Shuffle play Friday-Let the countdown begin

Hot Tuna-I See The Light/The Phosphorescent Rat

There have been a wealth of bands and performers over the years occupying my personal upper shelf of favorites. While it’s difficult to isolate and name a solitary artist/band as my all-time favorite, Jorma Kaukonen and Hot Tuna would give the #1 slot a strong push—and depending on the day, Hot Tuna may be the one artist I’d take with me if given one catalog of music to take with me to a remote location—like the proverbial dessert island.

I was a high school freshman during the fall of 1976. Dana Aspinall introduced me to his senior football teammate, and Hot Tuna fan, Paul Bohunicky. I didn’t know much about the band at the time, and wasn’t aware that they were Jorma’s Jefferson Airplane side project. Bohnucky was cranking what I’d later learn was America’s Choice from his Jensen’s perched in the back of his ’69 Rambler. Given that I was always interested in new music, I made my own mental note to check out the record bin at DeOrsey’s the next time I was in Lewiston.

By the end of my sophomore year, I had acquired the entire Hot Tuna catalog, all of it on vinyl, which was the preferred music format of the era, and still my favorite way to listen to music when I have a turntable nearby. Unfortunately, the draconian dictates of the fundamentalist sect I got wrapped up with looked unkindly on rock and roll, and I eventually unloaded my carefully acquired record collection for pennies on the dollar.

I’ve begun reacquiring some of the best of my former collection, picking up the odd gem, and adding back classics like Hot Tuna’s Burgers, America’s Choice, and Yellow Fever on vinyl.

Realizing how much I love music, my lovely wife gave me a gift certificate at BullMoose Records. Ironically, owner Brett Wickard once worked for the long departed DeOrsey’s, before starting his original BullMoose store in Brunswick, while a student at Bowdoin back in the early 1990s.

I still love browsing my way through music (to me, always “record”) stores, and BullMoose still maintains a great physical selection at stores like the one I visited in downtown Brunswick. This is no small fact in our age of iPods and other digital music devices, given that younger (and older alike) listeners no longer believe they should have to pay for others creative genius, causing sales to continue plummeting downward.

When The Phospherescent Rat was released in 1973, Hot Tuna no longer was a sideline endeavor for Kaukonen and bassist extraordinaire, Jack Casady. Jack and Jorma were now fulltime and full throttle committed to the band. Jorma’s songwriting shows it, and Casady’s bass playing is amazing, with few modern players coming close to creating the textures, and even foghorn effects that Casady was getting from gear that is far from today’s technologically advanced equipment.

While many of Tuna’s current fan base clamor for the acoustic, Rev. Gary Davis-style finger-picking songs in the band’s catalog, I’m one of those that loved the heavy, effects-driven mid-70s period. It was during this time that the band was known for three plus hour shows, combining both acoustic, and electric in separate sets, and extended jams. This album was transitional, with songs like “I See The Light,” along with “Sally Where’d You Get Your Liquor From,” hearkening back to the previous Burgers style of folk-rock, and “Easy Now” foreshadowing the full-blown electric inclinations of Jorma and Co.

Jorma and Jack performed in South Portland two weeks ago. I was on the fence about seeing them, but decided against it at the last minute. One of the reasons was that I knew they’d play a lot of great acoustic stuff. For me, however, the electric days are gone, as the amplified storm generated 30 years ago just doesn’t seem the same coming from an older musician, which Jorma certainly is, at this juncture in his career. That’s not a criticism, it’s just part of conundrum of rock and roll, baby boomers, and the nature of what the music once was about, and often is tough to pull off for stalwarts like Kaukonen, Neil Young, the Stones, and others, as they age, some not very gracefully.

Sonic Youth-Teeage Riot/Daydream Nation

Sonic Youth represents the break I made with the music I listened to throughout high school, and the DIY-influenced music that I embraced after coming out the other side of a difficult period immersed in fundamentalist ideology. Bands like Sonic Youth provided a new way of seeing music, even processing personal experiences at the time.

Another piece of recorded music that I once owned, originally possessing it on cassette, released on the Enigma label. As would happen occasionally with a cassette recording, particularly longer recordings (Daydream Nation clocked in at 70:47), the cassette would jam, and sometimes get “eaten” by the cassette player. At some point, my cassette copy became unlistenable, and disappeared from my music collection.

My new copy is on CD. I listened to the first half on my ride to work Wednesday morning, finishing the first run through on my commute home, at night. Subsequent listens defy a sense that this recording is 21 years old.

“Teenage Riot” is anthemic in the best sense of the word’s usage. Driving, propelled by Steve Shelley’s always solid drumming, with paired vocals from Thurston and Kim, this song is fairly straightforward, but not typical, given the band’s penchant for feedback, noise, dissonance, alternate tunings, and guitar skronk.

Sometimes it’s hard to remember the bleakness that many of us felt back in the late 80s, at the tail end of the Reagan presidency. This disc reminds us a bit about the dark days of those years, and cuts through so much of the historical revisionism that’s taken place since.

Here are a portion of German artist/musician/critic Jutta Koether’s liner notes that appear on the CD version I picked up at BullMoose.

Daydream Nation: a picture of a moment, taken with a Polaroid. Though the colors are faded, they were faded when the album was first released…remember? Hearing this music now reveals the power of memory-conceptually dreaming, thinking along with the flow. For that moment, it appeared as a stylized recording, a conceptual work, which allowed for spacey “light listening.” [light listening, indeed!—JB]

Koether, again:

Others thought of Daydream Nation as a perfectly laid out demonstration of the paradox of underground music, a dialectical meltdown, a moment in utopia and regression. To a quite a few people, the whole thing looked and sounded good as well. A breakthrough of unique but also somehow generic independent music.

Sonic Youth have continued making solid and even some excellent subsequent recordings, but nothing approaching the sprawling epic sweep that was Daydream Nation.

Todd Rundgren-Just One Victory/The Very Best Of Todd Rundgren

It might be difficult to truly appreciate Todd Rundgren’s musical genius, removed from the late 1960s/early 1970s context, which saw his star reach its commercial zenith.

While not an obscure talent by any account, as time spent listening to oldies formats will probably allow a listen to one of a string of Rundgren’s hits from the 1970s, it’s rare to find anyone that recognizes his name in a conversation about music. During the 1970s, however, you couldn’t pick up a major music magazine without reading an article on Rundgren.

Rundgren was someone that I was somewhat familiar with during my formative musical development as a pre-teen, browsing, and occasionally buying what I remember as Creem, Circus, or possibly even Rolling Stone, at Robert’s Pharmacy in my hometown of Lisbon Falls, or Victor News, in Lewiston.

Later, my best friend, Dave Gray (who taught us all to think [inside joke]) would tell me of Rundgren’s musical prowess as a mult-instrumentalist, his spiritual inclinations, and other qualities that I obviously had missed in my reading.

Most of my musical purchases over the last 20 years have primarily been rock of the independent variety. The last few years, however, I’ve allowed myself to be less focused on maintaining the self-imposed militancy against so-called corporate rock, and I’ve begun occasionally picking up recordings that seem a bit eclectic, and even mainstream, compared to most of my current CD collection.

Browsing BullMoose, I saw TVBOTR and realized that many of the songs were ones I recognized, and actually really enjoyed. Once in my car, after grabbing a cup of coffee at Little Dog (a great locally-owned coffee shop on Maine Street), it was Rundgren’s CD that found its way into the CD player.

There are wonderful tunes on the CD, in fact, all of the 16 tracks are of the quality that I could listen to them over and over again.

“Just One Victory,” however, contain lyrics that uplift, and promote an optimism that might seem hokey in 2009/2010, but in 1973 still seemed possible, as our sense of what was possible hadn’t been wrung out of us yet.

The Rural Alberta Advantage-Edmonton/Hometowns

My last tune, on the last day of 2009 (most of this is being wrapped up an hour before midnight) is by yet another Canadian band, a special discovery from the last half of 2009. I now know there is a wealth of musical talent north of the U.S. border. The Rural Alberta Advantage is one of several artists that I’m learning about.

The band’s music is rooted in a sense of place—in this case, the vast prairies and mountain ranges of western Canada. I think the music also has a timeless appeal to that sense of geographic rootedness that we all yearn for, and continue to search for. As homogeneity continues to be pushed upon us, from Edmonton, Alberta, to Portland, Maine, songs like the ones that the RAA play connect.

Much of the material was written by Nils Edenloff, the band’s lead singer, and chief songwriter. Edenloff had relocated to the more cosmopolitan and artistically viable Toronto, a journey that countless creative Canadians have made before. What comes across in many of the band’s songs, is that sense that you can take the boy out of the prairie, but you can’t take the prairie, and the distinctiveness of Alberta, out of the boy.

The band plays music that’s acoustic, but rocks as well as anything electrified and cranked to 10. In fact, the driving nature of many of the tracks indicates that rock and roll is an attitude, as much as it is amplification. The arrangements of strummed acoustic guitars, synthesizers, even glockenspiels, work, and make for a rich mix of musical mastery.

Well, 2009 is history, and we’re on to bigger and better things in 2010—music will continue to be part of that journey.

Happy New Year!!

Staying true, and keeping fit

Just before Christmas, I hit a milestone on my fitness journey I began June 23. I have now been walking (as well as biking, lifting weights, and participating in other cardio and strength building activities) the path towards fitness for six months.

What began as disapproval (seeing my weight at 259.5 on the digital scale display), then shifted into the planning stage (how do I lose some weight), and eventually became part of my lifestyle. Changes take time to become personal. For me, personalizing my routine happened almost immediately. By that I mean that I quickly embraced my initial plan of exercise, calorie reduction, and then, as the weeks rolled by, I became acclimated to portion sizes, foods I could eat, and foods I preferred not to eat.

Here are a few things that I have learned in arriving at this stage, with my weight loss fluctuating between 47-50 pounds:

• Change requires positive reinforcement--

Rather than deciding what foods I couldn't eat, I started out by figuring out what my caloric intake should be to maintain my weight where it was, and not gain one additional pound. From there, I then ratcheted back my calories, tracking them via Fitday, which has been a great site for me.

• Find foods that you enjoy, and don't overindulge--

I love cheese. I also like snacks that are salty. I found a great cheese made by Cabot, which has 50 percent less fat. I allowed myself one serving (which was one ounce) in my lunch for work. I also found that pretzels, particularly the mini ones are fairly low in calories and are a nice compliment to my cheese, and my Sara Lee turkey ham.

• Pack your lunch everyday--

I can't emphasize this enough. There are very few options for lunch that are as low-calorie and generally as healthy as packing your own lunch. By the time you can get away from work for lunch, you are generally hungry and when you're hungry, you overindulge. Not a good place to be. Plus, most quick lunch options are heavy in calories, not to mention expensive.

One of the nice perks of packing my own lunch everyday has been the money that I've saved (a minimum of $5-6 a day, which is being conservative, multiplied by two, as Miss Mary has also joined the pack-a-lunch-for-work club), which in these economically trying times, is not a bad thing.

• Find a way to exercise vigorously 3-4 times per week--

I can't emphasize enough the importance of vigorous exercise. For me, I need to burn about 3,500 to 4,000 calories per week to support my love of food and occasional higher calorie outings.

When I began my weight-loss regimen, my calorie intake was about 1,800 to 2,200 calories per day. Over time, I've allowed it to increase to around 2,400 to 2,600 per day (particularly on workout days). Occasionally, usually one day per week, I'll allow myself an extra beer, and a snack of some kind, or Mary will make a meal on the weekend that might be a higher-calorie choice and I'll approach 3,000 calories on the intake side.

Because I've been doing this long enough, I know that given my current routine of going to the gym three times per week, which includes an hour of cardio and an hour of weights, plus one to two sessions on the treadmill on my non-gym days, I can support my current calorie intake schedule. This is a key to where I'm at, which has become a maintenance phase.

Today I'm off from work. Instead of taking the day off from exercise, however, I spent 35 minutes on the treadmill, running for 12 minutes, and maintaining an average of 5.0+ miles per hour intensity level, which burned 375-400 calories.

• Find a weight range you're comfortable with and stay there--

I'm now trending in a weight range that fluctuates between 207 and 210. My goal is to stay south of 210. I have had a couple of upticks over Thanksgiving and recently, over the Christmas holiday, although this morning's weigh-in (prior to my treadmill session) found my weight at 210 on the button!

I generally weigh-in on Monday and then again on Thursday, although sometimes I can't help jumping on the scale more frequently.

Joining the gym has been a pleasant surprise for me. I'm not someone that generally enjoys gyms, but Planet Fitness in Auburn has been a good fit for me.

I'm in my ninth week of gym membership. I now workout early. Two times during the week, I'm at the gym at 5:00 a.m. Then, on Sunday, I arrive at 7:00 (when it opens) and this is usually my most vigorous workout of the week.

While diligence is required and I have to remain focused on staying the course, it's also exciting to be heading into 2010 without having to make a resolution to lose weight.

Invalidation Nation

The range or spectrum of discussion and debate in the U.S. is a narrow one. One could argue that our nation’s corridor of communication continues to contract, mainly along ideological, religious, and even cultural lines, inculcated via changes that are being pushed by technology.

In my own life, I have experienced the difficulty engendered by the pinched parameters of dialogue. Never one to stay rooted in any one place, I first investigated and embraced fundamentalist religion during my early 20s, found solace in political/ideological right-wing posturing during my late 20s and into my 30s, and then, pendulum swinging back to the left after the previous administration’s failure to clearly articulate their position for waging war. These journeys to and fro across the realm of what’s acceptable have provided me with a unique perspective, I think.

Spending time in multiple (often opposing) camps over the course of my adult years, compounded by not growing up in an environment that cultivated thought and exploration of ideas, propelled me to desire a deeper understanding of movements, organizations, and whatever else I decided to become involved in and with.

Regardless of what my affiliation was at the time, I quickly realized that most of the people around me—family, friends, co-workers—knew very little about my frame of reference at the time. Whatever they might know about my religious choice, political leanings, or books and ideas I was interested in and exploring, was miniscule, and often, laughable, if it wasn’t so deeply rooted in a fierce anti-intellectual sense of pride.

I enjoy observing people. Because I don’t travel with your typical coterie of friends and acquaintances, I regularly find myself in solitary situations, sitting in a coffee shop, browsing in bookstores, or having a drink in a bar, taking in the conversations of others. Listening to friends chit chat, weigh-in on national issues, or make small talk about their children, marriages, television shows, and thoughts on food/fitness, to name but a few of the topics I’ve overheard being discussed during the past 30 days, reinforces my own anecdotal belief that 85-90 percent of Americans know little or nothing about anything substantive.

My previous point begs the question, then; what are the substantive topics of debate that you are looking for?

Well, how about something as basic as how are government works? Rarely, if ever, do I run into anyone, ideological hardliner, or not that can outline our tripartite system of governance. Yes, some of the right-wing types that I seem to regularly run up against, think they have the solution to all of the nation’s ills. They know the problem, and they are quick to tell me and anyone else that government can’t solve them—because Rush Limbaugh, or some other talking head told them so.

A case in point is the current debate (if you care to call Fox News, and the WSJ harangues against anything that will remove the least bit of control from large insurance companies, a debate) over health care reform. What percent of Americans do you think have read one, long form narrative journalistic treatment of the subject? I think I’ve read five, at least, that have looked at various aspects of healthcare, its attendant issues of cost, doctor’s responsibilities in this, technology’s role, etc. Even the handful of colleagues that I rub elbows with in my day job—people that are bright and knowledgeable about government policy—didn’t follow through in reading one of the better pieces, about health care costs, after I sent them the link.

I’ve made a point of trying to read as widely as I can, on as many subjects as I can find the time to pursue, in an attempt to be an intellectual person. I don’t hold and advanced degree, and I have never even risen to the level of D-list stature in my writing, blogging, or any other attempt to get my thoughts on ideas into the public square. However, I can honestly say that for the past 10 years, I’ve tried to take a more nuanced view of the world, although, my initial attempts to distance myself from religion, and right-wing ideologues, found me overcompensating with wild swings to the far fringes of left-wing thought and ideas. This is a nether world just as dangerous, in my opinion, with Kool-aid drinking required.

What I am beginning to understand is that distant regions of thought tend to be places where the ideological weeds grow the thickest, and can deprive you of valuable air and vitality required for ideas to flourish. Better, spending too much time hard right, or lunatic left, diminishes the ability to think critically. This I have come to accept as a fact. These far flung regions require straitjacketing via ideology that restrict, rather than encourage open-mindedness.

This topic of free thinking and ideas is one that I rarely stray too far from these days. I now understand this as a consequence of my time spent deep within the inner sanctums of movements, and organizations that regularly demanded strict adherence to a narrow parameter of ideas and thought. Because of this, I now recoil when well-intentioned, and others, not so benign in their intent, tell me that truth lies only within the circumscribed confines of their religion, political party’s platform, or corporate parameters required for inclusion.

I just picked up Barbara Ehrenreich’s newest book, Brightsided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Undermined America. This is the kind of example of an idea, which Ehrenreich appears to have again trained her investigative antenna towards, which when I’m done reviewing, and reading parallel books, studies, etc, I’ll have a better understanding of. In this case, Ehrenreich sets out to shatter the myth that all we need to be happy and successful, is a happy outlook. That’s total BS, but the cult of Pollyanna is so entrenched in the U.S. that if you dare to offer a contrary opinion, you are immediately labeled as a cynic, crank, misanthrope, or worse. What is frightening, as I make my way through the first few chapters of the book, is how Ehrenreich’s clear-headed prose resonates with me, based upon years of experience being told not to feel the way I feel, or hold my particular view on a particular subject, because it wasn’t in line with what was “accepted.”

The other day, after posting my thoughts about Oral Roberts, I had a discussion with two co-workers. One, a lukewarm Catholic, with his own fucked up brand of theology that he was sticking to, and wasn’t being budged by anyone else; the other, I later would find out, was a true believer, who attended a Baptist church I once visited and found too narrow for my open-minded religious views at the time.

The first one, a fat idiot (I know, a needless ad hominem attack), who regularly throws out his opinions with the kind of dogmatic certainty, honed by a daily diet of sports talk radio, faux local news, and 15 minute liturgies once a week that irritates the shit out of me, said to me, “boy, are you cynical,” when I launched my missive on Roberts and religion.

Afterwards, I felt somewhat sorry about being so forceful in my condemnation of religion, particularly as perpetrated by religious hucksters like Roberts, in light of finding about the latter co-worker’s Baptist proclivities. Not necessarily because what I said didn’t contain a good measure of truth, sprinkled with firm (and accepted) theological underpinnings, but because I actually like him, and have found him to be thoughtful, and open-minded, at least compared to the other blowhard. This is a good example of the censoring nature of groupthink.

Hence, my ongoing dilemma in trying to think my way through life, and routinely, running up against legions of others that don’t. What I find so difficult, is that these individuals that don’t think, and don’t see a problem at all with their irrational, anti-intellectual parsing of the various issues, regularly indict my views, which have been framed, more often than not, by honest attempts at arriving at a nuanced understanding.

Are you into Facebook, or Twitter?

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This could have been higher--my intuition towards not being "addicted" to social media led me to answer questions a certain way.

I'm actually embarrassed by some of my answers to the questions, like, have I tweeted while on the can ("yes," he sheepishly replied)? At least I haven't tweeted what I was eating, while I was eating it.

Social media is here to stay, and while I was initially very cold on Twitter as a communications tool, I've warmed considerably, while maintaining my general disdain for Facebook. A recent article in the Washington Post considers the merits of Facebook vs. Twitter.

Interestingly, most of the people I rub elbows via work in Central/Western Maine are pro-Facebook, and many know little or nothing about Twitter. I tend to go the other way on this, given the number of Farmville acolytes inhabiting Facebook, and the general "FML" patois that is rampant there.

Holiday randomness

Anyone who has ever toiled on a diamond, whether Little League, sandlot, or at a higher level, always dreamed they'd have a baseball card of their very own, at least back when baseball cards were all the rage.

On my BlackBerry, I have several Google Alerts set up, one of them alerting me if my own name gets mentioned. Occasionally, something actually comes across the transom that relates to the Jim Baumer of Words Matter. Most often, however, it's some Baumer in Iowa, getting married, or in this case, another Jim Baumer, a former rookie shortstop for the Cincinnati Reds, in 1961, the year before I was actually born. On the left was his very own rookie card, which apparently is fetching $3 on today's baseball card market.

Here is a profile of this Jim Baumer's professional baseball playing career, a somewhat checkered one. He later became a major league GM with Milwaukee, and I occasionally got some joy out of pointing this out to my friends who were baseball fans.