Getting Back Into Balance

     We spent the first two weeks of our three-month long escape from the Arizona heat, in Seattle. Summer had not quite begun in the northwest. We stayed at my sister Karen’s house, and she referred to June in Seattle as “Juneuary”. It was cloudy and rainy almost every day, but then late in the afternoon, the clouds blew away and the sun spread its warm, drying rays around giving rise to the smell of green plants and moldy wooden houses. Our last few days were hot, in the 70s and 80s with high humidity. The day we left for the Olympic Peninsula, it soared into the 90s, a little too much summer for the locals. As one Seattleite put it, "I wait all year to complain about the heat." 

Seattle is a progressive, liberal city. It is most apparent coming from Arizona, a conservative State. At the grocery store, the clerk, seeing that we hadn’t brought any bags of our own, asked us how many bags we wanted to purchase to put our groceries in. We bought two paper bags at 5 cents apiece.
     Recycling is not the exception in Seattle, it’s the rule. Every house has three containers for waste pick up, the smallest one for garbage and the two big containers for recycled material and yard/compost material. I read that Seattle leads the nation in recycling. I think it’s commendable that the people of the city choose to recycle so much, but at times it can be frustrating. At the co-op, after eating lunch, I got so confused trying to decipher into which of the many containers I was to put my plate, napkin, cookie bag, plastic fork, paper cup and plastic lid, that one of the employees took pity on me and came over to help me sort it all out. In my frustration I said, “Down in Arizona, we just haul ass up the highway and throw our garbage out the window.” She laughed, I’m glad she knew I was joking.
     The Fremont area of Seattle seems like the epicenter of liberalism. One morning Katie and I wandered over to Fremont to witness the Solstice Festival and parade. Immediately upon entering the area, we felt transported back to the 1960s.                           
     As one enters Fremont, you are greeted by a giant statue of Lenin, not John “Lennon”, but Vladimir. I read that this statue is dressed up for a variety of different Fremont occasions throughout the year. As we walked by I noticed that Vladimir’s left hand was painted red. This subtle addition to the statue’s revolutionary pose, helped put it into the right perspective for me. There are at least two other notable icons in Fremont. 

A huge cold-war rocket fuselage adorns the front of a local store. I have no idea what the significance of this is. And then there is the giant Troll under the highway bridge. “The community pays tribute to the troll every October 31st with a mobile ‘Trollaween’ party, starting under the bridge and wandering to other funky art sites and events in Fremont.”
     The Solstice Festival proclaims the arrival of the sunny season and this year the sun cooperated. As the day progressed, the temperature rose into the 80s. We arrived early, about 11am, and people were already lining the streets to watch the parade, which didn’t start until 3pm. The festival celebrates and highlights all things environmentally friendly. It is also an opportunity for people to paint their bodies and ride totally naked on bicycles in front of hundreds of people. Not something I would recommend or be inclined to do, especially at my age.
     I stopped and talked to a young woman who had a giant shrimp on her head.

 She was very nice and wanted me to make sure that when I ordered shrimp in a restaurant, it was the right kind of shrimp. It was very important to her that I do not eat shrimp from certain countries. I can’t remember which ones, but she said these countries do bad things which to me seemed totally unrelated to my shrimp eating. She was very nice and very earnest about the cause. I trusted that she knew what she was talking about and I told her that I would do my best.       

     We walked past a man standing in front of a truck with green crosses and giant marijuana leaves painted on the side. He tried to give Katie a brochure, which she rejected, but I took and he seemed extremely pleased. These green crosses are all over Seattle on buildings and trucks. It is the symbol for medical marijuana. I’ve always been in favor of decriminalizing marijuana. It should not be lumped in with the harder and more addictive and dangerous drugs. But the movement to push marijuana as a medical remedy seems deceptive to me. I’m sure it helps people with certain ailments, but I suspect that the people behind it are not solely motivated by remedying other people’s health concerns. My friend, Erran, told me that there is a way to heat up marijuana and take out the chemical part that makes you high. The process leaves in all the medicinal elements, which means it would become more like Tylenol or Ibuprofen. I wonder, if all of the pot these people are pushing underwent this process, would the movement still have such a robust following.
     After wandering around Fremont for several hours, I began to feel a little more balanced. It was just the remedy I needed to counteract the effects of all the Tea Party rallies in Green Valley, AZ. over the past few years.

Fleeing the Southwest Heat for the Beautiful (damp, cold) Northwest

Our decision to escape southern Arizona for the summer was a no-brainer. The temperature hit triple digits on June 1^st and there’s no looking back until sometime in September. Waiting for the cooling monsoons is always a frustrating business. Often, you can see the rain over there and over there and over there, but it won’t come over here. Meanwhile the humidity cranks the heat up until you’d swear you were in southern Louisiana. The bugs love the hot weather--the gnats, mosquitoes and cockroaches. A few nights before we left, a spider the size of a compact car decided to spin his web across my closet. I got the broom and unceremoniously sent him to spider heaven. When the rains do come to our area, it is wonderful and refreshing, but then they are gone and the waiting and the sweating begin all over again. So on June 14^th, we headed for the northwest and the cool moist air. The drive up to Washington was uneventful. We spent the first night in a cheap little motel in Las Vegas. It was on a street filled with small wedding chapels and various kinds of adult merchandise shops. Did I mention it was cheap. The chapel right next to it did a brisk business. As we pulled into the motel parking lot, a lesbian couple excitedly exited the chapel door and locked lips for what seemed like an eternity. This chapel had a steady stream of couples tying the knot Vegas style and then being whisked away in cabs or stretch limos. We located the Chinatown of Las Vegas, which was within walking distance of our motel. It wasn’t like Chinatowns of other cities, but was a bunch of restaurants and Asian stores in several adjacent strip malls. We entered a small crowded noodle house, where we stood by the door, while a young Chinese woman cleared the dishes and cleaned off the only available table. She put away her cleaning rag, led us to the table and then promptly forgot we were there. We sat waiting to order and watched as several tables of people who came in after us, were served their food. In my hungry, tired and grumpy state, I stood up and told Katie we were leaving. But then the waitress spotted me standing and realized her mistake. She came over and apologized and asked to take our order. I was still locked into my angry “let’s get the hell out of here” mode, intent on leaving. But Katie told me to sit down and we ordered. The noodle soup was delicious and I forgot all about being angry at the waitress. She didn’t get much of a tip though. The Las Vegas temperature was actually cooler than Green Valley by a few degrees, still hot as a sauna though. I always feel a little sad when I pass by people wandering the streets of Las Vegas. Many of them have this look as if life didn’t quite work out the way they’d planned. And the ones around our motel never learned that in the middle of the night you need to use your after hours quiet voices, because there are some older folks in the rooms right above you who are very tired and trying to get some needed and precious sleep before the next day’s grueling drive. Somewhere in northern Nevada, while filling the car with gas, I noticed the Southwest heat was gone, replaced by cool mountain air filled with the scent of pine trees. The motel in Twin Falls, Idaho was much nicer and quieter and had a huge comfortable bed. On our way from Twin Falls to Yakima, we listened to a story on the radio about a 7-11 in Kennewick, Washington that held the record for selling more Slurpees than anywhere else in the world. The radio announcer said that one whole side of the store was devoted to nothing but machines dispensing Slurpees of all flavors. They called it “the wall of Slurpee”. I really wanted see this famous wall and sample some of the unusual flavors, but by the time we got close to Kennewick, we were so tired of riding and it was just enough miles out of our way, that we decided that Slurpee Heaven would have to wait for another day. We pushed on to Yakima. When we arrived and got out of the air-conditioned car, we felt as if we had reentered the southwest. The temperature might not have been as high, but the oppressive humidity made up the difference. Western Washington is like a slice of Alaska in the lower 48. It is the exact opposite of the southern Arizona desert. The trees are thick, tall and green and the air cool and moist. There was still snow on the tops of Cascade Mountains. As we descended Snoqualmie Pass, the sun shone brightly and big friendly clouds drifted in the sky. Katie and I both felt like we were heading home. We’ve been here only a few days, but already I’m reminded of why we moved to the desert. The damp cold seeps right into the old bones. June in Seattle can sometimes feel more like November, especially to someone who just came out of the dry, hot desert. I’m hoping to get used to it in week or two. People around here don’t seem to notice it, but I’m wondering if they notice this odd fellow wandering around in several layers of clothing, while they’re all in T-shirts and shorts.

The Skater Dude

I was wandering around in the mall the other day. I had no interest in shopping, but the temperature here in Arizona was already in the 90s and it was only 10:30 in the morning. Where else could a guy wander without getting heat stroke? The stores were unappealing to this 65-year-old. Persons of my

demographic are definitely not the target population of the mall entrepreneurs. I came upon a Zumiez store and went in. Immediately I realized, I was in familiar territory, enveloped in the skater’s world of hats, shirts, pants and jewelry, each item with a graffiti influenced graphic design. The young male clerk was alone. He greeted me, and probably out of boredom, began asking me a lot of questions concerning my interest in the skateboarding world and its merchandise. I saw a surprised look on his face, when he discovered that an old guy like me could hold his own when talking about the sport and its history. Before long I told him about our son, Ben, and his untimely death. He apologized profusely for hitting a sensitive nerve, but I had been cruising through life lately, not feeling Ben’s loss too much, so I welcomed the opportunity to feel and remember and told him not to worry. Strangely the store didn’t appear all that different from the ones Katie and I had shopped in all those years ago. Zumiez is originally a Washington store, the state where we lived while Ben was growing up. Throughout the 80s & 90s, for birthdays, Christmases or anytime we needed a present for him, we could always find something at Zumiez.               
The clerk and I talked about some of the skateboarding pioneers. These guys had been Ben’s idols all through his childhood and he loved telling his mom, his Auntie Karen and me all about them in great detail. Even though he was a self-professed non-reader,

he voraciously read the skateboarding magazines, like Thrasher, cover to cover.
Tony Hawk, Lance Mountain, Mike McGill, Tommy Guerrero and Rodney Mullen of the “Bones Brigade” sponsored by Powell-Peralta, Stacy Peralta, and Steve Caballero (man could that guy get major air on a half-pipe), all were familiar household names to me. Ben and I watched a video tape of Rodney Mullen doing incredible original tricks with his skateboard on an empty street or sidewalk. Ben was impressed that Rodney was such a creative purest. He didn’t need ramps, stairs, rails or half-pipes, just a board and a flat surface to perform his magic.
Skateboarding was the first activity that Ben put hours and hours of time into. It took him weeks of frustrating practice to finally master the initial trick that was the essential key to his mobility and all subsequent tricks to follow. I liken it to when I first learned to ride a bike in the 50s and with that one skill, my world was expanded exponentially. And so did Ben’s, when he mastered the Ollie. Being able to make the board leave the ground and then land it confidently, meant that he forever left behind the realm of kids, who when coming upon a curb, had to step off their boards, pick them up and place them on the sidewalk before resuming their ride. Now he was free to travel around town, hopping curbs and set to develop ever more impressive tricks like kick flips, shove its, 180s, 360s and so many other tricks that I could never quite understand or remember. From that time on and for the rest of his life, Ben was kind, patient and empathetic whenever he came upon a kid who was trying to learn the basics of skateboarding and they all loved him for it. 

Having the right board was essential. The first one we bought him was a ready-made board from Toys ‘R’ Us(a stupid name for a store and with a backwards R). He quickly grew out of that one and wanted a custom board with hand- picked deck, trucks (the front and rear axle assemblies) and wheels. 

 One year we planned a weeklong

family vacation to California that included buying him a custom board.
In a gnarly little shop on the boardwalk in Hermosa Beach, he painstakingly chose a Freddy Smith deck from a plethora of super cool decks. Then we stood by and watched as the young salesman meticulously applied the grip tape to the deck and completed the assembly by bolting on the special trucks and wheels Ben had chosen. 
Skateboarding was not just a sport, but a sub-culture and this was the identity Ben chose. At a young age he identified with and dressed like a skater dude. It all seemed so innocent at the time. He wore special kinds of shoes, baggy tee shirts, huge pants sagged halfway down his butt, silver necklaces and hats that looked too big and were worn crooked. His friends were nice and polite and came from loving families.
The dark side of this sub-culture emerged as he got older. At age 28 the drugs took him and we’ll never get a chance to know him as a mature adult. He’s frozen in time as an aging skater dude.

I didn’t tell all this to the sales clerk at Zumiez. In fact, right in the middle of our conversation about the film “Dogtown and the Z-boys”, he received a call on his cell phone and excused himself. Katie and I watched that documentary shortly after Ben died, probably in an attempt to feel some sort of closeness or understanding or something. It was a great documentary, but it made us feel worse. The call must have been of utmost importance, because the clerk started whispering into the phone and quickly retreated into the back of the shop and didn’t return. I left the store and wandered over to the food court to get some lunch.
Ben loved skateboarding his entire short life and I can’t help but love it too. I like to think of him up there flying, getting some major air.

The Hi Wo Company Grocery Store

Last Thursday I hopped on my motorcycle and rode off in search of a blog topic. It was a beautiful southern Arizona day, not too hot, sunny with a cool breeze. I remembered stopping at the San Pedro Valley Arts and Historical Society in Benson when Katie and I were exploring new territory after our move from Washington. I noticed some pictures and information about a Chinese family who lived in Benson from the late 1880s until the recent past. This was at a time in our history when there was so much racial prejudice against the "yellow peril" that in 1882 the federal government passed the Chinese Exclusion Act which limited any further immigration of Chinese people and barred those already here from becoming US citizens.

The cowboy era has always interested me, probably because I grew up watching all those western television shows and movies. But frankly I’m getting a little tired of the Earp brothers and their six minutes of fame. There were tens of thousands of Chinese men who came to the US in the mid to late 1800s, first to work in the mines and then to build the transcontinental railroad. Most are forever lost to history, unrecognized and unappreciated.

San Pedro Valley Arts & Historical Society

          At the historical society, a nice woman named Jeanette helped me find information on the Wo family, who owned and operated the Hi Wo Company Grocery store on 4^th street from 1896 to 1989. Hi Wo came to the US when he was 16. He first lived in San Fransisco and then moved to Tombstone where he worked in a restaurant. I’m not sure why he left Tombstone, maybe Doc and those pesky Earps and Clantons were getting under his skin. He moved first to Tucson, and then to Benson, where he stayed for the rest of his life. At the age of 39 he opened the Hi Wo Company store. It sold groceries and other goods. Jeanette proudly showed me Hi Wo’s stove and refrigerator that the historical society had acquired.

Hi Wo must have been a courageous man to have established himself and family as respected members of American society at a time when there was so much hatred and prejudice against the Chinese. He married twice and had four daughters and a son. He died in 1931 and two of his daughters continued operating the store. The information online says that the Wo

Hi Wo & family

family descendants still owned the building, but Jeanette told me they have since sold it to a woman named Kay Luzadder. Kay owns the Clip Cut N Polish beauty salon  right next door to the old Hi Wo Company building.  Jeanette said that the building was only a block and a half away from the historical society, so I walked over to have a look.

Current picture of Hi Wo Company building

          The two story stucco building was locked and the windows boarded up. I went next door to the Clip Cut N Polish and found Kay giving a manicure to a customer. The beauty salon was quite busy, there must have been six or seven women sitting in there in various stages of their beauty makeovers. All of them seemed very interested in why I had entered the salon. Kay asked if I wanted a haircut. I declined and told her I was interested in looking inside the old Hi Wo store. At first she said I’d have to come back at a time more convenient for her, but as I was about to leave, she told her assistant to finish up on the woman’s nails and said to me, “Come on, I’ll give you the one minute tour.”

Current picture of the Inside of  the Hi Wo building

          I followed her next door. She unlocked the building and we went inside. It looked like an antique shop that needed to be organized. Stuff was piled everywhere. Kay showed me binder after binder filled with letters, post cards and ledgers from the Wo family. There was a diary of one of the daughters and a lot of family pictures. She said all this stuff was left in the building when she bought it and that she spent hours and hours painstakingly organizing it. She told me she bought the building because she needed the parking space for her beauty salon. The Hi Wo building is on the Arizona Historic Register and so if  Kay wanted the parking space around it, she needed to buy the building, but not tear it down. My minute tour was up all too soon and I asked her if I could come back and nose around some time in the future. She said I’d have to make an appointment and that she would need to supervise me. She has a goldmine of history in that building and I decided I wanted to return at a future time.

          I thanked her and left to search for evidence of Chinese gravesites in the area. Except for Hi Wo, his second wife Emeteria and Hi Wo’s son Joe M. Wo who are buried in the Benson City Cemetary, I’m not having much luck. But that’s another story, another blog.

Feeling Good About Being a Democrat

After watching the recent Democratic convention, I’m feeling good about being a Democrat. Seeing the diversity of the delegates makes me proud that we are a party of inclusion and not exclusion. The multi-ethnicity in the hall was a snapshot of how America will look in the future. I’m glad to be part of the party that embraces diversity and doesn’t fear it. I am happy to support our current President, an intelligent man who learns from his mistakes and believes that the welfare of all is what matters. That  government can be a guiding force in people’s lives. The Democrats are the socialistic and environmental conscience of our country. Enacting policies that are charitable to the less fortunate and conscious of how they affect the environment does not always bring immediate results. It takes a certain amount of faith, faith that if one makes the right decisions in the long run good will follow. This is a long range ideology based on optimism and inclusion and not  fear and exclusion. Many speakers at the convention made the point that government needs to act for the good of the whole, not just the few. I liked the convention’s theme of “growing America from the middle out and the ground up instead of the top down”. If big companies shared the wealth more among all strata of their employees, the Republicans would have a better argument. Today there is great disparity in large corporations between the upper management and the rest of the employees. Because of this disparity, to say that “companies are people”, as Mitt Romney did, does not ring true. The 99% movement wasn’t mentioned at the convention, but the spirit of the movement was there. Democrats aren’t out to destroy big companies, but to shrink the widening gap between the top few and the rest.  Democrats are for government that is smart and works on the people’s behalf. Who, if not our elected officials, will stand up for people’s rights in the face of capitalistic power and money?  I like it that the Democrats believe in equal opportunity. That they talked about realizing the dream to enter the middle class and not the dream to become wealthy. It is imperative to our country’s future that we realize when enough is enough. Amassing wealth and material possessions do not translate into happiness, but having one’s share contributes to a better quality of life. I also like that democrats are on the side compassionate side concerning illegal immigrants. I was impressed by Bill Clinton’s speech. If Obama is taking his cues on the economy from him, I believe we’ll be alright. I also thought Michelle gave a great speech. The Obama family feels to me like the 21^st century’s version of Camelot. I discovered on the internet that James Taylor entertained the audience, but it wasn’t shown on television. That’s a shame because his appearance would have made a good comparison with Clint Eastwood’s fiasco. Like Clint, JT brought  a chair out with him, but as he told the audience, he was just going to sit in it and play music, which he did.  I am purposely disregarding the many one-sided polarizing bullshit speeches I heard the other night at the convention, because today I want to feel good about being a Democrat.

Content With a Latte and Occasional Oldie

  I can remember hiking with my dad. He was probably close to the age I am right now. We would be steadily working our way up the side of some mountain in Oregon and periodically I would realize I no longer heard him trudging along behind me. Looking back down the trail, there he’d be stopped, pretending to be interested in some unknown specimen of flora. I knew he had no interest in plants whatsoever. If I said anything like, “Are you resting again?” He would reply, with a voice handicapped by gasps for breath. “You’ll get old some day.” Lately I’ve been inundated with mail and phone calls from insurance brokers and HMO representatives trying to convince me that they have the information I need to help me decide what to do about my Medicare Part B, Each one assures me that they have my best interest at heart. I’m turning 65 in a few months and I’d like to get my hands on the person who let all these capitalist scavengers know about it. The truth is, I have absolutely no idea what to do about Medicare B, but I don’t tell them that. It’s all very confusing and when I start reading the material sent to me by them or the government, the words quickly turn into blah, blah, blah, blah. I was at the barber a few years ago having my hair cut. It was going along fine until he lifted up the few thin strands of hair on the top of my head and asked, “What do you want me to do with these stringers?” He must have been from the south, because he pronounced stringers, “strangers” rhyming with “hangers”. There is a time when one is going bald where you can fool yourself into thinking that you have more hair on top of your head than you actually do. This delusion is perpetuated by only looking at yourself in the mirror straight on. From this angle, there appears to be somewhat of a lush growth of hair on top. The truth reveals itself if you use an additional mirror and view your reflection from any other angle. I nurtured this delusion for years. Recently I told the 14 year old beautician at Super Cuts to just cut the “strangers” off. She did it immediately and without comment. In an instant my delusion evaporated and I turned into a bald guy. When I got home, Katie, my wife hardly noticed the change. When I pointed it out, she said I looked fine and there really wasn’t that much of a difference. My delusion ran deep. And to think I’ve been less than kind in my thoughts all these years toward men who sported comb-overs. And now I embarrassingly realize that I was guilty of a version of this desperate attempt to remain young and attractive. I am writing this blog in a coffee shop in Boulder, Colorado. The young college students all around me are working on their computers, most avoid eye contact with me, but every once in a while, one of them catches my eye and smiles. It doesn’t seem that long ago when I was a young college student like them. I know none of them have the same perspective that I do. What’s that saying, “youth is wasted on the young”? In the blink of an eye they will be where I am now. My dad realized it and tried to tell me, but like these young people around me, I didn’t get it at the time. I really have no interest in going back in time, but I don’t want to go forward either. This coffee shop’s name is The Laughing Pig. They make a hell of a good latte. The attractive young barista instantly created an intricate design on the top of the foam. It was a fern leaf that wrapped around the inner edge of the cup. When she handed it to me, she gave me a warm smile. I don’t recognize and don’t like most of the music that’s played on their sound system, but they just played an early Leonard Cohen song that I hadn’t heard for a long time. I’m tuning the music out for now and waiting for the next oldie. I guess I will continue my practice of being content with where I am right now, even if I am an aging bald guy.

Rolling Stone’s Top 500 Albums

Recently Rolling Stone magazine put out its special issue “The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time”. This issue is an excellent source of information for choosing good popular music from the ‘50s until today. Rolling Stone magazine has always been about rock & roll, so their album choices are mainly rock albums or albums that influenced rock music. The title of this special edition is misleading,”…best albums of all time”, you won’t find any classical music or big band music and not many country, bluegrass, jazz or folk albums. But strangely there are two Frank Sinatra albums on the list, what’s up with that? I like Frank, but why make the exception unless you also put in a Tony Bennett album or Ella Fitzgerald or Duke Ellington or any number of great singers and musicians from the ‘40s and ‘50s.
The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan have the most albums on the list at 10 each, followed by Bruce Springsteen with 8 and The Who with 7. The number one album is The Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and second is The Beach Boys’ “Pet Sounds”. I’m happy with the one and two spot. We now know that the Beatles were so impressed when they heard “Pet Sounds” that this influenced them to create the “Sgt. Pepper” album. We have to credit Brian Wilson with elevating rock music to a new level and creating the first album that is not just a compilation of songs, but works thematically as a whole. Number 3 is The Beatles’ “Revolver”, number 4 is Dylan’s “Highway 61 Revisited” and number 5 “Rubber Soul” also by the Beatles. These top choices are albums and musicians who had a significant influence on popular music, changing it forever.
What Rolling Stone Magazine does well is educate us on the roots of Rock & Roll. There are albums on the list by many artists who were a direct influence on the genre, like Robert Johnson, Little Walter, John Lee Hooker and Etta James. An omission in this category is Woody Guthrie. I think Dylan would gladly give up an album or two of his 10 to let in one compilation of Woody’s songs and maybe slip in an album by Pete Seeger, Woody’s friend and the godfather of American folk music.
There are many “greatest hits” type albums. The king of rock & roll, Elvis, doesn’t appear until number 11, probably because he didn’t produce many great albums, just great songs. “Sunrise” is a compilation of his early Sun recordings put out in 1999. The next early rocker at number 21, is Chuck Berry. “The Great 28” album is also a compilation of hit singles. Chuck should be higher on the list. Other early rockers that make the list are Buddy Holly, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis and Bo Diddley. Three blatant omissions are The Everly Brothers, Roy Orbison and Ricky Nelson. All of these guys had a huge number of hits and were true early rockers. Couldn’t they have dropped an album or two by The Beatles, who actually credit the Everly Brothers as an important influence on their singing and harmony? Or take a couple away from Bruce? Elton John has 5 albums on the list, I’m sure he wouldn’t have minded making space for Roy.
The Beach Boys have 3 albums on the list, but not one of them is from their early surfing/hot cars/hot chicks albums. Of the 3, the earliest is “The Beach Boys Today”, a good album but not representative of those early ones. They should have at least included one of their greatest hits albums to cover the early years. Included on the list is the Beach Boys album “Smile”, which to me sounds like it was written by a 6 year old on acid, probably not far off from Brian’s state of mind at the time.
Also included is the first Blood Sweat and Tears album, when Al Cooper led the group. It has some very good bluesy songs with big band back up. But the second BST album, with David Clayton Thomas, is much more consistent and has all those great hits. In 1968 it won Grammy of the year for best album beating out “Abbey Road”. Typical of Rolling Stone, edgy/hip won over popular/melodic.
The poets of the baby boom generation are largely the singer/songwriters. The top 500 hundred includes some of them. There are 3 Jackson Brown albums, his 2^nd, 3rd and 4th, which I am happy about, but not his 1st, “Saturate Before Using” which belongs on the list, 2 Joni Mitchell albums, “Blue” and “Court and Spark”, but not her first 3 which are great “Songs to a Seagull”, “Clouds” and “Ladies of the Canyon”. The list includes 2 of Paul Simon’s solo albums, “Graceland” and “Paul Simon”, but doesn’t include my favorite “Still Crazy After All These Years”. There is only one Leonard Cohen album, “Songs of Love and Hate” an excellent album, but so are his first two, “Songs of Leonard Cohen” and “Songs from a Room”. Including “The Best of Leonard Cohen” album could have covered much of his early music. There’s only one Carole King album “Tapestry” and one James Taylor album “Sweet Baby James”, but there should be more.
There are 2 Johnny Cash albums, 2 Willie Nelson albums but no Waylon or Kris, and no Highwaymen albums. There are no Leon Russell albums and that is just wrong. There are no Moody Blues albums, not even “Days of Future Passed”. There are no Animals albums and no Young Rascals’ albums.
Folk music and Folk Rock were hugely popular genres in the ‘60s and ‘70s and I feel these genres are sorely underrepresented on the list. Included are albums by The Byrds, and a lot of Graham Parsons (if you were good and died young, you make the list). John Sebastian should have died young, because there are no Lovin’ Spoonful albums or any of his solo work, no America, no Doobie Brothers (with or without Michael McDonald), but somehow a Carpenters album slipped into the list, which I’m OK with, but this almost blows my theory about Rolling Stone not honoring what they consider to be “twinkie” music. There are no John Denver albums, my list would include “Poems and Prayers and Promises” and “Rocky Mountain High”. There are no Jimmy Buffet albums (it seems that out of all those voters, there must have been one or two Parrot Heads among them) and no Gordon Lightfoot. There are no albums by Joan Baez and Judy Collins, the two women who introduced us to the songs of some of our greatest singer/ songwriter/poets like Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell.
There are no albums by Dionne Warwick(what a shame to leave out all those great Burt Bacharach/Hal David songs). There are no albums by Johnny Mathis (how many of us boomers fell in love with “Misty”, “Chances Are” or “When Sunny gets Blue” playing in the background). Nobody can sing a love song as well as Johnny Mathis.
There’s album after album on the list of groups I never heard of. I can’t intelligently argue against music I don’t listen to and probably never will, but something in me doubts whether some of this music is really worthy to be on the list. In spite of everything, I think Rolling Stone gets it right a lot in the areas where I have some knowledge and a host of opinions. They included and honored many of my favorite albums and artists. One pleasant surprise was their inclusion of one of my all time favorite albums, not even remotely connected to rock & roll, at number 447 “Getz/Gilberto”. I loved it back in the ‘60s and still do. It’s a super group of jazz artists, Stan Getz on Sax, Joao Gilberto on guitar and pianist Antonio Jobim who composed most of the songs.
The top 500 list is an excellent way to sample and choose from some of the best popular music of the last 6 decades. Here are a few albums that are not on Rolling Stone’s top 500 list, but would definitely be on mine: “Famous Blue Raincoat” Jennifer Warnes, “All My Life, The Best of Karla Bonoff”, “The Austin Sessions” Kris Kristofferson, “Carney” and “Retrospective” Leon Russell, “Blue River” Eric Anderson, “Mixed Bag” Richie Havens, “My Griffin is Gone” Hoyt Axton, “The Circle Game” Tom Rush, “Diamond Life” Sade, “Wildflowers” Judy Collins, “Genius + Soul=Jazz” and “Ray Sings, Basie Swings” Ray Charles (there are so many more great Ray Charles albums), and as long as they include Sinatra, “Sinatra at the Sands” & “The Best of the capitol Years” Frank Sinatra.
Just like Rolling Stone magazine, I too have left out a ton of great music.