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Listicles for itchy feets

Spring on the Gulf Coast is a time that is hard to beat. When I say Gulf Coast, I mean the area that extends from the “ArkLaTex” to the Florida Panhandle. It is a grand time of the year although it always leaves me with a case of “itchy feet.”

My feet, figuratively speaking, have developed that old get-up-and-go-somewhere feeling even more this year since, literally speaking, my feet have held me back from doing much of anything.

At last report, my podiatrist said I should go through about two more weeks of taking it easy on my tootsies, or should I say tootsie. My hammertoe surgery was performed about three weeks ago and yesterday was the first time I could even remove my foot from bandaging and take a shower. It, the shower, was “mahhvelous,” as Billy Crystal would say while performing as Fernando Lamas on “Saturday Night Live.” The toe doesn’t look very well, but that is only because stitches were only removed from both top and bottom of the toe.

I have been pretty much cooped up recently, that is hopefully ending in another week. One might observe that by reading my previous blather. My Union’s steward training at the end of July is in Albuquerque. It will be nice to get out and get away, despite that our training tends to get rather lengthy. And after reading about the Albuquerque police and its brutal ways, I might just stay to myself in my hotel room after training.

All this said, I have some places I have wanted to visit for R & R but couldn’t for one reason or the other, mostly a lack of funds. With that in mind I began thinking of the various places I have been after listening to sports talk radio hosts who were making a listicle of their favorite “Sports Towns.” With that in mind I shall make my own listicles of favorite places I have been to help prod my sad and itchy feet into happy and (non-itchy?) feet. Some of these places I visited 35-to- 40 years ago so for sure they will have undergone change. But as with gifts, it — supposedly — is the thought that counts.

TOP FIVE FOREIGN CITIES

1. Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia

2. Perth, Western Australia

3. Auckland, New Zealand

4. Taipei, Taiwan

5. Devonport, Tasmania, Australia

TOP FIVE MAJOR UNITED STATES CITIES (More than 1 million people)

1. San Antonio, Texas

2. San Diego, California

3. Los Angeles, California

4. Dallas, Texas

5. Houston, Texas

TOP FIVE LARGE U.S. CITIES (From 500,000 to 1,000,000 people)

1. Denver, Colorado

2. Austin, Texas

3. Washington, D.C.

4. El Paso, Texas

5. Fort Worth, Texas

TOP FIVE MEDIUM-LARGE U.S. CITIES (100,000 to 500,000 people)

1. New Orleans,  La.

2. Gulfport- Biloxi, Miss.

3. St. Louis, Mo.

4. Little Rock, Ark.

5. Las Cruces, N.M.

THE REST OF THE BEST (Less than 100,000 people, for various reasons. U.S. and Territories.)

1. Nacogdoches, Texas

2. San Marcos, Texas

3. Hattiesburg, Miss.

4. Santa Barbara, Calif.

5. Estes Park, Colo.

6. Ruidoso N.M.

7. Lake Charles, La.

8. Mobile, Ala.

9. Stockbridge, Mass.

10. Albany, N.Y.

11. Milwaukee, Wisc.

12. Big Sur, Calif.

13. Agana, Guam

14. Surfside, Texas

15. Sabine Pass, Texas

16. Newton, Texas

17. Maydelle, Texas

18. Llano, Texas

19. Wimberley, Texas

20. Lajitas, Texas

*Just as larger cities are ranked more as sentimental favorites, places that I just like, and cool spots on the map, the 20 listed above are not ranked and are merely listed and enumerated.

 

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To play (music) or not to play

“It’s never too late.”

That is a predictable comment when I sometimes openly wish I learned to play a musical instrument or speak fluent Spanish. Certainly, the response is an appropriate one for the latter. Too many uncertainties rise with regard to my learning guitar or even piano, the two instruments I would most prefer to master. One big reason is that I am not the most patient person in the world. It is a reason I give when people ask if I hunt. I do like fishing though, which can often take tons of patience. Go figure.

As a teen I enjoyed being around live music. I went to more than several dozen rock shows, mostly in the 1970s. A few shows I saw were during the prime of the performers’ careers. Included were Creedence Clearwater Revival, ZZ Top, Fleetwood Mac and Bob Seger, while others concerts were likewise and remain popular. These were bands such as the Rolling Stones, the Doobie Brothers and the Grateful Dead.

When several of my friends developed the idea for a “garage” band I was glad to cheer them on and to help in anyway I could. I guess you could call me a “roadie” though the venues were never more than 20 miles or so away from home. The group also weren’t literally a garage band. Like my late brother John, who was a musician and played more regionally than local and were even once on local TV, their bands had adult sponsors who were very reputable in our town.

I was very pleased when I worked my first “real” job outside the Navy, as a municipal firefighter, and was able to afford a decent stereo system. It was an Emerson system, not a component system with a turntable made by one company, an amp by another and speakers which launched a wall of sound like the giant Klipsch speakers a friend had. My friend brought those gigantic speakers to a couple of parties, our annual chili cook off was one if I remember correctly. I lived in the country with a large pasture in front of my house and my nearest neighbor was about a mile away. Normally, the neighbors couldn’t hear music from my place although their daughter later told me she heard the music and liked it.

I have never felt regretful that I didn’t learn to play an instrument, being the avid music listener and as appreciative as I am of music. My feelings were really reinforced yesterday upon playing perhaps the best Eagles song ever: “Hotel California.” The song — which contains what several polls say is one of the best guitar solos of all time — and the particular incarnation of the band then was largely contributed by a man whose name you probably can’t pronounce but is on many hit CDs and albums. That is: Bill Szymczyk. Pronounced (Sim-zik’.)

Szymczyk is now semi-retired but he has engineered and produced artists from B.B. King on “The Thrill Is Gone” to The Who’s “Face Dances” recording. Szymczyk never played an instrument and considers himself “a professional listener.” He developed that ability as well as building his electronics acumen by serving as a sonar technician in the Navy during the early 1960s.

It was Szymczyk who having produced the James Gang — which featured vocals and lead guitar by Joe Walsh — brought Walsh and the Eagles together. Walsh and former Eagles guitarist Don Felder had some outstanding lead output before Felder was fired from the group in 2001. You can hear Felder and Walsh in that famous “Hotel California” guitar solo.

The Szymczyk-produced “Hotel California” LP title track was named the 1978 Grammy award’s Song of the Year. That’s pretty amazing for someone who was not himself a musician.

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Percy Sledge: King of the “belly-rubbing” sound dies

Another one bites the dust. I suppose that is inelegant way of starting a “web obituary.” But sometimes it seems, although I have not yet reached 60 years old, that I know more people who have now passed than I do live ones. That’s not true but it sure seems as such.

With that said, I note the passing of soul great Percy Sledge who died Tuesday in Baton Rouge. Sledge, 74, was best know for his lovelorn ballad “When A Man Loves A Woman.” It was an instant hit in 1966. That song and others he recorded like “Take Time To Know Her” were classic soul ballads of those and later years.

He was without a doubt, back in the day, the king of what my Daddy used to call “belly-rubbing music.”

Sledge toured the rest of his life, never recording any later tunes that equaled his first chart-wise. But if you were of my age in the late 1960s and 1970s, you probably heard his songs on diner jukeboxes while eating greasy chicken-fried steaks to soak up some of the night’s intoxicants. And if you were lucky you also may have watched him play live during his 50-something years of touring.

I was lucky to see him although that didn’t happen the first time I went to one of his concerts. That first time was also my first time to visit a nightclub, which was in Vinton, La., near the Southeast Texas border with Louisiana. I was carded and was not allowed inside because I was 16.

The next time was successful and not only did I get to see Percy perform, but I also got to interview him during a break outside the back door of the club. I just told a band member some mumbo-jumbo, I had actually reviewed a Chicago concert earlier in the year for my hometown newspaper for which I had covered local sports.

My friend Nick and I got to talk to Percy for several minutes. Sledge seem preoccupied with a Houston Astros game on the radio of his limo. I can’t remember if I even wrote a story about our encounter with the great soul singer. Whatever, he and his band members were good enough to give a couple of under-age kids a few words of wisdom. Or something.

Percy, rest in peace, man.

 

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Pondering the imponderable

This afternoon I am sitting here pondering my own little mind full of hobgoblins as well as studying just what my foolish consistency did to bring about such a state.

The Texas Legislature is in session so don’t get me started on states.

No, really. I think about the great questions that have come to haunt me from the many years past. For instance:

Where did all the yellow go?

I refer to the jingle Pepsodent toothpaste ran on the TVs and radios of the 50s and 60s which goes like this:

“You’ll wonder where the yellow went, when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent.”

Where is all that yellow? What’d they do with it? It’s hard to hide something that has to be exceedingly large.

Photo: © Glenn Francis, www.PacificProDigital.com
Jonathan Goldsmith, The Most Interesting Man In The World. Photo: © Glenn Francis, www.PacificProDigital.com

And that person purported to be “The Most Interesting Man In The World,” why is it with every possible delight seemingly at his disposal would he settle for a Mexican beer? You know there is a reason why lime slices are given with south-of-the-border brew? Because most of those cervezas taste like crap!!! Well Dos Equis isn’t really too bad compared to some of the others. But this most interesting amigo also admonishes us to “stay thirsty.” Humans normally can survive three-to-five days without drinking water. I don’t know how beer figures into this. But going without something to drink is downright insane not to mention uncomfortable as hell. So why would one want to stay thirsty? Oh well, the ad just says their pitchman is interesting, not “the smartest man in the world.”

Those points I ponder are not limited to jingles and other crapola of the ad world. What about songs?

What about songs. Now if you want to travel down that road of no return absurdity, you will have no further to go than the lyrics of the 60s Jimmy Webb song MacArthur Park.

It is bad enough to consider:

  “Between the parted pages and were pressed/In love’s hot, fevered iron/Like a striped pair of pants”

Okay. I have no idea what the symbolism means. Sure, I can read, but if one wants a pressed pair of striped pants it sounds like those buddies need to be dry cleaned.

And,

  “MacArthur’s Park is melting in the dark/All the sweet, green icing flowing down/Someone left the cake out in the rain

  “I don’t think that I can take it/’Cause it took so long to bake it/And I’ll never have that recipe again, oh noooooo”

  You bet your ass “oh noooooo.” Though this was hardly considered an example of the “psychedelic” music genre of rock, one wonders whether Webb had been trampling through the cow dung patch and came upon those little “magic” mushrooms.

  Don’t get me wrong. Webb is a very talented songwriter. He has written some of my favorite tunes, largely ones with a country bent or in between. For instance, the Glen Campbell hit “Galveston” and the country superstar collaboration “Highwaymen” — Kris Kristofferson, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings — took its name from the Webb tune they recorded “Highwayman.” Webb also wrote pop hits such as the 5th Dimension’s “Up Up and Away.”

  So Jim Webb deserves my What Was He Thinking award — although Webb has said everything in the song was really there, cake and all.

  It is when a person ponders the larger-than-life matters in life, that he or she is on the road to something, well, at least larger than half-life. Sorry. I think next time we have spring showers I will go buy a cake and put it in the rain.

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Go out to the parking and get in your car and drive real far … it all makes sense

In my research of commercial spots for the upcoming Super Bowl XLIX — which of this weekend will be Seattle Seahawks facing the New England Patriots — did I find no mention of the hilarious Acura RDX commercial. I won’t give much away except it features an attractive woman who goes on speaker phone in her car without knowing, or apparently caring, that her bosses are listening. The woman is rocking out and singing along to, especially the rap portion, of the 1980 Blondie hit “Rapture.”

The sing-a-long may not be one of the $4.5 million spots seen on the Super football game but surely it will make it at least once in the hours-long hype leading up to the 4:30 p.m. Mountain Time game on Sunday, Feb. 1.

Of course, we all know the Super Bowl is all about the TV commercials. Well, mostly. I am not a big fan of the Seahawks although a local boy, Earl Thomas, the ‘Hawks Pro Bowl defensive back, from nearby Orange, Texas, is about the biggest thing in Southeast Texas right now since the Valero Refinery. Fellow Seattle DB and Pro Bowler Richard Sherman and Thomas were both injured in their come-from-behind win against Green Bay yesterday for the NFC Championship. Sherman sprained an elbow yesterday though continued playing despite that even I could see him wincing on TV and not using that left hand. Thomas had a dislocated shoulder. Both are expected to play in the world championship in two weeks.

Thomas is, understandably a hometown hero, he apparently spends a lot of time back home in Orange during the off season, doing good works for the community. So, if even half of what I hear about Thomas is true, it certainly speaks well of the young man. Sherman, obviously loves his mother and Campbell Soup. That, and being one of the best cornerbacks in the game, doesn’t prevent his generally being regarded as one who regularly engages in dirty play.

I didn’t intend to spend so much time writing about the upcoming Super Bowl. I just found the Acura ad amusing and liked that it used what is probably the only “rap” song I like even though it isn’t totally rap. I just have not liked rap or hip hop all that much. I suppose the major difference between “Rapture” and the rest of rap is Blondie vocalist Debbie Harry’s sexy voice — now 30-something years later —  as well as the rock and funk that underlies the tune. A couple of hip-hop pioneers, Fab Five Freddy and Grandmaster Flash, are also name-dropped in the song.

All I’m saying is that it’s a cool song though saddled as both rap and disco tunes. “Rapture” is pretty fly, my man. I gotta figure, that’s a good thing.