had an up and down career, plagued by bouts of alcoholism and depression, as detailed in numerous interviews. He spent much of his life in Los Angeles and was good friends of Jackson Browne, David Lindley, and members of the Eagles. He liked reading “pot-boiler novels’ and was friends with Steven King, Carl Hiassen and Gonzo journalist Hunter Thompson. He was a favorite on the talk show circuit and a frequent guest on David Letterman. His best known song was the fun, novelty hit ‘Werewolves of London.’ Ronstadt did a cover of Zevon’s ‘Hasten Down the Wind.’ In ‘Werewolf,’ he has a lyric which I believe has one of the finest example of alliteration, I’ve heard:

Little old lady got mutilated late last night ..

Say that out loud a few times.

He died of mesothelioma, a disease most associated with the exposure to the inhaling of asbestos. After 17 years of sobriety, Zevon fell off the wagon when he learned of his fatal illness.

My two Zevon albums have not been played in a while. ‘Sentimental Hygiene’ is an underrated group of smart, hard rocking songs. The album is backed by three members of R.E.M. The three members and Zevon put out another album called Hindu Love Gods, which I’ve heard but don’t own. It is excellent if you can find it in a record store or online.

This song he wrote after being diagnosed with a fatal disease.

The other album I have, ‘Stand in the Fire,’ has been called one of the top live albums. I think that’s pushing it. It’s good but not on the same level as The Who’s ‘Live at Leeds; the Rolling Stones ‘Get Yer Ya Yas out or the Allman Brothers’ ‘Live at the Fillmore.’

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Musings about the end of my vinyl countdown

The headline is a little on the click-bait side. I’m not going anywhere. I’m not shutting down this blog or my website myvinylcountdown.com.

But I am giving everyone a heads- up that I will within the next seven days publish the last three reviews of my vinyl record collection.

I counted 678 records when I began the blog in 2017 after getting the diagnosis that I had Lewy body dementia. Right now I am at 675. The blog was a way for me to spread awareness of the disease, which has no cure and its cause is unknown.

Likely I will write a story highlighting the best-of or most popular posts and other things I learned.

But raising awareness wasn’t the only benefit.

Spoiler alert: I will proclaim and explain my belief that without this blog, I would either be deceased or in much worse condition than I am now.

To say the blog has been therapeutic is a big understatement.

More soon.