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Troubles

Take all my troubles

Throw them down

Boot heel grind them into the ground

Take my big sorrow

Make it shatter

Into little pieces

That no longer matter

No more questions

I’ve had enough

We’ve known all along,

The answer’s love

World, show me your beauty

And your heart

That seems to be an honest way to start

Girl, show me your beauty

And your heart

That seems to be the best way to start

Take all my troubles

Throw them down

Boot heel grind them into the ground

Grind them into the ground

Into the ground

Into the ground

—-

A poem by Mike Oliver.

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The Woodentops — 42

ALBUM: Giant (1986)

MVC Rating: 4.0/$$$

New wavers of the 1980s run to your closet, pull out that box of vinyl and find the Woodentop’s very excellent album, ‘Giant.’

If you did what I did oh so many years ago, you played it once or twice and put it in the closet without any real testing. Very good album with all sorts of swirling rhythms. Drummer Benny Staples is excellent for this upbeat, bopping music.

They have a subdued B-52s feel, with a British accent. Like Morrissey on happy juice.

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Joe Walsh — 44, 43

ALBUM: The Smoker You Drink the Player You Get (1973); So What? (1974)

MVC Rating: 3.5/$$$

Joe Walsh is a good guitarist, good songwriter and great band member. It’s not easy coming to work for a new employer. So when Walsh joined the Eagles in 1975, there were concerns that Walsh was too hard rock for them or wouldn’t fit the Eagles sound.

While the Eagles sang the sedate Best of My Love, Walsh was playing songs like Rocking Mountain Way with its crushing guitar chords and nasty slide guitar. Before Rocky Mountain Way, he led the James Gang, a hard rocking, steady touring band with Midwest origins.

How would the Eagles with their soft Southern Cal delivery integrate with the rocking guitarist who loved to make his guitar talk through a vocoder and fuzz it all up with a fuzzbox?

Turns out he did OK. Understatement of course.

In 1998, a reader’s poll by Guitarist magazine selected the Hotel California guitar solos as the best guitar solos of all time.

(Hey what about Free Bird?)

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War — 46, 45

ALBUMS: ‘Why Can’t We Be Friends?’ (1975);’The World is a Ghetto’ (1972)

MVC Rating: Friends: 4.0/$$$$; Ghetto: 4.0/$$$$

Not to be confused by the song ‘War’ by Edwin Starr, the band, ‘War,’ was a funk-Latin-jazz-rock-soul group that was as adept with the long jam pieces as it was the pithy singles.

The song off the same-named album ‘Why Can’t We be Friends,’ was a megahit, a sly little ditty about race relations at a volatile time.

Speaking of Sly, one would not be laughed out of the room for saying War was like Sly and the Family Stone without Sly — large music ensemble, use of brass and reed instruments, funky, etc.

The difference was the Family Stone had a charismatic leader and War didn’t — at least at this point in the game. Early in their existence, War had Eric Burdon, former Animals lead singer, with whom they produced the hit ‘Spill the Wine’ under the name Eric Burdon and War.

War, without Burdon saw their share of hit continue: they not only produced the Friends song but also ‘Cisco Kid’, ‘Low Rider,’ and ‘The World is a Ghetto.’

I remember buying both of these used in Athens, Ga., in high school.

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The Waterboys — 48, 47

ALBUM: A Pagan Place (1984); This is the Sea (1985)

MVC Rating: Pagan’s 4.5/$$$$$; Sea 4.5/$$$$$

I think of this band as one that never quite achieved the success it deserved. Their sound was dubbed ‘big music’ after one of the songs on ‘A Pagan’s Place.’ Implying: The Next Big Thing.

Which creates a lot of expectations.

Mike Scott, the band’s leader, was (very obviously) influenced by Bob Dylan. He counts Joe Strummer of the Clash as an influence as well.

With the debut ‘A Pagan Place,’ followed by ‘This is the Sea’ and then ‘Fisherman’s Blues,’ the band snared me immediately as a fan. I have Fisherman’s Blues on CD so I’m not reviewing it here but I say ‘buy it,’ — it’s probably their best. Although the others are awesome. ‘Sea’ had their biggest ‘hit,’ if you can call it a hit, called ‘Whole of the Moon.’

The critique I’ve read and/or heard about the Waterboys is that they sounded overwrought with big subject matter (religion/Christianity), big singing, big music, leading to big pretensions.

OK, perhaps true. This tea is not for everybody.

But in my collection they each earn 4.5 points (out of 5). There is some real musical and songwriting craft going on here.

After ‘This is the Sea,’ Karl Wallinger, a keyboardist for the band left to form his own band, World Party, reviewed later. Mike Scott had some solo endeavors, some like ‘Bring Em All In,’ which touched on spiritual issues.

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Vanilla Fudge — 49

ALBUM: Vanilla Fudge (1967)

MVC Rating: 2.5/$$$$

Wow, this one is so bad it’s good. Almost.

Their cover of the Temptations’ ‘You Keep Me Hanging On’ was a high charting single and is a successful use of turning an original song inside-out, making it something new and good.

With it’s heavy organ sound and over-the-top rock vocals, it turns the song into something else. It sounds like Deep Purple before Deep Purple.

Unfortunately that formula didn’t work well on the other songs. In fact, some of the album sounds like laughable parody: Eleanor Rigby, Ticket to Ride, People Get Ready, She’s Not There — all covers of music that were current at the time. They were all great songs by the original artists but not by Vanilla Fudge except for ‘You Keep Me Hanging On.’

And therein lies Mike’s 2-pronged better and/or different theorem for a cover song to work.

No. 1: The cover takes a faithful route and blows the doors of the original. Janis Joplin’s Me and Bobby ‘McGee’ cover of the Kris Kristofferson song fits that bill. Michael Bolton’s cover of Otis Redding’s ‘Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay’ fails.

No. 2: The cover has to be so different that it reinterprets the original song. I think Creedence Clearwater Revival’s cover of ‘I Heard it through the Grapevine’ does that with Marvin Gaye’s version. I’m not saying the CCR song is better or worse, they are just different kinds of great with Gaye’s soul strong vocals and CCR’s swamp thing chug.

Now that you got my theorem, back to Vanilla Fudge. Between the cover songs, there are some strange psychedelic interludes (Illusions of my Childhood Pts. 1,2,3) which I won’t describe here but you get the picture.

This isn’t something I threw on my turntable much because there is so much gooey goo to get through to the good stuff.

It would make a great study as part of a look at the origins of psych-rock and heavy metal. Oh, by the way, either the bass player is very good or my speakers are very good — or both.

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Phone call from myself

NOTE: This is the result of one of my brain exercises. Think of pushups for my cerebellum. I think of these ‘exercises’ sometimes mostly to amuse myself.

*****

I called myself today on my cell phone. I knew it was me right away. But I wondered how I got my unlisted number?

‘Hey, how am I doing, I asked.

Not so hot, a little slow this morning, I replied.

Really? Me too, I said.

I was thinking of going to a record store or a thrift store, I said.

I was thinking the same thing but I remembered I went last week.

Wait, I didn’t see me there?

Yes I did. Remember looking in that full length mirror in the clothing area?

That was me.

Oh yeah, that was me, wasn’t it.

I am me.

Duh. Please don’t call me again, these conversations are useless.

Wait a minute, you called me, remember.

You? Who is you?

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The life and death of a little bird

My wife was in the backyard gardening when she heard a plop. A bird had fallen from the sky.

It landed just outside of our fence in the paved alley way and lay there, twitching now and again. Let’s just say, it didn’t stick the landing.

Catherine heard the thud, and went to take a look at the little brown bird, still flapping her little wings, trying to right herself.

She told me later she thought the the bird was ‘stunned’ unintentionally using a line from the hilarious ‘Dead Parrot’ sketch by Monty Python. (‘That bird’s not dead, it’s pining for the fjords.’)

Catherine’s bird really wasn’t dead. Catherine put on gloves, picked the bird up and brought it into our backyard. She stroked it and talked to it for a minute and then opened her hands and it took to flight.

It flew up into the thick branches of the many trees in the backyards along the alley. Catherine’s heart was filled with joy as she imagined the bird soaring into the blue sky.

But alas, the next day she came to find the little bird in our backyard. It was once again on it’s back flapping it’s wings. Catherine ran inside to grab some gloves. When she came back and picked up her little bird, she saw that it had died. Catherine was near tears telling me the story.

“It must have been her time,” was all I could think of saying. I wondered to myself if this was how birds die. Do they just fall out of the sky when their time is up? Why don’t we see dead birds more often? Like a scene from Hitchcock, there seems to be hundreds of birds in our yard every day.

I proceeded on to some self-absorbed pondering. I’ve been in sort of a slow motion free fall since November of 2016 when I was diagnosed with Lewy Body dementia, a Parkinson’s-like disease that is caused by naturally occurring proteins clumping together and killing brain cells. Read more about my case here.

There is no cure. The average lifespan is 4 to 8 years after diagnosis. Atlanta columnist Lewis Grizzard entitled one of his books in the 1970s ‘Elvis is Dead’ and I’m Not Feeling So Good Myself.’

Well, I was all ready, I joked, to name my unwritten book (haven’t actually started one): ‘Charlie Watts is Dead and I’m Not Feeling So Good Myself.’ .

But then the bird fell out of the sky.

The bird is dead. …. and I’m not feeling so good myself.

Now, I wasn’t there but it did affect me through my wife’s words. Catherine had also told the story to our daughter Claire, and this morning Catherine told Claire she had some sad news.

“Your little bird died?” Claire asked.

As I write this, I am nearing the end of counting down and writing this blog with reviews,– the 678 vinyl records I have collected over the years.

I was 56 when diagnosed. Hummingbirds that flitter around our garden can have a 5- year lifespan. I’m on my 5th year of the disease and am not nearly as frenetic as those wing-beaters.I write in the blog: “Counting down my 678 vinyl records before I die of a brain disease.’

I feel gentle hands and at least one more flight, soaring high into the blue. And I know that Catherine will be there when it is my time, too.

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Tom Verlaine — 50

ALBUM: Tom Verlaine (1981)

MVC Rating: 4.0/$$$$

Though it sounds very much like a Television album, that’s good. The Television singer and guitar player makes good music with the basics, mostly riding along on the guitar like it was a new electric Tesla. The notes finding him — not the other way around.

Every song has tasty guitar and the songs hold together as well. Key songs include Always, Mary Marie, Mr. Blur and There’s a Reason. No big hits here, just solid post-punk rock and roll.

As you can see by the number in the title, I am rolling up on half a hundred left to do. I will write more about that in a separate post.

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Violent Femmes — 51

ALBUM: Violent Femmes (1983)

MVC Rating 4.0/$$$$

The story goes, according to Wikipedia, the band was busking on a street corner out in front of a theater in the band’s hometown of Milwaukee where the Pretenders would be playing that night.

The trio caught the ear of Pretender guitarist James Honeyman Scott. Lead Pretender Chryssie Hynde let them play a song or two after the opening act ended. It was the beginning of a decades long career.

The band is not for everyone. Gordon Gano who writes the songs and sings lead embodies alternative at its most alternative.

With a tip of the hat to Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground, the Violent Femmes wrote songs from the street touching on drugs, lost love and loneliness. On the second album (Hallowed Ground) Ganos’ Christianity created some dissension at first. That was worked out, and the band member who complained said years later that those songs were among the band’s best.

The Phoenix New Times in a 2014 interview with Gano wrote:

lt was the strength of Gano’s fiery gospel punk songs, the devotional “Jesus Walking on the Water,” “Hallowed Ground,” which reads like it was ripped from book of Psalms, and his gleeful ode to God’s righteous wrath, “It’s Gonna Rain,” that caused Brian Ritchie to relent.