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Daily Journal, 4/16, 2020, a Friday long-time-no-see edition

This has hardly been a ‘Daily’ journal. Sorry about that.

The coronavirus has been a big distraction. Too light a word, distraction. It’s been a scary life-changing event for most. If you’ve been following this blog, you’d think that all I’ve been doing since April Fool’s Day is listening to piano music.

Holy Titanic, that’s not the case!

To catch you up on what I’ve been doing these past few weeks, I’ll start with the point where I realized this was a huge deal.

It was Friday, March 13, and after an exchange of emails with Dr. Michael Saag that started the previous day, I received and read an Op-ed piece Saag sent me and it really opened my eyes. In clear straight ahead prose Saag laid out the pending crisis from transmission to infection to possible runaway contagion and worldwide shut-down. Saag’s piece was a hard-hitting , fact-filled, Paul Revere call- out.

I felt Saag’s sense of urgency now . The AL.com headline published Friday evening:

Renowned AIDS expert: Alabama not prepared for ‘major storm’ of COVID-19

On Saturday I talked to Saag again about some of the emails he had received from doctors he knew on the front lines in Italy. The emails painted a vivid and tragic scene: overrun emergency departments, bed shortages, medical staff weeping as they helplessly watched patients die. That story published Sunday, I believe.

Italian doctors reveal how COVID-19 is blowing up the health care system

Saag agreed to do a Q&A and follow that up with daily reports answering questions as the pandemic unfolded. We did get a couple in:

Saag’s Q&A’s

I did a few other virus related stories after that:

MVC asks: Proof that God doesn’t favor the devout. And is coronavirus testing a farce?

Alabama hunkers down for virus and tornadoes

Many of these stories were getting 10s and even hundreds of thousands of page views. Saag’s Friday the 13th Op-ed has had half a million page views to date. Millions were reading AL.com stories and our hard-working staff of several dozen have written and are writing hundreds of stories.

I have been in this business for 40 years at three major news organizations from Florida to California and have been involved in stories that have had major impacts. But in terms of public service and changing lives, the alarm bells — once we started ringing them — probably helped slow this thing down by educating the public. And while I’m viewing this through the lens of AL.com, I think it is true of the news media in general. It is a great example of where the value of journalism shines.

And so it is ironic, and yes cosmically intertwined — like Saag getting the virus — that my company announced pay cuts and mandatory unpaid furloughs this week.

The reason: The coronavirus has hit our economy with a wallop not seen a long long time. We make much of our money from advertising and businesses are slashing those advertising dollars. And of course, some business will not survive.

What do we do? Keep on keeping on. In the meantime if you are so inclined, we announced a new way for readers to help: voluntary subscriptions. We hope enough readers will chip in $10 per month to help us do our job keeping the public informed.

I’ll leave you with a song I have adopted as my own personal coronavirus song by one of my favorites:

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My top 10 Jazz piano players

As I mentioned in my Countdown Post 247 and 248 I have come to really enjoy certain jazz. Late 50s, early 60s cool jazz and bop. i also like jazzy Brazilian music and some modern jazz.

Miles Davis, Charley Parker, “Big” Bill Patton, Stanley Turrentine. Chet Baker, etc. are all folks I’ve listened to more on this journey than ever before.

Here’s my list of best jazz piano players. I may be out of my league judging fine jazz but here I go anyway.

  1. Erroll Garner. I had not heard of him until I found for a $2 bill a 10″ 33\ 1/3 record by him. Soon as I heard record I knew it was someone special. He was 5-feet -2-inches tall and never learned to read music — which at first kept him out of some good music schools. They relented and he came one of the best pianists of all time in the Jazz real.
  2. Bud Powell his music is precise and yet it still swings like it has that boppity bop.
  3. Art Tatum. I’ve heard him on several things; would like to hear more.
  4. Thelonious Monk. I recognize his great skills. I haven’t listened that much to really ‘know’ Monk. I have a couple of 78s with Monk, Bud Powell and Charley Parker.
  5. Keith Jarrett. Bought a box set of his music, mostly solo. I’d heard his name before, but the man can seriously play

6) Duke Ellington — The master leader could also play.

7) McCoy Tyner Everything I’ve heard has been good but haven’t heard much.

8) Keith Emerson. This is a little controversial because he didn’t play jazz per se but he played classical in a rock setting thus I think he was often ‘Jazzing up the classical bits). He as an amazing pianist. He performed Scott Joplin music and for one album. (Or half).

9/10. Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea. I recognize their talent but I was never a big jazz fusion fan beyond some home cookin’ bands, Sea Level and Dixie Dregs.

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Montgomery rapper loves his mom

This kid from Montgomery contacted me on Twitter and directed me to a video of a song.

It’s about his mother and single mothers everywhere. (‘Single Mamas’)

I am a 60-year-old white man who loves music but this style urban contemporary hip hop is not one I listen to much. Sounds like it has radio potential.

I know there’s a thousand mix tapes and CD’s being pushed at streetcorners and online from folks who think they got something. Maybe they do. I think Rich Boi Streeter feat. the Younginz’ has something. Spread this around if you like it.

As always check out my music blog at www.myvinylcountdown.com

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Daily Journal the virus expert edition (March 14, 2020)

Well as I reported yesterday, the world is ending. But we made it through Friday the 13th.

I often talk about my fatal disease Lewy body dementia. Eventually after some conversation one of us will say ‘Hey we are all going to die.’ Death rate of those on earth is still 100 percent.

But me, I have a fatal disease and I don’t want to die ‘early’ from some damn virus. I want as many good minutes as I can get.

This COVID -19 virus is supposed to get widespread in Alabama, infectious disease expert Dr. Michael Saag. His op-ed piece which we published Friday paints a bleak picture., especially if we don’t act swiftly.

The piece is essential reading.

IMPORTANT BROKEN LINK FIX: There was a link to a New York Times graphic that Saag pointed out in his op-ed. The graphic a nice job in a simple way of how and why we need to stretch and slow the infection rate down. I checked the link this morning and it was broken but I found it here. I’m now going to go correct it in Saag’s op-ed.

Keep checking back here for more My Vinyl Countdown on the virus, the end of life as we know it or going stir crazy with no basketball. This is changing our lives in myriad ways.

TIP OF THE DAY: Don’t check your retirement funds. Not even worth adding that to the worry list.

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Hope. OK Peter take us there: (Crank this) ‘This too will pass’

Corona virus go away.

Peter Himmelman help us, let’s go:

This too will pass.

That song will heal your soul.

This Himmelman song will rock you out:

SEVEN CIRCLES

Related: OK so it’s the end of the world

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Daily journal Feb. 13, 2020 (Let it Loose, Lose? edition)

I forgot to publish this yesterday. So I am publishing now, Friday, Feb 14 Happy Valentine’s Day (Fake thought it is). I will add new items for the next 24 hours to this post so keep checking. It’ll be stuff I remembered that I forgot or forgot to remember.

[UPDATE 2/15: A column is forthcoming either later today or Sunday morning on AL.com — may post here as well]

UPDATE 2/16: Click here for my just published ‘Losing it’ story.

There’s lot’s of stuff going on inside my head these days and that’s good. Sure there’s bad stuff like memory loss caused by the invasion of alpha-synuclein proteins. I just say my brain is streamlining.

Keep this post at the ready and go back over the course of the next 24 hours because my memory will be jarred and a new bit of news will appear on my blog. It will be a compilation blog.

My vinyl obsession now makes me forget of a lot of the great CD’s I accumulated in the 90s. Remember I went 20 to 30 years with my vinyl stashed in boxes as I did the digital thing. Anyway, it’s a long setjj-up just to play you a song. This oneis by Sufjan Stevens riffing off of “Sound of Silence” All Delighted People contains everything people love or loathe about this artist. (I’m on the love side.”

ONWARD: Here are some ICYMI’s.

I gave Mike Love a vinyl record on Wednesday. Then I went to see them in a moderately entertaining concert at the Alabama Theatre. I’m talking about the Beach Boys — although that’s a point of contention as several of the commenters pointed out.

Ear worms are a condition we’ve all experienced and I listed a dozen or so of my most ear wormy songs.

In yet another list — and I’ve promised that I’m going to do a best-of my lists list later — I compiled a line-up of top songs about the rain.

I still stand by my argument that nothing is something.

I still dislike ‘Seasons in the Sun’ by Terry Jack, both the music and the lyrics and any and all emotion it evokes: anger, sadness, bewilderment, and huh? (That’s an emotion in most states).

This is going to be big for me: I’m going to the Alabama Record Collectors Association show at Gardendale Civic Center on March 6. That means I am going to start selling my Countdown records I’m the guy in the booth in the back with a tear in my eye

Let it Loose.

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I gave Mike Love a vinyl record today (blog version)

This is not the album I gave Mike Love today.

I gave Mike Love a vinyl record album today.

This all came about just a few hours before Love and his Beach Boys were to take the stage at the Alabama Theatre.

I’m going to the show, by the way. My brother bought me tickets for Christmas. Thanks David.

OK, here’s how I came about giving Love an album, or at least I hope he got it.

Earlier today I decided to take a stroll out of my office in downtown Birmingham to get a bite. Instead, I stopped at Reed Books, a favorite haunt which sells just about everything vintage, old and collectible.

All records are $2 and since I was skipping lunch I figured I’d use my lunch money for a record. The record was ‘Almost Summer,’ the 1978 soundtrack of a movie with the same name, which I found just rummaging around. Never heard of it but I looked at the songs and who wrote them.

A good portion of the tracks were written by Mike Love and Brian Wilson, I noticed. So there seemed to be good vibrations following me or leading me.

A record with obscure Beach Boys songs. One of them was apparently a hit.

I bought the record and wandered back to my office. The Alabama Theatre is on the way to my office, however. I stopped where a small group of people were standing near at least three large buses. They eyed me warily as I approached and began talking: Are you with the Beach Boys I asked? They really didn’t say anything. A security guard, clearly labeled so on his shirt, started to make his way closer to me. I reached into my satchel — slowly — and pulled out the album.

I told him I just wanted to give this to Mike Love or Bryan WIlson (not knowing if he’d be here or not).

“Oh,” the security guard said. “You just want me to give this to him?”

I said, yes. And I did, give it to him. Hope he likes it. Hope the security guard gave it to him. Then I started thinking, Love probably has this or maybe he doesn’t like it. I was arguing with myself.

Well, you never know. God only knows I felt good doing it, even if I won’t have it for My Vinyl Countdown.

AL.com version here.

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Daily update Feb. 3, 2020 (Cancer is a scary word edition)

A writer here in Birmingham, Lanier Isom, a cancer survivor, has written a very helpful guide and analysis about the steps needed to be taken after a cancer diagnosis.

This, of course, struck home as I am facing a shortened lifespan due to a diagnosis more than 2 years ago of Lewy body dementia.

Lanier, here, tells it like it is. How you see the best and worst sides of health care delivery in this county.

She writes:

Doctors are guides, not gods. You will witness some of the best the medical profession has to offer, and you will be stunned by the worst of the American healthcare system. Doctors are doing the best they can, but they’re handicapped by a system which has overloaded them with too many patients, too much profit motive, and too much meddlesome oversight by heartless insurance companies.

Question everything. Your life is at stake. Despite the queasy stomach and sweaty palms, when you find yourself in yet another doctor’s office, don’t let the doctor dismiss your questions or diminish your right to know and your right to choose what you do. Often the dismissal is simply a product of the doctor’s need to limit time spent with any given patient, so as to see to the backlog in the waiting room; however, you will encounter narcissists in white coats who view any question as an indictment of his/her ability and protocol.

For more of Isom’s story click her.

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Top 12 ‘ear worm’ songs (blog version

These are those meddlesome songs that won’t leave your brain, even after you ask.

I think in general that ear worm songs are good songs that — sometimes are just that, good songs. Maybe they are TOO good at burying themselves in your head for a long time. Heard’em called ‘ear Weevils’ as well.

Again this doesn’t mean you like or dislike a song. I’m looking for specifically songs that won’t abandon ship when you are waiting dockside. Gosh are they still playing “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honeybunch?)

Here’s my 12-plus from #12 to #1 (plus bonus). Afterword I’ll have a list that ‘science’ has picked for ‘catchiest’ song just to give this list some perspective.

UNRATED Iko Iko — Dr. John

This is one so good that it’s an ear worm every time you hear it. And then you don’t want it to leave. People want Iko Iko to stay in their heads, it’s good for full day worth. Like I said, I don’t consider it an ear worm because it’s rarely not wanted. A true ear worm may be good, but to qualify for an earworm it must STICK in you head past the point you want it to.

12) Come. on Eileen — Dexy’s Midnight Runners This was big in the early days of MTV. Catchy as all get out. Seemed like a good sound. Then what happened? Oh come on Eilleen …

11) Hey Ya — OutKast

Does this ever leave your head?

10) Billie Jean — Micheal Jackson

I was getting out of university and starting the late 1980s, 1990s with a Michael Jackson soundtrack that permeated everything of that time period. Such talent. Billie Jean is a top single of all time and it’s a worm all right.

9) Prince — Purple Rain

This is kind of like MJ (above) in that the songs are sweeping, epic and define the artists’ style. Two of arguably the biggest stars of the 1980s. But start chanting ‘Purple Rain, Purple Rain” to tasty Prince guitar licks and you will spend hours getting that that chorus out of your head.

8) Brandy (You’re a Fine, Girl) — Looking Glass

Brandy was a fine song. It appeared on nearly ever compilation album ever made (hyperbole). That’s because they are one-hit wonders. Apparently, they had little or nothing left to offer. But Brandy what a fine song, tells a slice of life tale and had a chorus even the sailors could sing to. And that’s the same reason you are singing it right now.

“There’ a port on the western shore that serves 100 ships a day.…”

7) Hey Jude –Beatles

Nananananana Hey Jude! Forever chorus.

6) If You Want Me to Stay –“Sly Stone

One of my favorite vocals — but not necessarily on this video, he’s seems a little slower here: But he seems to be having a good time through this song that is sung in Sly’s copyrighted Opposite of Falsetto (OOF) singing style, AKA Just Just Woke Up with a Frog in Throat (FIT).

5) Mmmmbop – Hanson

Brothers, singers. Play instruments. No Donny Osmond here.

4)Walking on Sunshine — Katrina and the Waves

This British singer had a big hit with this. The Bangles covered it as well. It’s a ‘worm.’

3) Sweet Dreams by the Eurythmics

Annie Lennox did a nice job with the Eurythmics, and I still stand behind this song as the biggest ‘ear worm’ but this song seemed to be new when I first heard. I know this isn’t profound, but it doesn’t sound so new anymore.

2) Land of 1,000 Dances – -Wilson Picket

You don’t have to remember all the words to get this stuck in your brain.

1) The Rain, the Park & Other Things (The 1) Flower Girl Song). — Cowsills

That’s my list. The Cowsills win hand’s down on one of the biggest ‘ear worm’ songs of all time. Listen to it with idea that it will be there 24 hours, even sleeping. I had to work this off with a heavy metal blast from Deep Purple’s ‘Highway Star.’ Album or concert version will do.

The Cowsills singing the Flower Girl song takes the cake. It sticks with you like that gum you stepped on yesterday. I got infected by this once when the song came on the radio in the car of someone we were talking to via cell phone.

Another Top 10 ‘Catchiest Songs (From CNET.com Read about how they put their’s together.

  1. Spice Girls – Wannabe: 2.29 seconds
  2. Lou Bega – Mambo No 5: 2.48 seconds
  3. Survivor – Eye of the Tiger: 2.62 seconds
  4. Lady Gaga – Just Dance: 2.66 seconds
  5. ABBA – SOS: 2.73 seconds
  6. Roy Orbison – Pretty Woman: 2.73 seconds
  7. Michael Jackson – Beat It: 2.80 seconds
  8. Whitney Houston – I Will Always Love You: 2.83 seconds
  9. The Human League – Don’t You Want Me: 2.83 seconds
  10. Aerosmith – I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing: 2.84 seconds

RELATED STORIES:

Songs that should have been hits

Train songs

Best Cover of Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door

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The Best Worst Song ever

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God, coincidence, numerology

I have 678 records. At least I did when I officially counted my records before launching MyVinylCountdown.com two or so years ago.

I have definitely picked up more since then.

Hit ABOUT ME here if you need more information about this.

I had written about this Nun study before.

A multi-decade study of Alzheimer’s Disease , is famous and has given people hope. They found examples of nuns with visible signs of dementia causing proteins in the brain. They found some brains upon autopsy appeared that the nun had Alzheimer’s Disease — but no one knew because the patient — the nun — did not show any symptoms of the disease, leading researchers to be optimistic that some people can fight this disease and workarounds by your very own brain can avoid much of the ravages of dying of dementia.

The number of nuns used in this multiyear study? 678.

See my earlier write-up

Now I have begun looking at 78’s — those hard but fragile slabs of chellac that made music at 78 RPM. I bought a couple of these and have enjoyed some very old good jazz.

So now i’m into 78s. Doubt they’ll go on the timeline like my 33s. They are 78s, like if only there were a 6 or 600 and they’d be, yes, 678.

Maybe a stretch. So I doodled while I was waiting to think. Which took me through a thousand memories and an hour of standing blank faced.

So start with 78 RPM records.

Take away 45 RPM.

Take away 33 RPM.

Equals Zero (0)

78-45-33=0

What? What does any of that mean?

Look I don’t know a thing about numerology except that I’d probably be promised Hell by a church lady if even talked about it.

One last thing while I’m still doodling. Let’s give a number to the letters RPM, a shorthand way of saying Revolutions Per Minute.

Let’s assign each letter a number based on where they are in the count.

There’s 26 letters in the alphabet.

R =18 P=16 M=13.

18+16+13= 60

That’s 60 as in SIXty.

Story is on 78 rpm records. Subtract out the 45s and 33s (from 78) and it equals 0. Zero is also the number that comes with 60, the number for RPMs added, as shown above.

Zap the zeroes as their doubling cancelled each other out.

Slide the now leftover 6 in front of 78 and it is 678.

But let’s look at one more thing:. The sum total of the RPM numbers added is 60. Double that and you have 120. In the music world 120 RPM was what Thomas Edison was playing on the original playback recording machine

I have written before about a numbers coincidence related to my battle with Lewy body dementia that almost blew what’s left of my mind.

FROM New York Times:

NOTE: I don’t want anyone to believe that I’m sitting on some magic numbers are something. I just noticed what appear to be coincidence. I’m fine with it being a coincidence, by the way. I don’t see God sitting around coming up with numeric answers to our own problems. But as I try to make my documentation of a Lewy body patient as complete as possible, I may seem to be pushing boundaries? Wasting time? Or learning that life is all about math?

Y’all keep reading. I will say this: I’m feeling much less random about the universe these days.