February 14, 2021 – Keith Robertson

“Brrrr“

Happy Saint Valentine’s Day to all of you. We are definitely staying inside to celebrate, except for a quick sprint that I plan later – out to the grill to cook the lobster tails. Temperatures are falling way below freezing very quickly and are not forecast to pass back above until next Saturday. We have an inch or snow just now and are expected to receive another 6 to 8 inches this afternoon with “near blizzard conditions.”

Weather has been the big discussion topic this week with an ice storm on Thursday causing havoc with traffic. Several massive pileups closed almost all the major highways through and around the Dallas/Fort Worth area. We don’t expect to be able to leave the house for the next week as several inches of snow and freezing temperatures will effectively shut down the roads until Saturday. The temperatures on the left have been significantly reduced in the current forecast.

I was able to get out for my runs earlier this week with Week 5 Day 1 on Monday and Day 2 on Wednesday. I squeezed a swim in between on Tuesday. Day 2 consisted of two 8 minute runs with 5 minutes of walking in between. I managed that fine, even in the 28 degree weather with drizzle freezing on my glasses, and was really looking forward to stepping up to the 20 minute run on Day 3 – scheduled for Friday. The frigid weather put a stop to that – I’ll never hear the end of it if I pull a muscle in the cold. With very little chance of a run this coming week, I may have to go back to the start of Week 5 again when things thaw out. This being Texas, it won’t be too many months until I’m complaining about it being too hot for running.

The Monday New York Times crossword brought a chuckle with the “Pooh” answer – crossing “discombobulated” which seems like a very big word for the Monday (easiest day) puzzle.

Monday night brought the regular weekly torture – oopsy, I meant entertaining fun – of watching the “Bachelor” with McD. Crazy Queen Victoria has left the show but it seems that things are still very silly with the remaining group of girls.

We enjoyed a new episode of “This is Us” on Tuesday evening. Kevin was having fits getting back to Los Angeles for the birth of his first child, and the commercial was very misleading about what happens on that trip.

Anne sent us these pictures of a great pineapple sign – “Be a Pineapple: stand tall, wear a crown, and be sweet.” Also another picture of a Mardi Gras float house. She was planning to take Denny out for a bike ride to look at all the decorated houses. One of the benefits of living in such a compact city.

Diana cooked up one of the more delicious sea bass steaks that I’ve had in a long time on Saturday night. The ponzu like sauce was excellent and the fish was perfectly cooked. Thanks D!

I finished up “Shuggie Bain” by Douglas Stuart this week, and the narrative certainly didn’t get any more uplifting as Agnes, Shuggie’s mother, continues her downward spiral with alcohol abuse. There is a vague hope at the end that Shuggie is getting on his own feet and may have a successful future. I did continue to find humour in some of the phrases:

“Voices crackled over the C.B. Some man in a Teuchter accent was talking about floods on the Perth Road.”

What’s a Teuchter accent? Well here’s the very proper definition from Wikipedia:

“Teuchter [tʲu:xtər] is a Lowland Scots word originally used to describe a Scottish Highlander , in particular a Gaelic -speaking Highlander. Like most such cultural epithets, it can be seen as offensive, but is often seen as amusing by the speaker. The term is contemptuous, essentially describing someone seen to be uncouth and rural.”

The quality of the writing is excellent throughout and I can see why it was on the Booker prize shortlist:

“She had been drinking all day. Her mood was a low-level haar, foggy, dark and heavy, but holding steady without rain. Shuggie did not want to burst this cloudiness and force the bad weather.”

In case you’re wondering about “haar”:

noun

1.a cold sea fog on the east coast of England or Scotland.

I thought I was jumping into something completely different when I started “Hard to Handle” by Steve Gorman. This is a memoir of his time in the rock band “The Black Crowes.” A band that he founded in the late 80s with the Robinson brothers – Chris and Rich. The band had massive success in the early 90s and then self destructed in much the same way that Agnes did in Shuggie Bain.

Gorman was the drummer and is a very good story teller. The Robinson brothers famously fought the entire time they were together in the band and I envisioned Chris as a laid-back hippy type personality. That is not the way Gorman sees him at all:

“Chris’s wife sent an email to Pete Angelus, our manager of twenty-four years, stating his demands for his continued involvement in The Black Crowes. Moving forward, Chris wanted 75 percent of all the band’s income. That was quite an upgrade from the 331/3 percent that he had been receiving.

It was apparent that our existing partnership agreement no longer meant anything to him.

The terms were nonnegotiable. There would be no discussion. Give him what he wanted, or he wasn’t coming back. And that was the end of The Black Crowes.”

I enjoyed the comparison of Chris Robinson to Emo Philips – after I pulled up his picture.

My favourite part of books like this is often the stories of how famous songs first came together:

“Like Chris and me, Rich had become obsessed with Nick Drake’s music. Unlike Chris and me, Rich put that obsession to good use. He began experimenting with open tunings like Drake played, and almost immediately he wrote the parts that would become “She Talks to Angels.””

As I revisited the early Crowes albums, I was amazed at how much the music sounds like the Rolling Stones and was thinking that, on the slower songs, Robinson sounds like a cross between Jagger and Rod Stewart. Clearly I’m not the first to think that:

“Chris fully committed to presenting himself as both a populist “man of the people” type and a “serious artist.” He bristled at comparisons to Mick Jagger or Rod Stewart. He wanted to be taken seriously.”

An entertaining anecdote from their first trip to Japan:

“There had to be a thousand fans waiting for us at the hotel; just an amazing turnout. As soon as our translator announced to the crowd that The Black Crowes had arrived, two-thirds of them immediately sat down and looked disappointed. Turns out they were expecting Status Quo, an English rock band I assumed had broken up at least a decade earlier.”

I still enjoy the music from Status Quo – so simple and yet so effective. How quickly musical tastes can change:

“Sixteen months earlier, we had headlined Glastonbury and the Phoenix Festival. As far as we knew, we owned the UK in the summer of 1993. And now…that’s it? I guess the rest of our fans were all at home listening to the new Nirvana record.”

I’ve only seen The Black Crowes once – during the first trip Diana and I made to the New Orleans Jazzfest – after a massive downpour and following a performance by Dr. John. I remember really enjoying their show and being very impressed with Rich Robinson’s guitar skills.

Thanks to Kara for sharing this book with me. She made a special trip to bring it to us when we were leaving New Orleans for the drive back to Dallas after the New Year celebrations.