Heart full of Soul

In the 80s “Alternative” music, grounded in the simplicity and DIY ethic of punk, but lyrically and sonically more expansive, struggled to be heard amongst the explosive clamor of schlock rockers with more passion for their hair then their music. Here’s a video of hair metal avatar Dee Snyder explaining why hair metal sucks.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I rest my case

            Alt. heavy hitters like R.E.M. and The Smiths, with the underground support of bands like The Replacements, Husker Du and The Pixies, bounced around the college airwaves sing-mumbling songs about alienation, politics and girls not talking to the funny looking kid at school, until 1991, when Nirvana’s breakout album Nevermind bludgeoned its way onto commercial radio with a fist full of teen angst and war cry of nihilism, rendering big hair and codpieces obsolete practically overnight.   

            I love grunge and alternative music, especially from those early days. I’m a sucker for an underdog story, and the triumph of the counter culture in the late 80s to mid 90s stands as one of my favorite moments in rock n’ roll history, even if I was to young and sheltered to know it was going on at the time.

I could write all day about why I love it, but thousands of people already have. I could also write about how, as the years have dragged on Alt musicians have, on the whole, become a sad, mocking shadow of their former selves, just as over-produced and predictable as the leather clad “Rock Gods” they toppled. Again, you’ve probably heard it before.

Instead I want to write about what alternative music has been missing, something I didn’t even know was gone until I began to hear it again.

If you read the title of this entry, you can probably figure it out.

I’m talking about soul.

You know, this stuff.

Here’s some more.

I’m not saying that alt. acts didn’t respect the part blues and soul music played in the genesis of rock n’ roll, (Nirvana covered Lead Belly for God’s sake.) but perhaps in a bid to set themselves apart from their rivals in the 80s, the blues got lost in the background.

For the past 20 years or so the only artists allowed to be influenced by the blues and soul music were pop acts.

Fortunately that is changing.

It probably it started with Jack White paying homage to Motor City’s heritage by sneaking blues covers into White Stripes albums all the way back in the late 90s, but more noticeably over the past few years soul has crept back into rock n’ roll.

The Black Keys introduction to the mainstream in the past couple of years may also have something to do with it, but I honestly didn’t make the connection myself until Brittney Howard and the Alabama Shakes practically slapped me in the face with it on their debut, Boys and Girls last year.

If you haven’t heard these guys yet, you’ve probably been living under a rock. Their first single, Hold On, is still getting played freaking everywhere.

They look more like a band you’d see a Jimmy’s Bar then Madison Square Guarden, but with three Grammy nods and a show stealing performance at the ceremony, these guys will probably be selling out stadiums soon enough.

Then there’s The Heavy, you might recognize them from the Boarderlands 2 intro or every commercial ever.

Sure they’re British, but so was Dusty Springfield, and if you don’t think she has soul… um you don’t have one.

A friend of mine introduced me to The Heavy a few months back and they are one of my new favorite bands. They are one of those groups that can balance a healthy respect for the old school while moving forward as artists. The Alabama Shakes fit this bill as well.

It’s artists like this that make positive impact on the direction music is headed, but in my not so humble opinion Gary Clark Jr. should be the one people are still talking about 30 years from now.

Jr. has been kicking around the Austin music scene, creating a pretty big buzz for himself for the past few years, releasing his debut album, Blak and Blu, in 2012.

In my opinion he wrote the strongest album of the year, but as I've already stated The Grammy’s are stupid. 

He is everything John Mayer wishes he could be, mixing blues, R&B, rock and even rap in ways I don’t think anyone else had even considered. If you haven’t heard this guy yet, I’d seriously encourage you to listen to this.

I love the music of my past, but as I get older I refuse to be one of those guys who writes off everything new that comes out just because it’s different. In the midst of all the crap getting made these days bands like the Heavy and Alabama Shakes, singers like Gary Clark Jr., they proves we still have a good chance for a bright future.

The best I ever seen

     A few months ago I wrote a blog about how much I love live music. I wrote about a bunch of the great shows I’d been to, from Tom Petty to Motorhead, but I left out the best one.

            I’d like to claim I didn’t include my anecdote about the great and underrated bluesman Carvin Jones because I was planning on writing a full entry all along, but the reality is I was drinking whiskey when I wrote that entry, so it’s a small miracle I even remembered to spell check it.

            I met Carvin Jones while deployed to Tikrit, Iraq. Every year the Army and United Services Organization spend… well I’m not sure how much… but a lot of cash on entertainment for the troops.

            You’ll get a few big names to come through every year. they get paid crazy amounts of cash to play a few shows and sign autographs, but on the whole, we usually got journeyman entertainers who either never made it big, or had their moment in the sun a long time ago. 

Do you remember the Gin Blossoms? That’s ok, neither does anybody else. They had that one song from that one movie. Yeah, they came out and played a show.

            I’m not trying to badmouth any of the acts that came out to see us, most of them were very nice to us. (With the exception of one very hypocritical country singer who makes money by singing about how great the armed forces are, then acts like a total diva when he visits them.)

I worked crazy hours during that deployment, so I usually didn’t get the opportunity to see these shows, but and I probably wouldn't have gone to most of them anyway.

            The few shows I did see, I attended as a journalist and photographer for my unit.             

            About 9 months into my 12 month deployment, I was told I’d be covering a Shaka Kahn Concert the next night.

I honestly didn’t know who she was, but after 5 minutes of research recognized her as the singer from 70s funk rockers Rufas, you remember them, they sang this one. I also learned she was a pretty successful solo artist in the jazz and R&B realm. 

What I found really interesting though, was the fact that in the 60s she was affiliated with the Black Panther Party… and she was playing for troops deployed to a war zone. (If you don’t know why this is funny you should either retake high school history, or re-watch Forrest Gump.) 

             Anyway, knowing her history I went into her show figuring I knew what to expect, only when I got there early, looking for an interview, a big black guy with a Stevie Ray Vaughan hat was doing sound check.

            The lady who handled the celebrities when they visited our base told me he was Carvin Jones, the opening act, and introduced me.

            His energy was infectious, and after a five-minute interview, where he barely gave me time to ask a question, but flitted from basketball to Buddy Guy to baby back ribs and back again in the matter of 45 seconds, I was excited to see what the bluesman could do.

            “I don’t know if you ever heard of us before tonight,” Jones said, stepping onto the stage with a swagger. “But we are all going to jam out!”

And Jam we did. 

Carvin blew the roof of the place, cutting through Hendrix and Vaughan covers like butter, throwing in a few instrumental tracks of his own for good measure.

He played one handed, behind his head and waded into the audience like moses parting the red sea. 

Half of his shenanigans I don’t even know the name for, and he kept it up for an hour strait. When he finally had to relinquish the stage to Khan you could tell he didn’t want to.

            Shaka Khan was pretty good. She isn’t really my bag, but I’ve got nothing but respect for her voice. A lot of the older soldiers in the crowd really dug it, and she seemed to have a really good time, but going on after Jones was kind of like going on after Nirvana. No matter how good you are nobody is going to be talking about you after the show.

            Especially considering Carvin wasn’t done yet, after Khan left the stage, he came on for an encore, and by encore I mean another 45 minutes of jamming to the coolest blues I’ve ever heard live.

          I just realized that nobody in this last photo looks impressed... THEY HAVE NO SOULS!!!

Alzheimer’s sucks

I know I usually write sarcastic little entries about things that don’t really matter, like demise of Punk Rock, or silly little stories about my time in Iraq.

This week is a little more serious, so if you were expecting to laugh... I’ll get back to you next week.

I have been writing professionally for about four years. As a journalist I’ve written about many terrible things. I’ve written stories about Iraqi troops turning their weapons on the American Soldiers they lived and trained with for months. I’ve written about how PTSD and traumatic brain injury can ruin good peoples lives and tear families apart. I’ve written about suicide.

Whatever the subject matter, I have always been able to keep a level of professional detachment in my reporting. I was trained to report the facts, and I’m pretty good at it.

Professional detachment is not something I am capable of when writing about Alzheimer’s disease.  

My aunt, Jill Francis, recently founded Gracious Goodbyes, a nonprofit aimed at providing assistance to individuals and their loved ones confronted with progressive medical conditions. Last week she asked me to share a few words about my grandmother and her battle with Alzheimer’s over the past 11 years.

As I said, I’m a journalist. Putting myself into a story is uncomfortable but I believe there is value in sharing the story of this incredible woman.

From a the time I was born Jeannette Ingram played a huge role in my life. As is the case with many children of young parents, I spent a lot of my time at grandma and grandpa’s house while the folks worked.

I remember when I was very young she worked, but I think around the time my younger brother and cousin were born, she became a full time grandma, watching all of us during the day as our parents started their professional lives.

Looking back, she was infinitely patient with a young boy with an overactive imagination.

When my dad got out of the army, we moved into his parent’s house for a while, and Grandma Ingram became my constant companion.

She was my first playmate, and spent hours in the backyard enduring endless games of make believe with me.

Grandma Ingram was kind, with a sharp sarcastic wit that never came across as superior or mean-spirited. When my cousins or I were down she was quick with a joke or an ice cream sandwich, both excellent tools for cheering up a sad kid.

When I was 5 my dad went back to college, and we moved away. For the next 5 years or so I would spend 3 seasons in school and most of the summer at Grandma and Grandpa Ingram’s.

I remember by the end of 1st or 2nd grade, I had fallen way behind my classmates in reading, so over the summer grandma broke out my dad’s old Hardy Boys books and made me read for an hour each day.

I hated it for the first few weeks, and then I loved it. The Hardy Boys had cool cars and got to fly in planes and solved mysteries.

By the time I returned to school, I was a couple of grades ahead of my classmates in reading comprehension. Now almost 20 years later, I’m a journalist. Grandma cultivated in me a love for the written word, and in the long run, is largely responsible for helping me find my calling as a writer.

            Three days before my 11th birthday my family moved to Quito, Ecuador, where my parents served as missionaries with HCJB Global and my brother and I attended school at Alliance Academy International.

            I saw less of my family back in the states after that. We would still visit during summers, and every couple of years someone would come out and see how the missionaries in the family lived, but it was never the same.

We lived in Quito until I graduated high school in 2006.

In 2002, doctors diagnosed my grandmother with with early onset Alzheimer’s. She was 62. I was 14.

I do not remember feeling the gravity of the situation then. Maybe I was in denial, maybe I lived too far away or maybe I was just a teenager, but I honestly didn’t notice a big change the first few times we visited after her diagnosis.

She was still funny, still kind and would still chase her grandsons around the house for patting her on the head no matter how big they got. Sure, she might not have remembered my name all the time, but my mom calls me by my brother’s more often than not, so I didn’t really notice it.

It wasn’t until I graduated from high school and stayed at my grandparent’s while saving for college that I really noticed the difference.

She talked in circles, telling the same Bill Cosby story over and over. Her wit would still appear in flashes, but she’d lost a step for sure. My grandfather did all of the housework.

I’ve come to learn that it is hard for all young adults to watch the ones they love getting older, but it’s doubly hard to watch someone loose themselves to a disease like Alzheimer’s.

My grandmother lives in a nursing home now. Her mind has forgotten how to walk, and she can no longer speak. She lies in bead and mumbles nonsensical syllables from lips that once spouted wisdom and wit in equal measure.

When I was younger, my grandmother’s disease made me sad. Over the past few years, that sadness has been supplemented with barbs of anger.

My dad used to say his mother had the Red Phone to God; meaning when she prayed, amazing things happened. I’m angry because God in his infinite wisdom saw fit to let his servant suffer.

My brother told me once that he couldn’t remember a time when grandma wasn’t sick. I’m angry because my brother should have known the sharp, wonderful woman who would spend hours indulging in a young boys fantasy world.

 Selfishly, I’m angry because one day the doctor may tell me that my brain is rotting, and over the course of a few years I will lose everything that makes me, me.

I’m afraid if I do fall victim to this enemy, I will become a violent, cruel and spiteful person, a terror to those whom I love most. Alzheimer’s has done worse to better men than I.

But not to Jeannette Ingram.

It is said that no man can know what is in the heart of another, but from day one, my grandmother faced this terrible burden with faith and grace. I’ve seen fear in her as she felt memories slipping away from her, but never bitterness, never spite.

Her grace and unwavering faith, even in the grips of this terrible disease she set an example of righteousness and humility for all of us to follow. I’m far from perfect, but her voice in the back of my head has kept me from making some huge mistakes in my life.

During the early stages of her sickness, grandma would often joke, “I’ll outlive you all. I won’t know who I am, or where I am, but I’ll outlive you.”

Even now I still sort of believe it.

If you would like to help those afflicted with progressive medical conditions please visit the Gracious Goodbyes website http://www.graciousgoodbyes.org.