ALBUMS: El Rayo X (1981); Win this Record (1982); Mr. Dave (1985} Very Greasy (1988).
MVC Rating: El Rayo X, 4,5/$$$; Win This Record, 4.5 $$$; Mr. Dave, 4.0/$$$; Very Greasy, 4.0/$$$$.
It’s been said that David Lindley can play any stringed instrument put before him. Just give him some string.
The eccentric looking musician — long unkempt locks, plaid shirts, psychedelic pants, bushy mutton chop sideburns — was the antithesis of smooth, suave So-Cal performer Jackson Browne, whom Lindley backed on much of Browne’s discography and live shows.
That’s probably why Lindley’s side projects were so much fun. His eccentricities — kept in check while playing a note perfect lead on ‘Running on Empty’ for example were finally his to accentuate.
And he did, mixing covers of obscure reggae rasta tunes, blues, country with scorching slide guitar and other instruments you may not know.
For example, on Very Greasy , Lindley is listed as playing slide guitar, Bouzouki, Saz, and mandolin. I know mandolin and slide but not the other two. Apparently they are lute-like instruments from Turkey and surrounding areas. (At least he used existing instruments with a track record unlike 10cc ‘s Godley & Creme who went noodling around with middling success on their self-made Gizmo.)
It should be noted that Lindley in his younger days won the Topanga Banjo/fiddle contest in California five times. From 1966 to 1970 he played in Kaleidoscope, a band he co-founded.
ALBUMS: Live at Kelvin Hall (1968); Lola versus Powerman (1970); Kinks on Pye (1970); Everybody is in Showbiz (1972); Preservation Act 1 (1973); The Kinks Present a Soap Opera (1975); Sleepwalker (1977); Misfits (1978); One for the Road (1980); The Kinks, A Compleat Collection (1984).
MVC Ratings: Kelvin 3.5/$$$$; Lola 5.0/$$$$$; Kinks on Pye $$$’: Showbiz 4.0/$$$$; Preservation Act 1 4.0/$$$$; Soap 4.0/$$$; Sleepwalker 4.0/$$$: Misfits 4.5/$$$; One for the Road 4.0/$$$$; Compleat Collection 4.0/$$$
*The numbers besides the title or artists’ names on the record reviews indicate the ‘countdown.’ In other words, with the Kinks now reviewed I have moved 10 spaces closer to my goal of reviewing my 678 albums in, more or less, alphabetical order. I have 368 records to go.
The Kinks are something else. Most times they are like no one else.
I heard them in a record store in high school in Athens, Ga. Nope it wasn’t WUXTRY where down the street my buddy Chuck would fix me up with records; the WUTRY where Peter Buck was handing out opinions on music when he was working there, before REM.
No, I don’t remember the name of this record store, down by the barbershop where they’d lather up your neck and take a straight razor to it. There was a guy in this store who played the Kinks all day and all of the night. Seemingly.
So I accumulated 10 Kinks records, most used, and I fell for the brothers Ray’s and Dave’s harmonies, Ray’s storytelling songs, Dave’s crunching and lyrical guitar, and their whimsical sense of humor.
This all came out of a brother-to- brother relationship that was mercurial at best. They fought so much, they were thrown out of the United States during the British invasion initiated by the Beatles, missing a payload of money as the Brits rang the till in America. But that was the Kinks.
Before getting kicked out, the Kinks were pioneering quirky singles like Stop Your Sobbing, heavy metal before it existed, ‘You Really Got Me,’ and “All Day and All Night” where Dave famously slashed his speakers to get a ‘fuzz’ effect on guitar.
Of course, Van Halen famously covered the 1960’s song and by the time I saw them in the late 1970s, Dave Davies in concert would give a nod to the VH version with a guitar assault in their live version of ‘You Really Got Me.’
My first Kinks album was either a Pye collection Vol. 2 or Lola (can’t remember) and, no, I didn’t immediately pick up the idea that Lola was about a transvestite. I was like, no, wait, and ‘so is Lola.’
From the used Pye compilation of early Kinks. I began to really appreciate the melodies and lyrical songcraft songs like ‘Till the End of the Day; Stop Your Sobbing; Dedicated Follower of Fashion Sunny Afternoon, Nothing in this World and Set Me Free.
Probably my favorite compilation I don’t have on vinyl, only on CD: The Kinks Kronikles. If I were starting off on a Kinks collection I would buy it first, then probably the Pye collection — just get a used record of Pye — not the giant boxed set unless you’re loaded. Another great album I don’t have on vinyl is Arthur, which is fairly well represented on the Kronikles compilation.
After losing out on the British invasion, the Kinks went on to a period that many critics deemed slow if not bad. I disagree. The Preservation Act records and Soap Opera era. I think there’s really good music in there. Soap Opera, to this American kid, was like a documentary on English life. The songs are part of a story, so may sound funny to a listener who is not in to sitting down and listening all the way through. But some songs are good on their own. Such as Sweet Lady Genevieve from Preservation Act 1.
The Kinks mean a lot to me for another reason beyond music. My high school love interest (now my wife Catherine) actually enjoyed the Kinks. This was about 1977-78. During her senior year, she had some serious surgery involving her gut, to put it in layman’s terms. She had the surgery, recovered a few weeks and we were off to Atlanta to see the Kinks at the Fox Theater. Kinks fanatic and friend Brian was driving. She told me later she wasn’t feeling well but didn’t want to ruin the fun. But once we got there she basically collapsed with gut wrenching pain. She was throwing up.
Luckilly we were a block away from the very hospital where she had the surgery. Otherwise, we were told in no uncertain terms that a longer delay would have killed her. That perhaps justified my bad behavior of screaming at them when they asked us to stop and fill out pages of forms.
She lived, thank God. And we even went to another Kinks concert about a year later, same venue. But it was only recently when we were talking about it that I said, ‘Funny thing, but the second surgery involved fixing a ‘kink’ in your intestine.’
Wha??? We laughed at the ‘coincidence’ but Catherine stands firm that it was no coincidence — she doesn’t believe in coincidences . WOG, I call it, for Wink of God. She says going to see the Kinks that night saved her life by putting her immediately in the hands of the hospital and surgeon who knew the medical history. That it was a kink needing fixing was the WOG, so she would say.
OK I am going to give you my off the beaten path Top 5 Kinks songs that aren’t Lola — with links..
Well Respected Man: This represents a Kinks’ go-to: applying whimsy to satire in a mostly loving way.
Waterloo Sunset. Just a beautiful song with lovely guitar by Dave.
Nothing in this World. Another early beautiful song, haunting melody, about broken relationships.
(Tie) Misfits/Full Moon. The 80s stuff is better than people think it is.
Which was a favorite of my daughter Hannah when she was living on Victoria in British Columbia.
I could have picked five songs off of my Lola album as well. If you noticed you will see I gave it a 5 out of 5 rating. I believe the only other 5 rating I have (so far) is Carole King’s ‘Tapestry.’
And of course, the real deal of a best Kinks’ song is on the video blow. Don’t know how I forgot this tears-of-a-clown Klassic.
His music is kind of like — and here I go with my sometimes inane, roll-em-up, comparisons — but he’s kind of like James Taylor, John Mellencamp and Tom Petty rolled into one. (I’ve seen Peter Case and Warren Zevon also in these comparisons.) Actually, in circumstance Joe Henry might be good comparisons in that both are outstanding and underrated. (I only have Henry on digital.)
And both have a famous family connection. Henry is married to Madonna’s sister. Peter is married to Bob Dylan’s adopted daughter.
But I digressl
Peter is Peter.
He’s a rock-and-roller from Minnesota whose lyrics are informed by his Orthodox Judaism, as the message and questions raised in his songs strike universal themes: life and death, pain and joy, war and peace — both globally and internally.
Peter is also a Grammy nominated children’s music maker and composer for TV and film (Judging Amy, Bones, among others).
For more about his story and how it is part of my story see the post I did last week for AL.com. In it I tell you how Peter came to send me three rare out of print vinyl records.
I need to live with these records for a while to give them their proper due, but I can tell you there are some strong songs.
The reason I have question marks on the price rating scale for these three albums is because they are no longer available in vinyl. And the only seller I could find online on several sites including Amazon had one copy of ‘There is no Calamity,’ for $198. It looks like you will have to go digital for any of these three records. I’m going to post links to two songs each off each he sent me and two other older songs. I’d urge you to listen.
There is no calamity
There’s two songs on this are so blunt both lyrically and musically and catchy I can’t believe they are not hits. Listen to them: Fear is our Undoing
Peter Himmelman, a Minnesota-born, California-based, singer-songwriter, rock star of cult-level status and observant Orthodox Jew, sent me three vinyl records recently in support of my effort to get the word out about a prevalent but little-known brain disease.
Woo hoo! I was so excited to rip open that box and play some new Himmelman music, which I find to be of the highest order.
Himmelman like a few of my favorite artists had not, heretofore, to my knowledge, put out LPs. Now that I have this vinyl, I can add him to the countdown. (In another post I will review his three albums.)
So how did this come about that a semi-famous rock star, Bob Dylan’s son-in-law, send me three excellent out-of- print vinyl records? Therein lies the story, a story about this singer, this journalist and my wife, Catherine, a Presbyterian minister.
Kerri Kasem and I talked recently about the disease that contributed to the death of her father, world-famous Top 40 disc jockey, Casey Kasem. He died in 2014 of complications of Lewy body disease.
Like myself (and countless others) the elder Kasem was first diagnosed with Parkinson’s. That’s one reason we need much greater awareness of this disease, which affects more than 1.2 million people nationwide, according to the Lewy Body Dementia Association.
Given that we had a similar mission — raising awareness of a little known and little understood brain disease — Kerri, co-host Ashley Marriott, and I talked for a podcast found on her KPOD her podcast website.
ALBUM: Local Hero (movie soundtrack 1983); Kitaro.
MVC Rating: Local”4.5/$$$’ Kitaro, 4.0/$$$
For the Now Playing portion of my column featured on this website and AL.com, we have a movie soundtrack from Mark Knopfler that is good, very good, as is the movie.’
Local Hero,’ beautifully filmed in Scotland is a droll and understated comedy fits right in with Knopflers’s smooth sounding finger-pick work. Like all soundtracks, there are incidents of incidental music, and the album is mostly instrumental. But the overall quality is superb.
I’m adding into this review another sleepy time album -by – a musician who happens to be in alphabetical order, more or less, as I reach into the New Age and pull out Kitaro. If ‘Local Hero’ puts you in a restful peaceful state, Kitaro will just knock you out . A New Age record, for those who don’t remember, is light bright soft serve ice cream. I don’t know that image just came to mind. But I’ve enjoyed New Age musicians, such as George Winston, Michael Hedges and Kitaro.
It’s also fine background music where you don’t want the music to drown out the talk. I find that a lot of folks get into New Age music when they have little ones, nothing like a soothing Kitaro waterfall with flutes to ease those temper tantrums. Because when you finish your tantrum, you’ll be able to help the children, right?
Got that?
I highly recommend Local Hero, a good one that has held up.
When I was growing up — I was about 11 when this came out — nearly all of the songs on Tapestry were on the radio. Or so it seemed. They are among the all time greatest pop songs ever written.
Rolling Stone magazine has her and writing partner Gerry Goffin at #7 on the list of greatest songwriters behind Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Chuck Berry, Smokey Robinson and Mick Jagger/Keith Richards. She’s the highest ranking female on the list. But I could argue for an even higher rank.
I think King hops the Stones’ boys and Smokey, all brilliant mind you, and on my desert Island I’d probably take the Stones first. But from a purely objective point of view, I think she’s a No. 5 on the list. And if you pulled the two Beatles together into one rank – the No. 2 slot — she would move up to the No. 4 slot. I’m not going to do a side-by-side on these but Tapestry, the album, is astonishing in that nearly every song is a standard.
But the kicker is this: Look at what she has written for other artists including a song — Chains — covered by the Beatles. Here’s a small sampling of non-Tapestry songs she wrote:
‘The Loco-motion’ for their babysitter Little Eva.
“Go Away Little Girl,’ Donny Osmond and Steve Lawrence.
‘Up on the Roof,’ the Drifters.
‘Don’t Bring Me Down,’ the Animals.
‘If it’s Over,’ Mariah Carey.
‘One Fine Day,’ the Chiffons,
‘I’m into Something Good,’ Herman’s Hermits.
At one time I remember Tapestry being the biggest seller ever, at least for a period, eclipsing Beatles. Then I remember hearing Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ surpassed Tapestry. Don’t know if this is accurate, but it comes out of my Lewy body dementia memory that way. Tapestry is still in theTop 10 best selling album of all time.
The copy of Tapestry I have in the house is from my wife’s collection. We began dating in 1978 and were married 1981 and that involved ‘merging’ of some records and tastes. Catherine loved Tapestry and knew every word to every song. Here’s the songs from Tapestry as listed on Wikipedia.:
I was learning to like some of Catherine’s music: James Taylor, for whom I skipped class to camp out and buy tickets to his sold-out concert at Auburn University in, oh, 1980 maybe; Carly Simon, whose ‘Your So Vain’ was one of the few songs I could listen to a million times without getting tired of it. Other groups she loved that I came to appreciate, for the most part anyway: Bread, America, the Carpenters and Diana Ross.
This is the intro to a story I did for AL.com . For full interview click on link at bottom.
Just say ‘Yes’ to Medicaid expansion and more people will get health insurance and the economic benefit will be in the billions of dollars.
Say no and the state gets no extra dough.
Alabama said ‘no’ in 2014, turning down full federal funding to expand the program to hundreds of thousands of people and the requisite economic benefit estimated to be in the billions of dollars.
Although we can’t go back and get that money — the federal funding was at 100 percent for three years. We can still say yes to expansion and reap benefits going forward. The federal funding fixes at 90 percent of costs starting in 2020. The state’s investment of $1 billion in Medicaid would generate $11 billion in increased economic activity between 2020 and 2023, according to David J. Becker, professor in UAB’s School of Public Health.
Becker has been at the forefront in studying the economics of an expansion. His reports have been cited by proponents, which include hospitals. We ask him six questions.
1. You were quoted by AL.com as saying the state missed out on the ‘deal of the century.’ Elaborate on what you mean by that.
This came out today on CBS Sport.com ranking the Top 10 National Anthems. A pretty good list but two things for historical perspective and posterity need to be mentioned.
Whitney Houston may have done the best version ever. Luther Vandross may be in the Top 10. Jennifer Hudson may be No. 2 behind Whitney.
But these soulful renditions would not have been possible, IMHO, without the pioneering sporting event National Anthems done by two men.
Way back in 1968, a blind Puerto Rican, Jose Feliciano, took heat following his ever so slightly Latin-tinged rendition and Spanish guitar flourishes at baseball’s World Series, Game. Some sources say the backlash nearly derailed Feliciano’s career: This is the man who made a pop standard out of the Doors’ ‘Light My Fire.’
And at the 1983 NBA All Star game Marvin Gaye blew the lid off the structure of the song and made it a soul song of incredible depth– still my favorite version. When has there ever been a National Anthem performance that had the crowd clapping and swaying in time near the end of the song.
I remember watching it live on TV and being riveted, hanging on to every verse to see what Gaye would do next with it. Check it out.
For more see My Vinyl Countdown posts on Feliciano and Gaye.
My wife
Catherine and I have electricity between us.
That’s a truth I am proud of even if we have to
check the voltage every now and again after 30-plus years of marriage.
But what I am about to describe is not actually the
spark of love or the metaphorical way we describe electricity between people,
sparks flying and all..
I’m talking literally.
When she touches the top of my ear, at certain
times, she feels an electrical buzz on her fingertip. When she does and moves
her finger back and forth I hear what sounds like a Star Wars lightsaber — bzuhzzzzzzzuhzzzzzuhzzzz (thanks Reddit and Huffington Post for offerings
on how
to spell that sound.)
We discovered this phenomenon a few weeks back and
it kind of freaked me out. Not known to be electrifying, I wondered how there
was a current running through me. Now when I touch my ear after she feels the
buzzing, I don’t feel anything.
My thoughts eventually led me to wonder if it has
something to do with my brain disease, Lewy
body dementia.
The ear is rather close to the brain I figured. And strange body feelings are
sometimes symptoms of LBD.
After some time searching the Internet, I got a
better idea of what may be going on – but certainly not a definitive answer.
It appears that the culprit may be the
computer laptop. Other reports are that the phenomenon is connected to electric
blankets.
What I found were scattered reports on website
threads from people asking the same thing.
When my wife uses her laptop, if I touch her skin,
I can feel a buzz. She doesn’t feel the buzz, but she can hear it if I touch
her ear. So I’m guessing it’s a faulty laptop, and she’s conducting an
electrical current. But why would she not feel anything, and what would it be
that she would be hearing when I touch her ear?
Similar stories are reported on a few scattered
websites but many of these reports are five or more years old. And it’s true
that the buzzing goes away if I’m not using my laptop with it on my lap.
Now scientists have pretty much ruled out any links
between laptops and testicular cancer, a concern in the early days of heavy
laptop use. But I haven’t been able to find a study on this particular
situation.
So I don’t think it is a symptom of my brain disease
but I do wonder – though doubtful – that it may be a cause.
As ‘Buzzing in California’ asked on a blog post
relating an electric blanket experience: This
experience prompts two questions; one of an academic nature, and the other more
related to general health matters.
Has anybody out there experienced this or know any
more about it?
I’d love to hear from you as I keep seeking an
answer.
For the time being I’ll just chalk it up to the
electrifying chemistry I have with Catherine.
