“Long Live Rock”
Clorinda and I watched a great DVD (yes, we can still manage to play those) on Monday. “Seymour: An Introduction” is about a concert pianist, who gives up a successful performance career to teach piano students. The care Seymour shows for his students is really something. Highly recommended watching.
Tuesday started with a pleasant swim. I’m finding that swimming is significantly helping the pain where I had the screws put in my leg. I had been considering having the screws removed, but if swimming is helping, then it’s likely scar tissue and not the screws causing the pain. Going to have to start swimming a few times a week.
After my swim, I took Clorinda for coffee at Duino. This is always a great time to enjoy her stories. The repertoire this time included: “Bluebell” with the rumble seat, a car that folks she would babysit for gave her to get around in; and Margie (Clorinda’s sister) teaching music in Orinda and putting on a choir performance that Clorinda loved.
Rachel joined us for dinner on Tuesday and regaled us with updates about her new boyfriend who lives in Nashville. I had told Clorinda at coffee that she could expect updates about Rachel’s love life – and I was not wrong.
The four of us had a last meal together on Friday night, with Alicia flying to San Francisco on Saturday. Everyone really enjoyed the meal at C.T. Provisions – our new favourite McKinney restaurant. Clorinda opted for the duck special and I had the Cornish game hen – plenty of leftovers from both.
Anne was in Ohio, helping her parents to get their cabin ready for sale. Guessing they’ll be living fulltime in Florida now. Looks like both Anne and her Mum, Carolyn, had a good time at the Rock ‘N Roll Hall of Fame.
Clorinda has been enjoying sampling my library books. This one is about a journalist for the New Yorker, who moves to Lyon in his fifties to learn all about French cooking. She got pretty bored with the details of the French cuisine and moved on to something else.
On Sunday, Independence Day (and nobody asked me this year if we celebrate July 4th in Scotland), we took Clorinda to Filtered for coffee, quiche, and crossword with Keith. Well – she declined to participate in the crossword competition. We watched the celebration from the Capital Mall in Washington, D.C. and the fireworks from New York, which are always so spectacular. R.E.O Speedwagon and Susannah Hoffs both performed songs from around 1980 – still going strong in their sixties with the same material from when I was in high school.
Will sent this picture of Ollie. I was quite impressed and asked who was the artist. Even more impressed to find it was Will, using Christine’s art pens.
I did receive a number of great July 4th pictures. Here’s Campbell and Molly’s penguin enjoying a boat ride to the fireworks on a lake in Iowa:
Do you like his patriotic bowtie? Our penguin got very puffed up when he saw these pictures.
Here is a picture from Tim’s vacation location in Colorado (Alta Lakes), and one from earlier in the week with his daughter, Imogene, posing at the high elevation pass that shares her name:
And finally, a lovely sunset from Blair’s boat in South Padre island:
I was making good progress on “Babbitt” by Sinclair Lewis, when I got an email from the library saying that I needed to return “The Final Revival of Opal and Nev” because another patron had a request for it. So I switched over to that right away.
The story centers on a fictional interracial rock duo from the 1970s: Opal is a Black proto Afro-punk singer from Detroit, and Nev is a goofy white British singer-songwriter.
Opal and Nev become famous in 1971, when a riot occurs at one of their concerts during which their Black drummer is beaten to death by a white mob. The book is told in the form of a faux oral history that’s being written by Sunny, the first Black editor-in-chief of a music magazine — who also happens to be the daughter of the late drummer.
I enjoyed the faux oral history approach for a while, with each character having their say for a paragraph or so, before moving on to a different character’s view. But I grew tired of the choppiness pretty quickly – I would have preferred lengthier sections from each, and more meat from the interviewer character (Sunny).
This book is on all the “Best of 2021 so far” lists, and it certainly provides some entertainment value, but not one I would recommend. I hope the person who picks this up from the library after me appreciates it more.
“Another Ticket” by Eric Clapton has been on my turntable as I’ve been composing this post. This is not one of the highly rated, popular Clapton disks, but it is one of my favourites and I believe the one that I’ve played most over the years.
The album is Clapton’s seventh solo studio record. It was recorded by Tom Dowd at the Compass Point Studios in Nassau, Bahamas, and has that rich bass sound that seems to come from that venue. It achieved modest commercial success peaking at number 18 in the UK charts.
Here’s the title track:
That’s Gary Brooker on keyboards. He was the lead singer and keyboard player with Procul Harem of “Whiter Shade of Pale” fame.
Albert Lee plays the alternate lead guitar and I think he’s fantastic. I was lucky enough to see him play with Clapton at the Edinburgh Playhouse around the time this record was released. You can hear his contribution and the great bass of Dave Markee on this Sleepy John Estes cover:
Stay safe and kind.