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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.

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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.

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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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Fleetwood Mac– 483, 482

ALBUMS: Rumours (1977): Mystery to Me (1973)

MVC Rating: 5.0/$$$$

Fleetwood Mac  was another ‘soundtrack-of-high-school record for me, it was 1977 andI I was 17. The girls liked this record because it was relationship oriented, albeit, broken ones. And it was melodic. The boys loved it because Stevie Nicks was a good looking, sultry singer. And the band could rock. In other you wouldn’t go wrong on date night with t is cassette. Unless you listen too closely to the words,  but  most didn’t do that,  it seems.

I have two of their albums on vinyl. The world renowned ‘Rumours’ and the lesser known ‘Mystery to Me,’ an album before the arrival of Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham. I am told by purists that the older Fleetwood Mac with  Peter Green was the  best, but I’m not familiar with it. I have seen Green on best guitarists lists over the years.

On ‘Mystery’ there’s a song called ‘Hypnotized’ that people I’ve played it for fall in love with upon first listen. But few can guess that it’s Fleetwood Mac. The ethereal song summons a semi-tropical hazy glaze. It’s the best thing on this album other than the wild cover art featuring a baboon -like creature painting his lips with coconut oil? Dunno, but it fits the hypnotic vibe. As for Rumours what can you say. An album in the realm of classic like Carol King’s ‘Tapestry’ or Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark Side of the Moon.’

fleetwood.jpegMike Oliver | moliver@al.com

Practically every song is a hit and high quality and man I got tired of hearing them on every single radio station all day and all night back in the late 1970’s.

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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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Flash and the Pan — 485, 484

 ALBUMS:  Flash and the Pan (1978);  Lights in the Night (1980)

MVC Rating: Flash: 4.0/$$$;  Lights: 3.5/$$

This is an odd group with an odd, albeit catchy, style.  It was essentially Harry Vanda and George Young, former members of the breakout Australian group -the-Friday-on-my-mind-band, the Easybeats.

Vanda and Young went on to manage and produce songs for AC/DC, for whom Young’s younger brother played.

But between the soaring and crashing of the Easybeats and world domination of AC/DC was Flash and the Pan.

I plucked their self-titled 1978 debut from a bin at WUXTRY  in Athens, Ga.

Their hypnotic studio sound was a little like nothing you’d heard. Although I heard some people describe them as quirky, otherworldly in a 10cc way.

I think the members of 10cc were more clever songwriters. But Flash and the Pan certainly had the stranger sound, starting with their vocals.  The lead vocals delivered usually in a talk/sing style sounded as if it were filtered by a toy megaphone. I guess you could say  it sounded like a voice that could have been used on 10cc’s prison riot hoedown,  Rubber Bullets, The sing-song semi-electronic groove would then explode into a catchy chorus, that across the two albums I have starts sounding a little formulaic.

Best songs on first album: ‘Hey St.  Peter,’ ‘Walking in the Rain’ (covered by Grace Jones, and ‘Down Among the Dead Men,’ a song about the sinking of the Titanic. On the second “Headhunter’ ‘Make Your Own Cross’ and  ‘Calling Atlantis are interesting.

They barely dented US charts, but the second album, Lights in the Night, was No. 1 in Sweden.

The American cover of the debut album (shown at top) is as odd as the sound. People sitting on the beach with Frisbees flying all around them. In the distance is a mushroom cloud. On the back cover, the people are all gone but not the chairs and Frisbees.  Hey St. Peter take me home.

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Fire Town — 486

ALBUM: Fire Town In the Heart  of the Heart Country (1986)

MVC  Rating: 4.0/$$$

For some reason, I have great clarity on how or at least why I bought this.

Critic Steve Simels, then of Stereo Review magazine, said it was one of the best records he had heard. Ordinarily I’d take that with a grain of salt. But Simels was the guy who said Tonio K.’s ‘Life in the Food Chain’ was the best album he had ever heard.

So I bought that Tonio album sight unseen  (or unheard. Remember no samples online in those days, about 1978). And Simels was right, more or less.

Foodchain is a helluva an album. And to this day, I consider Tonio K. to be one of the underappreciated artists of all time.

This Fire Town album? Not so much.  Now this is a very good album, very catchy songs that make you want to hum. But they aren’t plowing new ground here or showing  us  anything we haven’t heard. Very midwestern sounding, country rock or pre-Americana. BoDeans would be a touchstone. They are like the anti-Wilco, with bright cheery tunes and optimistic outlooks. Like John Denver with more electric rock guitar.

The singer’s voice is too generic for me, not bad, but doesn’t quite have that quality of making the listener believe he’s meaning what he’s saying. The songs are actually excellent and  one can see where Simels might of thought he was seeing the NBT, a new Eagles or a new Crosy, Stills & Nash. But  not quite. However this, like Tonio K., is an underappreciated gem.

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Firefall — 488


ALBUM:  The Best of Firefall (1981)

MVC Rating: 3.5/$$

I hate doing this because I kind of did this with the group America. Like America, Firefall writes pretty radio friendly songs that, if put on a loop, would qualify as a torture device. I mean this lovingly Because these songs do have value, they take me back to a place and time..(Please take that schmaltzy saxophone out of ‘Just Remember I Love You.’)

I kind of like ‘Strange Way.’ Their biggest hit ‘You are the Woman’ embodies everything that is good and bad about this group. Good musicianship, catchy melodies with generic love song lyrics. They were so good  that Top 40 radio put them on a loop. And you know what that does to me. Torture.

Funny, the song ‘Cinderella,’ as it opens, seems like it could be their best song, until you pay attention to  the words. As you listen you hear that his girl comes to him ‘heavy with child,,’

I know this is just the narrator of a song, but listen to his reaction:

I said “goddamn girl can’t you see
That I’m breakin’my back
Just tryin’ to keep my head above water
And it’s turnin’ me wild”

He then  says, sings in the song, to take  herself “and the child away.’

For this reason, I’ll take America and their best hits over Firefall, however, ‘Muskrat Love’ must be deleted from America’s list.

Some good inoffensive flute solos in here. And Stephen Stills co-wrote a number of the songs with Rick Roberts, but not the offensive ‘Cinderella.’. Some good guitar in ‘Mexico.’

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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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54.40 –489

ALBUMS: 54.40 (1986)

MVC Rating: 4.0/$$$

This was the second album by this ‘alternative’ band fromTsawwassen, British Columbia.

They are described as alternative but they, based on this album seem, more straight ahead guitar driven rock. I almost dismissed them as a generic hard rock band, but I let them seep in. The songs have a nice flow. “Baby Ran’ and ‘Take My Hand.’

“I Go Blind’ was covered successfully by Hootie and the Blowfish. Unexpectedly good guitar runs at time. ‘Me Island’ may be where they got the alternative tag, sounding a little like Buzzcocks meet  Sisters of Mercy. Not the best combination, but alternative sounding. And some real freak-out music in ‘Holy Cow.’

‘Alcohol Heart’ is powerful.

Do I still feel all right

Or do I walk on by,

how do I recognize a friend

And when I cover up my eyes I  can feel the whole world, I can feel the whole world

The band has apparently done well, with 14 albums since the 1984. I think they are a bigger name in their home country  where they have charted numerous times. One song I know off their third album got lots of American college radio play: ‘One Gun.’

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Bryan Ferry — 490

ALBUM: Bryan Ferry . ‘These Foolish Things.’ (1973)

MVC Rating: 4.0/$$$

 Bryan Ferry, man. He’s my favorite cover man.

This album of covers is the evidence.

This was a solo effort; I think his best, although I’d have to admit I haven’t kept up with him in recent years.

He was lead singer for Roxy Music. Roxy’s the High Road, a live EP contains another amazing couple of  covers (Neil Young’s ‘Like a Hurricane’ and John Lennon’s ‘Jealous Guy.’) Roxy Music’s Avalon is another favorite album of mine. I’ll review Roxy Music when I get to the R’s.

For now I get to dust off this one which has been fun listening to.

Standout covers include: the opening track, Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rain is Gonna Fall;’ ‘Tracks of my Tears,’ famously sung by Smokey Robinson; and ‘You Won’t See Me,’ a version which I think I like more than Beatles’ version. I know, heresy.

The Stones’ cover, ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ was an ambitious challenge but a failed one in my estimation. It’s one of those where the original artists can’t be beat so why try. I say this, though, I was recently blown away by Pink singing ‘Me and Bobby McGee’ – a song which I felt Janis Joplin’s cover of the Kris Kristofferson song was the definitive take.It still is but Pink slams the song home. Alhough it really is a close impression of Joplin’s version, who would of thunk Pink could channel that tricky song the way she did.

Speaking of Janis, Ferry does an interesting version of ‘Piece of My Heart’ that turns it inside out showing the incredible subtleties in Ferry’s croonful (my word) voice.

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Fairport Convention — 491

ALBUM: Fairport Chronicles (1972)

MVC Rating: 4.0/$$$$

Those of you reading my blog know by now, I wasn’t a collector of records for value’s sake. In other words I wasn’t looking for rare; I was looking for cheap.

To this end I went down various paths in my musical tastes and purchases. I am most of the time a fan of ‘best-of’ or ‘greatest hits’ collections. Most ‘real’ collectors are not. I used greatest hits to learn about an artist that I didn’t know too well and see if it led me to a whole new avenue of music. The Kinks were a band like that, I think my first Kinks record was a Pye label greatest hits. I went ‘wow’ and have since collected about 8 or 10 Kinks records, many cut-outs and bargain bin material (Soap Opera anyone?)

This is true with Fairport Convention, in a way.

I  knew virtually nothing about the 1960s and 1970s English folk rock group when I bought Chronicles, a wonderful compilation that sounds like a very well done studio album.

The album led me to other artists and other purchases: the amazing guitarist Richard Thompson and his solo work; the super great vocalist (and Richard’s ex-wife) Linda Thompson; the early folk-rock-jazz groups, Pentangle and the Strawbs; and the angelic vocalist Sandy Denny.

One of the best dark albums of all time is Richard and Linda Thompson’s ‘Shoot out the Lights,’ with songs such as ‘Wall of Death’ and ‘Did She Jump or was She Pushed.’ They recorded it while breaking up and it is heart rendering.

On Fairport Convention, there is a lilting quality of sadness lurking. Sadly Beautiful, to borrow from a Replacements song.

Songs like: ‘Who knows Where the Time Goes;’ ‘Meet on the Ledge;’ Dylan cover ‘Percy’s Song;’ ‘Fotheringay’; ‘Sloth’; ‘Genesis Hall; and ‘Farewell, Farewell,’ come together and set a lost, lonely, ethereal atmosphere that alternately may touch your heart or punch you in the gut.