Author: Roger

I'm a librarian. I hear music, even when it's not being played. I used to work at a comic book store, and it still informs my life. I won once on JEOPARDY! - ditto.

Music Throwback Saturday: Electric Avenue

Electric Avenue got to #2 in both the UK and US

eddygrantBefore I can write about the song Electric Avenue, a promise I’d made. Last year, I wrote: “Some time, I need to tell the story of when I saw Eddy Grant in concert.” Then I forgot.

Recently, I saw a photo of my old pal “Mary” on someone else’s Facebook page. Mary and I were casual friends, and we were going to see Eddy Grant performing at the University at Albany. I went to her house, and she and/or others were going to drive to the campus.

I came right from work, if I’m remembering correctly, and I was really hungry, and I ate a brownie she had out, and took another to go. We get to the locale, which didn’t have chairs, but had an open space for dancing. I ate the second brownie.

I’m grooving on the music, when suddenly, I’m in need of leaning against a wall. I am feeling unwell, maybe. Then even standing became too difficult, and my back slid down the wall, and I sat in a corner, I think, I don’t know.
And I really don’t remember much else, such as how I got home.

Sometime that week, I called Mary. She was SURE she had told me there was hashish in those brownies. Maybe there was a general announcement, but I never heard it.

Every time I hear that intro, I have, if not a flashback, an odd physical recollection. Electric Avenue got to #2 in both the UK and US, for five weeks in the States. It appears on the Killer on the Rampage album, and I heard that track on the radio. I have Electric Avenue on a reggae compilation album with Living on the Frontline.

Listen to:
Electric Avenue HERE or HERE
Killer on the Rampage HERE or HERE
Living on the Frontline HERE (short version) HERE (long version)

Health Report: January/February 2017

It was particularly disappointing timing too.

A few weeks ago, a reporter for our local newspaper posted on Facebook, trying to find out whether this stomach flu – is THAT what they call it? – was around the area. Subsequent to that, I’ve been reading anecdotal tales about the nasty bugger that has hit several of my friends.

On Martin Luther King’s holiday, after coming home from seeing Hidden Figures at the movies, we realized the crockpot had been disconnected prematurely. But we thought the meat, rice, and carrots that had cooked in there would be OK. I’m known for having an iron stomach, consuming even some long-in-the-tooth that my wife wouldn’t touch. I think it’s the Protestant ethic of not throwing out things unless absolutely necessary.

But a couple of hours later, I’m having digestive distress. I figure it’s food poisoning, and that it would pass. But I visited the bathroom two or three times overnight. And the Daughter was likewise stricken at some level. We were both home on Tuesday and Wednesday that week. We all went to school/work Thursday, and I was about to head out the door for choir that night when I had a recurrence.

I went to work on Friday, but at noontime, suffered yet again, coincidentally when the new President was being inaugurated. I felt so poorly that I actually had to STAY at work, because I wasn’t sure I’d make it home. I missed the local Women’s March that Saturday because I was still feeling woozy.

Then at the beginning of February, the Wife was felled by not one, but two, ailments simultaneously, the stomach flu PLUS some upper respiratory thing with a sore throat. The combo made her looked more washed out than I had ever seen her but once. I would have stayed home with her that Thursday except for The Daughter, with a return of her own stomach flu, but still in better shape than her mother, stayed home and brought fluids and light food.

It was particularly disappointing timing too. The Daughter went on a church ski trip over that first February weekend, and The Wife and I were going to a play, a movie, maybe dinner; didn’t happen. And Monday, she still felt weak.

The potential of a snow/ice delay was on the minds of both the females in the house this past Tuesday, but it didn’t happen. But they DID get Thursday (yesterday) off, and I know they were glad for the rest, though my wife spent a goodly amount of time doing paperwork for school.

We all had gotten flu shots, so what we’ve been suffering from must be something else, unfortunately.

Being sick, then the extra cooking and cleaning I did has made my blogging output quite pathetic recently, for instance, two posts in a week. I guess why I write ahead.

 

Smoothing over rough edges with friends

The metamessage received may be, “She doesn’t think I know how to dress myself, take care of myself.”

Chris wants to know:

How do you smooth over rough edges with friends? Do you ignore it, broach the subject, etc.?

It depends on what the topic is. Next question.

OK. But it’s true. What’s the issue at stake? Sometimes, you just let it go, and sometimes you say something. If you say something, you need to use “I” sentences, such as “I am not comfortable when you run over Bernie Sanders supporters.”

Is it an online dispute over politics? Those are usually in the “let it go” category. You’re not going to convince them, and they surely aren’t going to change your mind. Unless they’re otherwise abusive – “How can you think like that, you skank?” – move on.

I will say that if it’s really bugging me, NOT saying something almost never works. The issue metastasizes into a much bigger deal.

I’ve been reading the book “I Only Say This Because I Love You: Talking to Your Parents, Partner, Sibs, and Kids When You’re All Adults” (2001) by Deborah Tannen, which I am enjoying, and it has applicability to non-family relationships. I’m only in the part where she lays out the problems; I trust there are solutions coming. She notes the fact that, in many conflicts, there’s the message and the metamessage.

A simple example would be when someone suggests that you do something differently, wear more fashionable clothes, e.g. The message the sender thinks she’s giving is “I’m a good friend/relative, just trying to be helpful.” The metamessage received may be, “She doesn’t think I know how to dress myself, take care of myself.” And when more than two parties are involved, in sharing secrets and creating alliances, it gets even trickier.

So I tend to tread lightly. Humans are tricky. Humans online are even complicated than humans face-to-face, when you can pick up nuance.

This usually works; I’m still friends with people I went out with. Sometimes it does not work. Interestingly, Facebook is useful in connecting, or reconnecting, with people whose friendships might otherwise have lapsed, so there’s that.

Have you ever written poetry? When? Did you ever show it to anyone?

I went out with a published poet in the late ’70s and early ’80s. So I would go to the workshops. I tried writing a few and shared them with the group, but fundamentally, I just didn’t get it, and that was fine; I have other skills.

What’s your favorite tradition at your church?

I suppose it’s the raised candles while singing the third verse of Silent Night in an otherwise darkened church on Christmas Eve.

MOVIE REVIEW: 20th Century Women

I feel as though, in real life, I actually had met characters like these once upon a time.,

If I were to say that 20th Century Women was a quirky film, which it is, that wouldn’t tell you much. So I’ll you what the woman sitting in front of me at the Spectrum Theatre in Albany told me when the lights came up: “You must really have liked the movie. You laughed a lot.” And I did.

The storyline is about a 55-year-old divorced woman named Dorothea (Annette Bening) trying to raise her 15-year-old son Jamie (Lucas Jade Zumann) and keep the boardinghouse she runs from falling apart in 1979 Santa Barbara, California. One tenant, the young photographer Abbie (Greta Gerwig), is dealing with a potentially devastating medical crisis, while another, the repairman William (Billy Crudup) is seemingly enigmatic to his landlady. Julie (Elle Fanning), the 17-year-old who lives down the road, is at this home more than her own.

While these are specific people, I feel as though, in real life, I actually had met characters like these once upon a time, or maybe I WAS a character like one or more of these, especially in that era. The film meanders at times, but the actors are universally solid, especially the Bening character, who tries to act as though she’s got it all together, unfazed, understanding almost to a fault.

Some stupid review in the National Review complains: “20th Century Women is really a politically correct emotional biography of that 21st-century anomaly: a non-gender-specific male.” In fact, Mike Mills, the writer-director who had made the lovely movie Beginners, was creating a film that was a reflection of his own growing up in a female-dominated household, as he noted on Charlie Rose in December 2016.

Some movies I can say, “I’m sure you’ll like it,” or not. This film I’m not that sure about for you, but I’m glad I went.

US: adopt rail transportation

Trains have inspired some of the finest music in the world.

The illustrious bard Jaquandor gripes:

What IS it with this country’s refusal to adopt rail as a serious method of transportation?

There’s a sign, less than two blocks from my house, that commemorates the Mohawk and Hudson Railroad that ran between Albany and Schenectady, one of the first in the nation. It’s clear that the transcontinental railroad created cohesion for the United States.

I’ve made it quite clear that I find passenger rail travel to be the only really civilized form of transportation. So why doesn’t the US embrace it more?

1) Freedom. The freedom of the open road, the myth sold by the car dealers decades ago, and now a part of the fabric of the self-definition of the country. EUROPEANS use trains and the metric system and socialized medicine, but that’s not what WE do. And it IS a big country.

2) Liberals. Most of the greatest concentration of potential train use, because of population patterns, is in the Northeast corridor from Boston to DC, and California. And do you know who lives there? LIBERALS, those arrogant prigs who fuss about energy conservation and don’t REALLY share American values. So screw ’em. We have the fix for the problems of some of the recent rail crashes, but we’re not going to spend money for THAT.

OK, that was exaggerated, but only slightly. There are also pockets of density in the eastern Midwest, and in parts of Texas suitable for rail transportation. Still, fixing the rails, usually shared by freight, and needing to defer to cargo, is considered “subsidizing” Amtrak. Fixing the roads is… oh, never mind, we don’t do that either.

And trains have inspired some of the finest music in the world. Here’s a list of 1000 songs. It’s MISSING at least two songs, both of which I own. One is Northern Bound Train by Pete Droge, which I’ve seen him perform. The other is Ridin’ the Rails by k.d. lang and Take 6, from the soundtrack to the movie Dick Tracy, a movie I’ve never seen.

Here are just a handful of my favorite train songs. Links to all.

500 Miles – Peter, Paul, and Mary
8:05 – Moby Grape
Big Train (from Memphis) – Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison and Carl Perkins

Casey Jones -Grateful Dead
Chattanooga Choo Choo – Glenn Miller
City of New Orleans – Steve Goodman

Engine Engine #9 – Roger Miller
Friendship Train – The Temptations
Hobo’s Lullabye – Emmylou Harris

Love Train -The O’Jays
Midnight Train to Georgia – Gladys Knight & The Pips
Northern Bound Train – Pete Droge

Ridin’ the Rails – k.d. lang and Take 6
Rock Island Line – Lead Belly

Ramblin' with Roger
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