Daily journal, Dec. 16, 2019, ‘Knocking’ edition

Who does the best version of ‘Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,’ the Bob Dylan song from the 1970s?

Watch for a post on that later this week but you can help by sending me suggestions. There’s of course Dylan’s version and Guns and Roses version which I would start at as reference points. There’s other good competition though.

Regular readers of this blog may miss stories that appeared in AL.com only. And vice versa.

Here’s two stories that didn’t get published here. I received good feedback from the one about Lennon and mixed response from ‘bloody fable.’

Lennon’s God

Bloody Fable

I’m coming up on some time off but keep looking a i will continue to post when needed or inspired.

NP (Now playing Pretenders and Tom Petty as I wade deeply into the P’s. I also have found a couple of stragglers from the N’s and O’s that i need to get up.

Protomartyr — 285

ALBUMS: Relatives in Descent (2017)

MVC Rating: 4.0/$$$$

Post-punk they call it. Pere Ubu-like. I hear Lou Reed-like vocal word play. There’s a darkness about it that almost dips its toe into Goth, like the Cure did or maybe even as far as Sisters of Mercy.

This is a record I received a year ago for my birthday and since I’ve been listening to my 678 albums in alphabetical order, I haven’t had a chance to listen this more than a few times.

Despite all the references I give above, my first reaction was a relatively obscure Midwestern group called Eleventh Dream Day. Not so much lyrically but the driving jangly guitar which sits very close to the front, along with killer bass, constantly driving the angsty words which sometimes feature the same line over and over and sometimes veer into the Captain Beefheart experimental realm.

The persistent chord-a-matic guitar strums remind me a little of my high school buddy, Paul Hammond RIP, and his work in Time Toy and Little Tigers in the heydey of the Athens, Ga., music scene.

Good stuff. Go for it if you are interested in a punky Lou Reed — hey wait a minute that would be Velvet Underground. No? Yes.

The band reminds at times of Athens, Ga. band Time Toy

New Riders of the Purple Sage — 285

ALBUM: Best of New RIders of the Purple Sage ( 1976)

MVC Rating: 4.0/$$

With my Southern roots I grew up with country, country rock, folk rock and blues rock. On the west coast there was an equally dedicated group of musicians who played roots music before they called it roots music. That means a song might have banjo, pedal guitar, dobro, mandolin or other acoustical instruments.

They formed groups out there like New Riders of the Purple Sage with members Jerry Garcia and Phil Lesh, of the Grateful Dead. I’ve written before that, probably due to my Southern roots, the Allman brothers were my pick for a jam band, not the Grateful Dead. But in the past couple years I’ve gone from dismissing the Dead to admiring and even enjoying some of their work.

The psychedelic bluegrass rock blend of the Dead can be seen in this Purple Sage record. (This ‘Best of’ culls from seven albums between 1971 and 1976) and includes a nice cover ‘Hello Mary Lou,” the song RIcky Nelson made popular.

There were also in the 1960s and 1970s some cool sounds from that genre by Kalaidoscope, featuring an young banjo prodigy David Lindley, later to play guitar (and other stringed instruments) with Jackson Brown’s band.

The West Coast also had the Byrds, Gram Parsons, Poco, and It’s a Beautiful Day working in the same territory.

Administrative note: I am doing this record now while I’m in the ‘O’s because I missed it in the ‘N’s. That’s going to happen as I go farther toward the end — which will be a thing. I started this with 678 albums and I am below 300 to go. But those 678 have likely grown by 100 over the past two years. Just guessing.

The group on another greatest hits featuring live music has this Stones’ cover:

Mike Oldfield — 286

ALBUM: Tubular Bells (1973)

MVC Rating: 4.0/$$

This as many might know here was the theme song for the Linda Blair head spinning vehicle, The Exorcist, AKA ‘Get the Hell out of Me,” AKA as “Rotation, Rotation, Rotation.”

Sorry, I have to laugh to keep from recalling those horrific scenes when the Devil occupied the body of a young Hollywood actress. No wait, Blair was an actress playing a little girl who was definitely not an actress.

This movie was a cultural phenomenon. People actually had to be carried out of the theater or so the reports go.

If there was nothing else to take away from this movie — and it would be hard to take it away once it starts —and that would be that it brought to the national forefront two words.

Projectile vomiting.

Movie-goers learned from this movie that Linda Blair was fed way too much pea soup. I think if they investigate they may find the vomiting was connected to the head-spinning. You do a few 360s with your noggin and tell me you are not a little queasy.

Blair looked like a full-circle water sprinkler, only with gobs of goo instead of water.

Oh sorry. I made up some of that. But I did that to contrast what was an over-the-top extremely dramatic and tension building movie with the music, which is over-the-top, and extremely dramatic. So, perfect fit.

It’ll be interesting to see whether the movie or the music will be the bigger 1970s cultural touchstone. My bet is on the music.

The music fits the movie. It’s orchestral and symphonic in its sweep, not to mention psychedelic and dark.

Did I mention Oldfield, some kind of prodigy who could play dozens of instruments, created this at the age of 19? Wow. He apparently was in several bands as a young teen and due to family problems stayed in his room practicing guitar for hours on end, according to the well sourced Wikipedia page.

This album I bought used for $5 about a month or so ago after my man Willie Moseley, senior writer for Vintage Guitar magazine, suggested Oldfield as a top, if not the top, guitarist of all time. His suggestion was spurred by my posts about lists of greatest guitarists.

I listened. And Moseley had a point. Besides directing and other duties Oldfield spends a good time on his guitar, snapping, ripping through tubulur gongs of sound. Power chords, fuzzed tones and breakneck soloing are all there. And, what’s important it works with the music.

Good finding this record. True 1973 is a long time ago but I still remember the music played on the radio. That radio single was taken from the intro of the two-sided first album. There were many permutations and re-releases to come as the album sold an astonishing 15 million copies worldwide, including 2.6 million in the UK alone.

The music on head phones reveals repetitive riffs jumping on board one-by-one building to big and small crescendos. I flipped to Part. 2, the second side and ran into some parts that wordlessly disturbed me.

There was more tubulur bell dinging but there were unearthly sounds like phantom wolves howling — and snarls and growls of demons in the darkness as the music rose in volume and smothered the room.

I was having a flashback of Linda Blair squealing like a giant razorback. I pushed the off button, backed slowly, out of the room, and shut the door.

I need to go exorcise.

Roy Orbison –288, 287

ALBUMS: Roy Orbison’s Greatest Hits (1962), 4.5/$$$; All Time Greatest Hits (1986), 4.0/$$$. <both docked a half point for not having Pretty Woman.>

Orbison’s heydey was shortly after I was born. . I probably heard his songs Only the Lonely and Crying at sweaty sock hops in a gym in Indiana.

Hey what’s a guy and gal to do in rural Indy after corning cars, skating at the roller rink, and playing pinball at the laundromat.

So Orbison provided a lot of slow dance material. Sad rejection crying and whining even to some degree but it was slow dance material for sure.

Oh yeah I forgot to mention there were hay rides.

I was the new kid coming from Georgia to a place that didn’t get many new kids. I didn’t know to much about hay rides but I said:

“Hey.”

Now.

Indiana, where I lived for three years growing up — 7th, 8th and 9th grades — is loaded with coming-of-age tales — and I don’t mean that sexually, well maybe I do: we were puppets of a biological force we had no idea how to control or live with. My school was called Klondike Junior High School and our nickname was the Nuggets.

In Indiana?

Where the only gold was corn aging in the fields, awaiting frustrated teenagers to come and get these hard golden kernels to rattle some car radiators.

But I digress. Damn did I digress.

Roy Orbison. His voice was one of the best in rock music. You’ve heard of singers who can break a light bulb with the sonic frequencies. Well Orbison’s multi-octave voice could unscrew the light bulb, set it gently down on a bed of feathers.

Roy Orbison singing for the lonely, hey I want you and I want you only — “Thunder Road,” Bruce Springsteen.

WIkipedia writes: Tim Goodwin, who conducted the orchestra that backed Orbison in Bulgaria, had been told that Orbison’s voice would be a singular experience to hear. When Orbison started with “Crying” and hit the high notes, Goodwin stated: “The strings were playing and the band had built up and, sure enough, the hair on the back of my neck just all started standing up. It was an incredible physical sensation .

The video below was of the Traveling Willburys filmed after Roy died. His voice is on it and note Orbison’s framed portrait on the wall..

T

These albums I own have virtually the same line-up, but there is one big difference. The second, newer one, is re-recorded. Yes, they are not the original hits, which ticked me off — and i’m sure others felt the same way when they found out. It’s not prominently mentioned on the cover. But after getting over the initial ripped-off feeling, I listened to it and, you know, it’s not bad. Heck, if Roy Orbison needs to be covered, who better than the Big O.

Musically the sound is a little softer on the re-recorded one, but it’s still Orbison’s voice on this double album.

A Parable: The diagnosis of a man with a hat (BLOG edition)

NOTE: I published a column on AL.com over the weekend which included a parable. I am now publishing the blog version of the parable on My Vinyl Countdown. The story comes out of this notion that whether we are healthy or terminally ill, we are all going to die.

He not busy being born is busy dying – Bob Dylan ‘It’s Alright Ma, I’m Only Bleeding.”

A man is at the doctor’s office, hat in hand.

Man: How long I got Doc?

Doctor: 37 years, four months and two days.

Man : Whoa is that an average of lifespans after diagnosis?

Doctor: No average here. That’s how much time you have, I can tell you the exact second if you wish.

Man: No no. What do I do?

Doctor: Live! Live life.

Man: But now that you’ve told me the exact date I can’t stop thinking about it. Should I start making plans? There’s so much more I want to do.

Doctor: Well, you have 37 years four months and two days. Tomorrow at this time there will be one less day.

Man: AAaaargh. I’m dying.

The man ran out of the doctor’s office and into the street screaming.

‘I’m dying, I’m dying.”

A homeless person touched the man’s arm. ‘But you’re living. You’re living.”

The man stopped. He gave the homeless person a $20 bill. He went into a café, picked up a book and turned to a page.

A friend sat down.

Friend: What are you thinking about?

Man: My doctor said I have 37 years, four months and two days left to live

Friend: We are all going to die.

Man: Should I laugh or cry?

Friend: Yes.

The man looked at his friend. He looked down at the page with words by Henry David Thoreau.

He read: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

The man and friend sipped hot coffee. The heat felt good in the bustling café; outside was bone-chilling cold. The man looked again at Thoreau’s words.

“Live your life, do your work, then take your hat,” Thoreau wrote.

The man looked around the table, and underneath.

Man: Where’s my hat?

The man decided he must re-trace his steps. He looked and looked at the cafe, in the streets at the police station. He was driven by the words of a prophet: Nothing’s ever lost on God’s green Earth. She told this to the children. Time passed and he enjoyed life and almost forgot about his hat.

Then one day, five years later, , he spotted the hat on the doctor’s head as the doctor left the office one day.

Man: That’s my hat, doc.

Doctor: I know.

Man: Why didn’t you return it to me?

Doctor: I knew you would be back..

Man: But you’ve had it for five years?

Doctor: It takes time to get to the source.

His and hurricanes (Part 12 of a serial story)

SCENE: Prosby woke up feeling fuzzy headed after dispatching a killer bot into Alexander Springs. The head pool of the spring was about the size of two backyard pools.

Prosby’s first thought was relayed to him by his face. It was planted, face down of course, in the sand.

His second thought was relayed to him by his upper shoulder. It had been sliced by the circular saw on the robot’s arm and it hurt like a mother$%#$#@.

“Hey man, stay down! We are trying to help you.” Prosby’s eyes came in and out of focus. He had lost a lot of blood.

“Hippie Chick,” he said without thinking, looking deep into the pools of black dilated eyes, tinged with ocean blue.

It appeared she didn’t have any clothes on as her honey brown hair nearly touched her knees. While confirming that observation he suddenly he realized he was naked. And he had no hair to use as cover! He started looking around.

‘Relax Robot Hunter. Clothes aren’t used much here. Your closes are dirty, torn and bloody. We will make you new ones.” Hippie Chick seemed to have a bevy of hippie chicks.

Prosby’s head hurt. They were in a small clearing covered by a canopy of trees. It was warm. It appeared as an outdoor cathedral.

Hippie Chick brought him something to drink. “This will help heal you” she said.

He drank it and fell into a deep dreamy state but was awake. He asked what they gave him. The nectar of honeysuckle, ground nutmeg concentrate and oil of budding yellow primrose, said Hippie Chick.

“Let’s get you to camp where you can recover,” she said. He felt for his right shoulder using his left hand. He felt wet dirt.

“Gray clay,” she said.

“It wounds all heals,” she said laughing, running away. “Stay here, they will bring you.”

About 10 naked hippie chicks were laughing; He was not sure if they were laughing at him as he stood up in all of his glory? Or the joke Hippie Chick made before running away?

They took him to see the men, hippie dudes. They sat in a circle and urged him to sit in the middle. The women came and sat next to the men. He started to daydream, thinking of Burnese and how difficult it will be to rescue her. He imagined running away with her and being safe as they live out their years together. He thought of Burnese saying: “And how long did you stay in the woods with the naked women while I was near death?”

This snapped out of his reverie. The hippies were laughing. They talked into the night sipping Elderberry wine.

He spent a day or two healing. He practiced WoW with them. The hippie colony had a meditative spiritual focus on the word ‘WoW. At around midday, they would gather in a tent revived from long ago. And they all said WoW. Not in unison. They would just walk around and say, ‘WoW.’ WoW, WoW, I mean WoW. It was the perfect word, they said, it was their word for creation. It was the same backward and forward. It was WoW that opened the universe to their beings, their souls, they said.

Wow. Just WoW.

Prosby actually got into it a litle bit. Making your lips shape the WoW was kind of funny after a few hundred WoWs.

HIppie Chick took an interest in Prosby, and snuggled up against him around the communal fire pit, But Prosby told her his story and said he loved another woman. She kissed him on the forehead and said, ‘Go rescue Burnese. She’s a fine woman. I’ll always be here.’ She smiled and disappeared into the darkness. He was off.

He didn’t look forward to this leg of the trip.

The Hippies persuaded him not to use Alexander Springs because every time someone uses it as a portal, it draws unwanted attention. One time after three assassins went through the portal and killed a rising young politician J. Effum Kaye, the government attempted to plug the spring shut with cement. The Hippies plagued the shut-down efforts with diversion tactics and nighttime raids. Finally the government gave it up.

So Prosby took it to the road, onward to Auburndale, which was near the coast now as Tampa and St. Petersburg were underwater. The air will likely get worse as Prosby approached the area. It’s as if Florida residents had retreated and huddled up, millions of them around the Auburndale area. Underground was the desirable place to live and breathe, above ground you need masks and a protection from the bounty hunters, rabid, vicious animals, diseases, and of course the ever-present drug gang wars. In the Underground, you had restaurants, fitness gyms, health care and decent employment if you don’t mind being part of the History of the World Project, rewriting and documenting thousands of pages and computer drives of tedious information. All other employment consisted of services such as cleaning, cooking, waiting tables, and a few entertainment jobs but you could only play songs approved by the government. The elite rulers knew the power of music.

To Be Continued …

Van Morrison — 308, 307, 306, 305

ALBUMS: Astral Weeks (1968 ); Moondance (1970); Tupelo Honey (1971); ): St. Dominic’s Preview (1972 ); Hard Nose the Highway (1973); T.B. Sheets (1973 ); Common One (1980); No Guru, No Method, No Teacher (1986); World of Them (1973)

MVC Ratings: Astral and Moondance get top scores with 5. Both come with $$$$, but it might be hard to find in good condition under $20. Tupelo Honey, St. Dominic’s and No Guru comes in at 4.5 with $$$$ for Tupelo and St. Dominic’s; and TB Sheets at $$$; World of Them is 4.0 with a $$$.

Just after I learned of my illness, my wonderful friends and colleagues raised several thousand dollars to fund a trip to Europe. Ireland was one of four countries we visited on this ‘bucket list” trip. We went in this order: Spain, Scotland, Ireland, England and back to Spain where my daughter was living.

In Dublin, Ireland , I had to go see the Irish Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It was a small-ish building, having moved into a place that used to be a pub. I loved it but I had one major criticism, and told the museum people — who were good folks — about it. There was not enough Van Morrison. One could argue that he should have dominated that museum, based on artistry, talent and influence on the music.

They had lots of Thin Lizzy and U2. Don’t get me wrong I love both of those Irish artists. Check one of the streaming services for the Phil Lynot/Thin Lizzy documentary. He had an interesting life growing up mixed race in a 90-plus percent white population. His mother, the museum folks told me, still comes by the museum and visits, occasionally bringing memorabilia to display. There could be couple of things going on here. First, Morrison is considered ‘Dad-music.’ Not many under 30 could name three songs by Van the Man, or any at all, for that matter. Also, Morrison grew up in Belfast not Dublin meaning Morrison’s family and possible sources of memorabilia are in another part of the country.

In the United States, Morrison had a home north of San Francisco in Marin County. He said it was the place in the US that reminded him most of the rolling green hills of Ireland. I lived in that county some called paradise for a decade in San Anselmo. Van even wrote a song called ‘Snow in San Anselmo’ on one of his lesser known albums called ‘Hard News the Highway.’ The song says it hadn’t snowed there i n 30 years. It did not snow the 10 years I was there as the ocean moderated what was essentially a Mediterranean climate.

One morning in 2006, I came to play my usual pick-up basketball on Saturday morning at the Lagunitas elementary school. It was a game that had been ongoing for long time before I wandered up one day. On this day, a couple of players said they had seen Morrison the night before in a secret word-of-mouth event at this place in the San Geromino Valley called Rancho Nicasio — not far down the road where I played hoops every week. Damn, I said, why didn’t y’all call me! (I still broke out the y’all in California.) The Marin Independent Journal — a newspaper I had written for — said Morrison concert was the worst kept secret in Marin. Well, I didn’t know about it. Of course I’ve always had this feeling I was the last to know.

I don’t know what else to say about Van Morrison. He’s a rocker, a great writer. His songs are equally imbued with the blues and jazz. He always has great musicians around him. He sings a little like Mick Jagger if Jagger ventured deeper into jazz.

I’m not going to give a history here, that would be long. But he was in a band called Them in the beginning. He wrote a song called ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ whose opening riff is one of the most recognizable in rock. He journeyed through mystical observations. In the mid-to-later part of his career, he became a little more overt with use of Christian language wrapped around his deep spiritual explorations in words and music. Albums representing this would be ‘Common One‘ and “No Guru no Method no Teacher.’ And actually, thinking back, he’s always had that philosopher/poet quest that shape songs like “Into the Mystic,” or the whole album Astral Weeks, for that matter.

He’s still putting out music. I saw that an album is about to be released in November. Lastly, I’d like to make bring out some teaching points for lyricists and poets. I’m not saying I am that good at it, but I know good when I see it and hear it. Morrison’s style was to weave in and out of mystical explorations with repetitive chants and jazzy excursions. But he often wrote plain slices of scenes. a little portrait or a scene that draws you to a place so you can begin to feel what Van feels.

On the song ‘And it Stoned Me’ from the Moondance album, see how Van sets the scene without over describing.

Half a mile from the county fair
And the rain came pourin’ down
Me and Billy standin’ there
With a silver half a crown

Hands are full of a fishin’ rod
And the tackle on our backs
We just stood there gettin’ wet
With our backs against the fence

Oh, the water
Oh, the water
Oh, the water
Hope it don’t rain all day

Oh the water, let it run all over me

He drops in detail but with a deft touch leaves a little wiggle room for you, the listener, to put in your own details: These kids, adolescents, had just been to the fair? Or were going? Had a silver half a crown.

I don’t know what the song is about. Or, wait, maybe I do: Life.

Daily Journal, Sept. 29, the great Pretenders edition

POSTED in AL.com a story about how we perceive how people die.

One group I absolutely enjoyed during my college years was the Pretenders led by Chrissy Hynde. As I posted my Kinks timeout yesterday, I recollected that she and Ray Davies were at one time married.

If you saw my list (scroll down to find) you will see my write-up on Smith (or a Group Called Smith). They didn’t achieve the fame of the Pretenders but they are similar in that both sang well fronted a male band, and did great with rockers as well as ballads. Here’s Middle of the Road:

In the middle of the road you see the darnedest things
Like fat guys driving ’round in jeeps through the city
Wearing big diamond rings and silk suits
Past corrugated tin shacks full up with kids
Oh man I don’t mean a Hampstead nursery
When you own a big chunk of the bloody third world
The babies just come with the scenery

Daily Journal Sept. 18, 2019 (Kinks included)

My favorite newly rediscovered Kinks song:

I hope every body saw my underrated lists. They are on this website broken into three or four parts. They are altogether one story on AL.com

A colleague is singing the praises of Highwomen. Will check it out. Guess a lot of people are — it debuted at No. 1..

More to come …