This is soft rock AKA as Adult Contemporary. I bought this used recently for loose change after reviewing the Best of Bread for MyVinylCountdown.com.
I admired Bread’s songcraft and was impressed with Gate’s guitar and vocals. It was pretty but that’s about it. A little like the Carpenters, a little like America.
In fact some of us debated which one was best (or worst) Bread vs. America. Think that dispute is still ongoing. One colleague said he would pick America but only if they never do ‘Muskrat Love’ again.
So I bought this Gates’ solo album and it is pretty much a Bread album, pretty, but that’s about it.
But maybe that’s enough.
Song picks: ‘Ann’ shows off his voice. ‘SIght and Sound’ shows some guitar skills. Suite Clouds and Rain shows his piano chops. ‘Do you Believe He’s Comin’ shows his aforementioned guitar skills as well as religious faith. In fact for a guy who seems so partial to soft rock, Gates can play a mean guitar as he does here in the “Do You Believe He’s Comin’ and with Bread the song ‘Guitar Man.’
Got to find a way to bring some love in here today.
Marvin Gaye is smooth and soulfully cool. For good solid soul, Gaye knew no peer. He was the male counterpoint to Aretha Franklin.
I’m not counting out Otis Redding, Wilson Picket, Al Green or any of the other pioneers in this realm. Gaye was a little less of a soul belter than Aretha. His sound was seductive, jazzy soul — sometimes with a social message (What’s Going On.’)
I’m not saying he couldn’t belt either, on ‘Grapevine’ he belts.
Marvin’s life ended too soon, in 1984, tragically at the hands of his father.
I’ve written this elsewhere on the blog: His version of the National Anthem at the NBA All-Star game in 1983 brought tears to my eyes as I was hearing it in real time on live television. He did a soulful, and controversial take, on our National Anthem. I thought it was a touching rendition in the style Mr. Gaye sings. Jose Feliciano did a Spanish-tinged version, more than a decade earlier. He took some flak, as well.
The Gatlin Bros. are a little out of my realm. But I remember why I got this. Someone or someones were saying how much I looked like Larry Gatlin. I didn’t really follow the Gatlins but I knew they were wildly popular in the 70s and 9. So with every one calling me Larry I better figure out who he was. Used records, don’t know where. but I picked up “Greatest Hits.” My hair has long ago left me so I don’t think I look like Gatlin unless he has a large hair deficit.
This is the type of country I didn’t like a bunch–county-politan — or something like that. (It’s all right with Dolly).
But I did enjoy some of the songs here: Broken Lady and ‘Statues Without Hearts stand out.
I am also a sucker for good falsetto singing and Larry’s pretty good.
ALBUMS: Peter Gabriel (1977); Peter Gabriel (1980).
MVC Rating: 1st self-titled: 4.5/$$$
2nd self-titled: 4.0/$$$
Hope everybody has had enough time with ‘The Gaugin Years’ The History of Music and Dance in Tahiti. (Scroll down if you haven’t). That was the start of my G-music section and up now is Peter Gabriel, a political, intelligent, supporter of world music. We’ll see more of him in this blog soon as his longtime band, Genesis, comes up on my alphabetical course.
I have the first and third Gabriel albums. Oddly, he didn’t name his first four albums. They are called Peter Gabriel. To ID them people add a descriptor like ‘melt’ for the third one because it has a face appearing to melt on the cover.
I fell out of Gabriel’s thing about when “Shock the Monkey’ and then ‘Sledgehammer’ — MTV’s all time favorite video – propelled Gabriel from cult status to star. One thing I didn’t like, and others feel free to chime in, is that he seemed to employ an echo effect on his voice, especially in the “So’ era. Am I correctly hearing that? It is almost as if he didn’t have confidence in his natural sound. But the songwriting on Solsbury Hill, about a spiritual experience the Gabriel had, is about as good as it gets.
Climbing up on Solsbury Hill
I could see the city light
Wind was blowing, time stood still
Eagle flew out of the night
He was something to observe
Came in close, I heard a voice
Standing, stretching every nerve
Had to listen, had no choice
I did not believe the information
Just had to trust imagination
My heart going boom, boom, boom
“Son”, he said, “grab your things, I’ve come to take you home”
Biko’ on the second album is also a favorite of mine. It’s a powerful song with African rhythms lamenting the death at the hands of police of Steve Biko, an anti-apartheid protester.
September ’77
Port Elizabeth weather fine
It was business as usual
In police room 619
Oh Biko, Biko, because Biko
Oh Biko, Biko, because Biko
Yihla Moja, Yihla Moja
The man is dead
The man is dead
This is one of an occasional series of opinion columns on Lewy body disease, other dementias, and end of life issues written by a writer who happens to have the brain degenerative disease. A previous version of this appeared on AL.com.
As I’ve pointed out before, we live in a world where Lewy body disease is virtually unknown. That’s not good for the more than a million folks that have the second leading cause of dementia after Alzheimer’s.
That’s not good for the uncounted others who have it but don’t know they have it, either because the doctor didn’t make the diagnosis, missed the diagnosis, or the individual is passing off early stages of the disease as something else.
“It is shocking how few doctors, even neurologists, recognize this condition,” said Dr. Samantha Holden, assistant professor of Neurology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. “Alzheimer’s gets most of the attention, even in the research community, and DLB is relegated to the category of “Related Dementias”, which is unacceptable.”
Holden is also the co-principal investigator in the Lewy Body Dementia & Neurology Center of Excellence at the university.
Like me, Holden has been scratching her head over LBD’s anonymity. Part of it, we both agree is the complicated nature of the disease itself and its wide ranging symptoms, which leads to an alphabet soup of disorder names.
Holden says this chart is a great way to start understanding.
As you can see by the chart the broad category is Lewy body disease. That’s describing a brain disorder that creates the proteins believed to be the culprit of damage through brain cell loss. That includes Parkinson’s and Lewy body dementia. (Guess which one people have actually heard of.)
Both Parkinson’s and Lewy body, as you can see, are sisters under Lewy body disease.
Alzheimer’s is not on this particular chart because it is not a Lewy body brain malfunction. With Lewy body disease, the proliferation of a protein, which when clumped together are called Lewy bodies. They are named after their founder, Dr. Friederich Lewy, a German neurologist.
And please understand I am not an expert in the science by any means.
What’s in a Name
So to recap and offer questions I have for further exploring.
Lewy Body Dementia (LBD) is an umbrella term taking in both Parkinson’s Disease with Dementia (PDD) and Dementia with Lewy Body (LDB). Are the proteins the killer here or are they just what have been left at the crime scene and another unperceived entity is the triggerman?
Alzeimer’s does not fall under that LBD spectrum because it is a different type of malfunction in the brain. However, sometimes people get both — (Really? As if we don’t have enough to worry about.) What is the relationship between Alzheimer’s and Lewy body? If any?
I know this is confusing. But in many cases whether you have LBD or whether it’s PDD, eventually you will see the same (bad symptoms), physical impairment and cognitive impairment. Although some diagnosed Parkinson’s may never get dementia, correct?
That’s because every Lewy is his own person and afflicts different folks in different ways. Which leaves wide paths for optimism that the symptoms may be slow and mild. That’s the hope for those with the disease but, of course, those hopes can also be dashed.
ALBUMS: Firesign Theater: ‘Don’t Crush that Dwarf, Hand me the Pliers” (1970); Eat Or Be Eaten (1985); and, The First Family Vaughn Meader. (1962)
This is comedy which is hard to keep fresh once infused in beloved vinyl.
Firesign Theatre was a brilliant comedy troupe from another time. America’s Monty Python, sort of.
They did live shows, radio and lots of records.
The two FT albums I have are considered among their best, ‘Dwarf’ is often cited as groundbreaking in 1970 when it came out. In 2005, Dwarf was added to the National Recording Registry, a list of sound recordings that “are culturally, historically, or aesthetically important, and/or inform or reflect life in the U.S.’ Dwarf was also called by Rolling Stone Record guide as the best comedy album of all time.
I’m throwing in a non-Firesign record, Vaughn Meader’s First Family, a successful parody of the JFK White House. It is definitely dated coming from 1962. But you wouldn’t believe how popular this was at one time.
Dwarf and Eaten use similar techniques even though 15 years separates them. Firesign use what I’ll call the ‘drop-in’ method of listener interaction. The listener is dropped in to the middle of something, anything,. It could be a fake advertisement, or the middle of a dialogue between friends.
But while it sounds random, there’s a narrative thread running through, at least In Dwarf. It’s a story about George Tirebiter, a former child actor who lays around and watches late night TV. The narrative frequently is interrupted when Tirebiter changes channels.
Lots of a great work on the recording using voices on radios, TV, or telephones, ambient sounds galore and that effect where it sounds like someone is in another room. And walks by in stereo.
WIth Firesign, the aural presentation is an art; the records demand audience attention to stay on their toes as funny bits just parachute in without warning.
As I said earlier, humor on vinyl is a difficult medium to stand the test of time. I’m guessing there’s not a lot of market out there for old comedy albums, unless deemed a classic.
But in some way I guess you could say that about music. There are timeless songs but there are also a lot of songs that don’t date well: I don’t think we’ll have to wait until 2525 to see if Zager & Evans had a point. And that was their best song!
One piece on the’ Eat or be Eaten’ album is an advertisement to see Bob Dylan live at the Met where he’ll be singing opera in Bavarian and German languages.
“It’s just like the 60s,’ the advertisement spokesman says. “No one can understand a word he’s saying. And that’s when Dylan’s at his best.”
Vaughn Meader’s White House with JFK was apparently all the rage back in the early 1960s. It’s amusing in spots such as when all the world leaders gather together and give their sandwich orders.
But there’s a lot of jokes and laughing about stuff that in 2018 sounds sounds like an inside joke.
According to the Wikipedia page, the album, issued by Cadence was honored as “the largest and fast selling record in the history of the record industry’ selling at more than a million copies per week for the first six weeks.
This is part of an occasional series of stories on Lewy body dementia, other dementias, and end of life issues, by a long-time writer who happens to have LBD.
The chart is a 10-question check-up list to help doctors use symptoms and circumstances to more accurately diagnose the disease.. There is no known cause and no cure for this disease which shortens lifespans.
Here it is.
The Lewy Body Composite Risk Score
Rate the following symptoms as being present or absent for at least three times over the past six months. Does the patient:
Yes
No
1) Have slowness in initiating and maintaining movement or have frequent hesitations or pauses during movement?
2) Have rigidity (with or without cogwheeling) on passive range of motion in any of the four extremities?
3) Have a loss of postural stability with or without frequent falls?
4) Have a tremor at rest in any of the four extremities or head?
(5) Have excessive daytime sleepiness and/or seem drowsy and lethargic when awake?
6) Have episodes of illogical thinking or incoherent, random thoughts?
7) Have frequent staring spells or periods of blank looks?
8)Appear to act out his/her dreams (kick, punch, thrash, shout or scream) while still asleep?
9) Visual hallucinations (see things not really there)?
(10) Have orthostatic hypotension or other signs of autonomic insufficiency
NOTE from LBDA: Scores were significantly different in DLB patients compared to controls and those with Alzheimer’s. The Composite Risk Score discriminated between individuals likely to have underlying Lewy body disease from those who did not. Using a cut-off of 3, the Lewy Body Composite Risk Score had a sensitivity of 90%, meaning it identified 90% of those diagnosed with Lewy body dementia.
Follow Mike Oliver on AL.com and www.myvinylcountdown.com
For me with the Four Tops it starts with ‘Reach Out I’ll Be There,’ which is one of the top soul/rock songs of the 1960’s, and likely beyond. On top of that they dish out such timeless Motown winners as ‘Standing in the Shadows of Love.’
They had many many more charting songs which all but ignored the era’s trend toward the psychedelic sound in favor of straight rock ‘n soul.
The vocal group, spanning four decades, worked with the successful writing team Holland-Dozier-Holland in the early part of their career.
Singer Billy Bragg wrote a song about the baritone lead singer called Levi Stubb’s Tears.
Fraternities and sororities across the nation applaud the Four Tops for providing their soundtrack to the big parties that comes with higher education (at least these were the songs popular at frats and sororities in my college-going day): Songs like “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch); ‘It’s the Same Old Song;’ and ‘Baby I Need Your Loving.” Be careful readers. Just reading the song titles out load will load that song on a loop in your brains.
Baby I need your loving, got …. to have all your loving .
This is Fogerty’s first album after splitting with the outrageously sucessful Creedence Clearwater Revival. The first tune,’Rocking All Over the World,’ is a riff-laden anthem that sounds like — hmm who could it be? — Oh yes: Creedence.-
Much of the album, for that matters, sounds like CCR. Although I can’t put my finger on it, there seems to be slightly less ‘choogling’ energy in the songs as I remember was in the CCR recordings. It could be my imagination. I’m talking about some of that soulful oooomph that you hear in ‘Long as I See the Light or the forlorn traveling musician song, Lodi.
‘The Wall’ and ‘Traveling High’ are throwaway rockers — Fogerty does his vocal thing but the songs are just not too strong — relatively speaking.
Jackie Wilson’s ‘Lonely Teardrops’ sounds like it was more fun for Fogerty than the listener. It’s not a bad cover but this is one of those times where I say, let the 1959 version stand. Fogerty does inject with some nice retro guitar sound.
‘Amost Saturday Night’ is the other rocking standout in this group. Catchy, another CCR sounding song that you’d expect to hear on the radio.
And as much as I thought the ‘Teardrops’ cover was unnecessary, I really enjoyed the Sea Cruise cover. Go figure.
Overall, great stuff, especially for CCR fanatics — of which I am — or used to be anyway. They were one of my first favorite bands. I was about 10. So I have just about run my time with them. But every now and then (on Halloween?)) I like to put out some CCR and cranik it up because Fogerty could sing it.
“I see a bad moon a-rising, I see trouble on the way.’
