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Daily Journal, June 4, 2019

Tuesday’s not gone yet. In fact it’s only 10:58 a.m. my time (Central). As I said in a previous post, I was going through some fluctuating symptoms the past few days. So much better this morning as I can type.

Fluctuations in symptoms is a hallmark of Lewy body dementia. I see it as the ultimate donut and hole cliche’. In other words I am thankful it is not just one long descent. I am thankful that I have a donut on some days. (No wonder I can’t shake this extra weight).

Describing the symptoms is hard for me to put my finger on it, literally, when I have those symptoms but let’s just say I don’t feel comfortable in my own skin, feel fidgety and fine motor skills like buttoning shirts, typing, and tying my shoes become frustratingly difficult. Coping mechanism? Maybe half a tab of carbidopa/levodopa or get out and walk or both.

I have doctor’s permission to up my dosage slightly during these events. It’s good medicine but it was developed to treat Parkinson’s not Lewy body specifically. I also take a med created for Alzheimer’s patients to help with the cognitive issues. I don’t know how that is working, but somethings going well as I’m three years into this thing and still playing basketball.

In fact at the MikeMadness tournament I am getting excited about seeing who is going to come in second.

Because they may as well go ahead and put my name on the trophy now.

I’ll be wearing my No. 33 Boston Celtics jersey.

Let’s outro with my greatest therapeutic treatment: Music.

I love to listen to the slide guitar intro by Lynyrd Skynyrd for the song Tuesday’s gone — beautiful.

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Wynton Marsalis, Teo Macero — 342, 341

ALBUMS: Black Codes from the Underground; Acoustical Supension (1985)

\MVC Rating: Black 4.0 $$$; Acoustical 4.0/$$$$.

I’ve never been a major jazz fan. I give it about 5 to 10 percent of my listening time. Total listening time for the week is between four and seven hours. An hour is about three album sides. So  I still get a fair amount of jazz in

This is about all that, and jazz too. I’m combining these two respected artists because they are close in alphabetical distance and both are playing some late model jazz (1980s).

There is some jazz I really like and listen to, mostly from the old days. John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Dixieland Louis Armstrong, Joe Henderson, Cannonball Adderly, Bud Powell, and Sonny Rollins to name most of my repertoire. Oh, and Chet Baker (hipster dude).

So a jazz collecting friend asked why I don’t have any modern jazz, at least someone like Herbie Hancock (who isn’’t all that modern these days.) I dunno, I said. Seems like it takes me too long to warm up to. I do like some fusion as done by the Dixie Dregs and Sea Level, but that’s my Southern roots kicking in

So I asked him who’s the best jazz person right now in the world. He said the best trumpet player is/was (this was 1980s) Wynton Marsalis. So I bought a Marsalis record Black Codes from the Underground. He’s extremely good – won two Grammy’s for this album.  I like it, but am not passionate about it. It’s busy with trumpet runs (as you’d expect) throughout. Makes a good party record that can rise above the background music tag when you want some jazz but not something that rattles the martini olives.

Next up was an album I almost forgot about Teo Macero – and this album would be a notch higher on the in-your-face jazz – in other words with its funky beats, bleating sax and switcheroo time signatures, with splatters of electric guitar, it would not work as well in a background setting demanding low volume. In some ways Marsalis might be pushing it as a dinner time suggestion because of its swings and complexity. Playing Wynton’s album for the first time in years made me realize this album deserves some listening concentration.

Both these guys have great folks working with them and resumes that are about as good as you can get.

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Another look at words on AL.com

Mike Oliver is an opinion columnist who has Lewy body dementia. For this column, he culls posts from his blog where he is counting down his 678 vinyl records to raise awareness of this deadly, common, but not well known form of dementia.

Singer songwriter Peter Himmelman has a song about visiting a woman named Susan in the hospital. It becomes apparent Susan has no use of her muscles and can only talk by using her eyelids to build words on a special computer screen attached by electrodes.

Though not mentioned in the song, ALS was what she had, a degenerative brain disease that became known as Lou Gehrig’s disease after the world watched in the 1930s the baseball great succumb to it.

Himmelman sings about his visit, a moment that had a profound effect on him:

And the words come ticking out and the words bring us together

And the words come ticking out and the words must keep you sane

Susan I owe you an apology

Susan I owe you an apology

For all the days I just let slide right through my hands

You are the woman with the strength of 10,000 men

More click here.

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Daily Journal, June 3, 2019 ‘Pass the biscuits’ version.

I spent my weekend looking for my glasses. Or, at least a frustratingly disproportionate part of my weekend. But I found them. My ear buds too.

It’s Monday.. I was feeling especially Lewy over the past few days but it seems to have lifted. I am getting a ringside seat to the part of my disease they call fluctuating.

Musical reference for today, June 3 comes from Bobbie Gentry and her classic Ode to Billy Joe. You might remember the opening:

It was the third of June, another sleepy, dusty Delta day
I was out choppin’ cotton, and my brother was balin’ hay

Surprised Gentry didn’t find more success as good as she was on this song. She instead ended up more like Don McLean who wrote the brilliant American Pie. After that, as far as I know, he had minor hit with Vincent and then nada. Gentry put out some material but as I recollect she only had a hit with “Fancy” after Ode.

An example of Gentry’s great songwriting in Ode:

And papa said to mama, as he passed around the blackeyed peas
Well, Billy Joe never had a lick of sense; pass the biscuits, please
There’s five more acres in the lower forty I’ve got to plow
And mama said it was a shame about Billy Joe, anyhow

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Daily Journal May 30, 31, 2019

Had lunch Thursday with some friends from the West Coast. Talking about San Francisco made me nostalgic. Good conversation, good lunch at Mile End deli. It was DELIcious. (Sorry).

I’ve been stop-starting on some stories that I need to focus on. There are so many paths for me to go down, that I need a compass.

I really enjoyed the use of the phrase city-savvy in a sentence — as an alternative for streetwise. What sentence you are asking? The one I just wrote. (Sorry again).

Stay tuned for details about an after party for MikeMadness 3X3 basketball tournament. The tournament is Saturday July 20 to raise money for Lewy body research and awareness. We have raised about $25,000 overall in the previous tournaments. This will be the third and I hope we can raise $25,000 altogether this year to bring our total for three years to $50,000.

Here is officia MikeMadness page: https://mikemadness.org/

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Mr. Big, Mouth and MacNeal, Men without Hats (1-hit wonders in the ‘M’s)-345, 344, 343

Oh this is going to be fun. I have three records here all coming up on the basically alphabetic format I have pioneered (which means they are in alphabetical order except when I decide they are not.)

They are essentially one-hit wonders, this trio of bands I’m lumping together. And their names start with’M.’ And they are sometimes good, sometimes bad and sometimes silly as heck. Bargain bin material for sure.

Men Without Hats –343

ALBUM: Rhythm of Youth (1982)

MVC Rating: 2.0/$

Canadian group hit it big with the Safety Dance featuring a bubbly 1980’s synth dance beat:

‘We can dance if we want to, we can leave your friends behind, because your friends don’t dance, and if they don’t dance, they ain’t no friends of mine.”

Probably everybody in the world has danced to this song. And probably everybody in the world has this record which sits and never gets played unless you put it on a 1980’s synth-dance music playlist. The only other song that captured my attention was
‘I Got the Message.‘

Mr Big — 344

ALBUM: Photographic Smile (1976)

MVC Rating: 2.5/$$

This is a strange group and album. Not to be confused with the LA-based Mr. Big which was even bigger. This UK-based Big’s only significant hit was ‘Romeo although ‘Feel Like Calling Home sounds like a single for the radio. The singer sounds and looks like the bad gang member leader who set the Warriors up in the Walter Hill movie The Warriors. ‘Warriors come out and Plaa-ay, clink clink go the bottles on his fingertips. i checked the liner to see if this cat “Dicken” was listed as playing bottles. Nope. Dicken (just DIcken) is the vocalists name and he seems to be a known entity in some corners of the UK music scene or at least was at one time.

The album ‘Photographic Smile’ is all over the place from hard heavy rock with Brian May-like guitar solos to lilting folk ballads to songs with a sprinkling of Chinese pentatonic  musical touches. The title song sounds like 10cc.

There’s talent with songwriting musical hooks and musicianship, but it’s somewhat negated by the wild swing in the music and mediocre to poor lyrics. Still, some of these songs have hooks that catch and stick.

Mouth and MacNeal — 345

ALBUM: How Do You Do

MVC Rating: 2.5/$

Well ‘How Do You Do’. Talking about hooks that catch and stick. The one hit from this group is one of those earworms. Now we had a little fun with Mouth and MacNeal earlier in this blog, naming the song ‘How Do you Do’ the Best Worst song of All Time.” I have to say we were heavily influenced by an old black and white video that was so amateurish, it was hilarious.

On record M&M sound OK. The Mouth, a big bear of a man, has a voice that could make beams fall at a construction site. They put their spin on “Heard it Through the Grapevine,” which is inferior to CCR’s or Marvin Gaye’s version — but not altogether bad.

Try this Mouth and MacNeal for something different::

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Daily Journal, May 28, 29, 2019,

Tuesday/Wednesday post-holiday edition. We had good fun over the Memorial Day weekend at my parents’ in Athens, Ga. I bought a short stack of bargain bin records at a cool little thrift store . We ate hot dogs walked quite a bit and some of us swam.

ICYMI

Over the weekend I this posted on AL.com:

https://www.al.com/opinion/2019/05/the-top-15-my-vinyl-countdown-posts-at-the-half-way-mark.html

And Tuesday this posted.

https://www.al.com/life/2019/05/thank-you-judy-buckner-for-telling-us-how-bill-died.html

I used to think that when people use the term World War III, they are being hyperbolic. Not so sure now.

Reading this worries me:

https://www.al.com/opinion/2019/05/give-peace-a-chance-stay-out-of-middle-east.html

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Roger Manning –346

ALBUM: Roger Manning (1988)

MVC Rating: 3.5/$$$

This is not your grandfather’s folksinger.

Roger Manning is a New York-based artist who went around the world busking — singing for donations. He comes off sounding a bit like a higher pitched kid brother of Bob Dylan.

And he’s angry and sad, good traits for street level busking. Every one of the 12 songs on this self-named album have the ‘Blues’ in the title. In other words there’s the #14 Blues, the #16 Blues, Strange Little Blues, the Pearly Blues and the Lefty Rhetoric Blues and so on.

Funny lines in many backed by a hard strummed acoustic guitar that sounds pretty much the same on every song.

From ‘Lefty Rhetoric Blues:’ Lefty folksinger rhetoric has such a boring ring, they make me sick, they oversimplify everything ….but, then on the other hand they were right about Vietnam

WIkipedia says Manning was part of the ‘anti-folk movement’ and his legal challenge in 1985 overturned New York’s longstanding ban on music in the subway, and launched the Music Under New York program. He is currently a web designer in NYC, according to Wikipedia.

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Daily Summary, May 24, 2019: What is Life Edition

I have a reggae group on my blog called Black Uhuru who sing an anthem called ‘What is Life.’

What is life? I try to see
What is life? It’s unity
What is life? I try to feel
What is life? It’s really real

The term ‘life and death’ issues has almost become trite as a description because it’s tagged to issues that are not about life and death. But I think most will agree that abortion, end-of-life medical care and capital punishment are pretty solid life-death issues.

I’m not exploring all that here but I am leading up to a story by a guest writer to AL.com that is another example of why there are not black-and-white answers to all the questions about these topics.

The story excerpted and linked below is about a man, burned badly over 65 percent of his body. He wanted to die.

His case is now a case study in bioethics classes at UAB. Many thanks to Gregory Pence for sharing this remarkable and well-written piece, which opens like this:

Famous patient in bioethics, Donald (Dax”) Cowart, recently died. A high school football player from Henderson, Texas, he served as a pilot in Vietnam, after which he joined his father in real estate in Henderson.

On June 23, 1973, the two of them, while inspecting a ranch for sale, suffered severe burns from an undetected gas leak, burning over 65% of Dax’s body and killing his father.

Dax had learned about burns from his pilot’s training. Found by a farmer, Dax asked for a gun to kill himself. 

Read the rest by clicking here.

It’s an issue I want to explore further at another time because those of us with dementia may face instances of chronic pain and lowered quality of living.

Pence’s column really leaves you wondering. I’m still not sure what the takeaway is in this column and that’s what makes it so provocative. It’s not a same-size-fits-all lesson here.

That’s all for now. Check out my column tomorrow on AL.com: It’s about MyVinyCountdown.com reaching the half-way point.

And, importantly, let’s remember our veterans who have died.

1:18 p.m. Update:

Another story has come through that is related to this topic: Conservative Christian anti-abortion mother of two children with special medical needs sees the nuance and strongly opposes the new law banning abortions. Story here.

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Jerry Lee Lewis — 347

ALBUM: Another Place, Another Time (1968)

MVC Rating: 4/$$$

I just got this in a bargain bin and it will be, i think, my last ‘L.’ Short review but it was inexpensive and I was becoming more curious after reading Rick Bragg’s excellent book on JLL.

This album I”m reviewing here was billed as a comeback from his rock and roll success in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It features Lewis doing ‘hard country.’

He had a great soulful voice for country as well as R&B and rockabilly. But for the sake of clarity, this album is a pure old school country music — as Bragg wrote it was not the goopy high production sound popular on the radio. It was Hank Williams country.

That’s my favorite although I do also like alt-country, a newer genre, and even some of that overproduced stuff when it is purveyed by artists like Glen Campbell.