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.
The Dave Clark Band’s ‘Bits and Pieces’ is a bad song made worse by a bad video. Check it out.
And I generally like DC5 songs, such as ‘Glad all Over.’ But ‘Bits and Piece’s’ is a good title for a blog post that has, well, bits and pieces.
And that’s what this is.
I ruminate on this as I come out of my recent post on one-hit wonders. I like most of the songs on my personalized wonder list. But I considered and tossed out a couple because they weren’t good.
I was reminded of this when I visited another music blog today, and it was featuring a post about Henry Gross and the love-hate relationship with the song ‘Shannon.’ Oh the memories. See this well-done website called SliceTheLife
I dislike — but secretly like –Shannon, kind of like ‘Brandy’ by the Looking Glass.. But seeing this post reminded there was an album by Gross called ‘Plug Me into Something’ that I remember hearing every time I visited a friend’s house. I have fond memories of that record but never bought it for whatever reason, probably because I heard it so much without paying for it. The friend also had the Brothers Johnson ‘Strawberry Letter 23,” which I did buy (the album, Right on Time, and is reviewed here.
Anyway the thing that had me laughing today was the Casey Kasem, he of Top 40 fame, go off the rails on Gross’ song, Shannon, about a dead dog. SliceThe Life gives more detail on that. Here’s the video.
Casey Kasem died a few years ago of complications of Lewy body dementia.
That’s of course the disease I have and awareness of the disease is a big part of this blog and my life.
I hope those weren’t early signs of LBD.
I hope Casey was just having a bad day and being a jerk on his own. But the fact is that this insidious disease can change personalities and behavior.
I am here to tell you readers, you have the right to shut me down if I act like that. I don’t advocate violence (especially against myself) but put a piece of duct tape over my mouth or something. Or just give me some ice cream, Chunky Monkey is fine.
In other bits and pieces. I see that, ironically I guess, the song by Europe called “The Final Countdown” was named one of the top all time one-hit wonders.
My Vinyl Countdown Salutes you. Here’s what VH1 said in this somewhat dated release:
On VH1’s 100 Greatest One-Hit Wonders, [Europe’s] Joey Tempest said: “It was quite a surprise that the song ‘The Final Countdown’ became such a big hit because it was written for the band, it was written for our concert, it was written to be the opening song in our concert. It was almost six-minutes long, it was never intended to be a short pop hit or anything, it was very much a surprise and its been used for all kinds of events, anything from Formula 1 to boxing. It’s been used for a lot, sort of like an anthem. I know there’s been some cover versions of it as well and I know when the Berlin Wall (fell), at the same time that all thing happened I know a lot of other people from that area saw the song as an anthem. I get a lot of letters about that. So its been interpreted in many ways.”
