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J. Geils Band — 455

ALBUM:  Monkey Island (1977)

MVC Rating: 4.0/$$$

This is one of those straight ahead rock and roll groups that through persistence, solid chops and staying together finally hit the big time.

This album was the precursor to their Top  40 sales of ‘Freeze – Frame’ and ‘Centerfold.’ MVC does’t care for these later ‘MTV’ hits so much. Monkey Island in 1977 was the album where they were straddling both worlds.

This album, Monkey Island, I bought as a cut-out in high  school in Athens, Ga.  Played it a fair amount  actually. Some good old-timey songs like ‘I Do’ and the Louis Armstrong song, ‘I’m not Rough.’

‘So Good’ lives up to its title.

The title track is a little out of character. It’s a multi-part epic of a song with long (good)  instrumental intro and oblique lyrics.

The album is a near-miss but the group’s following albums helped give the band — who never thought a harmonica shouldn’t be used — some retirement money. J. Geils, founder and guitarist, died in 2017.

The band caught my attention with an earlier single called ‘Must Have Got Lost’ in which singer Peter Wolf  does a rap intro before rap was even a thing. See video below.

That’s not on Monkey Island. But I will include a Monkey Island video too.

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Tear-jerkers and Lewy

Quick catch-up here on some of the things happening in MyVinylCountdown – land.

I’m firing blogs off left and right lately so keep checking this site for updates.

You can get new post alerts via email by going to the comment section. Here’s how to do that: ‘click on the title of the post, for example, Bobby Goldsboro’. 

Then scroll down to bottom of post and you’ll see an email box. Click inside the box and a check-box asking if you want notifications.

The Bobby Goldsboro post, where ‘Honey the’ song is deconstructed by me makes me think of putting together a  Top 10 list of tear-jerking songs.

  1. Honey by ‘Bobby Goldsboro’

There I started. Now go. to the comments and add your challenger song or songs to ‘Honey.’ Or, you can email me your selection at moliver@al.com

(Maybe we’ll actually do it like we did on Top Train Songs.

In recent weeks my most popular posts have been:

Rub your dog behind the ears while you still can 

Robin Williams was killed by Lewy, the brain disease that won’t be named 

New song about Alabama could be next great state song 

 

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People with dementia, chronic diseases and their doctors benefit from ‘progress report’

 

 

 

 

 

 

As many know I have dementia with Lewy bodies, a brain disease that has symptoms similar to Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.

Another person with Lewy shared with me something I think that will be highly beneficial, not just for folks with Lewy but for those with other chronic diseases as well.

Let’s call it a “Report Card for your Doctor,’ or ‘Progress Report for Doctors and other caregivers.

{To see full report click here and scroll down}

 

This running document is something you update between doctor visits.

Thanks to a fellow ‘Lewy’ person and his wife, caregiver,  I am able to share an example of how this works right here.  It’s pretty self-explanatory. I have taken out the names  for privacy’s sake.

I think this could be a life prolonger or at least a life comfortor, especially  for those with memory issues as changes in symptoms are so important for the doctor to know about. Everyone in this situation has gone to those hard-to-get appointments with a neurologist only to remember that you forgot to say something about something. This puts it all in black and white and would serve as a patient-doctor conversation.

I think publishing this is helpful information on two levels: 1) For everyone with a chronic disease to  use to improve diagnosis and treatment, and 2) More specifically for those living with Dementia with Lewy bodies to see the chronicling of the disease in a real person.

To see the full report (if you missed the link above click here.

 

 

 

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Steve Forbert — 472

ALBUMS: ‘Alive on Arrival; (1978); Jackrabbit Slim (1979); Streets of this Town (1988);

MVC Ratings: Alive 4.0/$$$; Jackrabbit Slim 4.9/$$$; Streets 4.5/$$$$.

I blinked once and it was gone..

A poignant line in his 1988 album ‘Streets of this Town’ digs at the heart of Forbert’s pathos.

I used to to think this was guilty pleasure music.  But after re-listening to Forbert I can throw the guilty out. This is just a pleasure — and part of that is because of  his  pain.  Forbert suffered early from  Dylan comparisons like all those at that time with a guitar  and a catchy songs that paint a picture. He suffered because of the high expecations, early success and youth. Look at the cover of ‘Alive on Arrival.’ He’s a baby-faced kid, albeit with a 50-year-old Rod Stewart/ Dylan-esque voice.

Forbert isn’t Dylan. He’s a pop-folk singer who slung his guitar over  his  back and left his crappy-but-it’s-mine Mississippi town for  NewYork city. His first album ‘Alive on Arrival’ was, at least side one, a slam dunk. He opened the album shutting a door on his past by calling Laurel, Miss., a ‘dirty stinking town.’

Forbert was from Meridian, which was near Laurel (can you smell it from there?)

Steve Forbert

For an in-depth Rolling Stone piece at the height of his initial success, go here.

That debut set up the expectations. He came out next with an album that had a blockbuster single ‘Romeo’s Tune,’ a momentary brush in 1979 with the stratosphere. I saw him on the heels of that second album and remember a great show in Atlanta at a small venue.

But alas, like many, the follow-up pressure seemed to have gotten the better of him for a while and he made the scene in New York but  watched his creative space get smaller.

From ‘I Blinked Once,  10 years after Romeo:

The  nineteen seventies was ten long years,

was  ten long years to sing a song

It kicked off madly with a New Year’s cheer

I blinked once and it was gone

Gone, gone I blinked once and it was gone

Looking from present, he has a strong body of work and has had excellent musicians behind him on various albums including Wilco and Nils Lofgren. In addition to these vinyl records, I have about three other Forbert CD’s,each good in their own way.

Favorite line from a good song called, January 23 – 30, 1978: “Some say life is strange, but compared to what, yeah.”

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Rub your dog behind his ears while you still can (blog version)

This appeared originally on AL.com and much on  Facebook, But  I’m posting here for those who missed. Coming soon: a How-Am- I column and Top 10 (20?) of my blog post AND more music. Gotta keep  the countdown going.

My dog is getting old.

You know what I am going to say next, right?

I’m getting old too.

And you know what I don’t want to say, don’t you?

That I’m sad he is going to die.

Gus the psychodoodle. Photo by Rachel Vissers.

My worried thought came after my wife Catherine said it sounded like our  dog’s’ breathing was becoming more labored. And he wasn’t running the stairs with the same wild abandon.

Gus is his name.  He’s a small, rust-colored, curly mop of a dog, a poodle mix of unknown origin. I call him a psychodoodle. He’s about 12 or 13 agewise best we can guess. We rescued him from a shelter in California. He loves to be rubbed behind the ears.

I love him.

I know most pet owners can relate to that. Still sounds silly that a grown man can care for and love a dog that has complicated life with added expense for vet bills, food, poodle haircuts and just plain worry.

At great physiological expense to us, Gus likes to play a game we call  ‘shootig the gap, or doorway.’

Any space he sees at the front door when it is opened he tries to sprint through. If he makes it before a foot holds him back, he is off to a wild, run-through-the-neighborhood spree, oblivious to the speeding two-ton cars.

Before I was diagnosed with Lewy body dementia at 56, our other dog died. Well, we, my wife, Catherine and I, had to take Molly in to be ‘put down.’ How else do you say it. Put to sleep?

Molly, a yellow Lab who was as kind as she was dumb, had a nice friendship with Gus. Gus would bark at and relentlessly attack, in a playful way, Molly. And Molly  would just let him.

We knew when Molly was dying. The breathing became labored, overtime, suggesting the onset of heart failure. She increasingly didn’t like stairs and quit sleeping in our upstairs bedroom.  Given the age and symptoms, I knew as the son of a veterinarian, she needed to be euthanized. But we  just couldn’t do it, we made up excuses. “She sounds better today, I think,” we’d tell each other.

Molly’s last night with us, I slept beside her on the floor.

By some amazing strength she stayed alive through the night. She looked in our eyes.

At the veterinary hospital we carried Molly, in a blanket because she could no longer walk.

With tears flowing freely we watch the doctor inject Molly.

I’ll never forget the sight of Molly’s eyes. One minute I was looking into her soul, and then the pupils became fixed. She wasn’t there.

Our children, now all grown, learned about death  through these experiences with their pets. And they learned about love.

Gus is lying on a rug right now in front of me.

I  bend down and rub behind his ears.

Maybe Gus, you have some good time left.

Maybe I do too.

Read more about Oliver and his push to raise awareness of Lewy body dementia at his blog, www.myvinylcountdown.com 

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Yay. $12,000 more for Lewy body dementia fight. Go MikeMadness

This posted earlier  today on AL.com.. 

Saturday was one of the most entertaining days of my life.

Why?

The charity 3-on-3 basketball tournament MikeMadness, after weeks of hype and hoopla, was played at UAB Recreation Center. It was by all accounts a rousing success.

We raised $12,000 with possibly more coming in, easily passing the $10,000 goal, just as we did last year in our inaugural tournament. In two years we have raised more than $25,000 forLewy body dementia awareness and research.

Lewy body dementia, is the second leading cause of dementia (after Alzheimer’s disease). The money is going to UAB and the Lewy Body Dementia Association. More on that in another column.

It’s not too late to donate by going here: www.mikemadness.org

So why was this one of the most entertaining days of my life?

Because I saw friends and family getting together, making new friends, playing competitive basketball and laughing. And besides a few bruises, jammed fingers and sore muscles, no one was hurt.

I got to play with my brother David, and two athletic nephews Joe Oliver, and Jake Vissers. We came in fourth of 14 teams. There were also three ‘elite’ teams that played their own mini-tournament.

Oh yes, and Buck Johnson, former University of Alabama and NBA star said he really liked my little left-handed runner in the lane. Oh shucks Buck.

Johnson was in attendance along with Trent Richardson, former running back in the NFL and at the University of Alabama. They delighted more than 100 fans and players throughout the gym by stopping to chat, pose for pictures and play a little round ball.

“I really appreciate what you all are doing,” said Johnson, who said he had a loved one with dementia.

Both played some, giving kids and grownups stories to tell their grandchildren (“I stole the ball from Buck Johnson,” I overheard one say.)

I want to thank so many people, those who donated money, time or just plain good words. There are too many to list but I want to single out several who put exceptional work into this: Ramsey Archibald; John and Alecia Archibald; Paul Blutter, Dan Carsen, Julie Vissers; Catherine, Lori and David Oliver; John and Joe Ellen Oliver; John Olsen; Jim Bakken; Kevin Storr (and UAB); AL.com and Michelle Holmes; and John Hammontree;  There are so, so many more.

I’m thinking ahead to next year

As I told folks on Saturday, spread the word about Lewy body dementia. It needs money for research but we need to get the word out. As one who has  been diagnosed with the disease, you can imagine I’d like a little more awareness coupled with urgency.

We need to name it: Lewy body dementia.

Mike Oliver is a columnist who writes about living with Lewy body dementia among many other topics. Reach him at moliver@AL.com . And follow his blog at www.myvinylcountdown.com .

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Robin Williams’ birthday is on the same day as MikeMadness Lewy body event

This is an opinion column by AL.com’s Mike Oliver. See another version of this AL.com.

All this time I never noticed the ‘coincidence’ about the date. The MikeMadness charity basketball tournament date on July 21.  We picked it because it was approximately the same Saturday date in mid-July as last year’s tournament to raise money and awareness for Lewy body dementia – which I have.

I never knew it was also Robin Williams birthday. Until yesterday.

The birthday is an interesting coincidence, because Williams’s wife blamed un-diagnosed Lewy body dementia for his suicide.

When was that? His death date, I wondered.

It was on Aug. 11, 2014, Robin died.

My autonomic system came to life, a tingle, goosebumps.

On  Aug. 11 (2016) was the first time I was diagnosed with a degenerative brain disease. It was a Parkinson’s diagnosis, later switched to its lesser known cousin, Lewy.

Coincidences? How many coincidences do you have to have before they are not coincidences?

Some folks,  including my wife, the Rev. Catherine Oliver, associate pastor of First Presbyterian Church Birmingham, say that they don’t believe in coincidences.

So what does that leave us with? God? Messages from the universe? Robin Williams?

Albert Einstein said: “A coincidence is a small miracle when God chooses to remain anonymous.”

Writer Simon Van Boov said: “Coincidences mean you’re on the right path.”

But that leads you  to the question why is God leaving breadcrumbs, parceling out hints like we are all playing a Milton Bradley board game?

Some may be thinking right now, that a couple of dates lining up with Robin Williams and me and our tournament isn’t off the charts coincidental.

678sign.png

But let’s put it in context with other coincidences surrounding my disease.

The Numbers

If you all remember I’ve had other strange connections. One involved the famous scientific nun study which studied dementia in hundreds of nuns over their lifetimes.

One of the promising things about the study and the one I wrote about was that some nuns, upon autopsy, had Alzheimer’s, the leading type of dementia. But a small subset of those whose brains showed the ravages of Alzheimer’s did not present symptoms while they were living. This suggested there may be a self-made work-around that the brain is using in some cases. I wrote a story.

robinw.jpg

Months went by and I picked up a New York Times story on study again and started reading. Then saw the number. It said the study consisted of 678 nun participants.

What? That’s the exact number of albums I am reviewing. I did the counting myself right before I started my MyVinylCountdown.com blog last year. Now that kind of blew me away, I always start thinking about what are the odds of those two random things being the same number? A lottery-like long shot, you would think?

Some say either nothing is a coincidence or everything is a coincidence. Perhaps a coincidence is just an event that has much lower odds of occurring than something else.

So maybe it’s all about the odds. The numbers. After all, conception itself is a game of odds. Life is a game of  odds – which trees get the best sunlight, which rabbits are the fastest.

nun snip.JPGNYT story, circle is mine moliver@al.com

M.I.T.. professor Max Tegmark, author of our Mathematical Universe said in Scientific American that our universe isn’t just described by math, but that “it is math in the sense that we’re all parts of a giant mathematical object.”

Tegmark recalls Douglas Adams spoof  “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” that the answer to the ultimate question qbout existence and the creation of  the universe is 42.

That’s a little physics humor there.

 

 Who Am I

This next coincidence that has occurred regarding me and my disease seems like you could figure some odds on. But this one shook me more than the others because it was very palpable. It was a weekend day and I set out to do a little cleaning of my room, vacuum, dust, pick up clothes etc. I brought my IPod player and put it in a stand because music is my work partner. I put the whole 120G IPod (the Classic model) on random play. There were 7,500 songs being shuffled.

At one point while I was cleaning, I got inspiration for a blog post, basically about existence, who we are in the world.  Are we our brains? (A good question from one whose brain is under attack.) The title would be ‘Who Am I.

louie.jpegMike Oliver | moliver@al.com

I ran downstairs and began typing away on my laptop. I don’t know how much time went by — but more than an hour. I came back upstairs, walked into my room where the music was still playing on random play. It took me a while to process this one.

The Who were on my IPod playing “Who Are You’ — you know the song with the recurring chorus that goes ‘who are you? who who, who who’? This  is an IPod that could play 20 days straight 24 hours a day, theoretically, never playing the same song from the 7,500.

I actually felt afraid for a minute, wondering if someone else was in the house pranking me? But how would they know what I was writing?

Coincidence?

Lastly, as I was thinking last night of writing about all this, I was casually running through some records. . On one shelf there was a big box set of some classical music. It was covered up with albums so I knew it hadn’t been pulled off the shelf in a while. I picked the box up and underneath it was sheet music with words and notes and cords for a song.

The song? “Louie  Louie” by the Kingsmen.

When I saw it, I remembered I had seen it before like 10 or 20 years ago.. I had forgotten about it. And I have no idea why we even had it in the first place as nobody in our house really plays music and that  frat boy Animal House anthem from the 60s would be an unlikely choice for anyone.

Coincidence? I don’t know so.

Mike Oliver writes on many topics but often about Lewy body dementia. See his blog at www.myvinylcountdown.com  See how you can help by going to www.mikemadness.org . Happy Birthday Robin.

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MVC by the numbers: How far to go? I’ll be finished in 30 months

With the Flash and the Pan post this morning, I am at number 485.

That’s how far I have to go (484 more actually.)

That’s the number of posts I have left to fulfill the vow of reviewing or writing about the 678 vinyl records I  collected, mostly in my teens or 20s (1970s, 1980’s). Although I do have some newer vinyl, which sounds very good I must say. And I have a little bit from the ’50s and ’60s.

I’m doing it with diminishing brain function. I  have Lewy body dementia and am trying to raise awareness to this misunderstood and little known disease which affects more than a million people. Please read up on this by going back through my blog, and reading about my thoughts and experience. Also go to the Lewy Body Dementia Association website at LBDA.org

So let’s do the math on My Vinyl Countdown. From 678. Counting backwards I am on 485. (This is the number that appears at the top of each blog spot next to the artists’ name I am reviewing.)

So 678-485 = 193.  I have reviewed and written about 193 albums right now.

That is 193/11 (months) = 17.5. That’s how many I have been doing per month.

So 485/17.5 = 28. That’s how many more months I have if I keep at this pace. Two years and four months.

I have vowed to live long enough to do this, but I am compelled to chug through this to complete the task. I was diagnosed two years ago. On the high end, survival after diagnosis averages 7 years. I’ve done 2 so that gives me 5 years left of life.

PREDICTION:

I’ll complete this in 30 months, with 30 months to spare on my life span.

 

 

 

 

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Lewy Lewy. Come on, call it by its name!

See updated article, click  here.

Great news breaking a few days ago from AARP — you  know the’old folks’ lobbying group.

I have forgiven them a long time ago for inviting me to join them when I was 50. Now at 58 and a card-carrying member, I have a new beef with the group.

And it comes out of the praiseworthy announcement headlined online like this:

AARP Invests $60 Million to Fund Research for Cures to Dementia and Alzheimer’s

“This move reflects our ongoing commitment to people with dementia and family caregivers”, wrote Jo Ann Jenkins, CEO of AARP.

Later she writes:

More than 6 million people in the United States suffer from various types of dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease, and those numbers are growing at an alarming rate. Based on current projections, by 2050 that number will exceed 16 million, or about 1 in 5 Americans age 65 and older.

My beef? 

She never mentions anywhere in the article the name of  the 2nd leading form of dementia after Alzheimer’s:   Lewy body dementia.

I wish I could say I was surprised. But Lewy body is the disease with no name it seems. Name it. Lewy Lewy.

Lewy Bodies in the brain.

I was diagnosed about two years ago. They say the average lifespan is about 4 to 7 years, (some stats say 8 years) after diagnosis. Of course there are many exceptions. The Lewy joke is if you know one Lewy patient, you know one Lewy patient.

I have been trying to raise awareness of this disease ever since I was diagnosed. It’s important, I believe not to lump all dementia cases together. Lewy may have similar symptoms as Alzheimer’s but it’s a totally different malfunction in the brain. Lewy body’s brain malfunction more closely resembles Parkinson’s disease.

Many primary care doctors, based on the anecdotal evidence I have received from readers, are not familiar with Lewy body dementia. Patients don’t know to ask about it. Yet I continue to see its name omitted in stories about dementia. Say its name: Lewy Lewy.

Some in the medical field call it a disease that’s on a spectrum with Parkinson’s, and that seems  possibly is true. But if we’re lumping all research  under the nomenclature ‘Parkinson’s’ or Alzheimer’s we may never discover, much less cure, a separate disorder called Lewy body dementia.

Say its name. Lewy Lewy.

It’s kind of like now we are building Spacehip Research to launch into space with no destination beyond planets Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Hey what is that  planet we just passed? Not Pluto, it’s Lewy Lewy.

What to do?

Read up on the disease. Go to the website of the Lewy Body Dementia Association.

I have a blog where I count down my vinyl records to raise awareness; In addition to lots of music reviews, it has lots of stories about my experience with the disease. It’s called www.myvinylcountdown.com,    

At my website hit the ABOUT ME button for more, er, about me.

Read about the AARP money by hitting the headline with the big letters at the beginning of this column.

Last year a fund-raising basketball tournament in my name raised $13,000 for the Lewy Body Dementia Association.

This year we have the 2nd Annual Mike Madness basketball tournament.  Sign up to play. Or just come to watch on July 21 at UAB Recreation Center. Hurry sign up to play is July 15.

If  you can’t come, please consider a donation. This year,  in addition to LBDA, we are giving to UAB for Lewy body research. We are much excited about that.

Details here:: https://mikemadness.org/

Help spread the word by saying its name: Lewy Lewy.

(Or singing it.)

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A word with you

I am building words with letters pulling them from deep inside my head.

Flipping them out with my tongue, word sequences, nouns verbs adjectives: Words.

Stop it with a period when your thought is through.

But don’t stop too long  or you will lose you

-Mike Oliver-