Monday Musings

Today was the first day of my third week of work and it went well. It is nice to be back working and to be on a schedule and I find agreeable. But if I had one concern it is that I am having a hard time figuring out how I can do my writing. I am hoping that Monday afternoon and evenings are going to be a time that I can devote to writing and listening to music and continuing to explore my journey through life on both a physical and emotional level. Now, I realize that this may or may not be interesting to some of you. But, I also realize that as far as I am concerned I need to have the freedom of writing to express myself and that by writing I am able to keep myself sane. Writing allows me to get the voices out of my head and allows me to say things that I am not always able to say and for that I am profoundly grateful. I do not know how people live who are unable to have an outlet like I have.

Pretty Girl from Feltre - The Avett Brothers

Today is March 24th and I am basically dreading the coming of April, I am dreading it because in the middle of April it will be a year since Eric's death. And while I have made some pretty significant strides in dealing with this I am in now way ready to deal with this anniversary and I really honestly do not know how I am going to be able to process it. The very thought of it as I write is bringing tears to my eyes and I do not even feel all that emotional at the present time. But I am can feel them swirling around behind the small blockade that I have thrown up as a weak defense against being overwhelmed by them.

Warning - Black Sabbath

I have noted before that I do not fear my feelings and I have learned to embrace them and to ride them and in some ways bathe in them. That may not be the best way to word it but I am not sure honestly how to word it. I know that it is unhealthy for me to close myself off and to pretend that the pain isn't there and that if I fight against it the pain often lasts longer then it would have if I had just faced it head on and let it overwhelm me for a time. I think that is the strange nature of grief and loss. It can come upon us without warning and then leave again without a trace for a time. But that is just an illusion because there is always a trace. It is in the world around me. It is in the music that I listen too or the books that I read or the television shows that I watch. Or even how I carry myself and respond to certain situations. I am unable to look at my bookcase without seeing a book or two or three or more that Eric either inspired me to read or gave me directly to read. I love those books and I have not regretted ever reading them. Nor have I or will I ever regret reading them.

Only in Your Heart - America

There are films that I have avoided watching since his death. It isn't that I dislike there films. But I am not sure that I am ready to face the feelings that these films are going to bring about in me. They are not good or bad but they are sure to be intense and overwhelming and I am not sure how ready I am for such a thing. I want to say 'What the hell, just face it head on." But I can't. I want too. I want to sit down and watch 'The Royal Tenenbaums' and 'Almost Famous' and 'Fight Club' and other films that remind me of him. But I just can't. I want to so badly and I the idea of it just locks me up and makes my chest tighten with pain.

No one Knows - Queens of the Stone Age

On Saturday night I had my, what I call, my philosophy group. It is more like a fellowship group of some partially like minded thinkers and we discuss all kinds of things. I normally leave the group energized and fed and group was good that night. We did a question can thing that I always enjoy doing. But once it was over I wandered into the coffeehouse and had myself a drink and also ran into two of my good friends. These are two people that always make me feel welcome and also are really good for conversation. So I am always happy to see them. One of them asked how I was doing and I thought about it for a bit and realized that I was feeling rather aimless and basically at a loss. It was a beautiful evening Saturday. The air was still and warm but not too warm and everything was very nice. But I was not feeling nice. I wandered out to my van after saying goodbye and I was really at a loss.

Every Dog Has Its Day - Flogging Molly

I finally decided that the only smart thing too do was to go home. It wasn't like I was going to hurt myself. At least I do not think so. But the air felt almost swollen with anticipation and I do not know what I was expecting but it really felt to me like there something waiting to drop and when it dropped it would overwhelm me and I wasn't sure if that was going to be good or bad. To me the air felt like it does just before a thunder storm is about to hit. I drove home in near tears and by the time I made it into my inner sanctum the tears had begun to flow but I did not know what was driving them. They were just flowing. I tried to do some writing but was unable to achieve anything close to getting out what I was feeling. So I watched some very stupid television. It was Tosh.0 and anyone who is familiar with it knows how stupid it can be. It may not have been the healthiest choice but it allowed me to move beyond the gloom that was hanging over me.

Salty Dog - Flogging Molly

So that being said. I am not sure what was going on. I just do not know. But Sunday was a better day and so was today and now I am writing and that is a good thing. The act of writing just makes me feel better. It helps me to feel like something is coming out even if it is something that doesn't totally make sense to other people. But it works for me and for the moment there is some calm in the storm that swirls inside of me. I will never forget Eric. He will always be with me and I will always love him and I will continue to get tattoos upon my body that remind me of him. That is how I choose to remember him and to honor his life and his memory. He left permanent marks on my life and leaving permanent marks on my skin is how I can remember and honor that.

The Worst Day Since Yesterday - Flogging Molly


 I know that April will be hard for me and I apologize ahead of time if I seem distant and kind of out to lunch. I apologize if my writings are overly emotional and weepy. I am an emotional guy and this is my canvas for processing theses things. Thank you for reading my thoughts and for caring about me. I love all of you and I hope to continue to share my love with you in the months ahead.  So remember, be kind because the journey for all of us is a hard one and please keep on dancing.

Friday....

The Who - The Real Me

I know that I have posted this song before. I know that because it is from one of my all time favorite bands on my all time favorite album of theirs. I believe that the album "Quadrophenia" is the best rock opera of all time and I would also say that it is one of the best just plain albums of all time. But as I was listening to it today I also realized that this song does say an awful lot about me and who I am. This question..."Can you see the real me?" I think is a very real one and one that we all struggle with from time to time. The search to find the answer can lead us to some pretty dark places but also to some pretty good places as well.

Black Sabbath - Psycho Man

I have begun to realize that in the last month as I have been trying to process my feelings and experiences in dealing with the death and the loss of my friend and brother Eric that I have probably been far more honest about my feelings and emotions then I ever have before. At least to such a potentially wide audience. I realize that this also may or may not have made some of you uncomfortable as well. I am sorry about that. But that being said, I do not strive to make people uncomfortable, but I do strive for honesty and I do strive to stretch others in a good way that I hope. I also hope that my writing can be a help to others in some form or another. I know that for me, I believe, that it is helping me to do what I do and to process my feelings in such a public manner.

The Black Keys - Thickfreakness

This is my reality. This is my experience dealing with the pain of this, warts and all. This isn't even so much about me but it is about me experiencing this and me trying to experience this in the most honest way possible. I realize that I can't ask him but I honestly feel that this is what Eric would want me do. He would want me to live this without faking and without pretending that I have it all together and that everything is fine. Because honestly everything is not fine and to fake it would be doing a disservice to Eric's memory as far as I am concerned.

Toto - Straight From The Heart

Don't get me wrong. I am not telling anyone else how they need to be dealing with this. I am talking strictly in terms of myself and how I feel I need to process this in a healthy way. Because and for me this is the key that I need to keep reminding myself of. I must ensure that Eric's death is not not my death. On that point I have to be clear and hold myself to it. Because when I am at my lowest and I look at my life it is easy for me to spiral into this idea that why am I still here, because I have less going for me then Eric had going for him. I am not saying this to beg for sympathy and on the contrary I am probably the furthest away from suicide then I have ever been. But that thought is a real thought that dips in and out of my mind. That I have experienced that is the truth and to hide from that or to pretend that I have never had those thoughts would be totally wrong.

Fun - Some Nights

I do not know what the future holds for me. None of us do. Oh sure we want to think that we have a handle on it and we have it all figured out. But lets be honest. How many of us really do? We might think we do. We might have some vague idea of what tomorrow may bring. But that is just what it is a vague idea. Life is chaos and there is some real joy and beauty in that chaos. I say embrace the chaos. I say embrace the unknowing. I say embrace that experience and wrap it around you. I say live in the eye of the storm and thrive on it. 

Black Sabbath - After Forever

Wow...um I am not sure what just happened but there it is and I make it a practice to not edit my thoughts. So let me put my soap box away and bid you all a good weekend. 

Random Music Tuesday

Ok rambler's...lets get ramblin,

Supertzar - Black Sabbath - The father of the heavyiest of metal. I love earl, early Sabbath. Nothing else needs to be said. There are some great new metal bands, but honestly nothing comes close to the heavy grungy make your balls vibrate pounding of the early Black Sabbath records. NOTHING!!

Broadsword - Jethro Tull - Oh I like the way the music is flowing today. The winners of the first Grammy for Heavy Metal, Jethro Tull. This was a travesty but they do have some great songs and this is one of them. It thumps and rumbles and thunders along.

Eldorado Overture - ELO - Prog Rock at its finest and the music streak of excellence keeps thundering along. I love the strings in this song.

On My Radio - The Selecter - I love, love, love SKA! This song is great and a great example of the so called 2nd wave of Ska in the mid to late 80's. So good.

In My Life - Johnny Cash - An excellent finisher and a lovely song by a real legend. Thank you for finishing the list gracefully Mr Cash.

Rush...

is the greatest rock band in the world!! There I said it and I do not feel ashamed about saying it. I am not going to write a big defense of the band here or try to detail for the doubter why I think this. I am just going to put up some songs from their very first album. I realized as I was listening to 'Finding My Way" on my earlier post from today that I really, really like basically their entire first album. So I thought I would share some highlights of it with you.

What makes this debut album different from their other albums is that they had a different drummer on it, John Rutsey, and the music was written by Lifeson and Lee. The majority of the rest of the Rush albums were written by Neil Peart and you can really see the change in influences with his arrival. This first album is more of a typical mid 70's hard rock album and they hadn't become the prog rock gods that they were destined to be. The two biggest hits on the album were "Finding My Way" which I detailed in a previous blog post and..

"In The Mood" and do not pretend that you didn't dig the cowbell.

But I think there are several solid rock songs on the album. One of my favorites and I love the guitar on it is "Take A Friend" it isn't anything fancy but there is something about the basic straight forwardness of the rocking that I really can get behind.

The song that follows "Take A Friend" is the almost Black Sabbath copy "Here Again", it just chugs along and if you are at all familiar with early Black Sabbath you can totally hear the similarities. Which really isn't that much of a surprise because by the time this album came out in 1974, Black Sabbath had already put out five albums since the release of their debut album in 1970. 

 

Up next is another song that I just plain really enjoy and that one is called "What You Doing" and this one is more of a faster and harder edged song then the last one. Another solid head banger. I love Lifeson's guitar work on this one. 

The final song on the album is a classic and one that never fails to get me going. I think it is one of their best songs and one that they tend to play in concert pretty regularly because the crowd never fails to get up for it. It is called "Working Man"

Enjoy your day and enjoy listening to one of the great bands. Rush! 

More Music (Black Sabbath)

In 1970 an album was released that shook the very earth. This album changed the face of music and I think was probably what started Heavy Metal. Sure, other bands rocked hard in the late 60's and through the 70's but no band rocked as hard as Black Sabbath.

As a teenager I was only aware of Ozzy Osbourne as a solo act and being a young man raised within the Protestant church it often seemed to me that Ozzy was the very devil that I had been so often warned about. Of course it didn't help matters when his solo albums looked like this.

That album came out in 1980 and I was pretty much scared to death of it. I had not yet really began to like music like I do now. Do not get my wrong. I enjoyed it but I went to a private christian school for most of grade school and my parents car had an AM radio so all I really listened to was the local 50's station. So I did not have a real understanding of rock music and what started with the 50's then shifted into the 60's with the Door's and Jimmy Hendrix and the Who but I still never listened to or had even heard of Black Sabbath. At some point in the late 90's I stumbled across a remix of the Sabbath Classic "After Forever". I believe it was on a film soundtrack. After listening to it a few times I started to realize that the lyrics did not seem to be in praise of Satan at all.

Being an inquisitive young man I decided to check out the original version of the song and I was really surprised by both the music and the lyrics. It is also interesting to note that the song just before "After Forever" is "Sweet Leaf" a song all about how good marijuana is. So really all of that is to say that Black Sabbath was a far more complex band then the Christian Anti-Rock Media really realized.

Enough of my theorizing. On to the music. I am going to throw up some stuff when Ozzy was in Sabbath and then I will put up some stuff from when Ozzy was kicked out and Ronnie James Dio joined the band. I prefer the Ozzy years better but there is some good stuff from when Dio was there.

So without further adieu I bring you track 2 off of their first album "The Wizard". They get extra special bonus points for use of the rockin harmonica. I also really love the drums in this track and the secret cowbell.



Their second album was called Paranoid and I bring you the 8th track "Fairies Wear Boots". Another song that just has an amazing drum and bass line with some tasty guitar licks and the lyrics just make me laugh. I love it. 6:30 of awesome.



Their third album, Master of Reality, was also an epic one and I think my favorite off of it is the one I mentioned earlier "After Forever".



I really think that the first three Black Sabbath albums are the best ones. But they did have a few good songs here and there after those their fourth album was called Black Sabbath Vol 4. One of the songs is called "Supernaut". Want to hear it? Here it is.



Actually I am going to stop there. Ronnie James Dio can get his own post when I get to him. Black Sabbath was and always will be Ozzy's band. No offense to Dio fans out there because I own some Dio and I like his work but I like his solo stuff. Frankly, I think his work with Black Sabbath was not that good.

So there you go. A little bit of heavy metal for you.

Tomorrow we are moving away from the metal and more into pop punk.