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Bruce Cockburn — 578

ALBUM: World of Wonders (1986)

MVC Rating: 4.0/$$$

Cockburn, a Canadian folk singer, is smart, a great musician, serious, not so much the life of the party. A self-proclaimed Christian, Cockburn writes melodic dirges, melodic folk/country and melodic rants. Much is about politics.

Put another way, Cockburn is a dude who reads the NY Times and listens to  NPR every morning and absorbs it.

He’s smart and he’s pissed.

To be fair he has also traveled extensively on various human rights causes.

Look and listen to the lyrics of “And They Call it Democracy.’

North, south, east, west
Kill the best and buy the rest
It’s just spend a buck to make a buck
You don’t really give a flying fuck
About the people in misery
I-M-F dirty M-F
Takes away everything it can get
Always making certain that there’s one thing left
Keep them on the hook with insupportable debt
See the paid off local bottom feeders
Passing themselves off as leaders
Kiss the ladies, shake hands with the fellows
And it’s open for business like a cheap bordello
And they call it democracy
And they call it democracy
Have you heard of any other pop artists write songs railing against the International Monetary Fund?
I have to say as much as I admire his writing and Berklee College of Music training, I don’t and/or haven’t listened to this album much. It’s in mint condition. It is packed full of polemics and politics, good music, great guitar playing, but little humor.
Take my old adversary, Robert Christgau, well not yet but once he reads   my  blog he’ll turn into my adversary, I’m sure. The blatant plagiarism (on both sides). Look what he says about Cockburn in his same review or review of the same  album. Here’s his review:
World of Wonders [MCA, 1986]
Cockburn’s a very smart guy with as tough and articulate a line on imperialism as any white person with a label deal. Few singer-songwriters play meaner guitar, and as befits an anti-imperialist he knows the international sonic palette. Unfortunately, his records never project musical necessity. The melodies and/or lyrics carry the first side anyway, but though I’m sure Cockburn has some idea what the synthesized pans are doing on the cry of politico-romantic angst and the vaguely Andean fretboards on the Wasp dub poem, what the world will hear is the oppressive boom-boom of four-four drums. B  Robert Christgau.
Now that’s what I wanted to say.He stole it. Aha, but I stole it back, slightly altering the lede, the middle  and of course came up with a different ending.
I certainly missed the impressive boom-boom of four-four drums. Shame.
One thing to note: His Christmas album, titled just that, Christmas, is excellent. One of the  best of  my very extensive collection of holiday music (mostly digital).

 Counting down my 678  vinyl records  before I die of  brain disease.
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Jimmy Cliff — 580, 579

ALBUMS: The Harder They Come (1973); We all are one (12-inch single, 1983)

MVC Rating: Harder 4.5 $$$$; One 3.5 $$$

Jimmy Cliff, mon. If somebody walked up to me right now and said they don’t know anything about reggae music and wanted to buy something, relatively cheap, to see if they like this genre, I’d waver on a recommendation.

It’s a tough one to choose between Bob Marley’s ‘Natty Dread’ and the Jimmy Cliff vehicle soundtrack ‘The Harder They Come.”

‘Natty Dread’ was my introduction many years ago and ‘No Woman No Cry’ is in  my Top 10 song list (It is? Ok for now it  is.) And when I first heard Marley sing in Rebel Music: “Hey Mr. Cop, I ain’t got no birth-surf-a-ticket on me now,”  I thought it was the coolest thing. I still pronounce birth certificate like that to this day.

But as much as I love that album,  I might steer this newby to the Cliff album. Esteemed and rarely demeaned Rock Critic Robert Christgau,  whom I cite a lot in my musical meanderings, called this the best rock movie soundtrack ever or the soundtrack to the best rock movie or the best rock compilation…Oh you read it, I can’t keep jumping back to Christgau’s Consumer Guide, he’ll think I’m plagiarizing him.

The soundtrack featuring Cliff and others is indeed excellent. Cliff’s ‘Many Rivers to Cross’ is on my Top 10 list of great songs, and so is the Melodians ‘Rivers of Babylon.  OK my list is going to need some work pruning and expansion. But the above two songs prove  if you got rivers you got good reggae.

Let the words of our mouth and the meditations of our heart
Be acceptable in thy sight here tonight
Let the words of our mouth and the meditation of our hearts
Be acceptable in thy sight here tonight
By the rivers of babylon, there we sat down
Ye-eah we wept, when we remembered zion

And there’s ‘Johnny Too Bad,’ which UB40 did a great cover later. And the  Toots and the Maytals classic ‘Pressure Drop’ which the Clash made their own on my recently reviewed Sandinista!

I also have from 10 years later a promotional single. I distinctly remember buying this from Charlemagne Records in Birmingham probably 1983 or so. (I also bought a 12-inch single by Niles Rogers, which I hope to find and review when I get to the ‘R’s.).

We all are one (We all)
We are the same person (Same person)
I’ll be you, you’ll be me (I’ll be me, you’ll be you)
We all are one (We all), same universal world
I’ll be you, you’ll be me

Is in the conscience
And the shade of our skin
Doesn’t matter, we laugh, we chatter
We smile, we all live for

We all are one … now here’s a great rendition by Cliff himself of his classic:

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Van Cliburn — 582, 581

ALBUMS: Tchaikovsky Concerto No. 1;  Rachmaninoff, Concerto No. 3.

MVC Rating: 5.0/$$$$$

The US has long been the ‘team to beat’ in the world. Ideally we are also the role model, or should be.

An honest striving for excellence leads us to our exceptionalism mindset. Obviously that can be for  good or ill.

Racing to be first.

I suppose we should all be pushing toward being the best we can be, without hurting ourselves or others. (Gosh I’m starting to sound like Joan Baez or Melanie here.)

Good old competition can open eyes and push forward the truth.

Alabama native Jesse Owens won four gold medals, including the 100 meters and 200 meters in the 1936 Olympics, shattering German leader Adolf Hitler’s  definition of Aryan superiority.

The Space Race with the U.S. landing on the moon i n 1969, shot the US ahead of the Soviets in one dramatic leap and pushed both sides to advance the technology.

A 23-year-old, 6-foot-4-inch Texan, blew away the competition in the International Tchaikovsky Competition in 1958, getting a Russian standing ovation in the middle of the Cold War.

It’s interesting that Owens and Van Cliburn made their statements on the road in front of dumbfounded but appreciative witnesses, in Berlin and in Moscow.

The judges had to run it by Soviet Leader Nikita Khrushchev on whether to give the first prize to an American, according to Wikipedia citing the Washington Post and Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

“Is he the best?” Khrushchev asked the judges. Yes, they replied.

“Then give him the prize!” he said.

So Van Cliburn was like the first rock star of classical music. Oh, that’s not true, That would more likely be Mozart.

But the fact that the baby faced tall hombre from Texas could defeat worldwide competition is pretty remarkable. Wonder if Cliburn ever goofed around with other genre’s like rock or ragtime or jazz?

In an  an obituary upon his death in 2013, the Associated Press noted the 1958 Time magazine cover story described him as “Horowwitz, Liberace and Presley “all rolled into one.”

Wouldn’t it be cool to see Van Cliburn trading licks with Jerry Lee Lewis? Billy Preston. Or Keith Emerson, often considered the best keyboardist in rock

?

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

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The Clash — 584, 583

ALBUMS: Sandinista! (1980), Black Market Clash (1980)

MVC Rating: Sandinista 4.0/$$$$$; Black Market 4.0/$$

If you think about it, the Clash had the perfect name for their band.

They clashed with everything.

And Sandinista was a new turn that clashed with the group’s punk rock base. (Think Roy Moore followers if they were leftist streetwise Brits. I’m making the point that they are loyalists not so open to change.)

Sandinista, a three-record clashing of the soul  and gnashing of the teeth was their masterpiece and their self-indulgent jam session — (see the clash there?)

It had reggae, dub, punk rock, a waltz, rap, rockabilly, electronica, corner soul and Lord knows what else. Most people didn’t play the whole thing through because it was disorienting. It was like wearing plaid, stripes, gingham and seersucker all at once and on the feet: Keds red high tops.

Not Converse mind you. That’d be uncool.

But it  had great stuff on it. Some of the music was eye-openingly good (The piano and bass on the be-boppin Look Here, for example.)  It just got lost in the shuffle-play. While the Magnificent Seven, Police on My Back, Rebel Waltz and Somebody Got Murdered got most of the attention, I  like the Sound of the Sinners, a gospel send-up that kicks off with this:

As the floods of God, wash away sin city,

they say  it was written in the page of the Lord.

But I was looking, for that great jazz note,

that destroyed,  the walls of Jericho

This album featured six sides of six songs each and cost just a little more, if I remember it was something like $9,99. And I believe that included, at least at my record store, a copy of the 10-inch, Black Market Clash, taken from the Sandinista sessions. I loved side two of that 10-inch with bankrobber/robber dub and armigideon dub, and no justice/kick it around.

Mick Jones continued this dub reggae rap groove in Big Audio Dynamite, which I reviewed here.

Clash band leader Joe Strummer rememberedl

The Clash stood up for the working class and grew into a musically adventurous,  and politically aware punk rock group. By their fourth album, continuing in the tradition of arguably their best album, London Calling, they absorbed and reconfigured  every cross-cultural type of street music imaginable. They discovered dub alll right. And dub spelled backward as well.

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

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Does anybody really know how many Lewy body patients are out there?

So if you’re walking down the street sometime
And spot some hollow ancient eyes
Please don’t just pass ’em by and stare
As if you didn’t care, say, “Hello in there, hello”

   John Prine

Staying on topic again. Lewy body dementia. Quick quiz.

I’ll answer for you.

  1. Do you forget things, names for example? Um, sometimes.
  2. Are you constipated? Um, sometimes.
  3. Do you have muscle and joint stiffness? Um, sometimes.
  4. Do  you have vivid dreams? Well the other night I had some jalapenos on my nachos and man I was dreaming of  …..oh, so? um sometimes.
  5. Do you see things out of the corner of your eye, turn to look and it’s gone? Um, sometimes but that’s because I  have floaters in my eyes. 

Do you have Lewy body dementia? I dunno. What’s Lewy body dementia?

I’ve gone over these angles before but I recently read a research paper published in 2015 that generally backs up much of what I’ve been saying. But it does so in other words, which I found helpful.

I was (mis)diagnosed  with Parkinson’s disease first in 2016 and  then diagnosed with what we are pretty certain is Lewy body dementia a few months later. What was frustrating as a newcomer to these diseases, is how little absolute knowledge there was because everybody is different, brains are extraordinarily complex and what the hell are  all these alpha-synuclein proteins really doing in my brain?

Lewy Bodies in the brain. Public domain Wiki.

The research I was reading was posted on the Bio-Med Central website and authored by Brendon P. Boot of Alzheimer’s Research and Therapy.

Boot said while Lewy body has been pegged at being about 4 percent of all dementia patients, the figure is actually much higher.

“Dementia with Lewy bodies is an under-recognized disease; it is responsible for up to 20 percent of all dementia cases,” wrote Boot. “Accurate diagnosis is essential because the management of dementia with Lewy bodies is more complex than many neurodegenerative diseases. This is because alpha-synuclein, the pathological protein responsible for dementia with Lewy bodies (and Parkinson’s disease), produces symptoms in multiple domains.”

This is great stuff. This is why I have been harping about why the medical community needs know about Lewy, what it is and how to monitor. When a 58-year-old constipated man, who ate recently at Pete’s Nachos and who keeps seeing little bugs scurry across the floor comes into your office, let’s assess for Lewy body, as well as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.

Let’s keep going.

“By dividing the symptoms into cognitive, neuropsychiatric, movement, autonomic, and sleep categories, a comprehensive treatment strategy can be achieved.”

Yes!

“Management decisions are complex, since the treatment of one set of symptoms can cause complications in other symptom domains. Nevertheless, a comprehensive treatment program can greatly improve the patient’s quality of life, but does not alter the progression of disease,” wrote Boot.

That’s what I’m talking about.

Let’s continue.

“Dementia with Lewy bodies  is an under-recognized disease. The diagnostic criteria have low sensitivity (12 to 32 %) and high specificity (>95 %) [1], so many cases are not diagnosed,” Boot  wrote.

So many cases are not diagnosed. Did you understand the explanation in the  that sentence? The thing about the criteria having low sensitivity and high specificity?

Me neither.

Onward.

“Parkinson’s disease dementia (PDD) accounts for a further 3 to 5 percent of dementia cases .”

That’s on top of that 20 percent. (But of what? Need to find total number of dementia patients to put 20 plus 5 percent  in context.”)

“Both DLB and PDD are due to the pathological accumulation of alpha-synuclein.” Know this already.

“But patients with parkinsonism for 1 year prior to cognitive decline are classified as PDD [4].”

So they have all these  umbrella diseases based on the excess of alph-synuclein AKA as Lewy bodies. And they have to make their educated guess on whether it’s PDD, LBD or DBL,  or PD, or whatever, by which symptoms are showing and when, in what sequence, did these symptoms start showing.

Now here’s the kicker, and this is why everyone needs to be able to navigate the system as a patient or caretaker.

“Cognitive decline and parkinsonism are insidious, so the distinction can be difficult to draw and may be influenced by the subspecialty interest of the diagnosing neurologist (for example, movement disorder versus behavioral neurology) [1, 7]. Data on the relative frequency of DLB and PDD may be similarly affected by this subspecialty referral pattern. Whether or not the distinction has treatment implications is difficult to determine.”

So what do we know? We don’t know the cause of Lewy.  We don’t know of anything that will cure Lewy or slow its progression. We don’t know how to predict its speed or debilitation because ‘everybody is different.”

How many Lewy cases are out there? I want to know. Docs and patients work together to get diagnoses early and often so we can study this disease. Break down silos between memory specialists and movement disorder experts. They should be in the same place, same building, same floor, same parking deck.

Patients be patient but pressing. Time is precious.

I am channeling my focus on improving the treatment and getting more research based on the words of numerous patients and caretakers with a brain disease who have reached out after my public story. My own situation is working well so far.

Getting the Parkinson’s diagnosis first  was not unusual for Lewy body patients for reasons I’ve pointed out many times. I have a neurologist who has helped me get to the right balance of medications to treat Lewy. So I’m all right for now, just fine.

Bye. Heading out for nachos.

To leave a comment on this or any blog post, click on the post’s title and scroll to the bottom. To read the full report click here.

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How the heck am I doing?

  • I get asked all the time how am I doing. I guess everybody asks everybody that as an informal greeting. But since I came out publicly with my degenerative brain disease called Lewy body dementia, both the question and answer take on an added layer  of significance.

Sometimes I say ‘fine.’ But Catherine has trained that answer right out of me. Those who know my wife know that she responds to people who say they are fine by saying: FINE stands for Frustrated, Insecure, Nervous and Emotional.

So how am I doing?

Not fine. I mean not Catherine’s fine. I feel pretty good. Most of the time.

My disease affects 1.4 million Americans and is the second leading cause of dementia after Alzheimer’s. There is no known cause or cure. Average life expectancy is 5 to 7 years after diagnosed. I am 58 and about 15 months past my diagnosis of Lewy.

So I am not fine. Or, I am indeed Catherine’s FINE. Some of the time.

You could say my awareness that something was wrong with me was nearly two years ago. The key indicator was that my arm was involuntarily pulling up into what Parkinson’s patients recognize as the gunslinger’s position, near where your holster would be if you had one.

So in August of 2016, it was no surprise that when we went to the doctor and neurologist that we came home with the diagnosis  of Parkinson’s.  I say ‘we’ because Catherine is so interwoven into the fabric of my being and is taking this thing on at my side. And so are my daughters, and my friends and my employer and my… well you get the picture. I have a lot of people who care for me.

But other things — the advantage of hindsight and lots of research — led to other things. I had been having some memory problems for a while, also sleeping problems and  also anxiety of the likes I’d never had. This led to a psychological evaluation, which led to the conclusion that while I was no Einstein to begin with, I appeared to have lost some cognitive function. Enough that the diagnosis came back Lewy bodies, which simply means that i have been having cognitive problems from at least the onset of the gunslinger, and probably before that.

With Lewy body patients, an initial Parkinson’s (mis)diagnosis is not unusual. In the brain, the disorder is practically the same malfunction in Parkinson’s and Lewy’s patients. An overabundance of proteins from who knows where are killing neurons which are pretty vital as part of the brain’s communication hub to the rest of your body and mind.

It’s like an airplane (slowly) losing it’s ability to communicate with air traffic controllers. Oh, and automatic pilot quits working as well.

According to neuroscientists most folks are losing about 7,000 brain cells a day. Even though you have 100 billion brain  cells to start with, if  you start losing millions to the alpha synuclein hordes, it’s going to wreak a little havoc.

So Lewy is similar to Parkinson’s and some doctors go so far as call it a type of Parkinson’s. Here’s the difference, Lewy by definition affects a person’s mental faculties. There’s dementia all the time with Lewy. Not so with Parkinson’s, although eventually Parkinson’s patients, if they live long enough, may show dementia, as do many people when they age. Many Parkinson’s patients present symptoms of uncontrolled movement or shaking, like Michael J. Fox.  That side can come with Lewy’s as well.

Here’s the Lewy Body Dementia Association’s explanation.

In a way, it’s all semantics. There is no definitive tests for these diseases until we open up the skull and take a look.  There’s even research that maybe its not the proteins that are killing the neurons after all.

I do know there is no clear prediction on my future. I know I may not have much more time. But I might be around for a while and the medications, which are not a cure, keep symptoms tamped down.

It’s a disease or an umbrella of diseases that has different effects on different people. The key is figuring out how to treat it.

After years of suffering and misdiagnoses, Robin Williams killed himself. When they looked at his brain, they found it was full of this flopping protein, Lewy bodies.

So we need awareness. We need more research. We need it urgently. Someone who has Lewy who is misdiagnosed with Alzheimer’s may face serious harm or death if given certain medications to treat symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease — such as some anti-psychotic drugs.

So how the heck am I?

I’m happy to be able to write this to get the word out.

I am happy to see people who care.

I am happy to care for people while I still can.

I am sad to see tears and am happy when they turn to smiles, in the moment.

In this moment, I feel as good or better than I did a year ago, thanks, I believe, to finding the right balance of medications.

I’ve written that this blog is therapeutic. I am counting down my 678 records as I go along. My goal, or rather MY PROMISE, is to finish off those records. I haven’t counted recently but I’m over 90.

I believe I am close to 100.

I believe I am close to.  I believe I  am close. I believe I am. I believe I.  I believe.

I.

How the heck am I?

Really, I’m fine.

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Eric Clapton (Do I have too much?)

ALBUMS: History of Eric Clapton (1972 2-record compilation); EC Was Here (live)(1975); Backless (1979); Crossroads (6-record boxed set 1988)

MVC Ratings: Boxed 5.0/$$$$$; History 4.5/$$$$$; EC 3.5/$$$$; Backless 3.5/$$$$

Do I have too much Clapton?

Like an unbalanced 401/K plan do I need to liquidate some Eric Clapton. Should I re-rebalance my portfolio of 678 records (which I am writing about in this blog) by selling some Clapton.

For example, I could sell some Clapton for Albert King, a key Clapton influence whom I don’t have. But that would almost be like buying more Clapton, an artist steeped in blues music. Or, should I diversify and maybe buy some Django Reinhardt, a Gypsy jazz guitarist from yesteryear who was at least as influential as Clapton but had a totally different style, outside the realm of blues.

As you can see above, I only have four separate Clapton ‘products’ But as you can also see, one is a 6-record box set, and another is a  double record chronology.  Pretty comprehensive.

That’s 10 vinyl slices totaling about six or seven hours of Clapton. That doesn’t include my two Cream albums, my Yardbirds album and my Derek and the Dominos double album set, all of which have Clapton in the mix.  I will review separately when they come up in my alphabetical line-up. (I’m in the C’s so we’ll be doing Cream pretty soon).

I think I will hold off liquidating immediately.

If you are a Clapton fan, it is good to see the arc of his playing.

He is praised for his fluid improvisational guitar solos, mostly in a blues context. And he is cursed for his fluid improvisational guitar solos because they infiltrated rock and roll and pretty soon everybody and their brother-in-law’s cousin was strapping on a Fender Stratocaster aiming to be a lead guitarist.

As the low-solo 50’s melted away to the 1960’s, there was a nuclear arms race over how fast and long that guitar solo should be. Too many times the result was guitar for showmanship’s sake and not for song-sake. Granted these guitar jams tended to be used and abused more in the live concert setting, than in the studio.

In the studio you had a producer saying, ‘Uh, Jimi, I think we are good with that 37-minute version of the ‘Star Spangled Banner.’ You can flesh it out a little more on stage tonight if you want. I sure hope our flag is still there.’

Clapton can be accused of starting it. He and John  Mayall developed a cult following in London, immersing themselves in blues.

“‘Clapton is God’ graffiti began appearing around the city, defining  a central tenet of the Clapton mythology to this day,” wrote Rolling Stone writer Anthony DeCurtis in the Crossroad’s liner notes.

I don’t have ‘Tears in Heaven’ on any of these records. The soft rock tear-jerker about the tragic death of his child was one of his biggest hits but also fed into this view that he was going ‘commercial or soft as he got older, especially since he used to be such a purist.

Clapton himself said in the biography ‘Clapton!’: “I’m far too judgmental and in those days I was a complete purist. If it wasn’t black music, it was rubbish.”

Now we should give the man the benefit of the doubt on his sincerity behind ‘Tears’ given the subject matter.

But these softer songs and big hit covers like ‘Cocaine’ and ‘I Shot the Sheriff’,’ I think unfairly led to some in my generation and later generations to suggest he was overrated.

Um, no.

Listen to all six vinyl records in Crossroads. That includes his work with Mayall, the Yardbirds, Cream, Delaney and Bonnie, Blind Faith and Derek and the Dominoes.

D&D the double record studio production with Duane Allman and Eric  trading licks on old school blues tunes and the ever-great title song is one of my desert island albums.

Sure he had some commercial schlock (full disclosure, I and mi esposa like ‘Wonderful Tonight’ as one of the soundtracks of our first dates in high school.) A critical observation may be’ look at what he hath wrought.’

But overrated? Don’t think so.

David  Fricke, a rock critic for Rolling Stone magazine, said this:

“Clapton’s economy of style, clarity of technique and improvisatory firepower are the standard by which nearly all electric guitarists, blues or otherwise, have been judged for over twenty years.”

Like I said, a curse and a blessing.

 

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Carlene Carter, Lee Clayton, City Boy –quick hits — 591, 590, 589

Time is here today  and because it keeps slipping, slipping into the future, I need to move on this. Here’s a 3-for-1 special. There’s nothing really that ties these albums together other than they happen to be next on my alphabetical list and the artists here all sing and play musical instruments.

Carlene Carter – 591

ALBUM:  Musical Shapes (1980)

MVC Rating: 4.0/ $$

This is a cutout, meaning the record company, nicked the corner off or punched a hole in the cover’s corner. This meant they were slow sellers and the distributors were to mark them down. Cutouts were controversial in  the industry, but I bought them regularly. That’s because I felt like I might find that rare album, the best of all time that no one ever heard of. I almost did many times.

I think I bought this in Athens, Ga., I remember reading a little about it. Carter was the daughter of June Carter Cash, by June’s first husband, and thus, she was the step-daughter of Johnny Cash.  She is also the ex-wife of Nick Lowe, who plays bass on the album. Dave Edmunds, who played guitar on this album, was Lowe’s, co-band member in the great rock and roll group called Rockpile.

All said and done, this is a keeper. Her voice is good. Her cover of stepdad’s ‘Ring of Fire’ is pretty bad, though. ‘Sandy’ is good –“I like that  cold cash, that  cold hard cash.  The duet with Edmunds, on ‘Baby Ride Easy’ is fun and sums up the tone of the album, a little rock but a strong extra dose of country. In fact it sounded like a party going on in recording this.

“I was too drunk to remember, I was too blind to see,” she sings.

Carter was in concert in her early years and she famously (or infamously) introduced a song  by saying “Well this one will sure put the %$^&  back in country.” She said a naughty word left when you take the ‘tree’ off the musical genre.

Unbeknownst to her, June and Johnny, slipped in to see Carlene’s concert that night.

(Story updated 2 p.m.  Jan. 29 to reflect Carter was married to Lowe, not Edmunds).

City Boy– 590

ALBUM:  Young Man Gone West (1977)

MVC Rating: 3.0/$$

What is this? 10cc cover band? Queen without Freddie Mercury? 5cc?

I like ‘She’s Got Style’ because it rolls along as if art students were on sabbatical in the Tulsa Time zone. Are they the embers of the Sparks?

‘The Man who Ate His Car.’ ??  Is  there some subtle social commentary in there. I still have to go back to 10cc. That group was sometimes great. But sometimes good 10cc was bad 10cc. This is bad 10cc that may rhyme but has no reason.

Good  guitar player though.

Lee Clayton — 589

ALBUM: The Dream Goes On (1981)

MVC Rating: 3.5/$$$

This album I know I bought in Auburn.  I listened to this for the first time in years. Interesting cat, this Lee Clayton, growing up “surrrounded by fences” in Oak Ridge where he lived next to the Atom bomb factory, apparently.  He’s still radioactive about it — at least on this  album which came out in 1981.

Industry sucks, he seems to be saying, but, he acknowledges: “It makes me sick — and well.”

The vitriol and dramatic singing makes you wonder what really happened to him. In ‘Industry’ he talks about ‘the big boys’ and the people being ‘drug crazed’  and then he quotes the Constitution and  then the Bible. In ‘Where is the Justice’ he rails on about a bad concert tour in Hamburg and Brussels where he saw ‘goose-stepping Russians.’

At one point he sings with great feeling about “23 hours of madness for one hour on that stage. That ain’t justice. That’s bad pay.” What?

And then (whew) he comes up with a simple sweet and lovely song that I remembered the words to after several decades of not hearing this song.

“Won’t You Give me One More Chance.”

“To make it with you. Forget about the bad we had, don’t believe its true come and lie with me like the way we used to do; you’re the only thing I’ve got to hold on to.”

I know this sounds like a strange and perhaps awful album as I describe it but it’s really not. He’s passionate, perhaps unbalanced and thus interesting. The music keeps it together.

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The Coolest Cover Yet of ‘Angel from Montgomery’–by WPC

In this blog post  is  a song.

Play it.

Christopher M. Viner. and Sasha G. Alcott  PHOTO CREDIT: Cait Bourgault

Push the sideways triangle.

It’s a cover by When Particles Collide  of ‘Angel from Montgomery’ and it may be a challenger for  the best  cover yet of that song or at least puts it  in that conversation.

And believe me that’s saying a lot considering who has covered this John Prine classic:

  • Bonnie Raitt (she has done duets of this song with Prine, Tracy Chapman, Jackson Browne, Bruce Hornsby and more.)
  • Susan Tedeschi
  • John Denver
  • Cameo
  • John Mayer
  • Dave Matthews
  • Ben Harper
  • These are just a few who have covered it. The list goes on and on.

See what you think.

You, audience, are the first to hear this outside the inner circle. It’s a little different than Raitt’s famous version(s). It hits you with a little more force, urgency. It replaces melancholy and hopelessness with the beginnings of raw pain, and anger. For me the flies take on a  bigger buzz.

There’s flies in the kitchen
I can hear all their buzzin’
And I ain’t done nothing since I woke up today
How the hell can a person
Go to work in the morning
Come home in the evening
And have nothing to say

When Sasha sings the above, she spits out the last four lines and we suddenly wonder what the woman has done. The ambiguity in Prine’s  poetry starts to melt  away.

Give a little listen  w headphones.

Back ground here: Earlier in these bloggies, I wrote about this great  group When Particles Collide. I saw them  several months ago, a husband-wife band, performing on the back porch of my  basketball buddy Eric Stockman’s home here in the Birmingham area.

These 40-somethings from Maine had quit their day jobs and took WPC out on a 14-month U.S. tour. I picked up a record of theirs and loved their hard rocking style.

I wrote that I’d like to also hear some softer stuff, such as “Angel from Montgomery” cover of John Prine, which they had  played in the back porch concert.

I requested the song from this band and  like all good bands they played it. Not only played it, but recorded it and sent it to me. (I can’t swear to these time sequences, they may have already had this song recorded or plans to record it before I made the request about a month or so ago. But I like to think they fulfilled my request in the  rock and roll tradition.  And, as I have announced, they are coming out with an acoustic album , Eric tells me.

Learn more by going to WPC’s website.

www.whenparticlescollide.com/

To comment  or weigh in on the best ‘Angel’ cover, click the blog title and scroll to the end.

Posted on

Tracy Chapman — 592

ALBUM: Tracy Chapman (1988)

MVC Rating: 4.5/$$

Forget the hole in the head Cracker, the world needs another folk singer like Tracy Chapman.

I had a feeling that I could be someone, be someone

For me it wasn’t that the words blew me away Or the music and playing was so much better than many other great folk singers. For me it was all these things together and the voice. Yes the voice. I can’t really describe it. There are certain voices I really appreciate.  And hers,  singing about race, domestic abuse, poverty and just plain heartache and heart break, sounded real

That the voice comes from a gay black woman, and seems shot-through with wisdom brought by pain makes it all the more remarkable that it connects so powerfully with an older balding white guy, me, and I’m sure many others like me.

She’s got her ticket is a song about someone in pain who wants to fly away.

She’s got her ticket I think she gonna use it                                                                      I think she going to fly away                                                                                                 No one should try and stop her

And from this Grammy award-winning  album, her debut,  came probably her signature song: Fast Car.

That song plays on the same theme of escape, and is cathartic in its slow down, speed  up sound.  The words are potent but the song transcends the words and  should be heard. See video below.

You see my old man’s got a problem
He live with the bottle that’s the way it is
He says his body’s too old for working
His body’s too young to look like his
My mama went off and left him
She wanted more from life than he could give
I said somebody’s got to take care of him
So I quit school and that’s what I did
You got a fast car
Is it fast enough so we can fly away
We gotta make a decision
Leave tonight or live and die this way
 =–=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Another of her biggest hits here.
NOTE: I talked about certain voices that I like and somehow writing and listening to Tracy made me think of another one of my favorite singers: Phil Lynott (now deceased) of the Irish band Thin Lizzy. But the singers are nothing alike other than a smooth sounding voice. See video below.
 Counting down my 678 vinyl records before I die of brain disease.