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.’
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:
“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.
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.
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.’
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.
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.
Lot of things going on here. Josh Tillman aka Father John Misty is a smart guy. I think he knows it.
Pure Comedy is a song that is near brilliant.
Tillman’s story in one sentence: The drummer of folk rock group Fleet Foxes took some psilocybin mushrooms a few years ago, became enlightened, started using a pseudonym, and began wearing better clothes.
Couple of anomalies to clear up before I go forward. The usual My Vinyl Countdown records are ones I picked in the 1970’s and 1980’s. I’ve been counting them down, 678 in all, to raise awareness of Lewy body dementia, which I have. I have about 500 records to go .
Pure Comedy breaks the mode a bit in that this is a 2017 vinyl recording that I received from family members who want to extend my life under the theory that the more I have the more time I have to live. And it is true that this disease shortens lifespans but that I have vowed to finish the reviews, which on my current pace will be about 2 or more years from now unless I accelerate.
So, anomaly one, this is contemporary. Not my golden 1980s — stop-making-synth records. I will review and countdown new vinyl, when I get it and have done so at least two other times with Joseph Arthur and Max DeMarco.
I have some more coming up, including, I believe, the Fleet Foxes which connects to the Misty record here.
And, anomaly two, this double record set came with two of the same records – I got two side 3’s and side 4s. I did not get a side 1 and 2. What the hell? It’s a factory packaging mistake that in no way makes it more valuable. So, I filled in the rest of this record by going on YouTube to listen to the songs I was missing, especially the title track, a key song here.
Opening line is one strong couplet, foreshadowing and outlining the album’s life-is-so-bad-it’s-funny themes. The comedy of it all. The divine comedy of it all. Star.
The comedy of man starts like this; our brains are way too big for our mother’s hips.
But the album itself cannot stay at that high level and sinks slowly back into the primordial pool. To make this totally work, you would have to love the words so much to hang with this singer who is not working much in traditional pop structures. Dylan could be like that – so could early Billy Joel who went 180 degrees the other way later toward more formulaic derivative pop.
Would it be fair to say Tillman is somewhere between Billy Joel and Bob Dylan? Probably not. More like a day-glo Randy Newman.
But Tillman started something, by starting the album in this way. He caused me to be on alert for a real honest-to-God trailblazing singer-songwriter. The rest of the album didn’t tip me over though. So he is still on my ‘watch’ list. Update: I just watched/saw Misty’s ‘God’s Favorite Customer’ on YouTube. Excellent. Beautiful. I’m starting to tip. Then I watched ‘Mr. Tillman video. Wow. Now I have to get this on vinyl and put the new one on my countdown.
Back to Pure Comedy, here’s the opening that says it all and forecasts more:
The comedy of man starts like this; our brains are way too big for our mother’s hips.
And so nature, she divines this alternative:
We emerge half-formed and hope whoever greets us on the other end
Is kind enough to fill us in
And babies, that’s pretty much how it’s been ever since
I’m being silly but something has me a little shaken, or maybe the word bemused is how best to describe how I feel about this. Bear with me.
I wrote a story about lightning today for AL.com. I was going to put a photo I took many years ago, on I believe Fort Walton Beach or Destin on Florida’s Panhandle.
Probably 25 or 30 years ago, my wife, Catherine, and I had just pulled up to the beach and despite a gathering storm got out to walk. I saw lightning and grabbed my camera. I ended up getting a nice shot of two lightning bolts out in the ocean reflected like a mirror-image on the wet beach. This was the days of real film so I really had no idea what I had until later developed. But when I saw it I went to camera store and had it enlarged and framed. I was proud.
My wife, not quite as impressed as I was with my lightning photo, has tolerantly let me hang it — in the basement.
Anyway I decided to take a picture of my picture last night to use as an illustration for a column, which was about my longtime near obsession with the cosmic qualities of lightning.
One of the stories I tell in my article today is about a golfer who had his silver cross, which was on a chain around his neck while playing golf in a thunderstorm. The cross vaporized as the golfer was hit by lightning on the Florida course. He lived, but the lightning left an indelible mark. The lightning flash boiled the cross leaving him with a permanent scar in the shape of a cross.
So when it came time to add a photo of my photo, I was shocked. I took about eight snaps. One was different from the rest. One of the two bolts appeared to be in the shape of the cross. So I’m not one who thinks it’s a miracle when an image of the Virgin Mary appeared on a grilled cheese sandwich. That sold for $28,000 by the way. Hmmm.
This is the same photo which is hanging in my basement. The cross appeared in one of eight shots I took. See second picture, lightning bolt on right shaped like cross. In the third picture I circle the cross/lightning, but it’s seems kind of hard to see. To the naked eyeball, the picture looks like the one on the left. So to be clear, there is only one photo. I snapped multiple shots — 8 — within about a 5-minute period. My guess is there was some kind of lighting change that happened as I moved to a slightly different angle? But still baffling. And added on to other inexplicable ‘coincidences’ — here and here — I am beginning to think I have a brain disease.
Those are the highlights. Never really liked the Eurythmics much. I always thought Annie could sing, but I thought she thought she could sing better than she can sing. I bought this on the singular best song and overplayed song she and Dave Stewart have ever done: ‘Sweet Dreams.’ (Which to me sounded like a great Madonna song.)
So I guess I’m realizing this 30 years too late. But I bought the wrong record..
ALBUMS: Emerson Lake and Palmer (1970); Works Vol. 2 (1977)
When it comes to Emerson, Lake and Palmer I find myself feeling inadequate.
I loved ‘Lucky Man,’ when I was 13 or so (actually still do) so I got that album.
But that was written by Greg Lake when he was 12! OMG.
The classically influenced forays by Emerson and gang are labeled pretentious by some critics.
I don’t mind saying, I don’t find them pretentious. They are sometimes beautiful to my ears and sometimes they are over my ears and over my head.
ELP was no obscure Soft Machine here (see my home page graphic).
ELP sold about 50 million records worldwide.
When I posted on my Van Cliburn albums, I wondered in the column if Emerson could have beaten Van Cliburn in the International Tchaikovsky Competition. Well I didn’t wonder so overtly but I did set up ‘dueling’ videos.
I don’t know what’s going on when someone sounds like they have three hands on the piano. I can never break this down like altrockchick.com, a multi-instrumentalist, multilingual and probably one of the most insightful rock critics I’ve read of late.
. Read a snippet from her review of ELP’s Trilogy:
Here Keith Emerson demonstrates his dynamic flexibility on the piano, quieting detractors with a delicately played and beautifully phrased sequence. His return to percussive piano chords signals the intro to Part 2, a passage with tiny hints of Copland, foreshadowing the later track, “Hoedown.” Greg Lake then returns to sing the enigmatic closing verses.
I cannot write that. But I believe she knows it based on her other writings and the authority with which she writes.
Now my mentor and adversary (he has no idea who I am, of course), Robert Christgau, the grand poo-bah of acerbic crank, famously panned ELP, and said the fans are as pretentious as the band, or something like that.
Uh oh. I recently sat listening to ELP with my daughter, late 20s, and we thoroughly enjoyed Works Vol. 2 and their self-entitled debut album. Emily would read a bit during the contemplative pieces and perk up and grab the album cover on some of the more brazen ones. She is the least pretentious person I know. (She likes Dixie Chicks, who can also play their instruments.)
And I can listen to a master pianist, Emerson, play Scott Joplin all day.
Now I’m digging through my box ‘o cassette tapes because I remember I had Tarkus in that format.
I sold my Insect Trust .45 Saturday so Tarkus might be a good replacement in my rotation.
Did you know the mayor of Atlanta is the daughter of Major Lance?
Interesting. I did not know that. I learned this as I was researching this record compilation called ‘Endless Beach.’
Who is Major Lance, you ask?
A lesser known R&B singer who had some hits in the 1960s, notably ‘Um, Um, Um, Um, Um,’ and ‘The Monkey Time.’
This record also led to a search of information on Carolina Beach Music, a sub-genre of old and new R&B closely associated with the dance called the Carolina Shag. My take on listening to this album is that it is quite nice, pleasant, feel-good music. Undiscovered gem.
Some of the artists here, playing music represented from 1963 to 1979, include Robert John, Tower of Power, The Tymes, Tina Charles, Wild Cherry, Otis Leavill, and Spiral Staircase.
This two – record set has a very detailed R. Crumb-like cover credited to Ellwood Smith.
Keisha Lance Bottoms
Liner notes explain the Carolina Beach sound.
Lance’s daughter is Keisha Lance Bottoms, the 60th mayor of Atlanta.
ALBUMS: Emerson Lake and Palmer (1970); Works Vol. 2 (1977)
