Around September last year I slipped into a black hole of anxiety. It was pretty crippling because it felt like everything took a massive effort to get through. As a result, I avoided simple tasks like checking my email. Sometimes just putting a meal together caused me a lot of stress.
The worst thing was the morning. It was so hard to get out of bed. On odd occasions where I could have a sleep-in, I would constantly battle with myself on when I should get up. I'd feel guilty if I was still in bed, or I would just feel horrible and anxious once I got up. I would experience that awful racing heart that seemed to make my chest thud so hard I was surprised people couldn't see it pulsing.
If my mobile phone went off, either an SMS or a phone call, I freaked out. Sometimes it would just be a vapid notice from our phone carrier or a random message from a friend. The relief that it was no big deal would be pretty great, but then the anxiety would just begin growing again. I had to build myself just to check my email. And I would only do it once a day. I would congratulate myself each time I did it too. It felt like such an achievement.
The most frustrating part for me was not feeling like myself. I've usually got a few things going at once, and I'm fairly enthused to start the day. Struggling just to get out of bed was horrible. I'm a pretty happy guy most of the time, so to feel so blue was just soul crushing. And to not really know why. Part of me thought I could just snap myself out of it if I fixed the root cause. I did learn not to get so hung up on that as time went on.
This was not my first wrestling match with the black dog. Although, it was more anxiety than depression. I've had down patches ever since I was a teenager. They used to be triggered by falling behind in my homework at high school and/or insomnia. If I had a night without sleep, I knew I had about a week of cloud to fight through. There was a period of time before my mother took her life that I felt like I understood a little of what she went through.
She spent her last few years battling severe depression. Before I was born she'd had a bout so severe that she attempted suicide by jumping off a building. Thankfully she was unsuccessful, or else I wouldn't be here. It seemed that my birth played a big part in her coming out of her depressive state. She managed to keep the black dog away until I was a teenager.
So, I've had my moments with depression and anxiety over the years. I've never had suicidal thoughts, which I'm very grateful for. I'm very lucky to have had Rhona to help me through. I know there are people out there with mental health issues who have partners that don't understand or empathise. As Rhona has her own stress and anxiety problems, she knows exactly what I go through. We're a good team. Usually, when one of us is low, the other is high enough to help prop them up. Even when we're both a little low, we're good at leaning on each other.
I'm very lucky that during my latest period of anxiety, I still enjoyed gigging. If my work had become stressful, that would have been really hard to push through. As it was, just emailing and talking on the phone was a challenge. Socialising with band mates or punters in my breaks was a little touch and go. I did let a few close friends know what I was going through, and their support was wonderful.
Without wanting to jinx myself, I think I'm pretty much through to the other side now. I've been feeling good, and full of a little more get-up-and-go. Particularly in the mornings. Just a little more motivated to get things done.
Rhona encouraged me to visit the psychologist she'd been seeing, and come up with some strategies to help manage my anxiety. One big thing I took away from those sessions was making little 1% changes in life. Just to look at particular aspects of life and seeing if we could make a small change for the better. So I stopped putting as much emphasis on some household chores or errands to be done immediately. I was giving myself permission to leave things until tomorrow or another day. I began to make time to do things that I enjoyed, those activities gave me a little reprieve from the day-to-day stuff. They became very important in helping me move forward.
One analogy Rhona and the psychologist liked to use was that of a jellybean jar. Each interaction, task or moment of the day requires a certain amount of jellybeans depending on how stressful or manageable they are. It's important to remember to fill the jar back up. So, activities you enjoy, or time taken just for you, is crucial in filling up the jellybean jar. Rhona was very conscious that I needed to have filled up my jar before going to out to play a gig or the shops or other social interactions.
January is usually a bad month for me and Rhona, as we don't have a routine to stick to. School's out, and the structure of the usual week is gone. Rhona spent most of last year on long service leave and was experiencing high levels of anxiety due to not having a set routine. To add insult to injury, she was putting pressure on herself to enjoy the leave, which is something she'd been working towards for ten years. Sometimes getting what you want can have its drawbacks.
As the year progressed, Rhona got emotionally stronger and was managing her anxiety attacks quite well. Just in time for me to fall down the hole. I was constantly waking up with a racing heart. Some mornings I seemed to be in a waking loop where I was reliving a situation that was making me anxious over and over again. I would awake slightly panicked and not really be sure what I had dreamt or what was causing the feeling.
Thankfully I never dreaded going to sleep or getting into bed at night. I was usually up late enough to be tired, and I would want to go to sleep. Our bed is super comfy too. Night time was usually when I felt best, mentally speaking. I guess, it was the end of the day, there was little I could do other than enjoy the night and wind down. I think I possibly kept clinging to the idea that I feel better in the morning.
I remained very grateful for Rhona. She would constantly ask how I was feeling and check if I needed to talk anything through. If I had an upcoming gig that was causing me a little stress, she was a wonderful sounding board.
Things progressed slowly, but over time, the cloud started to lift. Constant support from my family and friends was the greatest factor alleviating my stress. The sessions with the psychologist helped me put a few things in perspective as well. Nothing like the reduced rationality when you're in the throes of depression and anxiety!
As I write this blog, I'm feeling a lot better. I'm pretty much back to my old self again, but I'm riding a different wave. It's my manic wave. Everything is awesome, and nothing is happening fast enough for me. Driving seems to be in slow motion as well. I can't get to where I'm going fast enough!
I tend to get a little self-centred too. Or rather, a bit blinkered in what I'm doing or trying to get done. My mind map gets very rigid and some things that come up to challenge this either get ignored or not taken seriously. I can almost feel myself doing it, but I don't fully realise it until after the fact.
I'm happy to be feeling happier. The family has had a couple of challenges to start the year off with, but there's been a fair few wins as well. Hoping that will be a trend that continues to, um, continue.
Greatest Hits Vol. 1 THE FLAMING LIPS (2018)
Week: Sat 7th Jul to Fri 13th Jul 2018
Format: Vinyl/3 CD Deluxe Edition
Producer: various
Track listing:
VINYL EDITION
Side 1:
1. Do You Realize?? *
2. Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Pt. 1
3. Race For The Prize *
4. Waitin' For a Superman *
5. When You Smile *
6. She Don't Use Jelly
Side 2:
1. Bad Days (Aurally Excited Version)
2. The W.A.N.D.
3. Silver Trembling Hands *
4. The Castle
5. The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song
TOTAL RUNNING TIME: 45:25
DELUXE EDITION
Disc 1:
1. Talkin' 'Bout the Smiling Deathporn Immortality Blues (Everyone Wants To Live Forever)
2. Hit Me Like You Did the First Time
3. Frogs
4. Felt Good to Burn
5. Turn It On *
6. She Don't Use Jelly
7. Chewin' the Apple of Your Eye
8. Slow Nerve Action
9. Psychiatric Explorations of the Foetus with Needles
10. Brainville *
11. Lightning Strikes the Postman
12. When You Smile *
13. Bad Days (Aurally Excited Version)
14. Riding to Work in the Year 2025
15. Race For the Prize (Sacrifice of the New Scientists) *
16. Waitin' For a Superman (Is It Getting Heavy?) *
17. The Spark That Bled
18. What Is the Light?
Disc 2:
1. Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Pt. 1 *
2. In the Morning of the Magicians *
3. All We Have Is Now
4. Do You Realize?? *
5. The W.A.N.D.
6. Pompeii Am Götterdämmerung
7. Vein of Stars
8. The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song
9. Convinced of the Hex
10. See the Leaves
11. Silver Trembling Hands *
12. Is David Bowie Dying?
13. Try to Explain
14. Always There, In Our Hearts
15. How?? *
16. There Should Be Unicorns
17. The Castle
Disc 3:
1. Zero to a Million
2. Jets (Cupid's Kiss vs. The Psyche of Death) (2-track demo)
3. Thirty-Five Thousand Feet of Despair
4. The Captain
5. 1000ft Hands
6. Noodling Theme (Epic Sunset mix #5)
7. Up Above the Daily Hum *
8. The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song (In Anatropous Reflex) *
9. We Can't Predict the Future *
10. Your Face Can Tell the Future *
11. You Gotta Hold On
12. What Does It Mean?
13. Spider-Man Vs Muhammad Ali
14. I Was Zapped by the Lucky Super Rainbow
15. Enthusiasm for Life Defeats Existential Fear Part 2
16. If I Only Had a Brain *
17. Silent Night/Lord, Can You Hear Me?
TOTAL RUNNING TIME: 3:43:47
I've been a fan of The Flaming Lips since the early part of the 21st century. I heard She Don't Use Jelly when it came out in 1993, and thought it was kinda loopy, but I still dug it. After that song faded from the spotlight, I didn't really give the band another thought.
Until around 2002, I think. A few friends were asking me about the band and if I knew any of their stuff. Their albums The Soft Bulletin and Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots were getting rave reviews from music critics a-plenty. I still thought of them as that noisy band who had a hit with She Don't Use Jelly and scored a track on the Batman Forever soundtrack.
I decided to dig a little, and I think the Yoshimi album was my first decent jump down the rabbit hole. I was pretty taken with it, from memory, and headed straight to Bulletin. Nearly twenty years later, and those albums remain very special to me, but it's 1995's Clouds Taste Metallic that I call my favourite now. My golden Lips period is 1995 to 2006. I didn't really get into the experimental 4CD Zaireeka from 1997, but I appreciated the concept. They lost me a little with 2009's Embryonic, particularly as I was quite taken by their go at Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon.
The 3CD set offers up a pretty good overview of their early output to the present day. The first two discs consists of most of their singles from 1992 to 2017, presented in chronological order. We are treated to demos, B-sides, soundtrack contributions and outtakes a-plenty on the last CD.
If you're after something a little more concise, the vinyl edition is pretty taut, consisting of just eleven tracks. The really well known songs are there too, Do You Realize??, She Don't Use Jelly, Bad Days and Race For The Prize. I've picked out five favourites from each CD and five from the vinyl tracklisting. Have at it! He he he...
Got Lips?
They're not for everyone, but there should something for all tastes here. If you can tolerate Wayne Coyne's high singing voice.
Wow, I can't believe how long it has been since I last did a Dylan blog! Almost two years! Bob Dylan's fabulous The Complete Album Collection Vol. One CD box set has been in my possession for over three years and I haven't made my way through all of the albums yet. That's so like me. I like to savour, you see. I have books and albums and movies that I seem to save for The Right Time. Seeing as we just got tickets to see Dylan in August at the Perth Arena, it felt right to jump back in again.
17. THE BASEMENT TAPES (with The Band) (1975) (24/5/18)
Despite being released in 1975, the songs on this album were relentlessly bootlegged since they were recorded in 1967 and 1968. Apparently more than 100 songs were laid down during Dylan's time with The Band (still known as The Hawks at the time). I think the biggest collection of songs from those sessions were released as part of Dylan's official Bootleg Series in 2014.
Anyway, I find this album a little difficult to get into. In fact, it was listening to this that stopped me from continuing forward with these blog posts back in 2018. There are eight tracks that don't feature Dylan at all, echoing the shared track listing of Before The Flood, and that creates a bit of a mixed vibe. It was always going to be difficult to craft an album out of so many songs that people had shared among themselves for nearly a decade. But, even with that in mind, it comes across as being very disjointed. Maybe after more listens, I'll start to 'get it'.
I've never been a huge fan of Tears of Rage and This Wheel's On Fire anyway, and they're the most well-known songs on offer. Even You Ain't Goin' Nowhere is quite different, lyrically and musically, from the version that appeared on Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Vol. II. I did enjoy Goin' To Acapulco, Long Distance Operator, Katie's Been Gone and Please, Mrs Henry however. The fact that Clothes Line Saga mentions the date January 30th (my birthday) is kinda cool too. One to revisit a little more, methinks.
18. DESIRE (1976) (24/5/18)
Interestingly, I listened to this album and The Basement Tapes on Dylan's 77th birthday. Another good reason for me to start spinning a little more of his work, I thought. Desire feels like a natural progression from Blood On The Tracks as far as production goes, with a prominent use of the violin, thanks to Scarlet Rivera and backing vocals from Emmylou Harris. Except for one song, the whole album was co-written by Dylan and Jacques Levy, which is quite unusual. Most of the tracks have a strong narrative style as a result, the album opening with arguably its most well-known song Hurricane. It's an epic tune outlining the wrongful imprisonment of boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter for the crime of murder (Carter was eventually released in 1985). The eight and a half minute track is not the longest on this album though. That title goes to the twelve verse (count 'em, twelve!) ballad Joey, which details the events of gangster "Crazy Joey" Gallo clocking up eleven minutes. It's a pretty good album this one. It was my first listen, but I was already familiar with Oh, Sister, Hurricane and One More Cup of Coffee (Valley Below), the latter being the one song Dylan penned on his own. I also dig Mozambique and Romance In Durango. During the recording of this album, Dylan also cut of my favourite tracks of his, Rita May. It was released as a single, and appeared on the 1978 three-album compilation Masterpieces, which is where I first heard it. The jaunty tune sounds like it should be here, like this is where it belongs, not adrift on a single.
19. HARD RAIN (1976) (25/5/18)
Like the documentary title, Dylan doesn't look back. If he chooses to revisit his older material in concert, he tends to change the arrangement significantly. This is definitely the case with this live album recorded during the Rolling Thunder Revue. The only songs that sound similar to the studio versions are the recent(ish) ones. Even the fairly new Shelter From The Storm gets a rollicking arrangement far removed from the acoustic treatment it received on Blood On The Tracks. The album opens with a raucous reworking of Maggie's Farm that I absolutely love. I only just learned that Mick Ronson (yes, THAT Mick Ronson) plays on the song too! It was actually the first version I heard, due to it being on the Masterpieces compilation. I didn't hear the original (from Bringing It All Back Home) until I was well into my twenties, possibly thirties. One Too Many Mornings gets a great rendition as does crowd favourite Lay Lady Lay, again presented quite differently to the Nashvillle Skyline recording. I'm not the biggest fan of Idiot Wind, but it's performance here is pretty apt closer for the album, and it's arguably more passionate than the studio version.
20. STREET-LEGAL (1978) (30/5/18)
Thanks to Rolling Stone magazine's Top 100 Dylan songs list a few years back, I was already familiar with three tracks on this album. If not for that, I would have flown into this one totally blind. While there's nothing hugely well-known here, it's pretty damn great. This marks another shift in Dylan's production as he enlists a full band complete with female backing vocals. My big highlights are Señor (Tales of Yankee Power), opening track Changing Of The Guards and the eight minute plus No Time To Think. The former is my absolute fave from this album, and bizarrely, No.100 in the aforementioned RS list. The album's closer Where Are You Tonight? (Journey Through Dark Heat) is a good track too, and another of the three from that RS list.
It's a number I've been seeing a lot lately.
Thanks to pop culture, I know Douglas Adams wrote that 42 was the answer to life, the universe and everything. I've never read a Douglas Adams book, but I know that. It's like some sort of societal osmosis.
The Australian Red Cross Blood Service have recently launched a wonderful campaign about the number 42. It shares that the red blood cells inside donated blood only lasts for 42 days. It's a pretty awesome concept, which asks you to be life, the universe and everything to someone else. Bizarrely, I have only just started giving blood again. My donation on February 20th this year was my first one in about five years, I reckon. I've now become a plasma donor, as my veins are apparently awesome, and my blood flow rocks.
Rhones and I recently saw Jackson Browne at the Leeuwin Estate concert last weekend. When I went to get us some eats from a local vendor, the ticket number I was given was 42. The concert was on March 24th...42 backwards.
Today would be called 4/2 in the US, rather than 2/4, as the rest of the world notates.
42 was the age that my mother would have been the year she died. She was only two and a half months away.
42 is how old I am at the time of writing this blog. I've been 42 for about 60 days now. How weird would that have been if I'd been 42 for 42 days?!?! You can't have everything, I guess.
Not sure what it all means, but I'm finding an odd comfort in the number.
And did you make the decision yourself? Or was it made for you? Did you wake up with a song in your head? Was it in a dream?
I'm not talking about the twenty second snippet you used for your alarm this morning. Or even that flash of song that came up during a segment on Sunrise or the ABC news. Not that song that was halfway through when you got into the car and switched your radio on either.
The first full song that started your day. What was it? Do you remember?
Did you wake up wanting to hear a particular track? Was it in your head when you got out of bed? Did you know what you wanted to hear? Did you run your thumb over the wheel of your iPod looking for it? Or did you pull a record out?
The first song I heard today was Sting's Shape Of My Heart from his 1993 album Ten Summoner's Tales. I opened up Spotify on my phone and looked through the six Daily Mixes on offer for the day. I could have picked a song by Elbow or Eels or Blur or Jackson Browne or Catatonia or Fleetwood Mac or Flaming Lips or Amy Winehouse or The Style Council, but the Sting song caught my eye.
It's a great song. I like the usage of the four card suites in the lyrics. It's easy to listen to. Not too intrusive, but quite engaging at the same time. I think it started my day off pretty well. The family came and had breakfast and everyone seemed to be in good form.
What if a different song had kicked off my morning? What if was too sad, or just too noisy for that time of the day? What if my song choice caused an argument? But, what if it went the other way? What if the song was so infectious and groovy that everyone had to dance when they got into the kitchen?
It's only a song, but your first one can pull an awful lot of threads.
I love music.
Physical Graffiti LED ZEPPELIN (1975)
Week: Tue 9th Jan to Mon 15th Jan 2018
Format: CD
Producer: Jimmy Page
Track listing:
CD 1:
1. Custard Pie
2. The Rover
3. In My Time of Dying *
4. Houses of the Holy *
5. Trampled Underfoot *
6. Kashmir *
CD 2:
1. In the Light
2. Bron-Y-Aur *
3. Down by the Seaside *
4. Ten Years Gone
5. Night Flight
6. The Wanton Song
7. Boogie With Stu
8. Black Country Woman
9. Sick Again
TOTAL RUNNING TIME: 82:45
My listening of this album kicked off because January 9th was Jimmy Page's 74th birthday. I don't know if I picked this particular Zeppelin album because of the length or because I just really dig the tunes. I only learned recently that the record was extended into a double album by adding outtakes from previous Led Zep efforts. So, without those tracks, Physical Graffiti might have looked something like this:
In the Light
Custard Pie
Ten Years Gone
In My Time of Dying
Trampled Underfoot
Kashmir
The Wanton Song
Sick Again
That's a total guess, of course. I have no idea what order the band would have chosen. In the Light just seems like a better opener for the whole album. Works great kicking of the second disc though.
So, where did the other songs come from, I hear you ask? Kinda. Well, the devout Led Zep fan will probably know this. The earliest track here is Jimmy Page's lovely instrumental Bron-Y-Aur, which was recorded during the Led Zeppelin III sessions in 1970. I first heard the song as it played in a sequence in their concert film The Song Remains The Same. I was in my mid-teens and had just been getting into Zeppelin, and I was only familiar with the first four albums. My dad and I bought them on CD after I returned from a jaunt to NZ with the youth theatre company I was in (he bought II and IV, whilst I got I and III). Anyway, I loved the piece of music, and it wasn't until I got given a taped copy of Physical Graffiti that I knew what it was. This was pre-internet, okay?
From the sessions for Led Zeppelin IV, came these songs:
- Night Flight
- Boogie With Stu (named for Ian Stewart - pianist, road manager and co-founder of the Rolling Stones - who plays on the jammed track)
- Down By the Seaside
I can see why they didn't make the album. They would have messed with the flow a bit. Even though Four Sticks and Black Dog sound like fun, they're pretty intricate pieces of music. The loose blues of Boogie With Stu would clash against nearly every other track. I guess it would also be hard to imagine those three songs in that album with nearly fifty years of hindsight. Or is that hindhearing?
The remaining outtakes, The Rover, Black Country Woman and Houses of the Holy all came out of the Houses of the Holy sessions, of course. I find it bizarre when a band has a song that shares its name with an album, but it isn't on the same album! I may be remembering this incorrectly, but I heard tell that Bon Scott was so enamoured with the title of AC/DC's High Voltage album, that he felt that they should have a song of the same name. It would appear on their TNT album. I think Houses of the Holy might have been a better song choice over, say, The Crunge on that album. However, it does fit on Physical Graffiti quite nicely.
This is one of the few double albums that seems to benefit from its length, rather than buckle under the weight of the material. Sure, some songs feel like loose jams, but they're still extremely listenable, and sit well amongst everything else.
While the first four albums (quite rightly) get a lot of praise and preference, I think this gets overlooked because it's a double. With bonafide Zep classics like Kashmir, Trampled Underfoot and Houses of the Holy on offer, it's timeless seventies English rock you can gorge on without filling up on bread.
The new year brings the feeling of a new beginning to me. A fresh slate, if you'll pardon the cliché. I no longer make New Year Resolutions, but I do try to make an effort to improve myself in a few areas. Lose weight seems to be at the top of my list every year. And to write more. I always endeavour to use blogging or tweeting to get the creative juices flowing, hoping to get inspired for more songwriting, but it's been a pretty dry few years.
Some people go down the 'new year, new me' road and try super hard to be the person that they wish they could be. I get quite tickled at how full gyms are in the first coupla weeks of January, before they start to get sparse again by February.
Others cry 'arbitrary this' and 'time marker that', but I think I sit somewhere in the middle. There's something about January 1st and December 31st that just cries out 'bookends' to me.
I've had little projects that take up a year, and I always tend to confine them to the traditional 365 (or 366) day time constraint. They've started on Jan 1 and ended on Dec 31...one year.
Of course, I realise that a year can commence by using any date as a starting point. Some may do this with birthdays. If I ever do a year-long project, I always start on Jan 1st. Things like tweeting birthdays/album releases of musicians. Or logging a list of movies I've watched, or albums I've listened to.
Weird. I could start at any time really, couldn't I? Must be the autistic in me.
