NOTE: A different version of this is posted on AL.com here.
One day recently, I happened to be hanging around with myself and overheard some of the things I say. I’m a fan of Steven Wright so some sounded like him. Some sounded like Mark Twain on a day when he wasn’t feeling well. Will Rogers? Well Will he?
Anyway here they are. My joy would be that you stick them on that refigerator called Facebook.
I have a memory disorder. I remember things before they happen. After they happen? Not so much.
Heard of food for thought? Well I’ve got some thoughts give me some food.
One of the symptoms of Lewy body dementia is hallucinations. I had one yesterday but it turned out I was dreaming that I was hallucinating.
Digital divide, digital first, digital upload, middle digital.
Life is what happens when you’re sitting in traffic.
I’m learning to feel deja vu on demand.
I know it sounds paranoid, but I’m paranoid.
I believe in God because I don’t want to have to learn quantum physics.
Think quickly, speak slowly
I don’t want to get out of my comfort zone.
Where is my comfort zone?
Eat early and often.
Love is not saying you have a pimple on your nose. But do you have to say your sorry if you do?
Freedom is just another word for having left your cell phone at home.
Dylan said you got to keep on keeping on but I’m not sure what I’m keeping on.
I like writing quotes from myself because I don’t have to fact check them.
A simile is like a word/ a metaphor is a word. That’s my analogy anyway.
Mark Twain said everything except for those things Will Rogers said.
My guilty pleasure philosopher is Socrates because he was too lazy to write all of his sayings down. Instead, he enlisted Aristotle and Plato.
Steven Wright asks if you are in a spaceship going the speed of light, what happens when you turn the lights on.? I ask what happens if your going the speed of sound and you turn the radio on?
I see a lot of dogs walking people these days.
If you like those, then, well, read them again. I got no more. At least right now.
ALBUMS: Biograph (1985 5-record box); Infidels (1983); Slow Train Coming (1979); Blood on the Tracks (1974); Greatest Hits (1967)
MVC Rating: BIograph 5/$$$$$; Infidels 4.5/$$$$; Slow Train Coming $4.5 $$$; Blood on the Tracks 5.0/$$$$;; Greatest Hits 5.0/$$$$.
For a private, quiet person, Dylan is a man of many words.
Before I start this essay on Nobel winner and influential singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, I want to point out, once again we are talking about words. (A favorite topic of mine).
Dylan (L) with Bruce Springsteen. From Biograph booklet.
A friend asked me a long time ago if I thought Dylan knew what he was talking about or is he just throwing words up on the wall. From experience I can say, he probably does and doesn’t.
Know what his words mean, I mean.
As with many writers, words are chosen for different things: The sound of the word, the meaning of the word, the secondary meaning of the word, the meaning of the word in context with the other words. Writers make choices about what words to use. Sometimes straight prose is what it says it is, like a recipe for a casserole. Add one cup of grated cheese.
Other times it’s more of an ink blot test and that’s where song lyrics can become part of an artistic presentation that means different things to different people.
Dylan was just better than almost anyone else at that.
By that, I mean the nimble word use that leaves you wondering, visualizing, thinking or letting it seep into your subconscious (for use later by your brain, for a dream perhaps). Of course it means something. It means something just by its very existence on the page. But it may mean nothing much or a whole lot. It may mean different things to different people. It may be Jabberwocky. That was Dylan’s art.
Of the big three: Elvis, the Beatles and Dylan, Minnesota-born Dylan aka Robert Zimmerman, probably did the most to influence the song in pop music, just my opinion.
(And a quick acknowledgement here on race and gender. These ‘Big 3’ —actually six when you add Beatles — white men climbed a foundation laid by many black artists and female artists such,as Robert Johnson, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Aretha Franklin, Carole King, Scott Joplin, Chuck Berry and so on. I picked the ‘Big 3’ based on the type of change and measure of change they brought to modern pop music. Though blessed with talent, the Big 3’s influence was largely circumstantial — or, to paraphrase Dr. John — they were in the right place at the right time.)
Dylan’s influence was greatest yet most subtle. It showed people that rock and pop songs could mean something. ‘Love Me Do’ to ‘A Day in the Life.’ His singing had obvious influences on such artists as Tom Petty, Mark Knopfler, and even the Beatles.
But let me anticipate the argument against this pick.
Many casual Dylan fans or non-fans say Dylan could write some good songs but that was about it, he couldn’t sing, he wasn’t a musical game-changer.
But that’s wrong.
I know I’m hypocritically and arbitrarily wiping away your right to your own ink-blot interpretation, but I’m using a writing device to debate or persuade you to my side.
Sure Dylan has a nasal vocal delivery that sounds like he gargled with Liquid Plumber. And then, periodically he would stop his rap and blow into a harmonica making honking, choo choo noises as a proper Woody Guthrie acolyte should.
But those are the pieces, what was the result of the whole. Dylan melded the words of the lyrics into the music’s structure and tied it all up with phrasing.
From Biograh album booklet.
Dylan made the song reinforce the words. And his voice, my gosh, his voice was that of a dying man’s last words backed by guitar.
One of his best songs was ‘Like a Rolling Stone.’ Let’s deconstruct a verse or two:
Once upon a time you dressed so fine [up and down with his voice here like a sarcastic nursery rhyme] Threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn’t you? [Internal rhyming in this 1965 song sound like today’s rappers). People call say ‘beware doll, you’re bound to fall’ You thought they were all kidding you You used to laugh about {Yoooo Yooooost toooo — stringing it out for effect] Everybody that was hanging out Now you don’t talk so loud Now you don’t seem so proud [steps down in lower timbre for a Dylan scold –‘seem to proud,’ he spits. About having to be scrounging your next meal [How about his dragging the word ‘scrounging’ out just in case I haven’t humiliated you enough.]
How does it feel, how does it feel? [how does it feeeel….I can hear the Dylan imitators popping up in every pub and street corner). To be without a home Like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone
More memorable lyrics from the Nobel Prize for Literature winner:
My Back Pages
Ah, but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.
‘Positively 4th Street’ – 1965
Yes, I wish that for just one time/You could stand inside my shoes/You’d know what a drag it is to see you
Tangled Up in Blue
And later on as the crowd thinned out I’s just about to do the same She was standing there in back of my chair Said to me “Don’t I know your name?” I muttered somethin’ under my breath She studied the lines on my face I must admit I felt a little uneasy When she bent down to tie the laces Of my shoe Tangled up in blue
Tangled up in blue (more)
Then she opened up a book of poems And handed it to me Written by an Italian poet From the thirteenth century And everyone of them words rang true And glowed like burnin’ coal Pourin’ off of every page Like it was written in my soul From me to you Tangled up in blue
The Times They are a Changin’
Come writers and critics Who prophesize with your pen And keep your eyes wide The chance won’t come again And don’t speak too soon For the wheel’s still in spin
The times they are a changin’
Subterranean Homesick Blues
Walk on your tip toes
Don’t tie no bows
Better stay away from those
That carry around a fire hose
Keep a clean nose
Watch the plain clothes
You don’t need a weather man
To know which way the wind blows
So that’s my take on Dylan. For now. Of my many records listed at the top, I’d recommend Biograph, the 5-record box set. It is a very well done compilation containing everything from his classics to never before published gems. Liner notes in a separate booklet enclosed is by Cameron Crowe and many comments on the songs by the man himself. Any of the other albums I’d recommend highly. The Greatest Hits from his 1960s songs was my first introduction and my hook. Blood on the tracks is just great, and Slow Train Coming and Infidels taken from his sometimes maligned ‘Christian’ conversion period are very good. (Actually Jann Wenner, Rolling Stone founder, called Slow Train Dylan’s finest work.)
ALBUM: The Drifters, Their Greatest Recordings, the Early Years (1971)
MVC Rating: 4.0/$$
Dion and the Belmonts picked up a lot of big hits the Drifters did first: Drip Drop, Ruby Baby and Save the Last Dance for Me.
Dion and the Belmonts, reared in Italian neighborhoods of NYC, of course, were bringing black R&B influenced Doo-Wop to white audiences. These early years, the Drifters had the wonderful Clyde McPhatter. Over many years,the Drifters ended up being more of a franchise, with rotating quarterbacks.
Ultimately they recorded one of the best songs of that era and genre, Under the Boardwalk. I love that song. But I also totally enjoy the rawer R&B sounds from the early years represented here.
One song, the opening one on this album, didn’t get released until this collection in 1971. From 1954 a song from McPhatter had executives running for cover and stopping its release. The song was ‘333.’
Lyrics like this were why: “Good Times, cheap wine, young chicks, so fine, there’s a whole lot of ecstasy, any time you fall in 333.” A little too hot for 1954.
Other hits for the Drifters in these early years include: Money Honey, Fools Fall in Love and There Goes My Baby.
Their slyly subversive take on Irving Berlin’s ‘White Christmas’ sells nearly as many copies as Bing Crosby’s version, according to the liner notes. Their version of that classic Christmas song holds a firm spot in my Christmas rotation.
Man, what do you say about the Doors? They became a phenomenon while lead singer Jim “Lizard King” Morrison was alive and an even bigger one after he died in 1971.
As Rolling Stone magazine in 1981 famously put on the cover a photo of the handsome lead singer with this headline: Jim Morrison.He’s hot, He’s sexy, and he’s dead.
It had been 10 years since he overdosed in Paris on drugs after many months of erratic behavior including arrests for drugs and exposing himself at a concert. But the band’s music was seeing a resurgence surrounding a book and a movie.
I truly believe this Greatest Hits album is all you need. They had the best-worst discography of all time. In other words they had some amazing songs that you wondered where they came from — because they would be side-by-side on albums with some truly awful stuff.
On this album most of the songs are good, even excellent except for the godawful psychedelic tune Not to Touch the Earth, which like Five to One, thankfully not on this album, showcases everything bad about the band, trippy psuedo poetry from Morrison, and psychedelic guitar-organ interplay.
But then there was the good stuff.
Compare the aforementioned horror Five to One to LA Woman. In the latter song the band kicks into a thump thumping blues rift and Morrison’s words suddently make some sense, not profound but propelling what is essentially a long jam song with speedup-slowdown parts.
Drivin’ down your freeways Midnight alleys roam Cops in cars, the topless bars Never saw a woman So alone, so alone So alone, so alone
Are you a lucky little lady in the city of light Or just another lost angel, city of night
Mr. Mojo’s rising …
Jim Morrison busted.
The musicians were good. Morrison strained too much on his voice. He certainly thought it was better than it was, but it was effective most of the time and he was the quintessential good looking, hard partying, artsy leaning, rock star. Robby Krieger on guitar was above average. Ray Manzarek on keyboards was outstanding and probably the real brains behind the music.
The thing I find fascinating stepping back on all this is how good some of the good songs were. Light My Fire is a classic that Frank Sinatra could have sung. So is Touch Me. And Riders on the Storm is timeless. Roadhouse Blues is a raucous rock and roller, also with timeless feel.
The lyrics are poetry, rarely great or even good poetry, but fitting right in and often doing their job as lyrics to Doors music.
On glaring omission on this collection is The End, famous for its Oedipal overtones and the darkness of death. It was featured in the movie Apocalypse Now — but it’s a long dark song and I’m not missing it here.
OK, I have to tell you my prank story involving Morrison and Birmingham News colleague. Ready Tom?
Nah, not yet, going to save that for a post solely dedicated to pranks.
So my idea about having a permanent children’s train ride at Railroad Park in Birmingham seems to have fizzled for now.
But it did make me think of train songs.
There’s a milion of them it seems and they are running around my brain.
Proposal to RR Park: I’ll be DJ and play my Top 10 choo choo songs (Plus my two honorable mentions if we have time). On vinyl. At the park.
So, dedicated to Railroad Park, sponsored by myvinylcountdown.com, here are my top 10 train songs. Plus two honorable mentions. I am judging these on a complicated formula that involves how much endorphins are created in my brain as I listen to each song.
Now, with the brain monitor hooked up, here we go:
Honorable Mention: Stoney Larue. “Train to Birmingham”
We’ll start you off with an Honorable Mention. New song it may crack the list with a little more time. JA introduced this one to me. Has crying, lying, dying and Birmingham, oh, and a guitar full of blues. Great song. The studio version has a little sad sounding fiddle.
10: Ozzy Osbourne “Crazy Train”
I know i’t old school heavy metal, but I like it, like it, yes I do.
9: Cracker “I See the Light”
Not really thought of as a train song but it is in a punch line sort of way. I just like this song. And if you listen you’ll see why I picked it.
I saw them live years ago and this was the only song I remember. (Maybe it was the only song they played.) If your kids aren’t head banging after Ozzy, they will be by this one.
4: This Train Is Bound For Glory”- Mumford and Sons, Edward Sharpe – The Old Crow Medicine Show
Good time video almost pushed this higher. Lots of granola and moonshine for this crunchy group of hippie/ roots rockers on a classic, train bound for glory.
3: Bob Dylan. “Slow Train Coming”
Just a good song. Underrated Dylan. Good live version. Alabama angle:
I had a woman out in Alabama, She’s a backwoods girl but she sure was realistic
She said, boy, without a doubt, you got to kick your mess and straighten out, you could die down here, just be another accident statistic
2: Gladys Knight and the Pips. “Midnight Train to Georgia.”
‘I’d rather live in his world than live without him in mine.’ Enough said.
1 (Tie): Johnny Cash. “Folsom Prison Blues.”
Yes, I copped out and have two as my No. 1. A tie. But I got to those last two and they are such great train songs which by definition must have a train-whistle ache about them. After doing this, I looked back and realized I don’t have ‘Peace Train’ by Cat Stevens or some other popular choices for train songs (e.g. Last Train to Clarksville)
But when it came to final two, I could not choose between them. Cop out, yes. But you tell me what to cut. Nevermind, I know which one it will be.
Anyway, it should not be this Cash song. You could do a whole top 10 train songs by Cash alone. And this song might arguably be called a prison song. However, I say, this has one of the most recognizable openings of any train song ever. “I hear the train a coming, it’s coming around the bend.” The train where people are in fancy dining cars, he laments, reminds him every day of his lost freedom.
1 (Tie)_ Peter Paul and Mary. “500 Miles”
Shuddup. I will defend this No. 1 pick to the ends of the earth or at least 500 miles.
Here is my other honorable mention: Runaway Train by Soul Asylum and I was considering Clash “Train in Vain,” then I realized that except in the title, there’s no train a-comin’ in the lyrics. In fact, no train at all unless I’m missing something.
Jerry Sloan never won a title either as a player or a coach but he is considered one of the top NBA coaches of all time.
The Salt Lake Tribune has a great profile of the 76-year-old man struggling with Parkinson’s disease and Lewy body dementia. As a basketball loving Lewy body patient myself, this story sent me looking for tissues.
So who is Sloan? Tribune says:
Sloan is an icon, a reminder of the franchise’s glory days when they made back-to-back trips to the NBA Finals in the late ’90s, back when Hall of Famers John Stockton and Karl Malone pick-and-rolled opponents to death seemingly every night.
I remember those Jazz teams well, often had or were close to having the best won-lost records in the league.
My own pick-up game with my Old Man Hoops League is waning but I’m still doing it. Sloan, though slowly losing brain function, is still going to Utah Jazz games. In fact it’s the centerpiece of his life.
Stockton and Malone pick and rolls should be required viewing for every aspiring basketball player. If I was a hoops coach, I’d put together a tape with dozens of Stockton-to-Malone P&R’s for my players.
We even use picks in our Old Man Basketball League. We are especially fond of the illegal picks that resemble downhill blocking in football. (Some of us have even called illegal picks. Ha. Funny.)
Seriously, a legal pick is simple and efficient and still works after all these years.
Oliver shooting form John Archibald on defense. \TRISH CRAIN photo.
Our knowledge of Parkinson’s and its mean younger cousin, Lewy Body dementia, is limited. Our treatments don’t work all the time. There is no cure. Both Parkinson’s and Lewy are the result of excess proteins in the brain, but no one has figured out why the protein’s are there, smothering the brain cells.
As the Tribune article says, the disease strips your mind and your motor skills, but not overnight. There is time to exercise, be with loved ones, keep the mind active and hope your brain’s neurons are setting good picks. Jerry’s wife Tammy Sloan keeps Jerry’s schedule very busy with activities and social functions.
I used basketball to describe my situation earlier in a column for AL.com
Here’s part of what I wrote: There are cases in the scientific literature of people who upon autopsy were found to have brains that indicated Alzheimer’s disease yet during their lives they showed no symptoms. Researchers say their brains apparently found “work-arounds” to the plaques and tangles that are believed to be the root of Alzheimer’s.
So that has me hopeful and encouraging my neurons: Come on you lightning quick neurons, put the Stephen Curry crossover on those proteins and get to the hoop.
I’m still playing, but I can relate to what Sloan is feeling. I just found my glasses before writing this Sunday afternoon. They’ve been missing for a week and a day. (I’d love to joke and say they were on my head but, thankfully, I’m not that bad yet.)
If Sloan wants to play a little 3-on-3 for charity this summer, we might be able to arrange that. Or, maybe just one-on-one, Lewy Jerry against Lewy Mike. What am I saying? He’s 6’5” and was a smashmouth player for the Chicago Bulls before his long-term coaching stint in Salt Lake.
Here’s an excerpt from Aaron Falk writer at Salt Lake City Tribune:
Before each game, Shawn Brown and his staff go over the list of VIPs and scan the crowd for people to highlight on the 24-foot-tall video board that hangs over the court at Vivint Smart Home Arena. It doesn’t matter who shows up, though. After four years of directing the Utah Jazz’s in-game video operations from the scorer’s table, Brown knows the man in Row 11 will get the loudest cheer.
“The reaction for him is bigger than any celebrity,” Brown says. “Everybody loves him.”
The crowd of 18,000-plus will erupt, maybe even stand in ovation. Tammy Sloan will tap her husband lightly. This, predictably, is his least favorite moment of the best part of his day.
“I always try to avoid that as much as possible,” Jerry Sloan says. “That’s not who I am, and that’s not what I’m about. I just love the great game of basketball. I’ve been involved with it my whole life. I enjoy that. I still enjoy the game.”
Friday morning started with a visit to, at least by Tammy Sloan’s estimation, the only man in Utah who hasn’t been following the Jazz’s first-round playoff series: her husband’s doctor. It has been just more than two years since Jerry Sloan revealed to the world that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s and Lewy body dementia, diseases that have begun to strip the mind and motor skills of one of the greatest coaches in NBA history.
ALBUM: Dr. John’s Gumbo (1986 RE Alligator Records)
MVC Rating: 4.5/$$$
Say you are planning a party. A party where music would be up front. But then the president comes on and declares National Music Conservation week.
President’s edict is that parties may play only one vinyl record the entire party.
Seems plausible? Right?
Well here’s the party record I’d recommend, Dr. John’s Gumbo.
It is danceable, hummable, sing-with-able and eat cajun food-able. Iko Iko can be played 29 times straight without diminished pleasure, scientists measuring brain activity have discovered.
Add on to Iko Iko songs like Mess Around, Big Chief, Stack A Lee, Let the Good Times Roll and you got a party veering toward that shaky ground between ecstasy and agony. The agony is caused by the imbibeable forces the album propels, however those effects won’t begin until morning. Health specialists recommend that you stay away from the song Iko Iko for several days before easing back in at low volume.
Mike Oliver is counting down his 678 vinyl records before he dies.
This is the regular Saturday column where I showcase some of the 678 vinyl record reviews I plan to review on my website.
I’ve reviewed 151, still have 527 to go.
This is a race, you see, to get these done, reviewed and put up on my website, before my brain disease gets me.
Recenty I posted that I had decades ago lent my Deep Purple live album ‘Made In Japan’ to someone who never returned it. I said jokingly if anyone out there has it, please leave it on my porch no questions asked.
Last week AL.com cartoonist J.D. Crowe walked into the newsroom and handed me the live album plus a copy of ‘Machine Head’ in primo condition.
Kevin Kinney is the soul of this band, his aching voice sounds a little like Rod Stewart. And his band definitely rocks. Maybe he sounds like the Bodeans lead singer.
Paste Magazine named this album the 39th best ‘Southern Rock album of all time. Guitarist Buren Fowler, whose name is not known to me, is as good as any playing in what we are loosely calling the Southern rock genre. You can tell he’s listened to a little Dickey Betts in his day and Skynyrd.
‘I’m going straight to hell’ is fun song.
I have a six degrees of separation with Kinney, which I will tell below.
But first if you want a really interesting take on how Paste defines Southern Rock, go here.
OK, so for my story. I was alone in WUXTRY in Athens, Ga. , except for the guy behind the register. Peter Buck (REM) walks in, apparently not too unusual, he worked at WUXTRY for a while before REM took off. I used to buy from him. So anyway, Buck goes flipping through the music. We chat a little I think it was 1991 or 92 so probably much of the music was in the already established CD format.
He said he recommended Kevin Kinney’s ‘McDougal Blues’ a solo album from the Drivin’ and Cryin’ frontman –which Mr. Buck had produced.
But the thing was I already had it. On cassette tape. I think I copied it from someone else who bought it. RIpping off the artists, though I didn’t really have that level of awareness at the time, even tho I was a grown-up.
So I had it on cassette and opted to go with this Los Lobos CD that I’d had my eye on: Kiko, one of my early CD purchases.
I started to kick myself later thinking I should have bought the Kinney disc, scooped up the REM discs and ask Peter to sign them for me.
But I never was much for that kind of thing. In the end I bought Kiko and was on my way. Great band, saw them at the Marin County Fair north of SF years later.
ALBUMS: Dion and the Belmonts 24 Original Classics (1984); Dion (1968)
MVC Rating: Classics 4.5/$$$; Dion 4.0/$$
If you are going to cover Purple Haze by Jimi Hendrix you better do it like Dion did it by totally deconstructing, making it virtually unrecognizable from the original.
He made it a slow smoldering, jazzy nightclub song : . ‘Excuse me while I kiss the sky’ he sings slowly, quietly, dragging the words out, and the line dissolves into flute, be-bop scats and an ethereal echo effects.
You may not like this treatment, click on link above to hear, but if he tried to do it like Hendrix, it would surely be a fiasco. On that song I give kudos for the creative arrangement.
Now on to the songs he was known for. Dion came out of the doo-wop New York City scene, where you got up a group of friends in the neighborhood and sang on the porch or stoop.
He hooked up with Bronx buddies: Fred Milano, Angelo D’Aleo, and Carlo Mastrangelo.
And of course you snapped your fingers as your voices — being the main musical instruments — blended in perfect harmony. Dion came from that scene and –became one the top singers in the era of the late 1950s after Elvis went into the Army and before the Beatles and British invasion.
Songs like Runaround Sue, which is addressing presumably an ex-girlfriend in a non-complimentary way:
People let me put you wise– Sue goes out with other guys
In the Wanderer, Dion is the macho loverboy who has goes from town to town loving and leaving them.
Oh well, there’s Flo on my left and then there’s Mary on my right
And Janie is the girl well that I’ll be with tonight
And when she asks me, which one I love the best?
I tear open my shirt and I show “Rosie” on my chest
Dion had lots of hits both as a front man for a band, (the Belmonts) and by himself. But the street corner dude was apparently hiding a heroin habit that began in his teens. Disappearing for a while he re-emerged with a softer folksy style that brought the hit ‘Abraham, Martin and John’ about the slain leaders.
Dion had a very soulful voice and feel for the song. The two-disc compilation I have is a great place to start. But I’ve found his discography to be deep. He did great songs that are sometimes hidden on albums like Born to Be with You. Beautiful.
He also did a very personal song, that may be one of the best and honest ‘getting sober’ songs ever done called ‘In Your Own Backyard.’ Listen to it below:
