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Lewy body math and the lifespan of My Vinyl Countdown

I extended my website domain name ownership today. I was worried that I’d wake up one day (or that I wouldn’t wake up one day) and the domain name wouldn’t be there.

It was due to expire in August. I have re-upped for 5 more years on the domain name, myvinylcountdown.com (I’ve also re-upped with Blue Host for 3 more years to host my WordPress.org site.

I’ve been told it’s a good one, domain name that  is.

Ramsey Archibald came up with it in a  brainstorming session with me. (Actually more of a brainsprinkling session.)

But for me it’s a  good positive sign I think, extending the contract. Those following this blog about raising awareness for Lewy body dementia may  know that the average lifespan of an LBD patient is 4 to 7 years after diagnosis.   I’m two years in, so that leaves me on the upper side with: 5 years.

I don’t know if I’ll make it or not, but I’m optimistic.  When I get there I’ll roll it over another 5 years.

And if David Bowie were still alive, i’m sure he would write a sequel to his dystopian song “Five Years.’

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File’ (Cajun dance band) — 480

ALBUM: Cajun Dance Band (1983)

MVC  Rating: 4.0

Dance. That’s what Cajun music is about. I also get hungry for some of the best food in the world when I hear the music.

The group is named after a spice used in Cajun cooking:

Mix the ingredients: Cajun French singing, gumbo cooking, creole, zydeco, fiddles, accordions, foot stomping, and hand clapping. That’s what’s cooking by this band which was around for about two decades before clocking out in 2002.

It’s a party record and it makes you feel good. File it next to Dr. John’s ‘Gumbo.’

Certainly there’s a time and a place, but when there’s a certain energy in the air, I could listen to this album 10 times in a row.

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The Flamingo Kid (Various) — 481

ALBUM: The Flamingo Kid (1984 soundtrack)

Soundtrack album I bought in a bargain bin to pluck songs for mixed tapes.

This was one of those where they had a beach-y type movie with Matt Dillon, early career, and needed some feel-good, finger-popping songs. So with Motown you can’t go wrong, right? Well.

These are tried and true, mostly great songs: ‘Heat Wave’ by Martha and the Vandellas, ‘Good Golly Miss Molly’ by Little Richard, ‘It’s All Right’  by  the Impressions  (my favorite).

And there’s also ‘MySweet Lord’ oh I mean ‘She’s so Fine’ by the Chiffons. But there’s a little trick they play by dropping in a song or two that were actually new amid the time tested Top Motown Hits listed above.. With hopes of making it big as if the magic would transfer by being on the same disc.

On this album, that song is the lead song, , ‘Breakaway’ by Jesse  Frederick. Never heard of it? Nor have many people. But there’s Dion chasing Runaround Sue.

Summed up, lots of good songs, but songs that are available on myriad compilations.

 

 

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Robin Williams’ birthday is on the same day as MikeMadness Lewy body event

This is an opinion column by AL.com’s Mike Oliver. See another version of this AL.com.

All this time I never noticed the ‘coincidence’ about the date. The MikeMadness charity basketball tournament date on July 21.  We picked it because it was approximately the same Saturday date in mid-July as last year’s tournament to raise money and awareness for Lewy body dementia – which I have.

I never knew it was also Robin Williams birthday. Until yesterday.

The birthday is an interesting coincidence, because Williams’s wife blamed un-diagnosed Lewy body dementia for his suicide.

When was that? His death date, I wondered.

It was on Aug. 11, 2014, Robin died.

My autonomic system came to life, a tingle, goosebumps.

On  Aug. 11 (2016) was the first time I was diagnosed with a degenerative brain disease. It was a Parkinson’s diagnosis, later switched to its lesser known cousin, Lewy.

Coincidences? How many coincidences do you have to have before they are not coincidences?

Some folks,  including my wife, the Rev. Catherine Oliver, associate pastor of First Presbyterian Church Birmingham, say that they don’t believe in coincidences.

So what does that leave us with? God? Messages from the universe? Robin Williams?

Albert Einstein said: “A coincidence is a small miracle when God chooses to remain anonymous.”

Writer Simon Van Boov said: “Coincidences mean you’re on the right path.”

But that leads you  to the question why is God leaving breadcrumbs, parceling out hints like we are all playing a Milton Bradley board game?

Some may be thinking right now, that a couple of dates lining up with Robin Williams and me and our tournament isn’t off the charts coincidental.

678sign.png

But let’s put it in context with other coincidences surrounding my disease.

The Numbers

If you all remember I’ve had other strange connections. One involved the famous scientific nun study which studied dementia in hundreds of nuns over their lifetimes.

One of the promising things about the study and the one I wrote about was that some nuns, upon autopsy, had Alzheimer’s, the leading type of dementia. But a small subset of those whose brains showed the ravages of Alzheimer’s did not present symptoms while they were living. This suggested there may be a self-made work-around that the brain is using in some cases. I wrote a story.

robinw.jpg

Months went by and I picked up a New York Times story on study again and started reading. Then saw the number. It said the study consisted of 678 nun participants.

What? That’s the exact number of albums I am reviewing. I did the counting myself right before I started my MyVinylCountdown.com blog last year. Now that kind of blew me away, I always start thinking about what are the odds of those two random things being the same number? A lottery-like long shot, you would think?

Some say either nothing is a coincidence or everything is a coincidence. Perhaps a coincidence is just an event that has much lower odds of occurring than something else.

So maybe it’s all about the odds. The numbers. After all, conception itself is a game of odds. Life is a game of  odds – which trees get the best sunlight, which rabbits are the fastest.

nun snip.JPGNYT story, circle is mine moliver@al.com

M.I.T.. professor Max Tegmark, author of our Mathematical Universe said in Scientific American that our universe isn’t just described by math, but that “it is math in the sense that we’re all parts of a giant mathematical object.”

Tegmark recalls Douglas Adams spoof  “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” that the answer to the ultimate question qbout existence and the creation of  the universe is 42.

That’s a little physics humor there.

 

 Who Am I

This next coincidence that has occurred regarding me and my disease seems like you could figure some odds on. But this one shook me more than the others because it was very palpable. It was a weekend day and I set out to do a little cleaning of my room, vacuum, dust, pick up clothes etc. I brought my IPod player and put it in a stand because music is my work partner. I put the whole 120G IPod (the Classic model) on random play. There were 7,500 songs being shuffled.

At one point while I was cleaning, I got inspiration for a blog post, basically about existence, who we are in the world.  Are we our brains? (A good question from one whose brain is under attack.) The title would be ‘Who Am I.

louie.jpegMike Oliver | moliver@al.com

I ran downstairs and began typing away on my laptop. I don’t know how much time went by — but more than an hour. I came back upstairs, walked into my room where the music was still playing on random play. It took me a while to process this one.

The Who were on my IPod playing “Who Are You’ — you know the song with the recurring chorus that goes ‘who are you? who who, who who’? This  is an IPod that could play 20 days straight 24 hours a day, theoretically, never playing the same song from the 7,500.

I actually felt afraid for a minute, wondering if someone else was in the house pranking me? But how would they know what I was writing?

Coincidence?

Lastly, as I was thinking last night of writing about all this, I was casually running through some records. . On one shelf there was a big box set of some classical music. It was covered up with albums so I knew it hadn’t been pulled off the shelf in a while. I picked the box up and underneath it was sheet music with words and notes and cords for a song.

The song? “Louie  Louie” by the Kingsmen.

When I saw it, I remembered I had seen it before like 10 or 20 years ago.. I had forgotten about it. And I have no idea why we even had it in the first place as nobody in our house really plays music and that  frat boy Animal House anthem from the 60s would be an unlikely choice for anyone.

Coincidence? I don’t know so.

Mike Oliver writes on many topics but often about Lewy body dementia. See his blog at www.myvinylcountdown.com  See how you can help by going to www.mikemadness.org . Happy Birthday Robin.

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Fleetwood Mac– 483, 482

ALBUMS: Rumours (1977): Mystery to Me (1973)

MVC Rating: 5.0/$$$$

Fleetwood Mac  was another ‘soundtrack-of-high-school record for me, it was 1977 andI I was 17. The girls liked this record because it was relationship oriented, albeit, broken ones. And it was melodic. The boys loved it because Stevie Nicks was a good looking, sultry singer. And the band could rock. In other you wouldn’t go wrong on date night with t is cassette. Unless you listen too closely to the words,  but  most didn’t do that,  it seems.

I have two of their albums on vinyl. The world renowned ‘Rumours’ and the lesser known ‘Mystery to Me,’ an album before the arrival of Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham. I am told by purists that the older Fleetwood Mac with  Peter Green was the  best, but I’m not familiar with it. I have seen Green on best guitarists lists over the years.

On ‘Mystery’ there’s a song called ‘Hypnotized’ that people I’ve played it for fall in love with upon first listen. But few can guess that it’s Fleetwood Mac. The ethereal song summons a semi-tropical hazy glaze. It’s the best thing on this album other than the wild cover art featuring a baboon -like creature painting his lips with coconut oil? Dunno, but it fits the hypnotic vibe. As for Rumours what can you say. An album in the realm of classic like Carol King’s ‘Tapestry’ or Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark Side of the Moon.’

fleetwood.jpegMike Oliver | moliver@al.com

Practically every song is a hit and high quality and man I got tired of hearing them on every single radio station all day and all night back in the late 1970’s.

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MVC by the numbers: How far to go? I’ll be finished in 30 months

With the Flash and the Pan post this morning, I am at number 485.

That’s how far I have to go (484 more actually.)

That’s the number of posts I have left to fulfill the vow of reviewing or writing about the 678 vinyl records I  collected, mostly in my teens or 20s (1970s, 1980’s). Although I do have some newer vinyl, which sounds very good I must say. And I have a little bit from the ’50s and ’60s.

I’m doing it with diminishing brain function. I  have Lewy body dementia and am trying to raise awareness to this misunderstood and little known disease which affects more than a million people. Please read up on this by going back through my blog, and reading about my thoughts and experience. Also go to the Lewy Body Dementia Association website at LBDA.org

So let’s do the math on My Vinyl Countdown. From 678. Counting backwards I am on 485. (This is the number that appears at the top of each blog spot next to the artists’ name I am reviewing.)

So 678-485 = 193.  I have reviewed and written about 193 albums right now.

That is 193/11 (months) = 17.5. That’s how many I have been doing per month.

So 485/17.5 = 28. That’s how many more months I have if I keep at this pace. Two years and four months.

I have vowed to live long enough to do this, but I am compelled to chug through this to complete the task. I was diagnosed two years ago. On the high end, survival after diagnosis averages 7 years. I’ve done 2 so that gives me 5 years left of life.

PREDICTION:

I’ll complete this in 30 months, with 30 months to spare on my life span.

 

 

 

 

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Flash and the Pan — 485, 484

 ALBUMS:  Flash and the Pan (1978);  Lights in the Night (1980)

MVC Rating: Flash: 4.0/$$$;  Lights: 3.5/$$

This is an odd group with an odd, albeit catchy, style.  It was essentially Harry Vanda and George Young, former members of the breakout Australian group -the-Friday-on-my-mind-band, the Easybeats.

Vanda and Young went on to manage and produce songs for AC/DC, for whom Young’s younger brother played.

But between the soaring and crashing of the Easybeats and world domination of AC/DC was Flash and the Pan.

I plucked their self-titled 1978 debut from a bin at WUXTRY  in Athens, Ga.

Their hypnotic studio sound was a little like nothing you’d heard. Although I heard some people describe them as quirky, otherworldly in a 10cc way.

I think the members of 10cc were more clever songwriters. But Flash and the Pan certainly had the stranger sound, starting with their vocals.  The lead vocals delivered usually in a talk/sing style sounded as if it were filtered by a toy megaphone. I guess you could say  it sounded like a voice that could have been used on 10cc’s prison riot hoedown,  Rubber Bullets, The sing-song semi-electronic groove would then explode into a catchy chorus, that across the two albums I have starts sounding a little formulaic.

Best songs on first album: ‘Hey St.  Peter,’ ‘Walking in the Rain’ (covered by Grace Jones, and ‘Down Among the Dead Men,’ a song about the sinking of the Titanic. On the second “Headhunter’ ‘Make Your Own Cross’ and  ‘Calling Atlantis are interesting.

They barely dented US charts, but the second album, Lights in the Night, was No. 1 in Sweden.

The American cover of the debut album (shown at top) is as odd as the sound. People sitting on the beach with Frisbees flying all around them. In the distance is a mushroom cloud. On the back cover, the people are all gone but not the chairs and Frisbees.  Hey St. Peter take me home.

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Fire Town — 486

ALBUM: Fire Town In the Heart  of the Heart Country (1986)

MVC  Rating: 4.0/$$$

For some reason, I have great clarity on how or at least why I bought this.

Critic Steve Simels, then of Stereo Review magazine, said it was one of the best records he had heard. Ordinarily I’d take that with a grain of salt. But Simels was the guy who said Tonio K.’s ‘Life in the Food Chain’ was the best album he had ever heard.

So I bought that Tonio album sight unseen  (or unheard. Remember no samples online in those days, about 1978). And Simels was right, more or less.

Foodchain is a helluva an album. And to this day, I consider Tonio K. to be one of the underappreciated artists of all time.

This Fire Town album? Not so much.  Now this is a very good album, very catchy songs that make you want to hum. But they aren’t plowing new ground here or showing  us  anything we haven’t heard. Very midwestern sounding, country rock or pre-Americana. BoDeans would be a touchstone. They are like the anti-Wilco, with bright cheery tunes and optimistic outlooks. Like John Denver with more electric rock guitar.

The singer’s voice is too generic for me, not bad, but doesn’t quite have that quality of making the listener believe he’s meaning what he’s saying. The songs are actually excellent and  one can see where Simels might of thought he was seeing the NBT, a new Eagles or a new Crosy, Stills & Nash. But  not quite. However this, like Tonio K., is an underappreciated gem.

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Flamin’ Groovies — 487

ALBUMS: Now (1978)

MVC Rating: 4.0/$$$

I was graduating from high school when this came out. Talk about retro.. This group was like something out of 1966. They cover ‘Paint it Black’ on this album like it was a new song.

‘There’s a Place’ cover sounds like the 1960’s prom band checking in on the Beatles.

All this came to me in the early 1980s.

I discovered this Flamin’ Groovies in a strange way. I was at the Birmingham public library doing some research and they had vinyl records that you could check out, like a book, and return later. This would have been mid-1980s.

I picked up a Flamin’ Groovies album called Groovies Greatest Grooves. It had the song ‘Shake Some Action,’which blew me away. It’s the sense of discovery that you live for as a record collector. Again I was looking for tunes not rare artifacts and that song was one good song. Cracker later recorded it and it was featured in a movie, all much later.

I made a cassette tape out of it that I have no idea whether I have or not.

The  thing that made the Groovies groove work was that they played essentially covers or originals that sounded so close to their heroes, early Beatles, Stones, and Who. — with no irony. That’s what makes it great. Just a few guys from San Francisco playing songs they love from another era.

So, it wasn’t surprising to see that this 1978 album, a comeback of sorts, was produced by retro-man Dave Edmunds. “Yeah My Baby” written by Edmunds, and band members Cyril Jordan and Chris Wilson sounds like a long lost classic. Or long lost classic B-side.

The sound seems  like it was coming through a B&W TV set.

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Firefall — 488


ALBUM:  The Best of Firefall (1981)

MVC Rating: 3.5/$$

I hate doing this because I kind of did this with the group America. Like America, Firefall writes pretty radio friendly songs that, if put on a loop, would qualify as a torture device. I mean this lovingly Because these songs do have value, they take me back to a place and time..(Please take that schmaltzy saxophone out of ‘Just Remember I Love You.’)

I kind of like ‘Strange Way.’ Their biggest hit ‘You are the Woman’ embodies everything that is good and bad about this group. Good musicianship, catchy melodies with generic love song lyrics. They were so good  that Top 40 radio put them on a loop. And you know what that does to me. Torture.

Funny, the song ‘Cinderella,’ as it opens, seems like it could be their best song, until you pay attention to  the words. As you listen you hear that his girl comes to him ‘heavy with child,,’

I know this is just the narrator of a song, but listen to his reaction:

I said “goddamn girl can’t you see
That I’m breakin’my back
Just tryin’ to keep my head above water
And it’s turnin’ me wild”

He then  says, sings in the song, to take  herself “and the child away.’

For this reason, I’ll take America and their best hits over Firefall, however, ‘Muskrat Love’ must be deleted from America’s list.

Some good inoffensive flute solos in here. And Stephen Stills co-wrote a number of the songs with Rick Roberts, but not the offensive ‘Cinderella.’. Some good guitar in ‘Mexico.’