How many other musical artists can say they had Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton play on their solo album?
Stephen Stills is one I can think of. In fact, the only one I can think of off the top of my head. Clapton and Hendrix played on different tracks, recorded at different times on this Stills’ album, so it wasn’t like they were physically in the same room at the same time.
But a nice score for Stills nonetheless.
Two good songs too. Hendrix plays lead guitar on ‘Old Times, Good Times.” (Hendrix fun fact: He played the guitar left-handed so he would flip a right-handed guitar and re-strung it for a lefty.)
Although known for his aerial string-bending assault on the boundaries of music, he was quite restrained here and also quite tasty.
Clapton plays lead on ‘Go Back Home,’ his Fender Stratocaster cutting through all the other instruments as he takes off on his precision runs.
And Stephen Stills is no third-stringer here, playing lead guitar throughout most of the rest of the album (and organ too).
Good solid album. The hit was ‘Love the One Your With.’
In his many iterations Stills has sold 35 million albums.
ALBUMS: The Classic Performances of Ten Years After (1975); A Space In Time (1971); Undead (Live) 1968.
MVC Rating: Classic (4.0/$$$$;) A Space in Time (4.0/$$$$); Undead (4.5/$$$$$$)
Ten Years After was a hard rock, blues band from England that had their career launched into orbit after their performance at Woodstock.
Alvin Lee played guitar like a man possessed with picking so fast that some have called him the father of the shredding style of guitar playing which emerged a decade or more later in the 1980s.
At Woodstock the group’s ‘I’m Going Home ignited the crowd.
The group’s highest charting hit was ‘I’d Love to Change the World.” It’s a nearly perfect rock songs musically with slow picking intro, segueing into power chord riffing as the vocals kick in amid it all.
The only thing that made me uncertain about the song were the lyrics.
‘Everywhere there’s/ freaks and hairies/dykes and fairies/ Tell me where is sanity .. Tax the rich/ feed the poor till there are no rich no more
I’d love to change the world … but I don’t know what to do
It’s hard to figure what the group meant by the lyrics which insinuate by these examples the world is messed up. The question surfaces in the actual examples themselves, it sounds a bit like an old, crotchety man blaming the state of the world on those long hairs. Yet the message seems slightly odd coming from a group of four musicians with hair down past their shoulders. But, hey, the music sounds good.
The third album I have is a live one cleverly called ‘Undead” and it gives us ‘Woodchopper’s Ball,’ a Woody Herman song that Alvin Lee tore the cover off of. Lee grew up listening to his father’s record collection, heavy on jazz and was pushing the group toward jazz at every turn.
So, I’m at an historic mile-marker in my quest to review the 678 vinyl records that I bought or were given over the past 50 years.
I’m down to 100.
I’m doing this to raise awareness of Lewy body dementia.
My goal is to finish before I die of that degenerative brain disease.
Starting with 678, I’ve done 578; I have 100 to go.
How much time I have is unknown. I’m 61, diagnosed in 2016. The average life span is 4 to 8 years after diagnosis. I’m into my fifth year and have every intention lasting another five years or at least until I’ve finished this project.
The terminal illness, for reasons unknown, causes a proliferation in the brain of naturally occurring alpha synuclein proteins, which willy nilly coat parts of the brain, smothering brain cells. Parkinson’s disease works in the same manner, only the killer proteins affect different parts of the brain, resulting in varying symptoms.
Given time, in many cases, near the end of its disease stage, a Parkinson’s patient will look just like a Lewy body patient.
Upon hearing the bad news I had Lewy body dementia, I came upon this idea to count down my beloved record collection. It’s a hodgepodge for sure and certainly not a high end collection. Lots of cut-outs and promotional records. I tended to drift toward the bargain bins.
My father gave me that record, not that he was a big fan but he saw how much I enjoyed their songs on the car radio. Remarkably, they are a band whose straight ahead rock and roll from the 60s and 70s more than holds up today.
I also had a Jackson 5 album, ABC, at about this time. Jackson was 11 when that album was released; I was 10.
In my parents’ childhood, there really wasn’t rock and roll unless you knew how to pick up a blues station on the AM dial at night.
The radio stations were more diverse when I was 10 or 11 than they are now. Terry Jacks’ ‘Seasons in the Sun’ would come on right after “Hey Jude,’ followed by Tony Orlando and Dawn’s ‘Candida,’ then Wilson Pickett doing ‘Land of 1,000 Dances.’
My mother took me to guitar lessons for a few months and I learned three chords. I just wasn’t musical in that sense but I loved music. I still dance like no one’s watching, even when people are watching. Although my dancing is less fluid rhythmic swaying to the beat and more episodic spasmodic dystonia.
‘No,’ I reply, unable to stop. ‘It’s doing me.’
Certainly the disease has affected my life and our family system. Heck, the effects have even trickled down to our dog, Gus, a yellowish poodle mix who at 15 or 16 seems to be hanging around for me. Sometimes we just sit and stare at each other like we’re building a Stareway to Heaven.
But until that’s completed I am hanging in there and learning the best practices on living with Lewy Body Dementia.
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They say life is short but I say life is long
Full of pretty faces and beautiful songs
You can think too much about moseying along
It’s best to stay calm
Life is long, life is long, life is long
–Jared Mees, ‘Life is Long’ from the album Life is Long.
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I don’t drive anymore after an accident several years ago. More recently, as in three weeks ago, I had to get my head stitched up after fainting.
Only six stitches, but the fainting is a condition –orthostatic hypotension — I’ve warned about on this blog. I was not following my own protocol when I stood up quickly from the couch and began walking toward the stairs. I kerplunked and my head hit the floor. So we are escalating my attempts to thwart this blood pressure problem. More salt in diet. More fluids in diet, standing slowly, deep breathing and putting my head down to feel the blood rush back to my brain.
We take my blood pressure frequently to monitor. I think the typing of these blog posts is stimulating my brain in a way that is slowing my Parkinonian effects, as well as my cognition effects. I think putting together words in sentences and paragraphs are all stimulating my brain. I think looking for a record that I just saw yesterday and now can’t find even though I know it was there and it makes me want to scream is stimulating my brain. It’s certainly raising my blood pressure, which is good also!
It gets tricky when you are looking for that one record which could be in one of three rooms, on two levels. They were fairly well organized alphabetically when I started.
I’ve become more philosophical about the disease. Getting the diagnosis was such a shock to the system but not a shock that I really let anyone see. I’d make jokes about it (still do). ‘We all die sometime’ became the cliche’ of my life.
Years ago I lived every day as if I had a month or so. Now the years have come and gone; my daughter Claire got married, my daughter Hannah moved here from Korea with her husband; and my daughter Emily moved to be close to me — all not knowing how long Dad had.
The years went by.
I still don’t have an answer to the question: If I had to do it all over again, what would you change?
(BTW it took me a good minute to find the question mark sign on my keyboard just then. That ‘s how the memory effects of Lewy body manifest themselves in little ways. But finding it was a mental exercise or, put another way, it was exercise for the brain.)
Just about a year ago, I went through a hallucinatory stage where I became immersed in another world: I communicated with other beings and talked to people no one else could see. I retired from my job at AL.com. Fixed the hallucinations for now. And here I am writing still on this blog I started four years ago.
I’ve written 578 album reviews, all available right here right now on this blog, www.myvinylcountdown.com
One hundred to go.
No, I still don’t have any more understanding of how we all ended up here on this big ball of mud, third from the sun.
While my disease has reinforced my belief that the universe can be a soul-crushing crucible and that its understanding is beyond human reach, I gotta believe God is good.
The sound of the record was what struck me first. Though it may be available remastered now, it wasn’t when I picked it up in high school in Athens, Ga, at WUXTRY. The guitar solos were executed wonderfully and seemed to hang in the air allowing it to sink into your cerebellum.
This is one where teen-age audiophiles would pick to show of their super sonics. That, and of course, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. The thread that binds these albums, nay not thread, the ROPE, tying them together was Alan Parsons of the Alan Parsons Project and producer of DSOFTM and Year of the Cat.
One day about 15 years ago, I was working at the Oakland Tribune newspaper and Alabama News Group. when I got a call from my wife that Al Stewart was playing for free at a church in Marin County (Ross to be exact). It was on my way home and I got there to find standing room only. It was him on guitar and, I believe, a piano accompanist.
This is one I’m giving a ‘5’ and I’ll admit it is partially for nostalgic reasons. It also had an appeal to musicians who liked the interplay between guitar, keyboards and strings. If you’ve followed my blog you know I don’t give out ‘5’s very much at all. But this one does it with literacy, musicianship and that it was different then pop/rock that was coming out at the time. Rick Wakeman, of the progressive rock group Yes played on this record. If you can’t tell from many of the song’s names, Stewart writes on historical events and weaving his own story within the historical context.
Fine reggae music. Tosh’s smooth as syrup baritone provided a nice contrast to Mick Jagger’s usual, well you know, Jagger-voice.
A Jagger-Tosh duet,(You) Got to Walk and Don’t Look Back was a hit single for them or ‘dem’ as we use the Jamaican vernacular — as in this lyric from the album: Dem ha fe get a beaten dem ha fe get a beaten/dem can’t get away
That song ‘Dem Ha Fe Get a Beaten’ is a call to fight the financial inequities in their country. The song starts:
Do (sic?) to unfavorable financial conditions/I’m unable to cope with this financial shituation (maybe not sic)/It’s causing an inflation upon creation
One way to stimulate the economy Tosh sings is:
Dem legalize marijuana, right here in Jamaica, Dem say it cure glaucoma/ I man a de Bush Doctor
Forty years later, Tosh’s words sound prophetic as states and countries around the globe decriminalize and legalize its use.
The album ends with a hymn of sorts with a spoken word recitation of the creation story (If you’re unfamiliar with Rastafarian religion, Jah = God.)
In the beginning was the word/And the word was with Jah/ And the word was Jah … Jah is my keeper/Jah is my health and my strength/So who shall I fear
Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare — the world’s best rhythm section, do their usual bottom best.
ALBUMS: Empty Glass (1980); Rough Mix,w/Ronnie Lane (1977)
MVC Rating: Empty (4.0/$$$$), Rough (4.5/$$$$)
Here’s two excellent albums that are still affordable and find-able. Up front, I want to acknowledge that Rough Mix is an almost equal collaboration between Ronnie Lane and Pete. I have talked about it in the blog before but don’t remember why, and I know I didn’t review it.
This is a good thing folks: I’ve done so many records I can’t remember them all, or, if I’ve done them. I’m closing in on 100 left of my 678 records. When I get there, probably in the next few days, I’ll do a short health update and look-ahead piece. Now on to the day’s albums.
Of the several all solo albums Townshend did, this is the one to get. It sounds like a Who album in many respects without Roger Daltrey’s powerful pipes, mind you. ‘Rough Boys, the opening song, is one that has that feeling of a long lost Who track. “And I Moved’ is an atmospheric piano driven piece that leaves me sad. Townshend’s jaunty hit song ‘Let My Love Open the Door” got quite a bit of radio play.
Rough Mix is a different album altogether as Townshend brings in Ronnie Lane, an English rock and roller who injected English folk music into much of his songs with the Slim Chance Band and Small Faces. ‘Annie’ is a beautiful example of Lane’s style. So is April Fool and ‘Nowhere to Run.’ Eric Clapton, who played guitars on much of the album, gets co-writing credit for Annie. Townshend, too, writes some excellent new songs: ‘Keep Me Turning,’ ‘Street in the City,’ and ‘Heart to Hang Onto.’
I know it looks like a typo: ‘The the’, but that is the group’s name. I guess your could pronounce it Thee The or The Thee but I’m sticking with Thuh thuh.
This British techno group was the vehicle for Matt Johnson. Hanky Panky was a rock/techno treatment of Hank Williams covers. It is fun but not part of my countdown because I have it only as a CD. ‘Infected’ was an ambitious mess (and their best selling album). It featured heavy synth vibe and too many words. Soul Mining was the debut and still probably the best that I’ve heard. Top songs included ‘This is the Day,’ ‘Uncertain Smile and ‘Giant.’
Uncertain Smile has a piano solo by Jools Holland (of Squeeze fame) that is one of my all time favorite rock piano solos.
Johnson was fond of putting together quixotic lines and singing them over and over until different meanings surface. For example:
I tried so hard to be myself I was turning into somebody else — Out of the blue (Into the Fire on Infected).
How can any one know me if I don’t even know myself? — (Giant from Soul Mining.’
For me they were the classic band that when they were good they were excellent and when they were bad they were very bad. Johnson’s voice, for example, lived or died on his over-emotive delivery. Not everything you are singing, Matt, deserves the Jim Morrison treatment.
Moving more into the ‘T’s, I am here with an Irish rock band headed by the talented and charismatic Phil Lynott.
Sadly, he died of complications of drug dependency, including pneumonia, in 1986.
When I went to Dublin, Ireland as part of my bucket list, one of my first stops was the Irish Rock ‘N’ Roll Museum where Lynott is prominently featured along with such Irish greats as Van Morrison, U2 and the Pogues, among many others.
A museum tour guide told us that Lynott’s mother Philomena often dropped by the museum to chat with museum-goers. Unfortunately that didn’t happen during my visit. (She died in 2019, several years later)
Philomena is white and Phil’s father, who didn’t play a role in his life, was black. Phil joked about being the only black person in Ireland. Or, at least that’s how it felt sometimes. Lynott a bass player, wrote nearly all of the Thin Lizzy’s songs. Their first hit, though, was not a Lynott song but a cover of the Irish traditional folk song ‘Whiskey in a Jar.’ Their biggest hits included “The Boys are back in Town,” “Jailbreak,” ”Don’t Believe a Word,” and ‘Dancing in the Moonlight (It’s Caught Me in Its Spotlight).”
Lynott set Thin Lizzy above your average hard rock boogie band with his streetwise, world weary songwriting and singing.
‘You can surely lose your heart but you can never lose your head,” Lynott sings in Johnny the Fox about a man who ends up getting shot robbing a drug store.
If only Lynott had heeded his own words. But it’s as if he sang on the album I have: ‘Don’t believe me if I tell you, not a word of it is true.”
The drummer BTW, Bryan Downey. is co-founder with Lynott of the band, is a very good drummer.
“Daddy,” said the boy pointing to the television. “Why are all the people at the Capitol building hitting and kicking each other, and breaking windows and spraying stuff in people’s faces.
“Whoa, slow down there son,” daddy said, “That appears to me to be just a normal tourist visit.”
“But I don’t remember breaking stuff and fighting when we toured the Capitol last year while on vacation,” the son said. “And the news says that more than 500 people have been arrested for violent things that happened there on Jan. 6.”
“Son, I don’t think you understand, it didn’t happen.”
“But dad, it says they are still looking for 300 people, including 200 who hurt police officers.”
“Son, you need to quit watching the TV news and quit reading the newspaper; the news media is helping cover up the fact that the current president stole the election.”
“Do you mean President Biden didn’t really win?” the son asked.
“Now your getting it son,” daddy said.
“So now we can act like President Trump is president.”
“Exactly,” said daddy.
The son thought about it and smiled a mischievous smile.
“Hey dad, can we go to Disney World?”
“Why son?”
“Well, Donald ‘The Duck’ says the Disney park is full of foreigners. He says we need to protect Snow White.
“And Alabama Congressman Mo Brooks said it’s time for folks to come on down to Orlando town and kick some Goofy and Pluto ass.”
This is an opinion/humor column by Mike Oliver who writes about current events, music and his battle with Lewy body dementia at www.myvinylcountdown.com
In the late 1970s in my high school in Georgia we had maybe five students who dressed all in black, used black eyeliner, black lipstick, dyed black hair, etc.
But I’m not really sure what Goth is. I mean is there a group of shared ideals beyond the fondness for black?
For me it conjures up images of medieval castles with gargoyles, Morticia on the Addams Family, the Rocky Horror Picture show, witches, dwarfs, the devil, and Igor. I’m letting my imagination run here.
They must only come out at night these days as I don’t see nearly as many folks rocking the Gothic gear as I did in the 1980s. Although, actress Pauley Perrette on the NCIS television program plays ‘Goth girl’ Abby, beloved by millions who watch that long running program. So maybe the real Goths on the street think the movement has gone too commercial and that’s why I don’t see them so much anymore? I don’t know.
This group Sisters of Mercy write darkly driven synthesizer and guitar rock songs about dreams of floods, and this corrosion.
From the song Lucretia My Reflection:
I hear the roar of the big machine/Two worlds and in between/Hot metal and methedrine/I hear empire down
The fact is, there are some catchy songs on here, even if it makes no sense lyrically. The whole album sounds like it was recorded in the basement of a dark, dank medieval castle.
