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The Doors — 519

ALBUM: The Doors Greatest Hits  (1980)

MVC Rating: 4.5/$$$$

Man, what do you say about the Doors? They became a phenomenon while lead singer Jim “Lizard King” Morrison was alive and an even bigger one after he died in 1971.

As Rolling Stone magazine in 1981 famously put on the cover a photo of the handsome lead singer with this headline:  Jim Morrison. He’s hot, He’s sexy, and he’s dead.

It had been 10 years since he overdosed  in Paris on drugs after many months of erratic behavior including arrests for drugs and exposing himself at a concert. But the band’s music was seeing a resurgence surrounding a book and a movie.

I truly believe this Greatest Hits album is all you need. They had the best-worst discography of all time. In other words they had some amazing songs that you wondered where they came from —  because  they would be side-by-side on albums with some truly awful  stuff.

On this album most of the songs are good, even excellent except for the godawful psychedelic tune Not to Touch the Earth, which like Five to One, thankfully not on this album, showcases everything bad about the band, trippy psuedo poetry from Morrison, and psychedelic guitar-organ interplay.

But then there was the good stuff.

Compare the aforementioned horror Five to One to LA Woman. In the latter song the band kicks into a thump thumping blues rift and Morrison’s words suddently make some sense, not profound but propelling what is essentially a long jam song with speedup-slowdown parts.

Drivin’ down your freeways
Midnight alleys roam
Cops in cars, the topless bars
Never saw a woman
So alone, so alone
So alone, so alone

Are you a lucky little lady in the city of light
Or just another lost angel, city of night

Mr. Mojo’s rising …

Jim Morrison busted.

The musicians were good. Morrison strained too much on his voice. He certainly thought it was better than it was, but it was effective most of the time and he was the quintessential good looking, hard partying, artsy leaning, rock star. Robby Krieger on guitar was above average. Ray Manzarek on keyboards was outstanding and probably the real brains behind the music.

The thing I  find fascinating stepping back on all this is how good some of the good songs were. Light My Fire is a classic that Frank Sinatra could have sung. So is Touch Me.  And Riders on the Storm is timeless. Roadhouse Blues is a raucous rock and roller, also with timeless feel.

The lyrics are poetry, rarely great or even good poetry, but  fitting right in and often doing their job as lyrics to Doors music.

On glaring omission on this collection is The End, famous for its Oedipal overtones and the darkness of death. It was featured in the movie Apocalypse Now — but it’s a long dark song and I’m not missing it here.

OK, I have to tell you my  prank story involving Morrison and Birmingham News colleague. Ready Tom?

Nah, not yet, going to save that for a post solely dedicated to pranks.

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Is this my last column? (blog version)

This is not my last post. At least as far as I know this minute in time.

Because I have an incurable brain disease my life will likely be shortened; I just don’t know by how much.

So this has  me thinking about my last post.

I’m still getting along pretty well at 58 after my Lewy Body dementia diagnosis about 20 months ago.

Why think ahead to my last post? I don’t really want to think about it. How bad I’ll be when I can no longer type. I may not even know my last post when I write it.

But I’m thinking about it because I want to make the life I have now as precious as I can. With full knowledge of my assets and deficits, financially and physically.

I want to make decisions directly related to those things. I want to provide for a smooth transition for me and my family. Let’s call it transition defense.

Let’s make super difficult times into not-so-difficult times. It’s easier to smile, laugh and be with your loved ones if you aren’t worried about how to pay the light bill after retirement.

Everybody is going to die. There has been no change in the human mortality rate in, oh, forever. It’s holding steady at 100 percent. (Trust me, I keep my eye on this stat.)

Death should be an open conversation. My wife, Catherine, as a pastor who has worked as a Registered Nurse as well, has visited and cared in both of her roles for dozens of critically ill people in Florida, California and Alabama. Too many didn’t leave instructions or at least legally binding ones. She has helped from the patient’s advocate view to make sure the patient’s wishes are kept.

That means questioning our health care systems where doctors are taught to save and prolong life but not how to prepare for death. The system is  set, intentionally or not, to financially incentivize interventions and heroic measures. When the patient is a pain addled  95-year-old person, open heart surgery may not be the best idea . The system  doesn’t  do death well.

Have you thought about it? Like I’m doing here. Got a will? Power of attorney? Does your spouse or someone you trust know about all savings accounts, investment accounts, retirement funds? Passwords?

Heck, I’ve got more passwords than brain cells at this point.

If you have a spouse will they stay in the house? Or downsize? Maybe it’s time to think about downsizing now. Maybe you should look at assisted living facilities or step-down communities that provide increasing care depending on your health situation?

Do you have a financial plan for retirement? Other than waiting for Social Security. Are you at the age where you need to start moving the stock heavy positions in your  IRA or 401(K) to safer havens  like money market, cash or bonds?

Seek advice from a fee-only financial adviser. In other words, one who will take a flat fee, say $300, and build you a financial plan without trying to sell you any investments for which he or she may get a commission. Ongoing financial oversight of your investments generally costs about 1 percent of your holdings.

Have you talked  about death specifically. Funeral. What do you want to do with your body? Cremation? Have your ashes shot out of a cannon like Hunter S. Thompson? Pour the ashes in the ocean.

Do you want your wife or husband or trusted love one to authorize pulling the  plug or do you want your doctor to make every effort to keep you alive? Do you want that at age 85? age 95? Age and condition would be key considerations.

There’s a specific thing called Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) which you would need to discuss with your family. What happens when you become incapacitated and can’t make the decision yourself?

I do know I don’t want to consume a lot of health care resources when I’m too incapacitated to blow my own nose. I would like to say goodbye in a final column, go home and  kiss Catherine, Hannah, Emily and Claire on the cheek then slip quietly out the back door..

‘Night night,” I’d say.

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Top 10 train songs, dedicated to Railroad Park

So my idea about having a permanent children’s train ride at Railroad Park in Birmingham seems to have fizzled for now.

But it did make me think of train songs.

There’s a milion of them it seems and they are running around my brain.

Proposal to RR Park: I’ll be DJ and play my Top 10 choo choo songs (Plus my two honorable mentions if we have time). On vinyl. At the park.

So, dedicated to Railroad Park,  sponsored by myvinylcountdown.com, here are my top 10 train songs. Plus two honorable mentions. I am judging these on a complicated formula that involves how much endorphins are created  in my brain as I listen to each song.

Now, with the brain monitor hooked up, here we go:

 Honorable Mention: Stoney Larue. “Train to Birmingham”

We’ll start you off with an Honorable  Mention. New song it may crack the list with a little more  time. JA introduced this one to me. Has crying, lying, dying and Birmingham, oh, and a guitar full of blues. Great song. The studio version has a little sad sounding fiddle.

10: Ozzy Osbourne “Crazy Train”

I know i’t old school heavy metal, but I like it, like it, yes I do.

 

9: Cracker “I See the Light”

Not really thought of as a train song but it is in a punch line sort of way. I just like this song. And if you listen you’ll see why I picked it.

8: Grateful Dead: Casey Jones

Classic, but not at the top of my train list.

7: Creedence Clearwater Revival. “Midnight Special”

CCR didn’t have many, if any, bad songs. This train song was one great one.

6: “People Get Ready (There’s a train a-coming)” Curtis Mayfield/ Impressions

I do love it when Rod Stewart sings this song but I have to give this to the original. 

But Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions are hard to beat. Here’s Curtis by himself with guitar, beautiful.

5: Blackfoot. “Train Train”

I saw them live years ago and this was the only song I remember. (Maybe it was the only song they played.) If your kids aren’t head banging after Ozzy, they will be by this one.

4: This Train Is Bound For Glory”- Mumford and Sons, Edward Sharpe – The Old Crow Medicine Show

Good time video almost pushed this higher. Lots of granola and moonshine for this crunchy group of hippie/ roots rockers on a classic, train bound for glory.

3: Bob Dylan. “Slow Train Coming”

Just a good song. Underrated Dylan. Good live version. Alabama angle:

I had a woman out in Alabama, She’s a backwoods girl but she sure was realistic

She said, boy, without a doubt, you got to kick your mess and straighten out, you could die down here, just be another accident statistic

2: Gladys Knight and the Pips. “Midnight Train to Georgia.”

‘I’d rather live in his world than live without him in mine.’ Enough said.

1 (Tie): Johnny Cash. “Folsom Prison Blues.”

Yes, I  copped out and have two as my No. 1. A tie. But I got to those last two and they are such great train songs which  by definition must have a train-whistle ache about them.  After doing this, I looked back and realized I don’t have ‘Peace Train’ by Cat Stevens or some other popular choices for train songs (e.g. Last Train to Clarksville)

But when it came to final two, I could not choose between them. Cop out, yes. But you tell me what to cut. Nevermind, I know which one it will be.

Anyway, it should not be this Cash song. You could do a whole top 10 train songs by Cash alone. And this song might arguably be called a prison song. However, I say, this has one of the most recognizable openings of any train song ever. “I hear the train a coming, it’s coming around the bend.”   The train where people are in fancy dining cars, he laments,  reminds him every day of his lost freedom.

 

1 (Tie)_ Peter Paul and Mary. “500 Miles”

Shuddup. I will defend this No. 1 pick to the ends of the earth or at least 500 miles.

Here is my other honorable mention:  Runaway Train by Soul Asylum and I was considering Clash “Train in Vain,”  then I realized that except in the title, there’s no train a-comin’ in the lyrics. In fact, no train at all unless I’m missing something.

 

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Jerry Sloan, legendary NBA coach, still battling dementia (blog version)

Sloan in 1969 publicity photo from Chicago Bulls

Jerry Sloan never won a title either as a player or a coach but he is considered one of the top NBA coaches of all time.

The Salt Lake Tribune has a great profile of the 76-year-old man struggling with Parkinson’s disease and Lewy body dementia. As a basketball loving Lewy body patient myself, this story sent me looking for tissues.

So who is Sloan? Tribune says:

Sloan is an icon, a reminder of the franchise’s glory days when they made back-to-back trips to the NBA Finals in the late ’90s, back when Hall of Famers John Stockton and Karl Malone pick-and-rolled opponents to death seemingly every night.

I remember those Jazz teams well, often had or were close to having the best won-lost records in the league.

My own pick-up game with my Old Man Hoops League is waning but I’m still doing it. Sloan, though slowly losing brain function, is still going to Utah Jazz games. In fact it’s the centerpiece of his life.

Stockton and Malone pick and rolls should be required viewing for every aspiring basketball player. If I was a hoops coach, I’d put together a tape with dozens of Stockton-to-Malone P&R’s for my players.

We even use picks in our Old Man Basketball League. We are especially fond of the illegal picks that resemble downhill blocking in football. (Some of us have even called illegal picks. Ha. Funny.)

Seriously, a legal pick is simple and efficient and still works after all these years.

Oliver shooting form  John Archibald on defense. \TRISH CRAIN photo.

Our knowledge of Parkinson’s  and its mean younger cousin, Lewy Body dementia, is limited. Our treatments don’t work all the time. There is no cure. Both Parkinson’s and Lewy are the result of excess proteins in the brain, but no one has figured out why the protein’s are there, smothering the brain cells.

As the Tribune article says, the disease strips your mind and your motor skills, but not overnight. There is time to exercise, be with loved ones, keep the mind active and hope your brain’s neurons are setting good picks. Jerry’s wife Tammy Sloan keeps Jerry’s schedule very busy with activities and social functions.

I used basketball to describe my situation earlier in a column for AL.com

Here’s part of what I wrote: There are cases in the scientific literature of people who upon autopsy were found to have brains that indicated Alzheimer’s disease yet during their lives they showed no symptoms. Researchers say their brains apparently found “work-arounds” to the plaques and tangles that are believed to be the root of Alzheimer’s.

So that has me hopeful and encouraging my neurons: Come on you lightning quick neurons, put the Stephen Curry crossover on those proteins and get to the hoop.

I’m still playing, but I can relate to what Sloan is feeling. I just found my glasses before writing this Sunday afternoon. They’ve been missing for a week and a day. (I’d love to joke and say they were on  my head but, thankfully, I’m not that bad yet.)

If Sloan wants to play a little 3-on-3 for charity this summer, we might be able to arrange that. Or, maybe just one-on-one, Lewy Jerry against Lewy Mike. What am I saying? He’s 6’5” and was a smashmouth player for the Chicago Bulls before his long-term coaching stint in Salt Lake.

Here’s an excerpt from Aaron Falk writer at Salt Lake City Tribune:

Before each game, Shawn Brown and his staff go over the list of VIPs and scan the crowd for people to highlight on the 24-foot-tall video board that hangs over the court at Vivint Smart Home Arena. It doesn’t matter who shows up, though. After four years of directing the Utah Jazz’s in-game video operations from the scorer’s table, Brown knows the man in Row 11 will get the loudest cheer.

“The reaction for him is bigger than any celebrity,” Brown says. “Everybody loves him.”

The crowd of 18,000-plus will erupt, maybe even stand in ovation. Tammy Sloan will tap her husband lightly. This, predictably, is his least favorite moment of the best part of his day.

“I always try to avoid that as much as possible,” Jerry Sloan says. “That’s not who I am, and that’s not what I’m about. I just love the great game of basketball. I’ve been involved with it my whole life. I enjoy that. I still enjoy the game.”

Friday morning started with a visit to, at least by Tammy Sloan’s estimation, the only man in Utah who hasn’t been following the Jazz’s first-round playoff series: her husband’s doctor. It has been just more than two years since Jerry Sloan revealed to the world that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s and Lewy body dementia, diseases that have begun to strip the mind and motor skills of one of the greatest coaches in NBA history.

Read entire article

 

 

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Dr. John — 520

ALBUM: Dr. John’s Gumbo (1986 RE Alligator Records)

MVC  Rating: 4.5/$$$

Say you are planning a party. A party where music would be up front. But then the president comes on and declares National Music Conservation week.

President’s edict is that parties may play only one vinyl record the entire party.

Seems plausible? Right?

Well here’s the party record I’d recommend, Dr. John’s Gumbo.

It is  danceable, hummable, sing-with-able and eat cajun food-able. Iko Iko can be played 29 times straight without diminished pleasure, scientists measuring brain activity have discovered.

Add on to Iko Iko songs like Mess Around, Big Chief, Stack A Lee, Let the Good Times Roll and you got a party veering toward that shaky ground between ecstasy and agony. The agony is caused by the imbibeable forces the album propels, however those effects won’t begin until  morning. Health specialists recommend that you stay away from the song Iko Iko for several days before easing back in at low volume.

Counting down my 678 vinyl records before I die of brain disease.

RIP Charles Neville

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My vinyl countdown continues (blog version)

Here’s  an excerpt of what I  posted on AL.com today:

Mike Oliver is counting down his 678 vinyl records before he dies.

This is the regular Saturday column where I showcase some of the 678 vinyl record reviews I plan to review on my website.

I’ve reviewed 151, still have 527 to go.

This is a race, you see, to get these done, reviewed and put up on my website, before my brain disease gets me.

Recenty I posted that I had decades ago lent my Deep Purple live album ‘Made In Japan’ to someone who never returned it. I said jokingly if anyone out there has it, please leave it on my porch no questions asked.

Last week AL.com cartoonist J.D. Crowe walked into the newsroom and handed me the live album plus a copy of ‘Machine Head’ in primo condition.

Read more here

Here’s what J.D. brought me. I’m out, gotta go ‘Space Truckin’

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Drivin’ and Cryin’ — 521

ALBUM:  Mystery Road (1989)

MVC Rating: 4.0/ $$$

Kevin Kinney is the soul of this band, his aching voice sounds a little like Rod Stewart. And his band definitely rocks. Maybe he sounds like the Bodeans lead singer.

Paste Magazine named this album the 39th best ‘Southern Rock album of all time. Guitarist Buren Fowler, whose name is not known to me, is as good as any playing in what we are loosely calling the Southern rock genre. You can tell he’s listened to a little Dickey Betts in his day and Skynyrd.

‘I’m  going straight to hell’  is fun song.

I have a six degrees of separation with Kinney, which I will tell below.

But first if you want a really interesting take on how Paste defines Southern Rock, go here.

OK, so for my story. I was alone in WUXTRY  in  Athens, Ga. , except for the guy behind the register. Peter Buck (REM) walks in, apparently not too unusual, he worked at WUXTRY for a while before REM took off. I used to buy from  him. So anyway, Buck goes  flipping through the music. We chat a little  I think  it was 1991 or 92 so probably much of the music was in the already established  CD format.

He said he recommended Kevin Kinney’s ‘McDougal Blues’ a solo album from  the Drivin’ and Cryin’ frontman –which Mr. Buck had produced.

But the thing was I already had it. On cassette tape. I think I copied it from someone else who bought it. RIpping off the artists, though I didn’t really have that level of  awareness at the time,  even tho I  was a grown-up.

So I had it on cassette and opted to go with this Los Lobos CD that I’d had my eye on: Kiko, one of my early CD purchases.

I started  to kick myself later thinking I should have bought the Kinney disc, scooped up the REM discs and ask Peter to  sign them for me.

But I never was much for that kind of thing. In the end I bought Kiko and was on my way.  Great band,  saw them at the Marin County Fair north of SF years later.

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Life after death, the science of it, my take (blog version)

Uh oh.

I warned my compatriots in the newsroom that I will begin going into a rumination stage.

It’s because I saw this headline first thing when I turned on the computer yesterday:

After death you’re aware that you’ve died, say scientists

 It’s the subject matter, existence, time, who I am, — topics that I am fascinated by and I’ve written about (click on the links for sampling). This time I’m going to deconstruct this article live right now. See if we can squeeze out any insights. It won’t be really live but I am going to paste the article and read it and add my notes all the way to the end.
So I’m not reading it first. I am reacting as I read.
Now here’s the story written by Tina  Fey (that Tina Fey?) for Ideapod.
<the bold comments are from me>
It’s one of the biggest mysteries <agreed>of human existence: what happens when we die? Does consciousness cease to exist? How can we possibly know:?

Elizabeth Kübler-Ross famously studied and made known to the world the life-after-death experiences of thousands of people who were revived, but these accounts don’t tell us if consciousness continues after actual death. <didn’t Raymond Moody more famously study life after death? I thought Kubler-Ross is best known for writing on stages of grief.>

A growing body of research is studying the processes that occur after death and the findings suggest that that human consciousness does persist immediately after the heart stops.<Okay>

What it means is this: when we have died, we are aware we’re dead. Scientists have drawn this conclusion because they have observed the continuation of brain activity after the body has stopped showing signs of life. <OK, I haven’t read this article before I started critiquing, but I see lots  of potential pitfalls to this logic already.>

This at least is the conclusion of researchers at New York University’s Langone School of Medicine. <OK, first we have ‘scientists’ now it’s down to researchers at a medical school I haven’t heard of>

Dr. Sam Parnia is director of critical care and resuscitation research at NYU Langone School of Medicine, where he and his team study patients who technically died but were afterwards resuscitated. <technically died?>

Parnia and his colleagues are currently investigating whether consciousness continues after the brain stops functioning. <is this where the rubber hits the road?> They’re studying large numbers of people in Europe and the United States who have suffered cardiac arrest and were then revived. It’s the largest study of its kind, Parnia told the Independent. <Isn’t this what Kubler-Ross or Moody did?”>

The point of death is taken as the moment when the heart stops beating and blood flow to the brain is cut off.

Dr Sam Parnia said: “Technically, that’s how you get the time of death – it’s all based on the moment when the heart stops. “Once that happens, blood no longer circulates to the brain, which means brain function halts almost instantaneously.<almost instantaneously? oxymoron?> You lose all your brain stem reflexes – your gag reflex, your pupil reflex, all that is gone.”<Ouch>

Here’s what’s incredible: there’s evidence to suggest that there’s still brain activity when someone has died. <not sure why that’s so incredible. Seems logical the brain would be the last one to turn out the lights.>

The brain’s cerebral cortex – which is responsible for thinking and processing information from the five senses – also instantly flatlines, says Dr Parnia. This means that within 2 to 20 seconds, no brainwaves will be detected on an electric monitor. <so up to 20 seconds there may be brainwaves detected.>

“If you manage to restart the heart, which is what CPR attempts to do, you’ll gradually start to get the brain functioning again. The longer you’re doing CPR, those brain cell death pathways are still happening — they’re just happening at a slightly slower rate,” Parnia told Live Science.

People in the first phase of death<first phase of death? Isn’t death like pregnancy, you either are or  you are not?> may still experience some form of consciousness, Parnia said. Substantial anecdotal evidence reveals that people whose hearts stopped and were then restarted were able to describe accurate, verified accounts of what was going on around them, he added.

“They’ll describe watching doctors and nurses working; they’ll describe having awareness of full conversations, of visual things that were going on, that would otherwise not be known to them,” he explained. <could this be the brain imagining what is going on based on memory of surgery prep, etc.?>According to Parnia, these recollections were then verified by medical and nursing staff who were present at the time. <this I can believe>

Scientists can see that there is brain activity, but they can’t explain why people can have consciousness and thought processes when there is a flat line in the brain.

 How could patients experience awareness during death?Doctors can measure brain activity, but what does that activity represent? We don’t know, because the person is technically dead.

It may very well be that the brain activity does represent continuation of consciousness, as the doctors concluded.

If we accept that the brain and the mind are not the same thing, that the mind exists beyond the brain and is the seat of awareness, then the brain is not needed for consciousness; it acts more as a transceiver for the activity of the mind. <I think this is an interesting theory but not seeing hard evidence it is true, therefore can’t just ‘accept’>

Also, according to quantum mechanics, the intention of the observer affects that which is being observed. In other words consciousness can influence the physical world. This suggests that the mind/consciousness is primary to physical existence – we can’t interpret or understand the physical world without making reference to the mind.<yes, understand>

To quote Max Planck, theoretical physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918 for his discovery of energy quanta: “I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulating consciousness.”<and no one so far has been able to tell us what consciousness is.>

Whether we can observe brain activity or not, it is most likely that consciousness continues beyond the death of the body (and the brain).<yes but at the max, according this article, of 20 seconds>

 OK, not convinced I learned anything here. I’m planning on distilling some of writings and thoughts on the matter in a later column. One thing I’ve tiptoed  around is religion. It is another realm that I’m sure I will address. People say there are things we’ll never know. I’m not sure about that. I think it’s always good, and it can’t hurt,  to ask. In journalism we say the truth is the best defense against libel. In the Bible it says the truth will set you free.
As a tease to my further exploration, I will say that I am not an atheist. That’s simple. Atheists say they know there is no God or in their words they reject the assertion that there is a god. I don’t know how to even step in shoes of that argument. Existence and creation at the very least raise the possibility God exists. But we’ll jump in to that muck (or crawl out of it) a little later.
 
 
 
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Memo to Rick Bragg: Let’s sit down, reminisce and laugh (blog version)

 

Note: This story appears in slightly different version on AL.com here

Dear Rick

Great seeing you last night at your book signing.

If I forgot to say it: Congratulations on your cookbook/memoir ‘The Best Cook in the World: Tales from My Momma’s Table.’

How many were there at the Alabama Booksmith in Homewood to get a book signed? Looked to be about 200. Amazing.

Sorry I couldn’t stay. Greg Garrison, his son Wes, and I were on the way to a debate sponsored by AL.com, and we would have slowed your two-hour signing process way down.

You and me made note of not seeing each other in a long time. Last I remember was lunch at Niki’s West, your favorite Birmingham dining spot. But that was a few years ago.

Oliver Bragg.JPG Mike Oliver, Rick Bragg at Alabama Booksmith in Homewood

We talked about getting together and having a sit-down talk to catch up. I joked we could spend two hours alone talking about our ailments. And, hell, we’re only 58.

This writing thing, or more specifically, the living thing, hasn’t always been easy but I want to compare your memories to mine over a cup of something, probably coffee.

The goal: Find lots of stuff to laugh about.

I want to reminisce about when we went on tour of West Jefferson Correctional Institution and had lunch with the inmates. Yeast rolls and butterbeans. There was Juicy and the Captain.

Walking out in the yard, the inmates shouted at us: “And the walls came tumbling down.” This was in the wake of the St. Clair prison riot in 1985 and the reason you and I went on this tour of West Jefferson. It led to a story on how the riot went down and prison conditions, which alas, haven’t changed much.

By the way, that Biblical quote (and John Cougar-Mellencamp song) shouted by the prisoners: You turned that into the opening of the story – another Rick Bragg special.

I remember when we got in some pretty big trouble for publishing the inmate’s list of demands.

I remember when we wrote together you’d tap something on the keyboards of our old VDT’s, look at me with a smile, stand up and say: I’ve got to walk that one off.

We can reminisce about the series of stories on foster children lost in the system which won some awards and a big luncheon thank-you from the National Social Workers Association.

We can talk about going to see Tom Petty in Atlanta. Road trip with several other Birmingham News folks, Dennis Love maybe? We’ll remember it.

We can talk about the big party after your first book signing for “All Over But the Shoutin’.” It was Atlanta and several of us ended up crashing on your floor. Or maybe it was you crashing on the floor. We’ll remember it. Luckily you lived right across the street from one of the oldest if not THE oldest Krispy Kreme establishment in America.

Rick Bragg and his mother.jpgRick Bragg goes for a walk with his mother, Margaret Bragg, who is the inspiration for his new book, “The Best Cook in the World.” (Photo by Terry Manier)

I remember you, me and Howard joining up and navigating the streets of San Francisco. We  were looking for fine dining and wound up in a burger joint. It was a good burger joint though.

I can remind you of how my wife, Catherine, pointed out with semi-feigned indignation because my name was in the “Shoutin”’ book (page 158)  but NOT her name.

You grabbed a book and wrote on the title page: ‘Dear Catherine, You’re in the book now, Sunshine.’

She loved it.

We got plenty to talk about, my time in California, your wedding in Memphis, Randy, families and friends. I mainly just want to follow up and make sure we do make a plan.

So, Niki’s?

I’ll tell Greg. (I’ll need a ride).

 

 

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Dion– 523, 522

ALBUMS: Dion and the Belmonts 24 Original Classics (1984); Dion (1968)

MVC Rating: Classics 4.5/$$$; Dion 4.0/$$

If you are going to cover Purple Haze by Jimi Hendrix you better do it like Dion did it by totally deconstructing, making it virtually unrecognizable from the original.

He made it a slow smoldering, jazzy nightclub song : . ‘Excuse me while I kiss the sky’ he sings slowly, quietly, dragging the words out, and the line dissolves into flute, be-bop scats and an ethereal echo effects.

You may not like this treatment, click on link  above  to hear, but if he tried to do it like Hendrix, it would surely be a fiasco. On that song I give kudos for the creative arrangement.

Now  on to the songs he was known for. Dion came out of the doo-wop New York City scene, where you got up a group of friends in the neighborhood and sang on the porch or stoop.

He hooked up with Bronx buddies: Fred Milano, Angelo D’Aleo, and Carlo Mastrangelo.

And of course  you snapped your fingers as your voices — being the main musical instruments — blended in perfect harmony. Dion came from that scene and –became one the top singers in the era of the late 1950s after Elvis went into the Army and before the Beatles and British invasion.

Songs like Runaround Sue, which is addressing presumably an ex-girlfriend in a non-complimentary way:

People let me put you wise– Sue goes out with other guys

In the Wanderer, Dion is the macho loverboy who has goes from town to town loving and leaving them.

Oh well, there’s Flo on my left and then there’s Mary on my right
And Janie is the girl well that I’ll be with tonight
And when she asks me, which one I love the best?
I tear open my shirt and I show “Rosie” on my chest

Dion had lots of hits both as a front man for a band, (the Belmonts) and by himself. But the street corner dude was apparently hiding a heroin habit that began in his teens. Disappearing for a while he re-emerged with a softer folksy style that brought the hit ‘Abraham, Martin and John’ about the slain leaders.

Dion had a very soulful voice and feel for the song. The two-disc compilation I have is a great place to start. But I’ve found his discography to be deep. He did great songs that are sometimes hidden on albums like Born to Be with You. Beautiful.

He also did a very personal song, that may be one of the best and honest  ‘getting sober’ songs ever done called ‘In Your Own Backyard.’ Listen to it below: