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Daily Journal, 4/23, 2020, the Right Think version

As some of my columns go I didn’t expect to write a column when I was just fiddling around on my computer. And thinking.

So I wrote up a little ditty about thinking. (Other stuff coming: a review on my Queen records and something about a Mixtape. And don’t forget my recent P.J {Proby review, a character indeed.)

Keep thinking folks!

Do our brains have an infinite number of thoughts?

By Mike Oliver | moliver@al.com

Think about it.

When you are forming a thought you could go in a million directions. Or, maybe an infinite number of directions.

I’m thinking right now of the beach. I’m thinking of the emerald blue water and white sugar sand, I’m thinking of lotion, and sunburn. I’m thinking about the coronavirus. I’m thinking of a story I read about two cats in different parts of New York who got the coronavirus.

“I wonder if dolphins get the disease,” I think. Stop!

Stop these thoughts, I’ve got to finish this column.

So think about it: Do we have an infinite number of thoughts?

No, you say?

When you die, your brain dies so that would end the thoughts, you aver. Therefore, the number of thoughts a person has is finite.

But wait a minute, what if we are talking about everybody’s brain, not just a brain. Or, let’s suppose we are immortal and the universe is infinite. Seems like we would have, or be capable of having, an endless number of thoughts?

Google receives 63,000 searches per second.

Of those searches, 15 percent have never been searched on Google, according to the SEOtribunal.com, which I found using Google. Never? Never!

That’s an astounding number of new queries if you think about it. That’s 229 million per hour and 15 percent would mean that 34 million Google searches each hour are searches that have never been made before.

Like, I just Googled: “Do dolphins get the coronavirus?” The answer is yes so it probably has been searched. OK, new search: “Given that dolphins do get the disease how far is a safe distance from an infected dolphin firing off snot through its blowhole? Well, 100 yards is the immediate answer, I think Google has had that one too. (So, you can see it’s hard to come up with something new to search.)

Moving on, I believe there may be an infinite number of thoughts.

I would like to see if that 15 percent of searches number holds steady over the years.

I’m dipping my toe, here, into the ‘infinite monkeys theorem.’ You know the one: If you give an infinite number of monkeys a typewriter and teach them to mash keys at random, the monkeys would eventually write the complete works of Shakespeare (or maybe Edgar Rice Burroughs). It’s true, in theory.

So I started wandering down this path of thought, when I was reminded of a measurement I do know.

And that is: The human brain has 100 billion brain cells.

I have Lewy body dementia and it kills brain cells.

But think about our mindpower. There are 7.5 billion people on Earth with (maybe) an infinite number of thoughts.

There are thoughts leading-to-questions-leading-to-cures for my condition, for Parkinson’s, for Alzheimer’s for cancer, and, yes, COVID-19.

So think people. Think.

And use Google when necessary.

Mike Oliver is an opinion columnist who writes about living with Lewy body dementia and other topical issues. Read his blog at www.myvinylcountdown.com.

Thinking story also published in AL.com w/ photos and videos.

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P.J. Proby — 243, 242, 241, 240, 239

ALBUMS: Three Week Hero-PJP (1969); Enigma (1966): You Can’t Come Home Again (45 rpm) (1968): Somewhere (1967): What’s Wrong With My World (1968): Focus Con Proby (1977)

MVC Rating: Hero 4.0/$$$; Enigma 4.0/$$$; Home (45) 3.5/$$; Somewhere 3.5/$$; What’s Wrong with My World 2.5/$$; Focus Con Proby. (pending review)

I have written about Proby earlier when I named one of his albums one of the seven most underrated albums in My VInyl Countdown collection.

Proby’s story is certainly a wild one: he got kicked out of England; Van Morrison wrote a song about him; his sister dated Elvis; he played Elvis in a stage production; sang mostly rock and roll and ballads but at one point in the 1970s was lead singer for Focus the heavy prog band from the Netherlands in ‘Focus Con Proby.’ Focus is a group best known for their heavy metal yodeling song called Hocus Pocus.

First, a quick update on My Vinyl Countdown.com. That’s my website where I state my mission by vowing to listen to, write about and list (in alphabetical order) all of the records I have collected since, oh about age 12.

I’m 60 now. (I took about a two-decade detour into digital).

I am doing this to raise awareness of Lewy body dementia, which I have.

There is no cure for this disease, the second-leading form of degenerative dementia after Alzheimer’s. So yes, I am forgetful and I have tremors now and then. But thanks to modern science and miracles of their cost prohibitive I’m doing fine. My bank account may not be doing fine, but I am.

So anyway, I started with 678 records and have reviewed 438. Now I have about 240 records to go. (Give or take).

Thanks to everyone with the notes and kind words throughout this. It keeps me hanging on. (Got a Vanilla Fudge album to do when I get to the V’s).

Proby is one of those artists that I really didn’t know during my formative vinyl years. He’s one of several on the countdown that I have purchased more recently (past 3 years) as I started thumbing through bargain bins and thrift shops.

Coming home after a thrift store find I put on his Enigma record and immediately noticed the voice. It was an entity all to itself, Vegas, swamp rock, Elvis, Otis, Tom Jones — that voice channeled just about everything.

He was not moving the needle much in the U.S. but the UK seemed to love him. He was like Bizarro World Elvis: or Tom Jones playing Mick Jagger in a movie about the Stones; or Johnny Cash if he had grown up in Ireland during the 1950s and 60s and was heavily influenced by Van Morrison.

(These are fun, I could go on but I’ll restrain myself.)

The ‘accident’ sparked so much audience reaction that it happened again ……..and again. I couldn’t find any stories that detailed how many times it happened. But an oversight office on moral turpitude basically had Proby thrown out of the country.

PJ Proby’s albums were often a hodgepodge of styles looking for a theme. Some real gems however found within.

About the music. I would recommend Enigma which has his single ‘Niki Hoeky’ a Deep South novelty tune in the vein of Tony Joe White’s ‘Polk Salad Annie.’ Or about anything Jim Stafford would do.

Proby’s vocals jump comfortably from falsetto to hard rock/soul back down again.

The man knew he had a voice and that was possibly his downfall.

On stage he knew he could wow anyone when he opened his mouth to sing. But his ability to sing any type of song also meant that he recorded any type of songs — as if he was going for the shotgun affect and seeing which style will stick

The problem, which comes clear in the very-good-but-disjointed ‘Three Week Hero., ‘ is that he thinks it’s all too funny, like a comedian who has no sense of when to quit repeating the punch line. His exaggerated bumpkin accent on the opening title song on Hero has no reasoning behind it, context.

It’s bizarre as if he was brushing up to be on TV’s Hee Haw.

In another really good song he sounds like Johnny Cash — only better!

Then he airs out a completely gut wrenching Otis Redding like vocal on a song that made me readjust the listening device. He covered ” It’s so hard to be a N-word.’ No, I’m not going to write it).

It’s a song written by Georgia civil rights activist and African American Mable Hillery. I was brought up that white people never use the N-word so I questioned the appropriateness of a white man singing. Here’s Mable’s version.

And here is Proby’s version with the backing of a group of four men called the New Yardbirds.

Yes, the New Yardbirds were John Bonham, John Paul Jones, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant. It is believed to be the first time the future Led Zeppelin members recorded together.

NOTE: This song is part of a 3-song medley that also includes ‘George Wallace came Rolling in this Morning.’

Off the same album is this one which sounds like it could have been a single.