I am indeed here. Took a few days off over the holidays. Went to see family in Georgia. Meant or intended to blog, ruminate. But I felt repelled from going into my blog and writing for some reason. I felt empty. Not so much empty like void of all thoughts. But empty like no gasoline to go. I felt tired of thinking about my brain. My brain felt tired of being used by me. It was so bad I went to WUXTRY — my old record store from High School and college days — and and couldn’t find anything I wanted. That’s a rarity of a different level of scarcity.
Now what.
I came home Monday and went to work Tuesday only to find that Charlemagne Records after 42 years of business at Five Points on Birmingham’s Southside is shutting down. Is this a signal of things to come? Has vinyl peaked?
I don’t think so from what I read. More later on that topic.
I’m behind on my reviews for the Countdown. of my 678 vinyl records. I ‘ve added to that number through some purchases and gifts at birthdays, Christmas, etc.. Plus I’m slowing down. Heck at this rate I’ll never die.
Inecentives on this blog deal are inverted.
Like our health care.
The high deductible model incentivises people not to go to the doctor because you have to pay bucks, sometimes big bucks. So you going put off going put off going. Then your leg needs amputating. How is that good health care?
Or your chest cold turns into pneumonia and you die.
It’s always back to dying with me, isn’t it. Well it’s a thing that happens to everyone who lives. Don’t want to die? Don’t live.
The album I picked up by mistake. I saw the name Hurley and thought it was this group I heard about called Michael Hurley and the Holy Modal Rounders.
This was more than 30 years ago in Birmingham, although I liked the record with its full-throated backing gospel choir. The music was soul-inflected gospel with a hint of country. For years I thought Hurley on my album “John Hurley Delivers One More Hallelujah’ to be a black man. Just based on his vocals, the hallelujah choir and there were no pictures on the album and no Internet to disprove my pre-judgement.
Like I said I enjoyed the album but I had hundreds of albums before boxing them up and embracing the digital age. So, to be honest about it, after three children three states and 100s of CD’s , I never heard about John Hurley again and forgot that album languishing in hap-hazard alphabetical order in about six boxes.
As those of you know who have followed my column , I am chronicling and reviewing my album collection on my site as I count down my 678 (and growing) number of albums.
This is to raise awareness for Lewy body dementia which is the second leading cause of progressive dementia after Alzheimer’s. Please check out the About Me button on my blog for more on Lewy.
Moving, raising a family and all that put some pressure on my records to be sold, but I held on Alabama, Georgia, Florida, California and now back to Alabama.
Meanwhile back at the vinyl countdown. I had stored away my records for decades, became an early adopter of an iPod and Apple streaming music. But I always vowed that even if I have to wait to retirement I’ll get those records out and have a listening room (AKA ‘Man Cave”). This was an idea long before I became ill. The Lewy diagnosis just gave me a deadline about three years ago I started this blog, to have fun mostly but also to raise awareness to this crummy disease.
So back to Hurley. He resurfaced in my consciousness when I got down to the ‘H’s ( I am now on the ‘N’s in my alphabetical countdown.) I listened to the album again and was really impressed. So I did more research and found out he grew up in a poor neighborhood in Pittsburgh. He worked and lived in Nashville for a while . He and his songwriting partner Ronnie Wilkins had a big moment in Muscle Shoals when Jerry Hall asked them to do a song for Aretha Franklin. They came back with “Son of a Preacher Man,” a worldwide hit for Dusty Springfield. Aretha covered it later to good success but not as big as Springfield’s hit.
I knew that song well, sang it on the way to church on Sundays when it came on in the car. My attention then focused on a song that I heard so many accolades but was relatively unfamiliar with it. It was called ‘Living on the Love of the Common People.”
I found his first album ‘John Hurley Sings to the People.” That had the Common People song. I was blown away again. ‘Sweet Pain’ is another great song off of that album.
The Common People song was a simple tune and simple words that came together with the ability to pull tears out of your eyes, especially if you watch the video of the song put together by Hurley’s son from family pictures. I was happy to have found these records and so now I’m looking for his third and last album. In the record store recently I found Hurley but it was the same album I had for so many years: John Hurley Delivers One More Hallelujah. Only this one had a birthday wish written in ink on the cover by presumably Hurley himself. See the picture.
Here’s the Happy Birthday message on an album I bought by John Hurt. Hurt, a singer-songwriter, grew up poor in Pittsburgh. He wrote several major hits but died relatively unknown at age 45.
I would love to find more information about this. Who’s Mom? Is this indeed from John Hurley?
I have tried to reach Hurley’s son, Ron, to no avail at this point.
John died in 1986 at age 45 of liver failure and brain failure, according to Wikipedia.
Meanwhile, another clue appeared on the same YouTube comment section suggesting Hurley at one point or several points in his life stayed or lived in Birmingham.
Here’s a post on the YouTube thread posted eight years ago.
@ronhurley1961 John Hurley was one of the, if not the most talented people that I have ever known. I met him when I was 17 years old in Birmingham Alabam at Bob Groves recording studio. He was there recording a friend of mine named Mike Gunnels. He drove a red sports car and always wore sunglasses. He stayed at my house and honored me with his friendship. That was over 40 years ago and I miss him to this day. He recorded the album “Street Gospel” shortly after and it is still my favorite.
NOTE TO READERS: The commenter’s user name was WiseGuyDogs1 and 8 years was how long ago this comment was published. Also ‘Street Gospel’ was the same record as ‘John Hurley Sings for the Common People.’ Lastly Mike Gunnels was the leader of a band called Hard Times, which later changed its name to Rites of Spring. They were considered by my own anecdotal research to be the best band in Birmingham for a few years there in the 1960s. Attempts to reach Gunnels were unsuccessful.
Among those dozen or so who have covered the song are Waylon Jennings, Elton John, Bruce Springsteen, Paul Young, the Everly Brothers, and the Four Preps.
END NOTE: Those familiar with www.myvinylcountdown.com know that I have been diagnosed with Lewy body dementia, a fatal disease which will likely kill me. Meanwhile, I have been reviewing my collection — I’m at nearly 400 reviewed now at my website. on my way to 678. I am going in alphabetical order (more or less).
I had a wonderful birthday weekend — the day was Nov. 9, Saturday. I received some guess what? Vinyl. I will share with you some of these new birthday records soon. I may even post a video if I can get that going.
I’m going to keep this blog post live today so check back for other things I may be filing here.
I think today is a good day to issue the warning: Watch out for the Trap Door
There’s a lot of good things going on north of us. Canada has consistently over the years produced some fine rock artists. Such as?
Well, Gordon Lightfoot, Alanis Morrisette, Bare Naked Ladies, Neil Young, Beat Rodeo, Jeff Healy, Bryan Adams, Joni Mitchell, kd lang, the Guess Who/Burton Cummings, Crash Test Dummies, Leonard Cohen, Rush, Bruce Cockburn, Bachman-Turner Overdrive — and I could go on. (In fact I would be interested in hearing who your favorite Canadian artist is. (And Anne Murray and Celine Dion — God bless them, they have their good points– aren’t really very near the Rock/Folk/Soul/ that I’m focusing on. But if those are your faves, that’s cool. We are inclusive here. Oh, forgot a good one: Most of The Band (Robbie Robertson).
I received this Northern Pikes album from a Canadian relative; it was their first studio album with a major label. Since its inception in 1984, the Northern Pikes have put out about 10 albums and charted many times in Canada. But as far as I can tell virtually unheard of in the states.
I have to admit I haven’t followed them and I don’t know my own album very well. One of those that gets overlooked when thumbing through hundreds of records to play something.
I was pleasantly surprised. It took me back to the jangly guitart sound of the REM-styled New Wave and the power pop trip of the Plimsouls, the Nerves and the Beat, which were California groups that shared members over time. But none, I think are still going at it like the Pikes who are still cranking albums and playing live.
Here’s a video of Teenland off their first album, followed by one of their highest charting songs called She Ain’t Pretty.
teenland sounds like plimsouls
80s sound but not the bad synth stuff good Cars-like guitar
One thing about going down the rabbit hole, sometimes you find a rabbit.
That’s all well and good. But what do you do with a rabbit?
Readers of this column know the plan for me. I will continue to count down my vinyl records until this degenerative brain disease — Lewy body dementia — won’t let me.
I embarked on this incredible journey into my life through my records after I was diagnosed about three years ago. I call this public awareness campaign ‘My Vinyl Countdown.’ My 678 vinyl recordings spent nearly three decades unused in boxes after I purchased them as a music-loving youth in the 1970s and 1980s.
People ask if I have CDs. Heck yeah. I had a carousel that held 300 discs at one time. I embraced the digital age, and bought an iPod that holds thousands of songs. But when I was hit with this diagnosis I resurrected or reconstituted an idea I had a long time ago: Start a blog and one- by- one chronicle my albums and possibly link to eBay to sell. I thought of that 10 years ago and never did it.
But now it’s up and running where I iintersperse my reviews with other stories about basketball, family, and music. Of course the way it turned out, from a readership and marketing standpoint, is much better. Now I have a cause — Lewy bodydementia awareness. Now I have a deadline. And now I have drama.
Much better than just talking about my records with no other context. Not that I would have selected this particular method — actually getting the disease — just to raise awareness. But now that I have this disease, I feel like making something useful out of it. With about 300 to go, I’m more than halfway there.
My little puzzle appearing in my post on song lyrics Saturday is still unsolved — at least officially. Some people have indicated they now know the hidden theme. So, if you do klnow the answer, I say you need to either post it on comments on the lyrics story, Tweet it out (make sure I see Tweet), FaceBook it — or somehow get the word out what the secret theme is and how you found it hidden in my story.
ADDENDUM: There’s a 2nd level complexity to this that I don’t believe most will understand so I am asking for those who have uncovered the hidden message (1st layer), to let people know (or challenge them to find it.)
These are all clues. To wake up to the news of another yellow bird sighting knocked me for a loop. As I had dedicated my column to a loved one lost — kind of like Casey Kasem used to do. Asking her if she found her yellow bird.
FILE photo. Yellow birds symbolize your one true love.
On Saturday I pulled the best lines that I could find in a reasonable amount of time and compiled them in a post on AL.com.
I broke them up into 10 categories of 5 song lyrics with the artist and name of the song on each one.
People weighed in via comments or emails some of their favorites. All good and fun. But no one to my knowledge has gotten it yet — it, being a larger message, a not-so-hidden message.
It’s as if one needs an Oracle to find the message.
I saw this movie many years ago. Good date movie. Not so great a soundtrack, though, unless the idea of live songs by studio musicians trying to sound like the boozy Janis Joplin and her various boozy bands appeals to you.
The soundtrack is noisy. Sure if they are ‘loosely’ basing this on Joplin, you expect some blues based rock and roll and there is — but it is as if the musicians and director were trying too hard to channel Joplin and her mythology. So we got noisy rock live in concert. Stuff Like “Whose side are you on” and ‘Love Me with a Feeling.’
Don’t get me wrong Midler has a strong powerful voice. But Janis was a force of nature, hard to emulate and that’s why they say it was only loosely based on Janis. So here we get snippets of the Rose, played by Midler, of drunken, drugged- out ramblings between songs and then .. then… there’s the title track. She snaps out of unconciousness somehow and delivers a beautiful poignant ballad that gave goose bumps to the movie audience.
The last song on the album, the name of the movie, the name of the character. It’s the best thing about it all.
The slow building ballad played too much on the radio in 1978, but that doesn’t take away its power. The song was my future wife’s favorite song when we decided we liked each other. We were seniors in high school, and like I said: Good date movie.
My recommendation is get the movie, not the soundtrack.
The young man who was struck by lightning and died just short of the finish line of a 50K trail race in Kansas rekindles a longstanding debate I have had with myself.
How do I want to go out? Instantly doing something I love, like playing basketball — the way Pete Maravich went out; The way this 33-year-old Kansas runner, Thomas Stanley went out.
I have Lewy body dementia and my lifespan — based on averages — is 4 to 8 years after diagnosis or symptoms begin. I’m in my third year. So unless I get hit by a bus or struck by lightning, I have received plenty of advance warning about what will happen to me as these excess proteins continue to clog up and kill brain cells. Slowly, it seems, and that’s a good thing. I think.
I’ve written about lightning a lot. As I’ve explained here before. As you can see I’m almost metaphysical in my feelings surrounding lightning. What random bad luck messed up universe would strike down a person. Very rarely, the average is 27 a year and there have only been 19 this year.
Part of my interest in lightning was living in central Florida, lightning capital of the U.S., where there are daily thunder-boomers, as my kids used to call them.
Stanley was 33 years old and from Andover, Kansas. He was the Director of Business Initiatives at the Kansas Leadership Center where he has worked since 2008, according to the center’s website.
He was the third person this year who has been killed by lightning while running.
I am 59 years-old and have lived a lot more life than Stanley. I wonder if I would have taken Stanley’s place if I had been offered.
I think I might have. It would be slam dunk ‘yes’ if it was a friend or relative. But I’m not sure, (uh oh, here I go debating my brain again.) I know this disease will take hold but I am also working on living every moment. I do enjoy life.
Stanley probably didn’t know what hit him. I know what is hitting me. I think I’ll stick around — and hit back.
Oh, and though Stanley didn’t make the finish line, the race officials gave him a finish because he had run the distance.
