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Making connections (blog version)

NOTE: This is a preamble of sorts to another observation about connections I hope to finish up today.

Musicians jamming on a song get into a groove. They are altogether connecting in a series of reactions. Smiles, eye contact: They play off the sounds of the instruments — off each other.

The mix is elevated beyond the contribution of any single player.

They’re connected.

Listen to Dexter Gordon or Walter Wanderley.

When the moment is gone, a song, that was once live music is a memory. It lives on in the brain– a brain that neuroscientists say may be able to store as much as 300 million hours of TV shows were it a video device.

The music connects the musicians who try to connect the audience.

In basketball and other sports, players and the team can get in ‘the zone.’ Every shot goes in, every pass finds its mark.

It’s like jazz.

Elevated improvisation within a structure. Its kind of what I’m doing here. And, it would be appropriate at this time to ask the question: What’s the point? The point these connections, these relationships shouldn’t be taken lightly. The brain is a buzzing slab of electro-excitability that needs its connections, its synapses and neurons to be firing.

I have Lewy body dementia where the connections get snowed in; the neurons get caught in a sticky pile of excess proteins. I get that I have a lot of storage capacity but every day a little is being chipped away. Lewy body dementia robs people the ability to make those connections.

Please join us July 20 for a fund raiser basketball tournament to raise money to fight this horrible disease. I didn’t ask to be the poster boy in this, but I am so happy to be involved. We have raised a total of $25,000 in two years and are looking to do much more.

If basketball isn’t your thing, we have an after party at TrimTab brewery open and free to all. We’ll have Karaoke, purple T-shirts for sale and I hear there may be some dunking going on.

Let’s connect. Go to: www.mikemadness.org

My NP this week are four Paul McCartney albums – 3 good, 1 bad.

For music reviews this week click on www.myvinylcountdown.com

Relationships can be tricky. A misperceived comment; fumbled attempts to help. We listen but aren’t really listening. We make assumptions that aren’t true and build with those assumptions our own wrong-headed case for action – the wrong action.

From the archives today, we have something I wrote about 18 months ago. I believe I meant it as a warning that like a gentle rose, relationships need nurturing to keep the connections alive.

What is more fragile than a relationship?

A day too old rose waiting for one touch to send petals spinning to the ground.

The stability of a family facing a future with too many ifs.

The conviction that doing right is always right. Or always doing right is right.

The profundity of a well educated person.

The joy of sleeping when really really worn out.

The reality you see right now.

The love you can’t define but know it’s true.

The knowledge that the straight trail is better than the switchback.

The theory that a theory is not truth.

The laugh between old friends you may not see again.

The idea that your decisions don’t affect the world.

The notion that there are things that are impossible.

Caring, love as I rearrange everything

What is rare as a loving relationship?

DId you find that yellow bird?

Reach Mike Oliver at moliver@al.com and read his blog at myvinylcountdown.com

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Music heals the brains of premature babies and me (Blog version)

 

Mike Oliver is an opinion columnist who is using music and his writings to raise awareness to Lewy body dementia on his blog myvinylcountdown.com and AL.com.

As you all may have figured out, I enjoy music. (Understatement).

Not only do I enjoy music, I believe it is therapeutic, as I have pointed out before.

I believe it is therapeutic for anyone, not just those like myself who have a degenerative brain disease.

Now, news out of Switzerland on the effects of music on premature babies adds more substance to my, admittedly anecdotal reports of music’s healing properties

“Among very premature babies, some of whom were almost born four months ahead of schedule, those who were given daily doses of music written just for them had brain functions that appeared to be developing better than those who weren’t exposed to the music, ” according to ScienceAlert.com., citing several studies.

Yes! I knew I was on to something. Tiny babies rocking out, shaking their booties, doing the funky chicken are helping their brains.

Well not so fast.

Turns out they weren’t exactly rocking out.

The music (which the babies had no say in choosing) is basically elevator music.

The preemies received “eight minutes of soothing background musi c (Click to hear it), bells, harp, and the Indian snake charmer’s flute five times a week.

Incidentally, the snake charmer’s flute was the most soothing sound to newborns,” ScienceAlert.com reported.

Bells, flute, snake charmer’s flute? Are they trying to teach them to slither out of the crib?

I have a friend, Jill in California, who suffers great physical and mental pain upon hearing the harp.

Did the researchers consider any Iron Maiden or old school Black Sabbath. I find a little ‘Crazy Train’ gets my blood pumping in the morning. That’s the goal here, right? Get the healing power of blood circulation in the brain.

If the experts believe that hard rock may be too much at this age, or encourage head-banging, maybe they can start them off with a power ballad by the Scorpions. Or going to another genre, how about the soothing tones of Barry White? Or Smokey  Robinson and the Miracles? Or the Rev. Al Green?

I listened to some of the music they  used on these little ones and, frankly, it sounds like what we called New Age music. You know , Kitaro. There were no lyrics. I say get them started on words. Old school hip hop like Run DMC or Kurtis Blow.

May want to avoid the Police doing (De do do do de da da da). That, and Janis Joplin singing ‘Cry Baby.’

I think the babies would enjoy the whole catalog of the ‘The Mamas and Papas.’

While this is fun, I’d like to take serious note that the best way to solve this problem is to reduce the number of premature babies. Unfortunately many women lack access to good neonatal health care, and sex education. AL.com’s Anna Claire Vollers is spending the year investigating these and other serious issues facing moms in Alabama .

Follow Anna Claire Vollers excellent reporting on Motherhood in Alabama.

Sciencealert.com says the music was aimed at different  parts of the babies’ day, such as feeding time or waking: “Headphones were placed on all babies during the trial when they were waking or noticed to be awake.”

I can see it, Lil’ Man, Lil’ Woman with the head phones on, maybe some shades, chillin’ to Bob Marley.

“We jammin’ we jammin,’ babies nodding their heads in unison, “we hope you like jammin’ too.”

 

https://youtu.be/H7knTgdgaSU

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Dixie Dregs — 527

ALBUM: ‘What If.’ (1978)

MVC Rating:

4.0/$$

I have a story about the Dixie Dregs. Must have been around 1978 and I was hanging out with Catherine (my future bride), Rose and Carol in downtown Athens, Ga.

We were all high school buddies and happened to be walking past the Georgia Theatre when some folks were loading equipment from a truck into the theater. It was late afternoon.

We sidled, or at least the young women in the group sidled, over  and asked what’s up. They told us they were the Dixie Dregs and were playing that night.

The Dregs members and crew seemed quite chatty, though not to me. Anyway, with me way in the background, they invited ‘us’ to enjoy the show from the front row. (I think at this point they were holding the door open for Catherine, Rose and Carol and I had to practically dive through before it closed in my face.) Anyway free front row show and it was good. An all-instrumental funky band playing music that was hard to pigeon hole.

Ironically, earler that year I had won an award for best high school critical review with a write-up about Sea Level, an all instrumental offshoot of the Allman Brothers, playing the same venue. The award was from the University of Georgia Journalism Department.

Sea Level was playing at the grand opening of the Georgia Theatre as a concert venue. It used to be a movie theater. (It burned down in 2009, but I can attest  it has been re-built and is very much a go-to Athens, Ga. music venue, with the likes of Randall Bramblett and Chuck Leavell frequently playing.}

As for the Dregs’ music, it was musicianship at a high level. A little bit of Mahavishnu Orchestra, a little southern-fried rock, and some Pat Metheny, or Steve Howe-like jazzy guitar-based tunes.  As a guitarist, Steve Morse is about as respected by musicians as you can get.  Since 1994, he’s been lead guitarist for Deep Purple.  

He had big shoes to fill in Deep Purple where the guitar was once wielded by Ritchie Blackmore. Apparently, he has been well received in the group. This from Deep Purple’s website:

Morse brought a funkiness, a depth as guitarist and writer, an unparalleled fluidity as a soloist, a startling aptitude as foil to Lord, and an arsenal of influences – country, folk, jazz, what they’ve sadly labeled “fusion,” and an inherent understanding of blues-based riffs – that meshed effortlessly with the immaculate Glover-Paice sense of swing and Gillan’s seeming capacity to go anywhere at any time, full-throated and eyes ablaze.

On the Dregs’ 1978 album ‘What If,’ which I have, the instrumentals are easy to listen to and sound as if they could be soundtrack miniatures in a way. ‘Take it off the Top,’ the opening song,, sounds so familiar, kind of like a TV soundtrack (in the vein of Rockford Files).

I hate to call it fusion, as well, but the music certainly fuses jazz, blues, rock and some classical conceits into a very listenable sound synthesis. There’s a violin, organ, bass and drums all driven by Morse’s extraordinary guitar.

Counting down my 678 vinyl records before I die of brain disease.