For Absent Friends

My longtime girlfriend Linda passed away on June 7th. I've pretty-much been stuck ever since.

She passed away at home, in her sleep, from congestive heart failure sometime between 3:30am and 11am that morning. I found her body when I went to take in her morning cup of coffee.

This wasn't completely unexpected. Linda had surgery to install a heart pacemaker in December of 2019. In April and May of 2023 she had two ultrasounds which revealed that her congestive heart failure was getting worse.

After Linda was notified by her doctor about this, she started getting her affairs in order -- though that wasn't the way I saw it at the time. She started calling old friends, close relatives. She had her car hauled away, feeling that she couldn't drive anymore. She gave up cooking. I had to cook for both of us, which was a real adventure for me.

Linda had already told me that without my help she would have been in a nursing home for her last year. I didn't think she was in *that* bad of shape, but she told me two years ago that I was in denial about her illness, and she was right.

But though her energy level was way down and some days she wasn't even up to leaving the house -- even for doctor's appointments -- we still had some good times all the way to the end. Our last weekend together, we went out for hot dogs twice, and I knew she always felt better and her mood improved if she could get out in the sun.

We stayed up very late a couple of times talking, those last couple of weeks. I told her how much she meant to me, how she was my whole world, how she rescued me when we met 7-1/2 years ago after I'd given up on women and love.

But though we could always talk about anything, she wouldn't talk about what she was thinking and feeling those nights in May when she couldn't sleep. I know she was scared. She said once that if she started telling me what she was thinking, she might never stop. And she'd been telling me since March that she thought she was just waiting around to die.

I have lots of guilt that I couldn't do better for her, that I couldn't see all the things she struggled with, that I couldn't help her as much as she needed. I did my best, but there's so much I didn't know, couldn't see.

I also feel guilty because I was writing my ass off the morning she passed away. I peeked in on her a couple of times that morning and she seemed fine as she slept. But somehow I think if I had checked on her sooner, had realized what was happening, maybe I might have been able to help, and maybe she might still be here.

I know by her facial expression when I found her that she wasn't scared, she didn't fight, she just drifted off. And I am grateful that she was at home, where she felt safe and warm and cared for. She would have hated being in a hospital, and by the end she was pretty fed-up with doctors.

Her passing away has left a hole in me that I'm only now starting to be able to handle, 5-1/2 months later. I barely thought at all for the first six weeks afterward, and when I did it was all negative. I had a panic attack in mid-July, my first in more than 20 years. I was stressing too much over bills and missing Linda, and I fell right into it.

The EMT's who talked me back down to normal gave me some good advice about how to handle my new life a little better, and I have been living on their advice ever since.

They recommended getting out of the house, getting out into the sun, going places with happy memories, doing more things I like, enjoying what I have, focusing on happy memories -- and playing lots more happy music!

I have done all of those things since, and they've made a big difference.

But the biggest difference is I started walking at least three times a week as of August 1st. For awhile I was walking every day, but was then advised by someone my age that three times a week is probably enough.

There's a walking trail along the bay downtown here in Port Orchard, Washington, where I live -- and my circuit along it totals around a mile. So I've been walking that path at least three times a week since August, and it's done me a world of good. I know I'm in better shape physically, the sunshine and fresh air and exercise does wonders for my peace of mind. And it makes me feel like I'm doing something positive for myself.

Linda and I talked about walking all through last winter -- but by the time the weather here got decent enough for us to try walking last spring, Linda was too weak to try it.

So I'm doing it for her.

The only person who would be more surprised than me about me becoming addicted to walking at age 64 would be Linda -- and the first few times I walked back in August, I could hear her laughing in delighted disbelief inside my head.

I still talk to her -- when I'm walking, when I'm driving anywhere, and especially just before I fall asleep.

I think she visited me once, the night after she passed away -- when I was crying like a baby and was at my absolute worst. I think she touched me and made me feel better -- because suddenly my despair went away and it felt like the sun rose up inside my head.

It's been a couple months since I've heard her whisper in my ear, but I know she's still out there.

She's the best friend I ever had.

My good days are slowly getting better and easier, but my bad days are still pretty bad -- and I am not thrilled about the dark, gloomy, cold, rainy winter coming back so soon to western Washington. I feel like I never really wake up unless the sun is out.

I'm not playing much music and I'm writing very little, but I'm trying to do better. I have all the time in the world to play music and write now -- but I don't want it.

I read a little, I stare at the TV a lot, I talk to friends on Facebook (where I've also posted all the stuff you've read here, and a bunch more besides -- I've had a lot of support from my Facebook friends, God bless 'em) ... but I know I'm not the same, not even half.

I don't know who reads these posts anymore, I don't know who I'm talking to -- especially since it's been at least five years since I have posted here regularly. But there's a chance I may start posting here again, if only because I can speak even more freely here than I can on Facebook.

I have no idea what the future holds for me, and I wish I had even half the energy and enthusiasm that I did when I first started blogging about music and books way back at the end of 2008.

But I'm still here, I'm still writing, I'm still carrying on. Just at a lower, quieter level than before.

I plan to keep on doing it.

So that's what I've been up to lately.

Until next time....

Lately

So, "enjoying" my retirement?

I have maybe half the energy I used to. I'm definitely not 55 anymore.

But I "musicked-out" twice in the past week, more than usual lately. Recently I've been playing two or three hours of music maybe once a month, if that often.

Last music session yesterday was mostly new-to-me or overlooked stuff on CD.

Previous session was mostly recently-purchased 45rpm singles I'd recently tracked down -- but eventually I got to a first listen to Stevie Wonder's 1973 album "Innervisions," which I found to be pretty great. Seven of its nine songs were well worth hearing, and the new ones that especially grabbed me were "All in Love is Fair" and "Golden Lady."

Of course "Higher Ground" has always been great, and I've loved "Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing" ever since I first heard it way back in 1974. I hadn't heard "Living for the City" in *years,* and had forgotten how passionately Stevie sang it. And I'd never heard the long version before.

But for me, "All in Love is Fair" and "Golden Lady" were the standouts. When Stevie gets into a groove he's really amazing.

Of course I should have known all this already, but there are many gaps in my listening. I've loved many of Stevie's hits over the years and have three of his studio albums and a couple of best-of's in the house. But I sure haven't heard everything.

Anyway, "Innervisions" is the best thing I've heard in awhile.

Awhile back I also heard Harmonium's 1977 album "The Five Seasons" -- very nice melodic progressive rock from Canada, very pretty. Nice moods, and parts were exuberant enough to make me laugh -- even if I couldn't tell what the guys were singing. They sang in French, because they were from Quebec.

These days I'm doing good if I can get through three albums in a sitting. After that, my mind starts to wander or I'm worn out.

Awhile back I went on a sort of crusade with old Van Morrison albums after I found his "Best of Volume 2" CD and was charmed despite the old-fashionedness of some of it.

Think I did five Van albums in a row -- most were only average. "Inarticulate Speech of the Heart," "Beautiful Vision," "Into the Music," "A Period of Transition" -- "Wavelength" was the best of these. Most of the albums had maybe one good track and a lot of filler. OK, pleasant, decent, but nothing stunning. Mood music at best. Linda said it was like Van just couldn't do it anymore -- "it" being the magical spell he weaved on "St. Dominic's Preview," "Moondance" and "Tupelo Honey" -- and on "Best of Volume 2," even though to me the jury was out for a long time on that one until he finally convinced me with the brief "Coney Island" and the live "Rave On, John Donne."

My mind wandering has been an issue with reading fiction lately, too. I can read a few short stories and then I get bored with fiction. I can't remember the last novel I made it all the way through. Best short stories I've read lately are Joyce Carol Oates's brilliant and spooky "Six Hypotheses" and Dan Simmons' dark and creepy "My Personal Memoirs of the Hoffer Stigmata Epidemic" -- both cosmic-horror short stories.

I've been reading a lot of non-fiction -- for months now -- but I don't have that much new non-fiction in the house, so have mostly been re-reading old stuff. Was on a binge of science fiction writers' autobiographies and biographies for awhile -- Alec Nevala-Lee's "Astounding," Julie Phillips' great biography of SF writer James Tiptree Jr., Robert Silverberg's "Other Places, Other Times," Damon Knight's excellent history of "The Futurians," "Hell's Cartographers," stuff like that. But there isn't enough of it. SF-author bios and autobios didn't become "a thing" until recent years, unfortunately.

Have been doing a little bit of writing, though of course I should be doing more. Wrote an entire 2,500-word ghost story a couple of weeks ago, but have held off going back to re-read it until it "cools off" a little. Started another science-fiction story the next day, and got down some ideas for a third new story a few days ago, but I don't seem to have much drive to finish any of them.

Added a couple scenes over the last couple days to a trashy '80s/'90s-style horror novel I originally had the idea to write a couple of years ago. I wrote maybe 7,500 words of it in a few days right after I first had the idea a couple years back, then backed away from it because -- although the words were coming out way easily -- it meant nothing to me personally. It was just a thing I was doing, it didn't actually involve me.

A couple mornings ago it occurred to me that if the words were coming and it was fun to do, why not just continue on with it? Writing used to be fun for me, so why not roll with it as long as I'm having a good time and not having to force it?

So we'll see where that goes.

Otherwise, I don't feel terrible, but my energy level comes and goes. On cloudy, rainy days it feels like I never really wake up. Each winter seems to get longer. This is a problem for me because the first 80-degree day we had here in western Washington was in the last week of June. The first 70-degree day we had was sometime in early May.

Some days it takes an act of Congress to get me out of the house, even if the sun is out.

What bothers me is, sometimes Linda feels the same way. And usually she was the one who got me to get up and get out even if I didn't want to. Now we both have to make an effort to get something rolling.

Did go see my daughter in Seattle for Father's Day, which was a real step out of my comfort zone. Visiting somewhere new? Riding a ferry across Puget Sound? Braving the Seattle traffic? Actually sort of getting lost for a bit? Pretty daring, for me. But my daughter was awesome as usual, and I got to meet her boyfriend and see their cute, tiny apartment, and had a wonderful couple of hours. So it was all good.

And that's what's been going on lately. More soon.

Banned in Boston -- and everywhere else!

So, I just got banned from Facebook for 24 hours because I joked that I wanted to launch my neighbor out of a cannon.

This isn't the first time I've been banned. I got a fact-check warning a couple years ago for posting an obvious satire about Donald Trump making a campaign stop in Boise and being so drunk he fell off the stage while making a speech full of gibberish. It made a pretty funny story too. But Facebook doesn't like it when you make stuff up -- sometimes.

Before that, I was given another 24-hour ban for "hate speech" -- because I dared to suggest that some white men can be pretty dang dense sometimes.

Interesting that FB should go after me for these things when they allow people to spread right-wing conspiracies, coronavirus vaccine misinformation, and massive conspiracy theories implying that Donald Trump will be returned to the presidency -- not to mention the usual racism and misogyny, and specific threats to specific people. But those all seem to be OK.

But let's get back to my neighbor. I don't even know who he is, but I have this neighbor a couple houses away who has a cannon he sets off around Independence Day ... or whenever the Seattle Seahawks win a football game, or at 2am, or whenever he damn well feels like it. There'll be the usual neighborhood near-silence and then ka-BOOOOOOM! This is what led me to say I'd like to launch him out of his own cannon. And that's what FB banned me for.

A couple years ago, back when we had a dog, the fireworks around July 4th used to send our dog to hide in the bedroom closet. And the sound of the cannon made him start shaking. I saw that shaking lead to convulsions. Foaming at the mouth, eyes rolled back in the head, the whole bit.

And our dog was scared of nothing else.

But that's OK FB, keep patrolling your pages and making the world safe by shutting up people who dare to say that things aren't all hunky-dory with their neighbors. I get that I was banned because I (jokingly) made a specific (joking) threat of (technically impossible) bodily harm against somebody. Even if I don't know specifically who it is.

But I was joking. And Facebook's bots don't get that. They have no concept of "context." They can't tell if someone's joking.

I'll be OK without FB for 24 hours. But I'm sure the QAnon folks and the vaccine deniers and the "election was stolen!" people will be allowed to continue peddling their BS -- along with the racists and fascists and women-haters and gun-rubbers. Really an ugly bunch to be hanging out with, to be honest.

I get why FB doesn't like talk of violence, especially these days. But I was just joking. I wasn't really gonna launch my neighbor out of his cannon. I'd never be able to squeeze him into it, for starters. I never meant ... aw, forget it.

There is one upside. My getting banned at FB forced me to write my first post here in eight months. So that's got to be a good thing.

Hoping you are the same....

Addicted to feedback

Hey there, I'm still winding down after my books-and-CD's-scanning job came to an end last Tuesday morning. My boss, who had been running a selling-books-and-CD's-on-line business for the last 18 months, suddenly realized he couldn't make enough money at it to keep it going plus cover his overhead and pay his three employees.

So I am now Officially Retired.

I dunno, it SHOULD have worked. My boss said a change in policies at Amazon regarding warehousing space and buying books from us was part of what put him into negative income. He hadn't paid himself in two months.

So I'm mildly bummed. I liked the job and I learned a lot -- it seemed like a perfect retirement job for me, just a little something to keep a few $$$'s coming in. But it did beat me up a bit, physically. I'm not 55 anymore.

Anyway, I'm now hoping to write more, read more, listen to music more. Musicked-out for four hours last weekend, my first serious music session in a month. Am watching a lot more movies in the evenings -- God knows I have a lot to catch up on there.

Read three long stories by fantasist Tom Reamy yesterday afternoon, all horror stories -- "Twilla," "The Detweiler Boy" and "Insects in Amber." Reamy, who died way back in 1977, was certainly no stylist, but his stories work. He won a Nebula Award for his 1975 novelette "San Diego Lightfoot Sue," a story I read more than 40 years ago, but maybe it's time for a re-read because I didn't really "get it" the first time around.

Hoping to find some more good short stories to get into before trying to read another novel. These days my mind seems to wander with long fiction. But I had no trouble reading Reamy's chillers yesterday.

Despite what I posted here previously, I am still posting on Facebook. I'm addicted to the quick feedback there, which is way more than I get here. Maybe I'll post the obvious stuff there and the more personal stuff here, who knows?

That's all for now. Hope you all are well.

Recently read and heard

Before we go any further, here's a list of new-to-me stuff I've been reading and listening to lately. This list covers my music and book intake back to June. Funny, I thought there was more:

BOOKS:

* Paul Theroux -- Figures in a Landscape. Theroux's third collection of essays, covering everything from a profile of Robin Williams to slabs of family history and autobiography. Theroux claims he'll never write a full autobiography or memoir, but he's already written at least one -- the brilliant history of a friendship "Sir Vidia's Shadow."

* The Best of Rolling Stone. This 400-page collection of nonfiction pieces was originally published as a special issue of the magazine back in 1992. There's some great stuff here (all cut for space), but the writers' introductions are the best part. Daisann McLane's awesome "The Girl in the Tweed Jacket" is maybe the best, most personal peek behind the scenes, but I wish McLane's wonderful 1979 portrait of Fleetwood Mac, "Five Not-So-Easy Pieces," had been included.

* Gene Sculatti and others -- The 100 Best-Selling Albums of the '60s/'70s/'80s/90s. Dull, unsurprising and full of errors, this low-budget rush-job series was a big disappointment. The only surprises come from learning what kind of crap music most people buy. Gene Sculatti's a good rock critic, but the editors gave him no room to write, and the editing and proofreading are hideous. Avoid.

* Michael Lesy -- Wisconsin Death Trip, The Forbidden Zone. "Forbidden Zone" is about people who deal with death every day -- homicide detectives, undertakers, pathologists, etc. Some of them are such odd characters that they deserved to be in a book. "Wisconsin Death Trip" is about what happened in a small rural Wisconsin town between 1890 and 1910, when an agricultural failure and depression followed outbreaks of diphtheria, dysentery, smallpox and more. People went crazy. Eerie, odd, depressing, one of a kind.

* David Leigh and Luke Harding -- WikiLeaks. Covers the frantic early days of the WikiLeaks classified-information-leak site, but for the rest of the story you'll have to consult Wikipedia.

* Judy Pasternak -- Yellow Dirt. Follows what happens when Navajos start mining uranium on their reservation in Arizona, and the U.S. government stonewalls the tribe about the effects of uranium exposure and radiation for the next 60 years....

* Barbara Moran -- The Day We Lost the H-Bomb. Recounts how the U.S. Air Force accidentally dropped three unactivated atomic bombs on a small town in southern Spain back in 1966. A fourth bomb fell into the Mediterranean Sea and took two months to find.

* Nicholas A. Basbane -- A Gentle Madness. About *extreme* book-collectors. One great long chapter is about a man who stole more than 5,000 rare books from libraries and universities over a 20-year period. Most of the schools never realized the books were missing.

* Six science fiction writers -- Hell's Cartographers. Writers like Robert Silverberg, Frederik Pohl, Brian Aldiss and Alfred Bester talk about what got them hooked on reading and writing science fiction.

* Nine more science fiction writers -- Fantastic Lives. This is more scattershot than "Hell's Cartographers" and much less interesting. Still, some good stuff by Barry Malzberg, Norman Spinrad, R.A. Lafferty.

* James Gunn -- The Listeners. This 1972 science-fiction novel has a great idea at its center, and the first chapter's pretty good. Then the absurd and insignificant "human drama" gets more and more in the way and the book gets sillier and sillier. Gave up halfway through.

MUSIC:

* Mott the Hoople -- first album, side 1. Brain Capers, side 1. Rock and Roll Queen early-best-of. "Rock and Roll Queen" sucked me in. Early Mott was great when they roared. Side 1 of their first album is mostly a great Bob Dylan impersonation. Side 1 of "Brain Capers" features more greatness. I'll be getting back to these guys soon.

* Funkadelic -- Maggot Brain. Loud and chaotic, with an awesome Hendrixy 10-minute guitar solo on the title track. Some throwback R&B-type cuts in the middle, leading to the crazed "Super Stupid" and the sound collage "Wars of Armageddon" -- which along with a steady beat includes protests, chanting, screaming, a mooing cow, and cosmic farts. "Revolution 9" should have sounded like this.

* Tim Buckley -- Happy Sad. Perfect music for lounging around all day in bed with your Significant Other.

* Amazing Blondel -- Evensong. Cute fake-15th-Century English folk music, but nowhere near as good as their later "Fantasia Lindum" and "England."

* The Kinks -- Arthur. Each song turns into real basic bash-it-out English rock'n'roll, and thank God. Includes the glorious "Shangri-La" and rockin' "Victoria," and nice bits like the hilarious "Yes Sir, No Sir" and "She Bought a Hat Like Princess Marina."

* Three songs from Magazine's "Real Life." More listening required.

More soon!

I'm back.

Hey there.

Facebook has become a toilet. Jokes and outrage get the biggest reactions, constant unavoidable advertisements crowd out the "real" content (if there is any), and the platform's multi-millions of users have become the product that Facebook is selling.

And that's not even counting the racists and conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers and political crazies.

So I'm back here.

Nice to see ya.

I posted more than 350 music and book reviews and nostalgia pieces on FB over the past three and a half years, and at one point I had more than 200 friends and other folks following me. But I've slowed down recently. I don't have as much to say, and I don't have as much energy as I did three years ago.

Plus, maybe I've gotten a little stale for folks over there. Recently I posted a book review there that I spent a couple of hours on, trying to get the words right, trying to get the message and meaning of a challenging book across without turning anyone off.

Only two people noticed.

Plus I seem to have lost a lot of my sense of humor lately. Or at least what I think of as humor doesn't match the silly crap I see on FB.

Most of all, I'm tired of the silly, pointless arguing. I started dropping "friends" when I realized some of them just wanted to argue, that they only commented on something when they wanted to play "devil's advocate" on some political post I passed along. And who the hell needs that?

Some folks out there just make it really hard for me to stay in the 1972 fantasy world I'd prefer.

Enough whining. Some good news: I'm working, have been working since last December after an unintended year off. Am helping sort used books, CD's and DVD's for a guy who re-sells items on eBay and Amazon. It's only 20 hours a week, and that's fine, because I'm 62 years old now and more and more often I think about retiring.

In terms of my interests, it's a perfect job for me. Most of the time it doesn't require much of a brain or even much attention. But there's some physical labor, and my year off didn't do me any good. The repetitive motions of digging through a huge box of books or media often has my back talking to me by lunchtime, and often by the end of my four-hour work day I have to sit for a bit and let my body rest. I truly am not 55 anymore.

But I remind myself that jobs don't get any easier than this one, and I keep going. If I get fired for being too slow I'll likely retire. That's my plan right now, anyway.

Obviously I'm still writing, and I haven't given up trying to find good music and books that are new to me. I spend much more time reading than listening these days, though.

I don't think I'm "written out" yet and there's a lot more I'd like to write about -- I have a list -- and that writing will likely happen here, where I don't have to worry so much about the length of these essays.

I will warn anyone reading this that if you think I leaned toward being nostalgic and overly personal here in the past, I've done nothing but get more nostalgic and more personal in the last three years.

It should be interesting to see how many people actually read this post. I figure anything more than the two blogging regulars who always used to comment here is a bonus.

Feel free to comment below. More soon.

I'm back! Sort of....

Hello there. Been awhile.
I've been hanging out over at Facebook for the last couple years. It ain't always pretty over there. Got a few friends, a few people who follow me and seem to like what I do -- but there's a lot of petty, stupid BS over there, too.
So I'm posting this to see if anyone notices. Maybe it's time for this blog to make a comeback.
Things have changed. I'm no longer working, been unemployed since last November, before the coronavirus crisis. They worked me to death at my old job, to the point where my legs and feet were cramping up every night. Every day for three months, I complained that I needed more help, that nobody was doing their job, that everybody left all their work for me.
Finally, I came in on a Monday evening to discover that the place was a wreck, that nothing had been done during my weekend off. I had a screaming meltdown for about five minutes. Then I did my usual evening's work, putting the place back together from scratch.
I was fired the next day, after 16 years at the store. It came as sort of a relief.
My request for unemployment compensation was denied. It took the unemployment folks two months to make a decision. My appeal was also denied. My former employers didn't even bother to show up for the appeal hearing.
I started sending out resumes the first day after getting fired, but there wasn't much out there. Then the coronavirus hit and jobs practically disappeared.
There's been a slight bounceback since mid-May, when the economy started opening back up again, but there still isn't much out there. I sort of went into shock when corona hit, but since then have been fairly optimistic about future job possibilities.
I'm just grateful I had a little money stashed away when I was fired.
Know anybody who could use a decent reporter-editor-proofreader-photographer with 20 years of experience? How about a retail-sales cashier and customer-service rep with 21 years of experience? If so, let me know below. I could use a good job, even part-time. Not truly desperate yet, but getting there.
Still reading lots and listening to music some. I have maybe half the energy I did five years ago, so I'm afraid that book I was planning to write about Really Bad Prog is most likely never going to get finished.
I have a couple other book projects in the works, however. Am currently 8,000 words into a cheezy B-movie-style horror novel. God knows if I'll get it done, either. But my next completed book will go to a legitimate print publisher. My experience with selling e-books has not been good.
I am hanging in. Wish I had some more positive news to pass on.
My girlfriend had a heart pacemaker installed back in December after some fairly scary health-related stuff happened, and though she feels way better than she did before, neither of us are planning to run any marathons. I'm grateful she's around to take care of me. I do my best to take care of her.
If anybody's out there, drop me a line in the comments below. Let me know what you've been up to. We'll see if this blog is worth getting rolling again.

9 Years?!?!

It was somewhere around this time nine years ago that I started blogging about music.
My first review (on a site my son set up for me) was about the Hollies' ROMANY album. My second was on Al Stewart's MODERN TIMES. Within a week I had two-dozen reviews posted. A week later I'd added another dozen. Then I contacted Internet-rock-review legend Mark Prindle (I'd made a few comments at his huge review site), he posted a link from his site to mine, and I kept on rolling.
That first year I posted pieces on everything from made-up music history (What would have happened if the Beach Boys' SMILE album had been released on time?: World peace, and Brian Wilson winning the Nobel Peace Prize), to how CNN became the Michael Jackson Network after MJ died.
After nine months I had 225 reviews posted. I wrote six posts in a day, once. I wrote all of them in shorthand "text English," like most people use on their cellphones and Twitter -- I was striking a blow against illiteracy or something, I thought. Besides, as an extra bonus, writing that way seemed to annoy some people. Every post I did before #666 on King Crimson is still in text -- I was going to put them all in Real English once, but ... you know, life's too short.
Then the old website started having trouble. Posts disappeared for no reason, and I had trouble accessing the site. So I gave up and moved here to Blogger, and everything's been great ever since.
I was surprised for awhile by how much the blog has meant to me. It's been a way to blow off steam about work, whine when I'm lonely, work through issues when I'm angry or depressed, rant about politics and modern life, etc. After 950 posts, it's really been the best diary I've ever had.
The rash of posts this month has also helped me avoid thinking about other things that have been going on. The Girlfriend was in the hospital for a couple days back in November, after she was having increasing trouble breathing. She was diagnosed with COPD and the beginnings of congestive heart failure. She's doing much better now after being on oxygen 24/7 for awhile. Her spirits are good, and she has more energy than I do, most days.
My car got back-ended on the way to work a couple weeks ago. Almost $7,000 in damage. I wasn't hurt -- and I was grateful the woman who hit me wasn't hurt either. She was nine months pregnant and had her four-year-old daughter in her SUV. So it could have been a lot worse. I just want my old car back. And now I REALLY hate to drive here.
But enough. Thanks for reading here. And as a special Christmas gift, I was going to post a list of the 40 worst Beatles songs I could actually remember. But then (after typing the list out) I discovered I'd already posted that list -- back in July of 2016. And that list is better and funnier than what I was going to post this morning. Alzheimer's is an amazing thing....
See ya next year!

Hacked?

Greetings. It looks like my three-month-old laptop may have been "killed" as part of the ongoing worldwide cyberattack. I keep getting what my son used to call "the blue screen of death" as the machine tries to start and load-up. This started happening after five minutes on Facebook early this morning. Ghod knows if I've been infected, but I don't like the timing.
Luckily, I still have this eight-year-old laptop as backup. No complaints from me, at least I'm still "connected," except now this machine seems incredibly SLOW....
Will be working to see what the hell's wrong, but in the meantime it looks like any Silly or Political stuff will be posted at my old TADs-Back-Up-Plan page on Facebook. Will of course announce there if I have any new reviews to post here.
Haven't been doing much lately -- may even have started ANOTHER new book a couple days ago, sort of by accident. More about that eventually.
More here soon, and be careful with your computers out there....

...After giving it 12 hours to recover, the new laptop FINALLY came back to life and -- after cleaning up and defragmenting the hard drive -- it SEEMS to be working normally again, for now. I'll keep you posted. Thought I was a goner for sure. Back to normal status, apparently. Safe Computing, everyone....

UPDATE -- It happened again on May 19th, while I was trying to write a post here. Since then I've "restored" the system to its condition before May 13th, cleaned-up and defragged the hard drive again, and as of this morning it seems to be working normally. Whatever that means.
But what's with this fragile new technology? Already I've had more "fun" with this machine than I ever had with the old laptop. The old machine's been dropped at least twice and been knocked off of desks a couple times, and it still works. More or less. Maybe they made them tougher eight years ago. Or maybe the viruses out there now are just meaner. Anyway, onward.

Spring Break

Thanks for checking in here, but I won't be reviewing any Strange Music for awhile.
I've been posting pretty steadily here since last June, but it's time for a break.
I have another book project I should finish that I keep putting off, because I don't want to face it -- even though it would only take a couple weeks to finish. And I've been trying to get the book written since 1977.
It's also been awhile since I've listened to any music FOR PLEASURE, rather than concentrating on whether it's WORKING or if I can make any snarky comments about it.
Lately Sunday album-review-days have been coming around too fast, and what's always been fun before has started to seem like work -- self-imposed, but still work. I still have a lot of new-to-me music piled up to listen to here, but nothing I'm too excited about, to be honest.
I've been pretty dissatisfied with almost all music and books lately. I think I'm getting stale.
I've also noticed -- especially since getting this new laptop in February -- that the Internet and especially Facebook are great time-wasters. And I continue to put projects off.
So I'm gonna try to unplug and do some other stuff. If I can't resist commenting about something, I'll post it here, and I'll probably still post Political and Silly stuff on Facebook, but I'm gonna try not to spend ALL DAY doing it. (That's been happening to me a lot, lately.)
I'll clear my head out, and then hopefully come back here fresher and more enthusiastic. And maybe I'll be able to pile up more new stuff while I'm gone.
I don't plan to be gone too long. I'll probably be back before you even realize....

My 900th post??!!

Yeezus. If you count the 225 posts I wrote at my old vanished website at the end of 2008 and through most of 2009, this is my 900th post since I started doing this stuff a little over eight years ago.
I'm averaging about two posts a week since I started doing this. That's surprising enough, considering the long gaps and breaks I've taken over the last few years. But I'm still here.
And though I'm more into it now than I have been in awhile -- it's still the gift that keeps on giving -- what I'm mainly thinking about lately is how many bloggers are no longer posting.
Check out that list of "Followers" down at the lower right. Except for one, every single one of those people has "retired" from blogging, moved on with their lives, have stopped talking, or maybe have moved to Facebook full-time. This bugs me, because I like to read about how people feel about things, how music fits into their daily lives -- I like knowing I'm Not The Only One, sometimes.
My buddy Crabby is still crankin' em out, Ghod bless him. He threatens to pack it in occasionally, but he keeps going despite his disgust with current music ... and almost everything else.
2000 Man has been busy with other things and posts every few months or so, which I think is a loss to music-blog fans.
But everybody else has disappeared. Gardenhead was off writing novels, last I heard. Rastro has vanished without a trace. Groove Sandwich went off to be a gigging musician. Layla/Barbara was blogging about things other than Classic Rock for awhile. Vegas Linda Lou has officially retired, though she may still be doing her standup comedy act -- she urged me to publish my first memoir through Amazon/Kindle. Lex Dexter was depressed a couple years back, then went quiet. Drew seems to have a happy family life.
And there are others who've been and gone. I miss them. If I could find someone to replace them, I'd let you know.
The Girlfriend started writing a blog back in December. I think she does good, but if politics and current issues isn't your thing ... well, she hasn't written about music yet. The best music blog I've found lately stopped posting in 2010.
This is all probably normal. Blogging is so 2007. But hey, I'd like to read more good new folks. I just can't find them.
Plus lately I've been a little more ... uh ... politically involved than usual.
Anyway, thanks for your support. I've got more planned -- more Prog reports as I continue slowly to try to get that Strange Music Guide finished. I actually did an hour's worth of work on the book yesterday....
And for tomorrow, I plan to play at least a couple hours of totally new-to-me Strange Music. This Sunday no-coffee reviewing thing is still working for me.
Thanks again to my son for giving me the best Christmas present ever. He got this thing rolling more than nine years ago, and I'm still having fun with it.
More soon....

The mission continues

Another wonderful weekend. On Monday, took all the music I was bored with and all the books I'm fed up with or will never finish reading (have a real attention-span problem with fiction right now) to Half-Price Books in Tacoma and turned it all in for cash. There wasn't actually that much to turn in, just a box-full, hardly anything compared to previous trips. And though the place was jammed -- everybody in town seemed to have the same idea, and the buy-counter was piled high with trade-ins -- it was worth the trip. Even found half a dozen good cheap vinyl albums in Half-Price's $1-or-less Clearance bin. There are some real bargains in there, if you don't mind digging and maybe getting a little dirty. However, the pickin's in the full-price music bins were kinda thin....
Then took the cash to Tacoma's Hi-Voltage Records, still my favorite record store despite their occasionally OUTRAGEOUS prices. They hadn't updated their bargain bin since the last time we were there (a week ago) -- but out in the big (and expensive) vinyl room, they had several boxes full of $3 jazz albums, and I found a few spacey things in there -- Return to Forever, Stomu Yamashta, etc.
After that, started going through the expensive-vinyl bins, which I still haven't picked clean of stuff I can afford. But the PRICES! FIFTY BUCKS for a vinyl copy of Miles Davis's LIVE EVIL?! Man, is someone gonna be disappointed. $30 for Miles's ON THE CORNER? Sure it was ahead of its time, but.... I also discovered that if I ever want to pay off the mortgage, copies of Gryphon's five imported albums run from $25 to $35. But I'm not giving mine up.
(One of the guys at Hi-Voltage's competitor a mile down the street, Golden Oldies, agreed that Hi's prices are sometimes off the charts, but he added that "If you're looking for something a little off-the-wall, there's a pretty good chance that you'll find it there." "But at what scary price?" I asked. Golden Oldies has VERY reasonable prices ... but you can browse through everything in the store in 15 minutes or less.)
Did find a few things. First two Byrds albums packaged together for $13 -- a bargain, considering they were selling separately for $15 each. First two Kansas albums cheap. Argent's first. Couple Anthony Phillips solo albums (early guitarist for Genesis). Journey's DREAM AFTER DREAM, Kayak's STARLIGHT DANCER, Jethro Tull's BROADSWORD AND THE BEAST, The Nice's ARS LONGA VITA BREVIS. Renaissance's AZURE D'OR for less than $6. (Really Bad Prog will be making its return soon.)
On the way home, listened to a blues album The Girlfriend found -- Bob Margolin's DOWN IN THE ALLEY. Some pretty rockin' stuff on there, with excellent guitar and piano work: "Boogie at Midnight" is straight out of the '50s, "Tough Times" is funny, "While You're Down There" is mildly raunchy and funny, and maybe best of all "Boston Driving Blues," which is about how tough you have to be to drive in Boston. Hilarious. I don't remember "All Blues" ever playing THAT.
After getting back home (and much of Tuesday), put some of this new stuff on the stereo. Argent's "Dance in the Smoke" is pretty freaking awesome, with a great build-up. It was so good I played it a couple more times over the evening. Best new music I've heard recently. Their "Liar" isn't too far off from Three Dog Night's cover version, either. I continue to think these guys were underrated.
Anthony Phillips's work on THE GEESE AND THE GHOST and PRIVATE PARTS AND PIECES seems to be mostly low-key guitar works, pleasant but very quiet. I had hopes for a piece called "Tibetan Yak-Music," but it turned out to be a 12-string showcase, pretty and very inoffensive. Nice background music.
The Byrds' "The World Turns All Around Her" still sounds great, and I tried a few other things I hadn't heard before -- "Oh Susanna" is kinda funny, and "Don't Doubt Yourself, Babe" is fun (all the hardships you go through just make you prettier, gorgeous). But I couldn't take "We'll Meet Again" -- had to put on The Turtles' version right afterward to wash the Byrds' downbeat version away.
The first side of Genesis's NURSERY CRYME is pretty cool -- Peter Gabriel makes a good Creepy Old Man in "The Musical Box." "Return of the Giant Hogweed" is also fun -- but they were very show-offy here. I was also surprised by how clear the production was. Much less muddy than I expected. Wonder what happened on FOXTROT?
Continuing with Peter Gabriel, both "D.I.Y." and "On the Air" from PG2 are interesting -- what surprised me most on these PG tracks was I didn't mind his voice. Maybe I'm getting over it, finally.
For contrast, turned to two tracks from Genesis's ABACAB -- "Like it or Not" and "Keep it Dark," which I hadn't heard in awhile. "Like it or Not" now sounds like a blueprint for Phil Collins's whole solo career -- strange that bassist Mike Rutherford wrote it....
Then turned to Jethro Tull. The Girlfriend has a block about Tull almost as big as her block with The Beatles. But she survived "the good parts version" of SONGS FROM THE WOOD (title song, "Ring Out Solstice Bells," "The Whistler," "Fire at Midnight" and -- yes, for contrast -- "Pibroch") edited by yours truly, and she didn't complain when I followed it up with Side 2 of MINSTREL IN THE GALLERY. Of course she was blogging and maybe a little distracted by then....
I finished off with Tangerine Dream's "Monolight" from ENCORE -- still sounds great. I gotta get some more of their stuff....
(On a previous trip to Hi-Voltage, found a two-CD best-of by English folkie John Martyn -- SWEET LITTLE MYSTERIES -- that was worth $12. Despite that he was an old buddy of Nick Drake's, I'd never heard Martyn before. "May You Never" and "Solid Air" are especially nice, I like his smokey voice and sometimes-slurred vocals, and there's a nice long guitar instrumental, "Glistening Glyndebourne." There is also more nice vocal stuff that may take more listenings. Some of the later stuff gets so jazzy it almost loses form, and by the time I got to the title song, I thought John could fit in on '80s adult-contemporary radio....)
Of course, all this listening is going toward finishing that Strange Music book I've been writing in my head for 20-some years. More updates will be coming in the near-future.

Check her out

Hey, The Girlfriend just started a blog. It's called THINK and you can find it here. She said she's wanted to start blogging for years. Well, now she's started.
This is not exactly Strange Music- and books-related -- The Girlfriend has some strong opinions about the recent election and how we treat people in this country. After living through the Civil Rights Movement and the Feminist Movement, she's concerned about the drift of this country right now, and her background and travels give her a range of experience I certainly don't have.
Her opinions and how she views Reality were among the things that first attracted me to her. This is the woman who got me to vote in a presidential election for the first time in almost 20 years.
So naturally, I hope she keeps going. Check her out if you feel so inclined....

Now....

It's sleeting outside, there's been an inch or two of snow here a couple times already, and I have to work a long day on Christmas. So what's new?
This: The Girlfriend has changed jobs, and her being around more often means I've been blogging less because I don't want to waste any time when she's here. Also, I'm happier, so I feel less driven to mouth-off as often.
However. There's still SOMETHING working. To celebrate the holidays, over several recent trips I've probably brought about 50 cheap new-to-me vinyl albums into the house, lots of stuff I've never heard before, in one last effort to maybe get that "Strange Music" guide written that I've been putting off for 20 years. Maybe I can actually get it finished in 2017 before I'm too old to bother with it anymore. Blog posts from now on are likely to be first impressions of new-to-me albums and updates on my progress. And by posting this here maybe I can force myself to finish it.
Just hope this goes better than my last dive back into Prog and "Strange Music" a few years back, in which I learned that most of the new stuff I picked to listen to was ... overall, pretty disappointing. And I spent enough on that adventure to fund a small third-world country.
Have listened to a little bit of this haul so far:
Kevin Ayers: "Connie on a Rubber Band" and "Gemini Child" from ODD DITTIES -- Found a $15 copy of ODD DITTIES at a hole-in-the-wall record store called Quimper Sound in cute old Port Townshend's small "underground" downtown. Some decent vinyl prices, and a few interesting oddities.
Hadn't heard "Connie" since I stupidly traded OD off a decade ago. A bouncy, silly, lighter-than-air piece of British reggae, probably not worth $15 to you all by itself. "Gemini Child" is a charming and direct mid-tempo rocker, more straightforward than Ayers usually is. And I'll vouch for the quality of half a dozen other songs on OD. Above-average in charm, good stuff from ol' deep-smooth-voice. But not worth paying $30 for a copy like some folks are asking.
Genesis: THE LAMB LIES DOWN ON BROADWAY, side one -- Got most of the way through the first side of this epic "rock opera." Would have liked "In the Cage" more if I hadn't heard Phil Collins' ferocious vocal on THREE SIDES LIVE. Production seems kind of muddy and flat, even for 1974.
Stomu Yamashta, Steve Winwood and Michael Shreve: GO, side one -- Airy, spacey, funky prog-fusion with Winwood's occasional vocals. I like the synthesizer atmospherics, not too sure about the more earthbound, funkier stuff. A nice-enough surprise; I'll have to play side two.
Jean-Michel Jarre: "Oxygene, Part 4" -- Bouncy synth piece with just enough melody to keep it interesting. But after 4 minutes, Jarre slows it down and he loses me. Shoulda kept it upbeat and bouncy.
Jethro Tull: THICK AS A BRICK, side one -- Love the folky first four minutes or so, which I'd already heard on various Tull best-of's. Then they got heavy and I went for the reject button. But I'll be getting back to this....
Kate Bush: "Under the Ivy" from THIS WOMAN'S WORK. My Ghod, when Kate isn't busy showing off her range and her singing lessons, she's pretty amazing. Much better when she just SINGS rather than being all studied about it. One of several great overlooked tracks on THIS WOMAN'S WORK. Also played a handful of songs from Kate's THE RED SHOES awhile back and have yet to find anything that sticks.
Gerry Rafferty: "The Royal Mile (Sweet Darlin')" and "Bring it All Home" from SNAKES AND LADDERS. OK, this isn't Strange at all, but it's beautifully produced by Hugh Murphy. Hadn't heard "Bring it All Home" in 30 years -- still sounds great. And I'd never heard "Royal Mile," which grew on me pretty fast. And the pennywhistle riff that hooks the song is played by my hero Richard Harvey from Gryphon.
Alan Parsons Project: TALES OF MYSTERY AND IMAGINATION/EDGAR ALLAN POE, side one -- I've always liked their rather predictable smoothness, but that's messed up pretty badly by Arthur Brown's crazed vocal on "The Tell-Tale Heart." "The Raven" and "Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether" are both pretty great, not sure about "Cask of Amontillado," and maybe I should play side two....
Alan Parsons Project: "Hyper-Gamma-Spaces" from PYRAMID -- Pretty funky instrumental, kept my attention. Why wasn't this on INSTRUMENTAL WORKS?
Supertramp -- "The Meaning" and "Two of Us" from CRISIS? WHAT CRISIS? -- Pretty much the chirpy upbeat stuff I expected. These could almost fit in on BREAKFAST IN AMERICA, though maybe they have a little more edge.
Reports on more new-to-me stuff soon.

BOOKS: Still getting educated. Colin Larkin's VIRGIN ENCYCLOPEDIAS OF 60'S AND 70'S MUSIC both seem pretty solid, all the way down to one-hit wonders and folks I thought everybody'd forgotten about. That's why I picked them up. Maybe not enough humor.
Musichound's ESSENTIAL ALBUM GUIDE (edited by Gary Graff) puts the humor back in -- very direct advice about what albums to buy, with WOOF! ratings for the true dogs.
THE ROUGH GUIDE TO ROCK seems geared for a much later generation than mine -- what, no Moody Blues? But lots of humor in the career recaps and photo captions, and a few careful recommendations about what to buy.
THE ROUGH GUIDE TO THE BEST MUSIC YOU'VE NEVER HEARD (edited by Nigel Williamson) does a nice job presenting one- or two-page bios of artists and bands you really should check out, plus tosses in detailed write-ups on albums awaiting rediscovery. Just enough Strange Music acts to make it compulsively readable for me.
More soon!

Lately

Thinking of starting a new blog for music fans with short attention spans. Like me. If I do it, I'll let you know. Suddenly I'm dying to write a bunch of SHORT reviews of albums I've got here in the house, reviews that cut through all the BS. Maybe I'll try a couple of experiments here.
Books first:
Legs McNeil and Gillian McCann's PLEASE KILL ME (1996) -- An oral history of Punk Rock, amusing and involving, and I read the whole thing (sort of from the middle outward) and had a good time. Some truly appalling and hilarious behavior detailed inside. But it wasn't really my scene. Still think somebody should compile an oral history of progressive rock, and then we could see if the behavior by musicians a generation earlier was any worse. (I think it was probably just as bad, they just didn't ANNOUNCE it.)
Bill Martin's MUSIC OF YES (1996) -- Proves that it's way possible to THINK TOO MUCH about this stuff. Martin's a professor and a guitarist, and he's pretty solid on Yes's early days (when they were way more interesting covering other people's songs than doing their own) and their "main sequence" of albums in the '70s. But man does he take their work WAY too seriously. He hardly seems to know how to react when the band cracks a joke -- like they did on the title track of GOING FOR THE ONE. But what was TORMATO if not a comedy album?
Martin seems to think Yes were being absolutely sincere all the time -- when they were at their best. He seems to think their lyrics actually support a "philosophy." He's the second commentator I've read who thinks "Yours is No Disgrace" is a Vietnam War protest.
I think Yes at their best is like sound-painting -- not that far removed from the Roger Dean artworks that have adorned their album covers. Really good mood music that paints pretty landscapes in your head, but not so much to think about. And certainly not as deeply as here.
Chris Welch's CLOSE TO THE EDGE: THE STORY OF YES (1999/2008) -- Will likely tell you more about the band than you ever wanted to know, especially about the comings and goings of various band members. The best, most revealing comments in the book come from former drummer Bill Bruford. If you want to know what being a member of Yes was like, read Bruford's great AUTOBIOGRAPHY instead.
Speaking of autobiographies, Rick Wakeman's FURTHER ADVENTURES OF A GRUMPY OLD ROCK STAR (2009) will tell you very little about Yes, but will fill you in on the kind of amusing troubles rock stars can get into during their careers. An hour or two of light reading, not quite as funny or fresh as Wakeman's first book, GRUMPY OLD ROCK STAR.

I've also been listening, in bits and pieces.
Spent a couple hours awhile back digging through Tacoma's Half-Price Books' tons of "clearance" albums for a dollar or less. Found lotsa stuff I'd either never heard or wanted back in the house. More trips planned for the future. Was bummed to find lots of old Moody Blues and Al Stewart albums in the cheapies. I assume people must have outgrown them. But it also did my heart good to see lots of old Loverboy albums there....
Solution: CORDON BLEU (1975) -- A Dutch or German jazz-rock band on Elton John's Rocket Records label. Very nice sax and keyboards -- they also sing, not as impressively. Best on long instrumentals. Could be a keeper.
Automatic Man: (first album) (1976) -- Dramatic vocal jazz-rock, lots of show-offy playing, leaning towards stadium-rock. Not sure about the singing and lyrics yet.
Be-Bop Deluxe: "Adventures in a Yorkshire Landscape" from LIVE! IN THE AIR AGE (1977) -- The words go right through me, but the guitar and keyboard solos are gorgeous. Gonna havta play the rest at some point, though I already know most of the other songs from studio albums....
Phil Manzanera and 801: LISTEN NOW (1978) -- Disappointing. All this talent, and all they could come up with was lame, limping disco take-offs? An all-star cast (Eno, Francis Monkman, Mel Collins, Godley and Creme, Eddie Jobson, Tim Finn, Dave Mattacks, Simon Phillips) and I haven't found any decent tunes, let alone any flashy guitar. And ROLLING STONE called them something like "the ultimate art-rock group" at the time....
Styx: "Why Me?" from CORNERSTONE (1979) -- Guilty Pleasures Department. We all have our "things." I bought a cheap copy of PIECES OF EIGHT, too....
Kate and Anna McGarrigle: (first album), (1975) -- Oh, I dunno. Seems kinda simple, even though Joe Boyd produced. Cool, distant north-country voices. "Kiss and Say Goodbye" has one cute line in it. I've been trying to figure out why Linda Ronstadt covered "Heart Like a Wheel." I'll havta get back to this....
Tim Buckley: HAPPY SAD (1970) -- His voice is deeper than I expected, somehow. "Love From Room 109 at the Islander" is certainly interesting. Makes for a pretty quick 11 minutes....
Rick Wakeman: CRIMINAL RECORD (1977) -- "The Breathalyzer" is still cute. But I couldn't make it more than three minutes into "Judas Iscariot"....
Electric Light Orchestra: "Confusion" from DISCOVERY (1979) -- I've always been a sucker for this, and for them. Second side's pretty solid.
Pete Townshend: "Zelda" and "Melancholia" from SCOOP (1983). Why weren't these on Pete's best-of?
Paul Winter: COMMON GROUND (1978) -- I swear this album has some sort of hypnotic, pounding tribal-drum piece on it somewhere. But I can't find it now and may never find it again.... The version of "Icarus" here sounds kind of thin to me....
Ry Cooder: "Fool for a Cigarette/Feelin' Good" from PARADISE AND LUNCH (1974). As a non-smoker, I find this hilarious.
Jayhawks -- RAINY DAY MUSIC (2003) -- Bought this after it played at one of my favorite CD stores, Tacoma's HI-VOLTAGE (good CD prices, some OUTRAGEOUS vinyl prices). Nice sorta country-folky-Eagles sound. Was impressed with the first seven songs and have yet to play the rest....
Argent: HOLD YOUR HEAD UP sampler (2000) -- Some nice bits and pieces here, pleasant enough without ever getting to stunning, still makes me think I should investigate them further.
Genesis: "Supper's Ready" from THE PLATINUM COLLECTION (2006) -- Not bad, kinda primitive, thin production, though the keyboards and guitars sound just like they do on the only other version of this I've ever heard, from SECONDS OUT with Phil Collins singing. I'm getting used to Peter Gabriel's voice. Wonder why they didn't remix this?
David Bowie: "John I'm Only Dancing" from CHANGESBOWIE (1990). Hmmm. He is a strange one, isn't he?
Yes: "Changes" from 90125 (1983) -- Probably my favorite "later" Yes song, nice mix of Trevor Rabin and Jon Anderson vocals and good drama.
Mum: SING ALONG TO SONGS YOU DON'T KNOW. Hmmm, this is not at all what I expected. I thought they were some kind of Icelandic choral group. This seems kind of low-key and primitive, though it's lightly pleasant....
Hollies: "King Midas in Reverse" from GREATEST HITS. I think it's funny, I love the melodramatic lyrics, and my girlfriend can't take the keening vocals.
Peter Gabriel: "Come Talk to Me" from US (1992) -- Reportedly written to his estranged daughter, this is full of drama and martial guitar, keybs and bagpipes -- the emotional open-heart-surgery I expected. Right up there with PG's devastating "Family Snapshot" for me.
...An album I passed by at a local Goodwill -- Brian Auger and Julie Driscoll's OPEN -- I now see is selling for $300 at Amazon....
More eventually....

Now I'm Here

Coming to you live from my new home with The Girlfriend, where I've been blogging from for the last three months. But now it's Official.
Got all moved-in on Monday and Tuesday, getting all the furniture and endless boxes transferred on Monday, and going back for the cleanup and leftovers on Tuesday. Woke up on Wednesday with aches in places I didn't know I HAD, but was happy I got it all done. Took longer than I thought, and it was messier than I expected, but. Now I'm here. And this is where I want to be.
The worst part was the books. Yeezus -- 19 big boxes of books (and clothes and etc). Awhile back my Old Roommate asked me why I had SO MANY goddamned books. And on Monday I told him that RIGHT THEN I didn't KNOW why I had so many goddamned books.... And I meant it.
Good thing I'd already moved a good-sized pile of them over here.... Good thing all the CD's were already here....
Right now all my stuff is sitting in The Girlfriend's garage, and I'll slowly be moving it into the house -- once we figure out where to put it all, and once I make sure all my body-parts still work like I thought they were supposed to. Luckily, the garage is pretty dry -- even with the fall-starting rain we got in the last few days. I don't think it will hurt stuff TOO much to sit in the garage for a couple days. Besides, we're supposed to have a stretch of 70-degree sunshine here for the next week....
It's a lot quieter here. More time for me to mull things over or play music or read, or blog at my leisure. Who knows -- I might even have time to finish another book, since I haven't gotten anything new out there in the last 18 months, not that my worldwide legion of fans is screaming for more RIGHT NOW or anything like that.
The Girlfriend and I are happy. We've been talking about me moving in since June. And Ghod knows her house is quieter than the Old Roommate's. We sit and cuddle and talk and laugh like loons, and because of our sometimes clashing work schedules, we spend a lot of time wishing we had more time together. But we cherish the time we have.
With the move and all, I haven't had much time to listen to music, though I'm slowly taking in that batch of new stuff I grabbed in Portland (see last installment).
Am almost finished with YES IS THE ANSWER, and I recommend it. I've read all but a couple of the essays, laughing all the way. Only a couple pieces don't quite seem to fit the concept of the book -- one is about how a Prog fan immediately converted to Punk after seeing a Styx concert. Seems like a totally legit reason to me.
A couple other pieces are either personal reminiscences or are more into Metal than Prog. But they're still enjoyable. There are even -- shocker! -- WOMEN Prog fans in the book! Amazing! And all the writers have such affection for progressive rock that it makes the book a helluva lotta fun to read.
Just got in Will Romano's PROG ROCK FAQ (2014), part of that FAQ series I've become hooked on -- I reviewed their volumes on Pink Floyd and The Who back around April, I think. Romano wrote the solid Prog history MOUNTAINS COME OUT OF THE SKY a few years back, and I'm glad to see someone wanted him to write more about the subject. Though I gotta tell ya -- just browsing through FAQ, I think the book is less about What Else You Need To Know About Prog than it is a platform for introducing you to overlooked Prog artists. And I'm OK with that.
There's also a recommended list of LONG Prog compositions ("Close to the Edge," "Gates of Delirium," "Echoes," etc.), and a long look at Prog concept albums. So I can see this book is gonna take awhile to digest. And that's OK. I got nothin' but time....

Marathon 4 not that bad

Suddenly it's fall here. Pouring rain, windy, temperatures down around 50 at night. And just two weeks ago it was 95 degrees. Ah, global warming. This is the new normal.
Marathon 4 at work hasn't been so bad. My feet are numb, but the work itself hasn't been too terrible, and my two long days this past Monday and Tuesday were actually a nice break -- just enough to disrupt my routine in a good way. Tonight will be Night Number 10 out of 12, so maybe I'm just delirious by this point. Sometimes that's not a bad place to be. But sleeping in late today sure helped balance things out.
I've been pretty cheery and haven't had to raise my voice at work in a week ... but I had a real challenge in the store last night. Good thing I was in a good mood.
He came in at 10 p.m. with a hoodie over his head and a backpack on his back -- clearly he was either homeless or had been thrown out. He angrily demanded that I sell him two packs of smokes. Didn't tell me what KIND of smokes -- it took three more questions to get that information out of him.
Then he about broke our card-reader when he discovered we didn't have a chip-reader to speed up his transaction. He about tore the bottom off of the machine while trying to force it to work.
"I am SO FUCKING PISSED OFF!" he shouted.
"OK," I said, "easy, easy -- we don't have a chip reader, just slide your card down the side."
He didn't tell me if he preferred debit or credit. That took three more questions to get out of him.
Then he needed a lighter. We agreed a couple free packs of matches would be better, so he didn't have to fight with the card-slider again.
Then he left, and began circling around the building, shrieking into his cellphone. Clearly he was upset about something. But he wasn't done.
A few minutes later, he returned with an empty beer can he'd found in the parking lot.
"I want to pay for this," he said.
"You don't have to pay for that," I said. "It's empty. But thanks for picking it up for me...."
"No, I want to BUY this. Will you just SCAN IT so I can PAY you for it?!"
No point arguing. So I scanned it. And naturally, the cash register came up with the six-pack price of almost $6 after tax.
"Normally we charge 99 cents for a short can like this," I told him. "You don't have to pay me six bucks for an empty beer can. You don't have to pay me AT ALL. I'm not gonna charge you for this."
"YES YOU ARE!"
He forced $7 cash into my hand and left. And I took his money. Because there's no point arguing with a deranged person over something this silly.
I thought he'd left, but he wandered back in at ten minutes before closing and asked if there was somewhere he could sit down for a minute.
"I've been on my feet all night and my feet are burning up," he said.
So I gave him our step-stool to sit on, and he set it up back in the corner next to the soda machine. I went back to closing up the store and the next thing I knew he was trying to get water out of the soda machine.
"That machine's already closed down for the night," I told him. "If you try to get water out of it, it's going to spray everywhere."
"I just want some water," he said.
"I can fill it up for you quicker here behind the counter."
"I'll get it HERE."
"It's going to spray everywhere...."
No point arguing. He was already trying to fill an ugly-looking plastic gallon bottle with water, and it sprayed all over him and the machine and the floor.
And I sighed and went back to work.
A couple minutes later he shrieked "I just want some WATER!"
"I can fill it for you in the sink here behind the counter. Only takes a minute."
"I'll get it HERE!"
OK, no point in arguing. He got his water bottle filled and I cleaned up the spilled water after he left.
But as it got closer to midnight, I wondered if he was going to be a problem to get out of the store so I could close. It's happened before, though not in a long time.
I thought maybe he was finished, but I was wrong. I had the news playing on the radio, and maybe that set him off.
He walked over to where I was perched on the edge of the counter.
"Hey, have you seen it before?" he asked.
I wasn't sure I'd heard him right, so I turned the radio down. "What?" I asked him.
"Have you SEEN it before?"
"Seen WHAT before?"
"The MACHINE! Have you seen the MACHINE before?!"
He seemed to be referring to something outside. But there were no machines or vehicles out there. The parking lot was empty. What machine was he seeing?
"I'm not understanding you," I said. "...And I have to close this place up in about three minutes."
This deflated him. "Oh. OK." And he slowly gathered up his stuff and shambled out the door. He was no trouble at all. I told him to be careful out there, and I meant it. And I was grateful that he was no serious trouble while he was in the store.
Now this was clearly a person in distress. And there wasn't much of that distress that I could help with. Or that he seemed to WANT help with. He was already furious when he walked into the store. I sure couldn't help with THAT. All I could do was be careful with him.
But I wonder about these homeless folks -- where they come from, why they always seem to come out more when the rain starts pouring down, what kind of weirdness has messed them up so badly. I wonder why so often they seem to be guys who don't know when to shut up -- guys who've gotten into ugly fights with their Significant Others and then been tossed out. There's a lot of weird, ugly, knee-jerk behavior going on out there these days. Doesn't anybody ever relax anymore, or is everything grounds for an ugly argument?
Did you know Washington is among the Bottom 10 in the U.S. when it comes to mental-health services and funding? The feeling is that if folks who need help can deal with Reality, they should be out there dealing with it 24/7. And maybe that's why there are so many people roaming the streets here. And most of them don't seem to want any help.
Coincidentally, our famous former Regular "Bike Guy" (also homeless) met me in the parking lot when I got to work Thursday afternoon. The last time I saw him, a couple of winters back, he had a BAD case of shingles and was WAY distraught about Everything. You couldn't ask him a question without him freaking out.
After that, he disappeared. I was pretty sure he'd died. He'd refused to go to the emergency room or see a doctor at a free clinic. He refused to go to a homeless shelter. He said all they'd do was mess with him.
Yesterday, he looked WAY happier and healthier than I'd seen him in years, maybe ever. He'd moved to a town 10 miles up the road and was WAY more hopeful about his future. He agreed he'd been in bad shape, but things were MUCH better now....
But I wonder about the future for Bike Guy and that guy last night ... and even for me in five years if things go wrong. I have no idea of the challenges homeless people face every day. I have no idea what I can do to help. Most of those I've met don't seem to WANT any help.
There are no safety nets for anyone. Not really. We shouldn't kid ourselves. We never know what's going to happen. And winter's coming soon....

Happier things, now. I have a ton of new-to-me music in the house, mostly from the recent Portland trip, that I've barely had time to even sniff at. I'll be listening to and reviewing it in the near future. Artists include Hawkwind, Magma, Camel, Gong, Cat Stevens, The Strawbs, Gentle Giant, Cab Calloway, Fats Waller, Grateful Dead, The Go-Go's, Bob Seger, The Drifters ... and some guy named Frank Sinatra.
More soon....

News flash: YES IS THE ANSWER!

I'm reading YES IS THE ANSWER ... AND OTHER PROG ROCK TALES (2013), a collection of 21 essays about progressive rock, edited by Marc Weingarten and Tyson Cornell.
And it's freaking HILARIOUS.
Because these writers UNDERSTAND. They know what a great, gorgeous, hilarious, nonsensical Guilty Pleasure prog was, and they all love it.
Just from a quick browse, I've already found several sections of this book that guarantee it will never leave the house. So far, I think it's the best book on music I've read in YEARS.
Because they are all so affectionate about prog, the writers are willing to admit its many flaws right up-front -- pretension, horrible lyrics, self indulgence, showing off, long-windedness, you know the list. And they admit that's part of what attracted them.
The essays are so direct, down-to-earth, open and honest -- that they make me laugh like a loon. This could happen to you too.
So far, I've loved Wesley Stace on Canterbury bands and lame lyrics (and why those same lyrics are also great), Matthew Specktor on the many wonderfulnesses of Yes, Jeff Gordinier on how Styx made him give up on progressive rock, Peter Case on the attractions of the Incredible String Band, Marc Weingarten's hilariously honest and direct introduction, and more. Rick Moody trying to defend Emerson, Lake and Palmer will have you laughing with the first sentence.
This book also tells me some things I need to investigate. Like that Gryphon has ANOTHER album out there somewhere: PAWN TO GRYPHON FOUR ... ? Really?! What??!! Have to confirm this....
It also points out some stuff I clearly missed while listening to Soft Machine, Hatfield and the North, National Health, Matching Mole, Robert Wyatt and others. And makes me wonder what ELSE I missed while I was allegedly listening closely.
If you're not a Prog fan this probably won't work for you. Or maybe it WILL if you need some good laughs. And there's nothing wrong with that.
I'll be back eventually with more about this. Meanwhile, there must be a cheap second-hand copy you can find somewhere. It'll be worth it....

An Interruption In Service

Jeez, where to start?

WORK: First 2 nights of Marathon 4 have gone very smoothly. No complaints from me. And at least the AC is still working, as it remains hot here -- in the mid-to-upper 90s. The Girlfriend has me relaxed and thinking about work differently. Like it's OK if I can't fix something in the next 30 seconds, maybe the world won't end. Only 10 more nights to go. And at least two of those 10-hour nights will be ALL OVERTIME....

MOVING: It's Official. I will be completely moved-in with The Girlfriend on Labor Day. Talked it over with The Old Roommate -- he knew it was coming, wasn't surprised, even had a replacement already lined-up. I'm ecstatic, and The Girlfriend is thrilled, and this is actually going to happen within our lifetime. I know where I want to be, and it's right here. The Old Roommate even offered to let me use his truck so I can get the move done all at once, rather than carting a few boxes over now and then and fighting with the furniture. He's really a pretty great guy. Life is really good. I'm so happy I hardly know what to complain about....

TRIP: Portland is the Future! Well, maybe not, but it was a great break -- and I brought back a TON of CD's and a half-ton of books, all of which I'll probably be reporting on here, eventually. Powell's really IS the biggest bookstore I've ever seen, and within an hour I'd easily blown my modest budget.
Also visited one very nice CD shop -- Everyday Music, somewhere on Portland's west side -- and could easily have spent the rest of my life THERE, too.
There were lots of other things I liked about Portland: The pace somehow seems much slower there, MUCH slower than the Seattle area. In two days, I didn't see a single instance of road rage, horns honking, people screaming at each other, anyone driving anyone else off the road, etc. -- stuff I pretty much take for granted in this neighborhood. When we were stuck on the freeway in 90-degree heat, it was just The Girlfriend and I who were getting cranky. And a break for dinner took care of that.
I'm not naive -- there were a number of homeless people, but they weren't aggressive like they are here -- I wasn't held up for spare change. I only saw one meth freak, at the end of the second day, who began shouting threats for no reason and was immediately bounced from the restaurant we were sitting in ... and 10 seconds later the police arrived. I was impressed. It seemed almost ... civilized, there.
I'm not an idiot about stuff like this. And I can be miserable anywhere. But it sure was a nice break. Just getting out of town for awhile maybe did me more good than my vacation awhile back. I sure am relaxed, now. I'm hoping it lasts....

LOVE: Well, it's freakin' great. I have never felt so relaxed and at-ease with anyone, a woman who really GETS me, who has many of the same interests and obsessions, even some of the same hang-ups. We can talk for HOURS and laugh like loons and it's freakin' great. It seems like we've always known each other. She's my best friend. We've been seeing each other for four months -- together pretty-much 24/7 for the last three, and there hasn't been a cross, angry, ugly word between us. So THIS is what all those lovesongs were talkin' about. I recommend it heavily. Five stars.

Marathon 4 looms

NOW: It's hot here, mid-90s, damn hot for western Washington -- 95 here is like 105 in Idaho. The nights especially remind me of Idaho -- warm but dry, not hideous. It could be worse -- it could be way muggier. But the days are like an oven. There's at least one more 90-degree day coming before summer gives up here. And all the people who were whining that it rained too much in June and July are screaming for relief now.

COMING UP: My 57th birthday is tomorrow, and to celebrate I'll be spending my weekend in Portland, Ore., location of what I'm assured is the World's Biggest Used Bookstore. If I survive that, I'm told there's at least one decent record store in town, too. And I'll be spending all weekend with the woman I love, the best birthday present of all. Can't wait.

NEXT: After Birthday Weekend, I'm scheduled to work the next 12 nights in a row leading up to Labor Day. A couple of those will be longer work-nights than normal. Can't wait. Have been stocking up on new music in preparation for this upcoming stretch. I ain't no spring chicken however, and with the heat most customers at work seem even more pushy than usual. I'm a little pushy these days myself, but I'm trying to watch it.
If things should get too crazy or exhausting at work, you may see an Interruption In Service here at the Back-Up Plan, but I will be doing my best to carry on....

LISTENING: To keep myself sane, have been listening to lots of Aretha Franklin and Steely Dan. Have especially gotten into the choruses of the Dan's "Dirty Work": "I don't want to do your dirty work no more/I'm a fool to do your dirty work, oh yeah." I probably should have been fired years ago. That and the silly non-sequitur comedy of "Pretzel Logic." The angry guitar and lyrics in "Don't Take Me Alive." And of course nobody can top Aretha.
Speaking of non-sequiturs, right now am listening to the Firesign Theatre's SHOES FOR INDUSTRY! best-of. Sometimes unaccountably hilarious. I laugh for reasons I can't explain. The Theatre's DON'T CRUSH THAT DWARF HAND ME THE PLIERS is an old high-school favorite of mine, the greatest comedy album of all time, even if you're not stoned. And this best-of features a big slug of it, thank Ghod, or Columbia/Legacy, or whoever. But I can't stand "Nick Danger."

READING: Trying to read Clive Davis's THE SOUNDTRACK OF MY LIFE (2012). I really enjoyed his much-earlier CLIVE: INSIDE THE RECORD BUSINESS, especially the parts where he tried to take credit for EVERYONE'S success while he was running Columbia Records in the '60s and '70s.
Hey, maybe Clive DID edit and splice-together all those great early Chicago hits. SOMEBODY had to. I can just hear him telling the band, "Guys, if you take out all the dead horn parts and useless solos, you might just have something GOOD here." Too bad he couldn't save stuff like "Just You 'n' Me" or "Saturday in the Park." But at least he let them get away with stuff like "In Terms of Two" and "Critic's Choice."
Clive seems much more modest and much less self-serving in SOUNDTRACKS. But I'm only 10 chapters in, so there's plenty of time for that to change....