Checking in to organize my thoughts. With the blog I can do these things — kind of like thinking aloud. As always appreciate help from the cheap seats. (There are no luxury boxes in my forum, sorry).
I’m working on a piece outlining my strategy to beat Lewy body dementia, based on my trial and error successes so far. I think it will be worthwhile for patients, caregivers, family and friends. This should be ready by Monday if not sooner, keep checking.
On the music front, I’m going to take a look at the most underrated albums, artists and songs in my collection (emphasis on IN MY COLLECTION). I’m still trying to figure out the format and the content. As always, I appreciate suggestions. I’m hoping to drop this over the weekend in close proximity of my regular My Vinyl Countdown column which points out that, in a way, Lewy body dementia is underrated in that it is often overlooked, misdiagnosed, misunderstood and not given credit for being the devastating disease it is.
I found a 31-year-old mixtape playlist made by me in the 1980s recently.
This was a list of songs on one side of the 90-minute cassette. The list below represents the other side.
I don’t have the tape but this list, tucked into the inner folds of my wallet, is eye opening because it chronicles musically a particular time in my life. I will comment briefly on the songs below but first. some background.
I was about 27 or 28 and had left the Birmingham News after five years. I went to work at the Orlando Sentinel. I was living in Leesburg, FL, for my first reporting job at the Sentinel. And that’s where I think I assembled a tape to send to my colleagues back in the Birmingham News newsroom. We had a running game to see who could find the best songs no one had heard of.
I wrote a list of the playlist to keep for myself and I’m not sure why except perhaps anticipating sometime in the future we would open this time capsule and talk about the tape, see how our tastes have changed or rediscover lost music from my past. Prescient, I think I can say in retrospect.
It’ an eclectic bunch of songs heavy on rock, alternative, New Wave, and what we call now Classic rock. I think I made the tape the old fashioned way with vinyl, turntable and cassette deck — although some of these cuts I believe came off CD’s which were starting to get a toehold in the market, and I was an early adopter. I took pride in mixtapes. I still know these songs but some I haven’t played in dozens of years. And some I’m not sure I have or where I got them.
How did it stay in my wallet all this time? I have changed wallets since then but not much. I have a rotating set of wallets and I think I went back to an older one right around the year 2000. The older one had stuff in it that I must have just let ride in wallet — business cards, receipts I think I should keep but don’t really need to.
Here’s my song-by-song thoughts:
Eleventh Dream Day“Rose of Jericho.” Underrated band alternative hard rock with female vocalist. Good band. I actually like. with its rock harmonies, the song “It’s All a Game’‘ better than Jericho.
Dreams so Real “Rough Night in Jericho” another good alt-rock song from the Athens, Ga., scene.
I see I scratched out Green on Red “Zombie for your Love.” Too bad, that’s a good one but I think i had this on CD not vinyl.
Mekons “Club Mekon” I just reviewed this one for My Vinyl Countdown. i have speculated that this was the last vinyl record I bought during this eral
Soul Asylum “Cartoon.” This band received some success on MTV with a song called “Runaway Train” about runaway teens.
Pylon “Stop It” Athens Ga., band tried to catch a ride on the attention brought to the college town by REM and the B-52’s. This one is a real screamer, cathartic for Vanessa Briscoe.
Alex Bradford “Lord Lord Lord” Some good old fashioned gospel.
Darden Smith “2000 Years” And some new fashioned gospel.
Here’s the list for the other side of the cassette:
Flaming Groovies“Shake Some Action.” A garage 1970s band that played music 1960s music. Home base was San Francisco. Camper Van Beethoven covered this great song.
Posies “Golden Slumbers” A band from the Northwest that played tuneful alternative songs with hints of a Beatles/Byrds influence.
Big Star“Ballad of El Goodo” Band that famously didn’t make the big time featuring Alex Chilton who belted out “The Letter” as lead vocalist of the Box Tops when he was only 16.
Blackgirls “Happy” I’m going to have to go back to listen to this one because I have no memory of it.
Love “Alone Again or …” Classic 1960s band and song coming from the classic album “Forever Changes.” Covered by Suzanna Hoffs and Matthew Sweet in one of their covers records.
Quicksilver Messenger Service “Fresh Air” Another California Bay Area rock, a little psychedelic with kick butt guitar playing on this one.
Camper Van Beethoven “Pictures of Matchstick Men.” Cover song of a Status Quo psychedelic-era song. Well done.
Toad the Wet Sprocket “Come Back Down.” Another one I remember nothing about. What’s a wet sprocket?
Saw it, shiny and silver, and strode with my dog on a leash, right over the dime on a sidewalk. I barely thought about it until I started thinking about it.
I used to pick up pennies. I think now I would bend down to pick up a quarter. This is terrible, I began thinking. It’s money for goodness sake. I can certainly see passing over a penny, maybe even a nickel but a DIME. I’m now walking past one-tenth of a dollar. I could buy …. um, ….what can I buy with a dime? Used to be a dime to call someone from a telephone booth.
What’s a telephone booth? You ask.
Aye yi yi.
Is it inflation or aging? Or both. I sometimes let my shoes go untied rather than bending over with my aching back and tired knees and ankles.
But I say a part of it is the erosion of American values. My grandparents were Depression-era folks who knew how to save money and make things last. My now deceased father-in-law was a child of the Depression in way small town Epes (In Alabama near LIvingston).Bill Willis would take one tissue, tear it half and put it in his pocket for later use — all before blowing his nose in the one-half tissue that was left. That can save a lot of tissue over time. Toilet paper too, I suppose, but I’d rather not go there.
So what is your coin cut-off. Pictured at the top of the story are a penny, a nickel, a dime, a quarter, a Liberty dollar coin and just for fun, a $2 bill and some sort of Asian coin like thing that I was given for good luck in California. Don’t know what it is exactly but I would definitely stop and pick it up.
Which one, If you saw them lying on a sidewalk, would you stop, bend over and pick up?
I guess I learned that my threshold is not a dime.
From here on, I vow to stop and pick up dimes. I’ll assess nickels on a case-by-case basis.
Sorry pennies but for me a penny saved hurts my back more then the meager return on my investment.
But I’ll keep my eyes on the PPI. (Penny Pinching Index).
Lee Michaels had a big hit: Do you know what I mean?
“It’s been 14 days since I don’t know when, I just saw her with my best friend. Do you know what I mean?”
This is strange on several levels.
It’s better than I remember it. I knew I bought it as a teenager for the hit song ‘Do You Know what I Mean.’ It came out in 1971 and I remember turning up the car radio when I was about 12 and living in Indiana. No, I wasn’t driving. (It was in my corning cars heyday.)
As years rolled by I didn’t play this album in its entirety very much. Michaels has a half-decent soulful voice. There’s a drum and a little electric organ (Hammond?). The instrumentation is almost minimalist with the organ shouldering most of the music. And Michaels can play that organ.
Interesting because it doesn’t really feature or sound like most rock bands at the time. There’s a gospel choir on several tracks as Michaels may be showing us where his roots lie. Merry Clayton, the soul belter who made the Rolling Stones’ ‘Gimme Shelter’ send tingles down your spine (in a scary way) makes an appearance on ‘Keep the Circle Turning.’
If you have read that article you know that I sold three records at a recent record show in Gardendale: Nick Drake’s ‘Five Leaves Left;’ ‘Buckingham Nicks’; and Electric Light Orchestra’s ‘OLE with yellow/gold vinyl.
I feel like I could have stayed and sold more but I felt drained. Here’s what I didn’t sell:
Led Zeppelin ‘Houses of the Holy’ (original pressing, Broadway address, Robert Ludwig initials in dead wax). I was asking $200 and was pretty firm about that price. Several expressed interest but no offers on that.
Jimmy Buffett
‘High Cumberland Jubilee’ (an early, early Buffett album). I was asking $20 but
would’ve taken $15.
Keith Whitley
‘A Hard Act to Follow.’ Near mint EP with press release and 8X10 photo. Asking
$50 but would have taken $30.
Scorpions
‘Virgin Killer’ and ‘Best of Scorpions’ (I was asking $15 each but would have
taken $10 each.)
Dion ‘Runaround Sue’. Cover was frayed but Laurie label record pristine. I was asking $30. Probably would have taken $20.
Hearing loss happens to all of us getting older. It makes
you feel left out because you can’t hear
what they are saying behind your back anymore.
I went to Costco to
get some hearing aids but they took one look at my ears (two looks actually)
and said I need to go see an ENT (Ear Nose and Throat doctor). So I did.
I’m supposed to put drops in my ears for
a few days and go back next week to get rid of what was called an ‘occlusion.’
I understand that to be packed-in ear wax.
So gross. I’m writing about my own ear wax.
Hey Oliver don’t you write about music?
My answer: Hmmmm. Hearing loss and rock music. Wonder how that might be related?
Yes it is documented that loud music – just like loud construction noise, can be harmful to hearing.
My ears rang for days after the Who concert in the 1980s in
Atlanta.
The music at concerts may not be as loud as it was in my day
with the Who, Black Sabbath, AC/DC and KISS making ears bleed from coast to
coast. Punk rock. Loud.
Healthline.com
reports that long exposures to sounds over 85 decibels (dB) can cause hearing
loss. Concerts tend to be about 115 dB or more, Healthline says.
Old man tip: Wear earplugs to concerts.
It’s like using sunscreen at the beach, a must do.
Don’t wait until you’re 50 to do it. Put them in now so you won’t have to put hearing aids in later. (Price check: Hearing aids are expensive like $3,000 to $12,000 for a pair.)
Young ears brutalized by decibels turn into deaf ears as you
age. Besides the ‘occlusion’ I also have
nerve damage. Do I need hearing aids? Stay tuned I’ll find out next week.
Now back to my vinyl records – or known by another name: Wax.
Mike Oliver who has Lewy body dementia often writes about living with that disease and other health and aging issues.. See his blog here.
Frank Zappa records tend to be worth a little more in the resale market. This is a greatest ‘hits’ album of early stuff before Zappa put his name out front of the band, which was made-up of former members of the 60’s rock/pop group the Turtles.
I will be writing more about Zappa when I get to the Z’s. He can be brilliant and disgusting, often at the same time.
Meanwile, enjoy (if you are able) songs such as Wowie Zowie and Who Needs the Peace Corps and Flower Punk. This album had a median price, used, of $12 on Discogs; it’s probably the least valuable of my Zappa stuff.
This is a trailblazer in mixing orchestral music with rock music.
Here it is the Moody Blues and the London Festival Orchestra conducted by Peter Knight, All molded into a dramatic and pretty song cycle. It was deep music for the 1967 contemplative hippie. To my ears now it sounds like music from the Bambi soundtrack featuring spoken word poet Rod McKeun. Next comes lyrics like: ‘cold hearted orb that rules the night.’
The two album-cut hits are Nights in White Satin and Tuesday Afternoon. I had a hippie foster sister for a while as my parents were helping somebody out of a jam.
Kathy loved the Moodies. The album ‘Question’ is their best in my opinion. Besides the title epic it also had a simple sad refrain called ‘Melancholy Man.’
Samba! Brazilian! bossa nova? Organ music? Slightly psychedelic on the Sergio Mendez platter Gentle Rain.
Sergio was the unusual example of a Brazilian artist whose work was nearly exclusively done in the U.S. And is not all that well known in Brazil, according to Wikipedia. On my anecdotal accounts, there’s a lot of his work sadly sitting in bargain bins. He spent a career introducing Brazilian music to the U.S. and beyond: He’d take a Bacharach song like ‘Do you know the way to San Jose?’ and completely samba-ize it [patent pending, not to be confused with Simonize].
So Walter Wanderly, sometimes billed as Brazil’s No. 1 organist, was on the Gentle Rain album with Sergio and multiple musicians. Of these two I have, Wanderley’s Rain Forest is the one I would purchase. At times it sounds like the organ music played when hockey games cleared the ice between periods. Or mall music, sprightly yet warm. But then you start listening, really listening, it’s like a hypnotic.
Don’t need that second beer. Just flip the switch to Wanderley. It’s electric organ like a banjo always playing bright and happy music, only more soothing. The effect is rolling waves of controlled improv tightly harnessed by song structures.
I’m not kidding, I Iike this a lot. Happy Mall Music or old time skating rink music in 2/4 time it’s its own jazzy thing. There are lots of folks who collect Brazilian music and I can see why. But I can’t get lost down that rabbit hole though. Need to stay focused.
You may have wondered why Wanderley is here in the middle of the M’s alphabetically. It’s because he’s being ushered in along with Sergio Mendes.
