The Raybeats — 118

ALBUM: Guitar Beat (1981)

MVC RATING: 3.5/$$$

This is not your grandfather’s Ventures — the Ventures being the guitar-no-vocals band that enjoyed worldwide success in the 1960s and beyond with their melodic, catchy sound and virtuoso playing.

No, this is punk guitar picking ‘neo-surf rock’ band. They are now gone but I’d say they were the only ones to occupy this genre. Some of the songs are so avant garde as to be unlistenable even if you can appreciate the talent of the musicians. With some of their other songs such as ‘Searching,’ ‘Tight Turn‘ and ‘Calhoun Surf,’ you can catch a wave of twanged-up guitar and have a good time.

The drummer stands out. They also throw in some saxophone and organ. However, and I know I’m getting old, but I’d sooner put a Ventures (or Duane Eddy) album on the turntable than this one.

Daily Journal April 21, 2021: What am I doing?

People often ask me how I am doing. But maybe that’s the wrong question — for all of us.

Let’s try: What am I doing? Or, what are you doing?

Well, I’m staying alive, staying alive as the Bee Gees put it. My primal survival instincts are kicking in. My degenerative brain disease isn’t the Shootout at the OK Corral. It’s more a war of attrition; not a sprint, but a marathon. Tools include exercise, diet, cognitive workouts, music, writing, research and love. Absorbing the love and care of my friends and family, even when it hurts.

What am I doing?

Making up bad jokes and puns.

DId you hear the one about the guy who said ‘Doctor, doctor what wrong with me? Doctor says I’m afraid you have a dire liver.

Dire liver? The man exclaimed. Well, am I going to liver dire?

What am I doing?

Eating sesame seed crackers, putting sesame seed in soups and looking for other ways to consume sesame seed oil. This follows a study that showed sesame seed slows down the unwanted proliferation of Lewy bodies, the protein tied to Lewy body dementia and Parkinson’s disease.

What am I doing?

Getting my second and final COVID vaccination. I received a Pfizer vaccination at the Birmingham airport this morning.

It was cold, windy with temperatures dropping below 50. I appreciate all the health care workers who while trying to keep themselves warm, especially their hands, administered vaccine shots in a drive- through setting.

It occurred to me that this organized and quick delivery set-up was happening at hundreds (thousands?) of locations across the country, a remarkable feat when you extrapolate. It’s what we are doing.

But there were fewer people getting vaccinations this morning than there were three weeks ago when I got my first one. Nationally, they are worried about a slowdown in vaccinations. What are we doing? Waiting for COVID’s next variant.

What am I doing?

Sitting here wondering if I am going to have any side effects and hoping they will be inconsequential like my first shot and like its been for most of the millions of shots administered. My arm is slightly sore. That’s it.

What am I doing?

Musing on the grocery store observation from my wife, Catherine, who said there’s a buoyancy in the air she believes is tied to the Floyd verdict yesterday (Tuesday 4/20/2021).

What am I doing?

Realizing that is the right question. And ‘what’ is the right word.

At this stage it’s not how we are doing. That’s looking back, making an assessment, writing a report to file alongside millions of other words, meetings minutes and court depositions. That’s wringing our hands while a modern day plague kills millions of people; while bullets are sprayed every day in neighborhoods, schools, stores, workplaces and dark alleys across America.

So the question is put this way:

What are we doing?

Rainmakers 215, 214

ALBUMS: Rainmakers (1983)

MVC Rating: 3.5/$$$/

These Kansas guys jumped out of the speakers and gave little notice they were about to slice the Red Sea.

Holy Moses.

This came out about the time I started working here the first time around (1986). So my old old Birmingham fans may remember some of these tunes.

They sound a bit like Jason and Scorchers. And the lyrics seem political with some religious overtones. But not sure what about? Am I missing something here?

I did not put you here to suffer

I did not put you here to whine

I put you here to love one another

And get up and have a good time.

Other songs are a little more surprising, if not, if not disconcerting: ‘Big Fat Blond’ and ‘Government Cheese,” which throws this verse at you.

Rolling Stones, –227, 226, 225, 224, 223, 222, 221, 220

ALBUMS: Hot Rocks (1971); Between the Buttons, (1967) Get Your Ya Ya’s Out (1971); Metamorphosis (1975); Dancing with Edward (1974; Sticky Fingers, (1971); Exile on Main Street (1972); Undercover (1987); Tattoo You (1978); Love You Live (1977 ); Black and Blue (1976)

MVC Grade: Hot Rocks (5.0/$$$$$); Between the Buttons (4.0/$$$$); Get Your Ya Ya’s Out (4.5/$$$$); Metamorphosis (3.5/$$$); Dancing with Edward (3.0/$$$) Sticky Fingers (5.0/$$$$$, Exile on Main Street (5.0/$$$$$); Undercover (2.5/$$$); Tattoo You (4.0/$$$$) Black and Blue(4.5/$$$$) Love You Live (3.5/$$$).

What’s that sound all across America of people zipping up their pants, their coats, their purses. Listen:
zzzzzzzzzziiiiiiiiiiiiippppppppppppppp!

Oddly makes me feel secure knowing everything is zipped up.

Zip? And what better to zip with: A zipper.

I once bought a $120 pair of jeans marked down drastically because the thingymajigy used to pull up and mesh the zipper teeth, was missing. So I had to use my fingernails or bring a pair of pliers into the bathroom.

CAUTION: Use caution when you make sure you are clamping down on the zipper. A wrong placement and a tight squeeze can cause pain. Just be careful.

So a zipper is one of those words that when you say it out loud it sounds like the name of the thing that goes with the name. Come on you know what I’m talking about …. a word that makes a sound instead of a thought, I mean, not really that so much as it’s a pioneering use of the English language like Zonk! (or is that Zonk?)

What’s a Zonk and what does this have to about zippers? You mean Zonk is the sound a zipper makes? No Keith says, Zonk is like a Three Stooges smack to the head. Usually a smack that rattles you into dumboundedness.

I told Keith Richards that I already told him this was a Rolling Stones review for MyVinylcountdown.com. We need to be on good behavior.

OK, here we go:

Sometimes when the zipper method of merging works, the cars, as if driven by cooperative experts take turns merging, you first, me next, you next. (That’s called the zipper merge on American freeways.)

Well this is what the Rolling Stones did with Rock and Roll. They pulled all these disparate tangs into a big zip. If you don’t believe it, they actually show it on possibly their best album: Sticky Fingers. The original cover has an actual working zipper on the cover.

It’s a safe bet to name the Rolling Stones the best ever in rock evolution and revolution, pulling in the blues, some country, folk and poetic lyricism (Dylan influence).

The Stones did that as well with more of an emphasis on the blues. But that doesn’t mean they became the best blues players of all time.. The Stones became the best rock and roll band of all time because they could play, having internalized that strong mix of rural and urban blues, hooky chorus driven pop and early rock and roll, and let it rip. Or zip.

The Beatles pound-for- pound had better songs, better singing and playing, but the Stones were road ragged warriors. Paul and John had the words and questions. Mick and Keith had the exclamation points.

First you see the Stones and you look at these little punky kids (1960s) and the lead singer with the huge mouth, bodies flailing around and you wondered: Are they putting us on?

But the more your listen, the more you realize Jagger’s voice is perfect to carry this thing off, loud, ripped Chuck Berry and Bo DIddley chords, Watts and Wyman and Richards thrashing about.

And Jagger was singing (and writing along with Richards), songs like Satisfaction, Street Fighting Man, Gimme Shelter, Mother’s Little Helper,

Sorry but the Herman’s Hermit’s were not taking on revolution, the hypocrisy behind the pharmaceutical drug complex, or the advertisers brainwashing techniques.

Here some zippers:

Well this is what the Rolling Stones did with Rock and Roll. They pulled all these disparate things together.

If you don’t believe it, they actually show it on possibly their best album: Sticky Fingers. The Andy-Warhol designed cover has an actual working zipper on the cover. Merge.

WARNING: All those with Lewy body disease, beware dangerous fainting spells.

The first one was the scariest for me. I blacked out coming down our steep hardwood floors and rolled to the bottom. Just last week.

My luck was that it was only a four or five stair roll. No major damage to my 60-year-old body except for a n inch- long gash on my knee. I was lucky.

Since then — about a week ago — I have blacked out three times with people catching me in their arms. So, one tip: Stay around people.

Seriously, nearly everybody has this dizziness due to low blood pressure. It happens sometimes when sitting a long time and standing up quickly. You get lightheaded. Dehydration can play a role. But Lewy body dementia which has been linked to fainting condition called orthostatic hypotension.

I touched on this in an earlier column last week but I wanted to give it a little more attention.

I’ve had Lewy body dementia now for about five years and previously have had that happen to me. But that was once in a blue moon. I’ve had it a few times in my life — orthostatic hypotension — but it happens, you’re dizzy and it goes away. But in some LBD cases it can be a thing to warrant extra attention. These falls are dangerous.

I’m going to do more research, and talk to my doctor about it. But until then I’ve developed some strategy to save myself from flopping on my face. Before I get up from a long sitting or from bed in the morning I start breathing deliberately and deeply. I’m not hyperventilating. I am just aware of taking my breaths.

Sit there poised to get up but don’t — just breathe for another few minutes. Stand up using your arms on you knees or railing. I stop and keep my hands on knees continuing the deliberate breathing.

Here’s the thing. If this is going to happen to you it might happen as long as 10 minutes after the standing up. My faints were all several minutes after I thought any potential episode had been averted.

So the key part of this is time. Keep breathing and now standing lift one leg up (holding onto something) and then another like you are slow marching in place. I also put my hands on my head to open up my rib cage. Don’t get in a hurry. Stay there as long as you feel any cobwebs in your brain. Remember to drink plenty of liquids. I drink water, vegetable drink and sports drinks, usually sipping on one or the other all day long. (Coffee, too, but shhhhh, I don’t belive that’s going to help you on this one. Coffee is helpful to me with Parkinsonian symptoms like body unease, tremor and clearing my mind.

Another key to this thing is bringing more attention to it. Additional news on top of this information includes OH — the dizzy knockout symptom — might also shorten the lifespan of a Lewy body sufferer. After dealing with LBD all week, it was the last thing I wanted to hear. Maybe it is that the OH is killing people with falls at a rate to affect the numbers. More investigation needed and I’m on it.

So, if you see a guy ambling down the street one day, wearing a helmet — that’s me.

For more information go to LBDA.com the website of the Lewy Body Dementia Association. Please talk to your doctor if these spells are frequent. Remember I am not an expert and can’t say that anything I said above will work for you. I’m just operating on my experience as someone who has been living with LBD for 5 years.

Rubber Rodeo — 229

ALBUMS: Rubber Radio (EP) )1982

MVC Rating 3.0/$$, (1982)

I will say this, thousands and thousnds upon thousands of inexplicable rock star names are out there and this is one that I can’t even scrape up a guess.

Rubber Radio is this one one , which debuted with ‘Rubber Rodeo in 1981.

Hmm. is there a Plastic Playgrounds?

Belushi and Dan Akroyd popularized an old soul 1950s hit –‘Rubber Biscuits,’ –and of course there was Birmingham singer Eddie Kendricks known for his hit record , ‘Rubber Band Man.’

Rubber Rodeo, on the other hand came out as a New Wave cow-punk band that was sweeping, nation, well maybe dustbrooming .the nation.

Despite some good press and a couple or so albums, they never bounced back.

Bounced back? From what? Well I was making a little joke there, but if you must know, rubber head, in the cow punk genre they just weren’t as good as Jason and Scorchers, Rank and File, Danny and Dusty and, got to mention some of X’s work..

And they were from Boston.

REO Speedwagon 232, 231

ALBUMS: High Infidelity (1980). A Decade of Rock and Roll 1970 – 1980

MVC Rating: Infidelity 3.5;/ $$’ Decade of Rock and Roll. 4.0/$$$

Kevin Cronin (with the hair ) and me (Mike Oliver) a photo and discussion after the show about Lewy body dementia at a Lewy conference in Las Vegas.

OK, i’ll start something: Journey or REO Speedwagon?

Which one was the better band?. They both suck right, ?

Well, no. How can you even ask the question? Journey had better songs. Journey was the perfect rock date band: Journey was more famous and was worldwide. Man, what’ are you even talking about?

I hear you .

My family moved to Indiana, trading red clay dirt clods for cornfields and a famous car race My new Indiana friends were very much into REO Speedwagon and if you think REO ws a cheesy Top 40 band listen to some of their earlier albums, they rocked so hard the front row had their eyebrows burned off.

Of course that is obviously not true but I’m sure there were ringing ears.

Now flash forward a couple of decades plus. I was regional editor or projects editor for the Oakland Tribune., My co-workers of a slightly younger age who grew up in the SF Bay Area Journey was the thing. Not even a guilty pleasure but an awesome hard rock band that made REO look like hayseeds. (They’re behind the corn).

Let’s look at the tale of the tape, quite appropriate when you consider how many cassettes these guys sold .

Super hard rock in Speedwagon’s earlier days.
s

Journey, over a 40-years career, has been one of the greatest classic rock bands of all time. The band has released 23 albums and 43 singles since 1975 and has reached worldwide album sales totaling more than 75 million. .

OK drop the Mic. I

I like this early one by Journey:

I didn’t think their resume was THAT good. And I like them. Just so we give ’em a fair shake, I’ll find REO’s numbers. Those are oustanding numbers for Journey probably putting them in the top echelon for 70s and 80s bands..

OK, here we go with the REO number. (Both of these nuggets of info, supplied by Wikipedia and Google aggregation abilities.

Over the course of its career, the band has sold more than 40 million records and has charted 13 Top 40 hits, including the number ones “Keep On Loving You” and “Can’t Fight This Feeling?.

Not bad. But this was exactly the music I was transitioning out of at about 18. Played them again for this piece and yes both Journey and REO Speedwagon rock!

If you don’t feel like you re seeing all my stuff?

My writings emanate from two places usually. My blog called www.myvinylcountdown.com Most of my writings are in there but not all and also there are different versions. The other place they start out are AL.com where if you search my name and find something like this:

https://connect.al.com/user/toniokroger/posts.html

Click on that and you have a nice flowing river of my stories. While I’m thinking of it, if you like my content in AL.com I would appreciate it if you would throw a little money my way, actually the company’s way, but tell ’em I sent you. It’s part of a campaign to keep us going. READ HERE.

Daily journal, May 22, 2020, (archives, Orlando Sentinel version).

Since graduating in journalism from Auburn University in 1982, I have left a trail of news stories and features along the way. Sometimes these articles are saved in the archives so I can go back and look at my work. Sometime there are big gaps in data to be found online. Of the thousands of stories I’ve written over the years, maybe 15 to 20 percent are retrievable online. Googling around the other day looking for a name and contact of someone who had been a source of mine long ago on a case involving drug smuggling I found this totally unrelated feature, a story I thought had been lost forever. It involved three brothers and a close friend, killing themselves by suicide, one-by-one. I had searched for this story years ago and couldn’t find it so I figured it was forever gone lost in an ocean of electronic digitrash. So I was happy to know it still exists and I’m going to post it below to better its chances of staying in existence. Look for this to become an occasional feature. (Can’t wait to see what hat Columbus City Council meeting story — the one I dictated petrified with fear on my first real newspaper assignment. On deadline translating notes through cerebellum into something readable. In a phone booth with seasoned pro at the other end cracking jokes and talking me out of my shakes. Them’s how you learn the ropes.

Here’s a thumbnail of my career:

  • 1980-1982 Auburn University. Besides a few, very few, stories I wrote for the school’s Plainsman, I also did a few pieces for the Opelika-Auburn News and the Columbus (Ga.) Enquirer.
  • 1982-1987 — The Birmingham News.
  • 1987-2001 — The Orlando Sentinel (where the below story was published).
  • 2001–2011 — Oakland (Calif.) Tribune, Contra Costa Times, San Jose Mercury New (Bay Area News Group,)
  • 2011 to present–The Birmingham New/AL.com.

https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-xpm-1989-03-19-8903190238-story.html

‘Brotherly love becomes deadly bond

Bobby Junior Stone stood silently at the graves of his two younger brothers, Robert and Richard. A light growth of grass covered Richard’s grave, but over Robert’s coffin the sandy brown dirt was newly turned.

His mother, JoAnn Cord, snapped a photograph from 20 yards away.

It was late March 1988 and the sun was shining in Dade City. The ride to the cemetery from Leesburg had been uncomfortably quiet, as if all the words had been used up.

Richard Stone, the younger of Bobby Junior’s brothers, had killed himself in 1986 at age 21. Then Richard’s best friend, 19-year-old Jamie Fell, had committed suicide in 1987, two days before the first anniversary of Richard’s death. And now his other brother, Robert, had done it at 24.

Bobby Junior stood quietly at the graves, but the 28-year-old man was simmering with emotion. Before Robert’s funeral he sat on his sister’s bed and sobbed. “I won’t ever have to go through this again,” he said, “because I don’t have any brothers left.”

Patty Bowen couldn’t bring herself to go to the cemetery that day with her brother and mother. Now she looks at the photograph of Bobby Junior standing at the graves of Richard and Robert and can’t help wondering.

“I wonder what was going on inside his head,” she said. “I wonder if he knew then that they would soon be digging his grave right next to his brothers.”

Two months later they buried Bobby Junior. Like Richard, Jamie and Robert before him, Bobby Junior died by his own hand.

The four suicides in two years cast a ghostly pallor on bright memories of the young men. Survivors grope for answers and struggle against a flood of feelings from guilt to anger to empty sadness.

The reasons for the suicides are complex – broken homes, societal pressures, stormy love relationships and alcohol abuse. On the surface mounting personal problems seemed to take their toll on each of the young men. But beyond the problems was a bond so intense that they chose death rather than being apart.

Say what you will about the Stone brothers – they were wild, they were pool-hall tough – friends and family knew them to be unusually close. When Richard got leave from the Army for the first time, Robert sprinted across a crowded lobby in the nursing home where he worked to embrace his younger brother, a memory that still gives Bowen goosebumps.

It was as if each was tied to the same rope. And when Richard killed himself, Jamie Fell followed, then Robert, then Bobby Junior. The sinking weight of depression tugged harder with each death.

Beginnings . . .

The Stone family moved to Leesburg from Dade City in 1973. They lived in a small home on Colonial Street – the parents, Bobby and JoAnn, and the children, Bobby Junior, 13; Patty, 12; Robert, 9; Richard, 7; and Latonya, 6.

The parents worked at Golden Gem and later Minute Maid citrus-processing plants.

Bobby Junior was the quiet leader. Robert was the wild tough one who’d do anything if dared. And Richard, with the impish grin, was the even tougher youngest brother who tried to do everything Robert did.

In a house full of rough boys, Patty and Latonya had to learn to fend for themselves. The boys dubbed Latonya “Tonya Tornado” for the way she fought, with legs kicking and arms flailing.

The boys played tackle football on a field off their street.

“We called ourselves the Colonial Street Boys,” friend David Chastain said. “We used to laugh and say you didn’t mess with the Colonial Street Boys.”

It was a tough blue-collar neighborhood on the western edge of Leesburg. “I’d say about 80 percent of our neighborhood never finished high school,” Chastain said.

The neighborhood remains much the same. Mobile homes sit side by side with concrete-block and frame houses on the oak-lined street. Nearby woods, where Robert once rode his dirt bike, provide stomping grounds for a new generation of Colonial Street Boys.

In sandlot football games, Bobby Junior always was the quarterback. Richard and Robert would go out for passes. Bobby Junior demanded perfection in the patterns they ran, or he’d chew out his brothers.

The Stones always played on the same team and had a reputation for being fiercely loyal to one another. Opposing players didn’t mess with one without messing with the others. If a baseball coach hollered at Robert, the coach might have seen Richard stomping off the field with Robert.

Charlie Baker coached Richard and Robert in Little League and other youth baseball leagues from 1974 to 1978. He remembers the Stones as temperamental, athletic, and eminently likable. In four years they made All Stars every year but one and helped turn around a 1-17 team to 18-0 in two years.

“It was the first time a Little League team had gone undefeated in Leesburg, I’m pretty sure,” Baker said. “The Stone parents worked a lot, and Robert and Richard would call me on Saturday and ask if I’d pick them up to go out and pitch and hit. We got close.”

Robert and Richard were inseparable. “If you saw one you knew the other one was around somewhere,” Baker said. Bobby Junior was older, so he didn’t play on the same team with his brothers. But he was a standout on the Leesburg High School baseball team.

“You see a lot of kids who would rather buddy with someone other than their brother, but not the Stones,” Chastain said. “They looked out for each other, and that’s what I liked about them. I was an only kid, and they seemed like brothers to me.”

As children the Stones traveled the country with their parents, who worked as migrant farm laborers before settling in Florida. During those years the brothers and sisters attended many different schools from Arkansas to Michigan to Florida.

It was during that rootless childhood that the Stones found the solid rock of stability in one another, family members say. Their parents’ divorce when the siblings were in their teens sealed the bond.

“I don’t think Robert and Richard could have been closer if they were twins,” their mother said.

It was a closeness, a tightness, that extended to a few select friends such as Chastain and Jamie Fell. It was a bond so intense that its force was felt even from the grave.

“If I was to grow up again, I would pick the same friends because they were the best friends I ever had,” Chastain said. “They were always there for me, and I was always there for them.”

The future seemed so bright.

“They were happy and very close,” the Stones’ mother, JoAnn Cord, remembered. “One thing, though: Robert used to wake up nearly every night until the time he was 10 years old with nightmares. I’d go in there and he’d be staring off into the wall, crying.

“I know this sounds strange,” she said, “but I think back and wonder if he somehow knew what was in his future.”

Richard …

Richard Stone was a skinny teen-ager when he joined the Army at 17.

“Mama, I’m going to make you proud,” her youngest son said. “I’m going to make sergeant.”

His mother told him, “Richard, I’m already proud of you.”

Richard adored his mother. While a soldier he had “Mom” tattooed in small letters over a red heart on his chest.

Marla Scalf, who dated Richard, remembers one night in a bar when Robert and another patron exchanged words. “He said something about Robert’s mama. Well, Richard got up right behind the guy and said, ‘That’s my mama your talking abouttoo.’ “

As a specialist four in the 403rd Transportation Co. at Fort Bragg, N.C., Richard drove a truck. The Army said nothing but good things about him after his death.

Capt. Nicholas J. Anderson, Richard’s commander, wrote his mother: “He was part of our family here in the unit. He was a positive, refreshing, selfless person who would immediately win the respect and admiration of anyone he came in contact with.”

Family, friends and military reports recall that Stone was happy as a soldier. They saw the skinny teen transform into a 6-foot-1-inch, 194-pound man. The little boy who once locked himself in a closet and cried because he thought that his front teeth were too big suddenly had lots of girlfriends.

“I finally grew into my teeth,” he told Latonya one night before a date.

But investigators believe that an incident shortly before his death troubled him. While on leave Richard was arrested in Daytona Beach on a charge of indecent exposure. He was changing out of his military garb into shorts in the back of a pickup truck as it sped down the highway.

A police car happened by and pulled the truck over with the undressed Richard in the back. Richard laughed off the incident at the time.

“Me and Jamie and Robert went to pick him up from jail,” said Scalf, 20. “He was just laughing about it.”

The Army report on the suicide showed that he faced a potential demotion for the incident.

Army psychiatrist Harold Tarpley wrote: “To the possible demotion the soldier reportedly stated, ‘I can’t handle being a private again.’ “

On the morning of June 30, 1986, about 11 hours after he was supposed to have reported back to Fort Bragg, Richard called another girlfriend, Leigh Cooper. He told her goodbye and that he wasn’t going back to Fort Bragg. He wrote a note on a memo board hanging on the wall in Robert’s apartment: “I couldn’t handle all the pressure anymore! I love all of y’all.”

Then he shot himself in the head with a .22-caliber pistol. He was alive when they took him to the Leesburg Regional Medical Center emergency room. Richard lived one more day and died July 1. An autopsy revealed no alcohol or drugs.

At services in a Leesburg funeral home, dozens remembered the former star baseball player, known for his quick, mischievous smile. Friends and family still remember Richard in much the same way that the Army does in its report on his suicide. Under the heading “General Personality and Lifestyle,” it states: “He was noted to be intelligent, self-assured, happy-go-lucky and goal oriented.”

Richard was buried in Mount Zion Cemetery in Dade City with military honors.

One of the many mourners at the funeral was a thin, good-looking 18-year-old whose straight dark hair hid a long scar on his scalp

Jamie …

Jamie Fell hadn’t been out of the hospital long when Richard committed suicide. Fell was recovering from a near-fatal pickup accident in which he was thrown 80 feet and landed on his head. He was in intensive care for three weeks.

Richard had been there for Jamie during his recovery, taking weekend leaves from the Army to sit with him in the hospital. During the year or so before the accident, Robert, Richard and Jamie did everything together.

“Robert and Richard adopted Jamie as a younger brother,” said Jamie’s mother, Carolyn Harris. “There was a very, very close bond there, almost to the point that my older son felt left out.”

Harris said there were two Jamie Fells, the one before the accident and the one after.

“He suffered a severe head injury, and when he got out he still had an equilibrium problem,” she said. “He developed a drinking problem, and there was a coldness that came over him.”

He apparently was in pain but didn’t talk about that.

“He told me about this battle between the old person and the new person.” she said. “He said, ‘My life ended on the highway. This is all gravy.’ “

Jamie’s mental health continued to deteriorate, his mother said, and the suicide of his best friend compounded the pain. After the death, he put together an album of photos of Richard.

Jamie began dating Latonya Stone, the youngest of the Stone siblings and the closest in age to Richard.

“I was going through a really hard time, and he was going through a hard time. But he helped me so much,” Latonya said. “I couldn’t believe he did it. He did it because Richard did it.”

On June 28, 1987, two days short of a year after Richard shot himself, Jamie killed himself with a .35-caliber rifle in his bedroom. He had been drinking. It was about 9 p.m.

He left a note saying he loved his mother, sister and brother and Robert Stone. The name Robert Stone was underlined.

On the day of Jamie’s funeral, Robert found a note on his washing machine that stated, “Robert, you are my brother. I love you, Jamie.”

Robert …

The suicides of his brother and his close friend pushed Robert Wayne Stone, the middle Stone brother, over that edge he had walked most of his adult life.

When Richard killed himself, Robert directed his anger toward the Army. Shortly after the death Robert was stopped for speeding and held on gun charges on his way to Fort Bragg. He had put on Richard’s Army fatigues, grabbed a sawed-off shotgun and jumped into the car with Bobby Junior to take care of whoever might be responsible for Richard’s suicide. Charges were dropped.

After Richard’s funeral, Robert tossed the pistol his brother had used to kill himself into a lake, said Bob Fell, Jamie’s brother.

He talked about suicide at the time. But then he seemed to get over it. He continued with his plans and got married later that year to Dena Ann Schumann, a 17-year-old Leesburg girl he had been dating since she was 15. Dena and Robert had a son.

After Richard died, Robert had seemed to transfer all of his brotherly devotion to Jamie.

Jamie, in a sense, became Richard, said Jamie’s mother, Carolyn Harris. Jamie and Richard had similar personalities and tended to keep feelings inside, she said, a foil to Robert’s outgoing and sometimes aggressive manner.

When Jamie killed himself, Robert came to the scene and nearly had to be restrained by police. He screamed, banged the walls, and yelled, “No, no.”

“The most pained person other than myself was Robert,” Harris said.

Not long after Jamie’s death, Dena and Robert moved into a house with Jamie’s mother, brother and half-sister.

“I fell in love with Robert when I met him, even with the rough edges,” Harris said. “I felt he had a lot of love to give.”

Even before Richard’s death, Robert was a drinker. He liked to play pool, drink beer and party with friends. But the drinking turned nasty after Jamie’s death. He piled up driving-under-the-influence-of-alcohol charges. He began fighting with his wife. One time he came to Harris with tears streaming down his face, and said, ” ‘I’m just an alcoholic, and I’m going to lose my wife and kid.’ “

Jamie’s brother, Bob, said, “When he was drunk and wild-eyed, even his best friends didn’t cross him.”

The couple sometimes lived without heat or with the phone cut off. After a while, Dena said, she never even saw Robert’s paycheck and didn’t know what he did with the money.

Robert and Dena divorced after about a year but continued to see each other off and on.

“We had problems mostly due to alcohol,” said Dena Stone, now 19. “I tried to get him help, but he always said that nobody could help him.”

On the night of March 23, 1988, Robert stopped by his sister’s house in Fruitland Park. He put his arms around Patty Bowen and said, ” ‘I love you, Sissy.’ “

“I thought he was going to raise hell with the in-laws,” she said. “But I didn’t know he was going to do what he did.”

Using a borrowed shotgun and pistol, Robert stormed into Dena’s parents house and held the frightened family at gunpoint. Dena talked Robert into going for a ride to Patty’s house nearby. One minute Robert was calm; the next he was out of control, Dena said. She grabbed her boy and ran inside, urging Patty to lock the door.

“He’s got guns,” Dena said.

Robert banged on the door and screamed to be let in. Patty yelled at her out-of-control brother: “You’re scaring the hell out of me, and we got our kids in here.”

The police sirens drew nearer.

“I heard a shot,” she said. “That night was really a nightmare to have to listen to my brother blow his head off.”

Robert was blind drunk when he killed himself. His blood-alcohol level was .29 percent. That was almost three times the legal definition of intoxication in Florida of .10 percent.

But some have no doubt that it was a planned suicide. Earlier that night Robert called his boss at the company where he worked as a telephone-cable splicer. He asked about his last check and then said, “I’m going to meet my brother.”

His sister is sure now that he wasn’t talking about Bobby Junior.

Bobby Junior …

Bobby Junior was the oldest by several years, and his relationship with his two brothers was fatherly as well as brotherly. He coached them in baseball and watched after them when their parents weren’t around.

But Bobby Junior had a life apart from his brothers. While Richard, Jamie and Robert were getting close, he moved out of state.

After graduating from Leesburg High School in 1977, he worked at the Minute Maid plant where his parents worked. Then his father found him summer work in Michigan. He married while in Michigan and lived there and in Texas before separating from his wife several years later.

He joined the Navy in 1985 and missed his youngest brother’s funeral because he was on a ship in the Mediterranean. He went absent without leave several months later and returned to the Leesburg area, settling in Fruitland Park.

Richard’s death shook Bobby Junior, as did his inability to be there, his sister Patty said. He served time in the brig for being AWOL. But before formal discharge papers could be signed he took off again without permission. Family members said the Navy was looking for him until his suicide.

Of the three brothers, Bobby Junior was the smart one. He was the only one to graduate from high school, although the other two passed their high school equivalency tests. He did well with computers and was a programmer in the Navy.

Although he had problems in his marriage and with the Navy, friends and family members figured Bobby Junior would have been the last person to kill himself.

“He always seemed so stuck on himself,” said Dena, Robert’s ex-wife. “I thought he liked himself too much to kill himself.”

Chastain, the Stones’ boyhood friend, said, “Some people didn’t like him because they thought he was cocky. But that is what I liked about him. When I was down I’d look at him and say, ‘Look how good he feels about himself. Maybe I can too.’ “

But like Robert, Bobby Junior began turning more and more to alcohol. On May 21, 1988, less than two months after he stood at the graves of his younger brothers, Bobby Junior shot himself in the head at his girlfriend’s house after an argument with her. His blood-alcohol content was .16 percent, an autopsy revealed.

His mother drove by that night to visit her son and saw the police cars.

“What happened?” she asked. She began running to the house.

“You don’t want to know,” an officer said.

She ran screaming out of control.

Unable to calm her, police handcuffed her and manacled her feet.

They buried Bobby Junior with his wallet, which held a telegram he had received while on the Navy ship in the Mediterranean. It stated: “Richard Stone shot himself. He is dead.”

Survivors . . .

Patty Bowen and other family members are left pained with questions. Explanations don’t come easy.

“It was a chain reaction that started with Richard,” she said. “That’s the only way I can explain it. I couldn’t say that if Richard hadn’t done it the others wouldn’t either. But people have problems and don’t kill themselves. If everybody killed themselves when they had a problem there wouldn’t be many people left in this world.”

Bowen, 28, has undergone therapy for a year now to help cope with the losses.

Bob Fell, Jamie’s older brother, points out many reasons contributing to the suicides, including mounting personal problems.

“It was an accumulation of everything,” said Fell, 22. “Me and my brother come from a broken homes, and the Stones did too. It seems like today there is more of a pressure to be the best of everything: to have the best truck, the best clothes.

“If you ain’t driving the fastest car and wearing the most gold around your neck, you just ain’t it,” he said.

Working-class children in small-town Leesburg have a tough time making it like the young folks they see on movies and television, Fell said.

“I admire the guy who can work his life away just to keep food on the table,” he said.”I just can’t do that. I get too bored.”

Bob, who like Richard served a hitch in the Army, said he thinks about the Stones and his brother and suicide every day. “Sometimes two or three times a day,” he said. “And it scares the hell out of me.”

After the last suicide David Chastain said he became seriously depressed and started drinking heavily. He finally packed his bags and moved to Tennessee for a four-month sabbatical to think things out. He has come back, though, to Colonial Street.

“There’s no way to explain it, even if you want to,” he said. “Now, after it’s happened and me being so close, I still can’t put it in words how I feel. I felt selfish in a way, hurt because I didn’t have no friends to talk to. I can’t turn and talk to that special person, because they’re gone.”

The Stones’ father, Bobby, lives in Dade City. He didn’t have much to say about his sons’ deaths.

“I had three sons, and now they are gone.”

His brother Earl said Bobby can’t talk about it. “He’s had a hard time with it.”

Latonya Wellman, 22, lives in Jacksonville, N.C. She is going through her second divorce and said she soon will return to Florida. She underwent therapy for a while but quit because she didn’t think it was helping.

“I used to think about committing suicide, but why should I do that? I enjoy life too much.”

Latonya tries to put the deaths of her brothers out of her mind but sometimes they haunt her sleep.

“My brothers were all there in my dreams. They were dead, but they were talking to me,” she said. “I felt so sorry for them. Richard put his hand on my face and said, ‘I didn’t mean to hurt you.’ “

JoAnn Cord lives in Marion County. She has

three photo albums, one for each son. The photos show mostly good times from school, in baseball uniforms, playing in the country at grandma’s, arm wrestling at the kitchen table, Richard and Robert riding a dirt bike on Colonial Street. She can take you through those albums, telling stories about each snapshot, laughing at a memory – like the time Bobby Junior washed the neighbor’s car but left the windows open.

But within each album she keeps sobering reminders that memories are all she has. Sealed carefully in plastic are three obituaries.

Dena Stone, Robert’s ex-wife, said she wishes only that she could have snapped the string of suicides by persuading Robert to get help.

She lives in Gainesville and is trying to support herself and her son.

“I’m trying to forget, but it’s not working because I was in love with that man.”

She is worried about her 2-year-old son. Dena said there is no doubt the toddler remembers his father and the terror-filled night he went away. It seems recently that the little boy has begun to take after his daddy in one respect.

Robert Stone Jr. wakes up often with nightmares, screaming.

Rockpile 232

ALBUM: Rockpile (1980)

MVC Rating: 4.5/$$$$

I used to say that if I was limited to one album to play at a party it would be Dr. John’s Gumbo.

Swampy cajun with creole spices, a magical brew of traditional and current dance songs that, even if you can’t understand the words — are forced to dance by the driving zydeco beat. But guess what? In my experimental ‘sell-some-records’ mission linked here, It was one of the very first bought at my booth at the Alabama Record Collector’s Association. I think I sold it for $18. The price was good for me and the buyer. But, I’ve regretted it ever since.

But I had regrets about most I sold — and that’s why this was an experiment to see how I would handle, and how much money they could make. I sold 33 records for a little over $400.

So what I didn’t foretell was that I let go of a very useful album that could be played successfully at a party over and over again as if you had no other selections.

Now, if you’re paying attention you probably realize that you are in the Rockpile post. And you guessed it, it is the new successor to Dr. John. It was a one-album only gig for a couple successful musicians Nick Lowe and Dave Edmunds

The album is a frothy brew of American rockabilly, and English pop helping push and shape the new genres of New Wave and Power Pop, who both have extensive catalogs of their solo work which this blog covers (HERE FOR EDMUNDS AND HERE FOR LOWE). The Rockpile album, as a listening experience, is a treasure. It’s kind of like Buddy Holly’s 20 greatest where there are no bad songs and even the sad ones make you happy.