Happy Birthday Paul Westerberg!

I have a lot of "favorites" when it comes to music. I don't think I've ever just targeted one band or one person as the tip-top, but Paul Westerberg is about as close to the top as you can get with me without seeing much competition. 

He came out of Minneapolis with his post-punk/pre-grunge, highly influential alternative (when it really was alternative) college rock band The Replacements in the early 80's. Westerberg rapidly grew into an outstanding songwriter and a pretty damned good guitarist. When The Replacements broke down (definitely not "up") he was already well on his way to doing his own thing and continued to write great songs and wear his heart on his sleeve.

He never became a big commercial success by today's standards, but his influence is felt through a thousand bands and he is well respected in rock circles among other musicians and critics. His 53rd birthday is today and I felt like writing a little bit about him in celebration. His influence on my musical tastes can't be measured. Opening my mind up to The Replacements allowed me to drive myself to all sorts of music I may not have otherwise heard. It was like "Freddy, there's a lot of music out there, don't miss it!" The years wear on and Paul isn't releasing as much music to the public as he did in years past, but that's OK. Like The Band, Waylon Jennings, Beastie Boys, The Beatles, and Roger Waters, their music that is already out there is more than enough to satisfy me for the rest of my life. The music is not to be disregarded after a listen. It's timeless for me. I just go back to my LP's or IPod and visit my friends when I'm lonely for one of their songs. 

Happy Birthday Paul! 

"First Glimmer" on MTV!

"I'll Be You" by The Replacements

"Dyslexic Heart" from the Singles soundtrack

"Love Untold" on Letterman! (Tommy Keene on guitar!)

New Year's Musings On Music I Found In 2012

Personally, 2012 was an OK year. I don't keep up with "time" very well and one year seems to slip into the next for me and then I don't remember exactly when something happened. Anyone else let time slip away like that? I suppose it's just natural as you get older, to lose track of when certain events happen. I need a better filing system in my programming. Freddy 6.0? 

I had some great times with family and friends last year and just keep plowing ahead towards the final destination. I have to say though, that there are a few things that were not of 2012 that I'm glad I found for the first time during this year. While others are listing their favorite "this" and "thats" from 2012, I'm going to list a few albums that I experienced for the first time in 2012, but were around way before this year.

Pieces Of A Man: Gil Scott-Heron (1971)

A wonderful find for me. I heard Gil Scott-Herson's name on a superb documentary about Bill Withers called "Still Bill" (which I highly recommend to music lovers and you can find it on Netflix, or watch on You Tube by clicking the link) and decided to find out why Withers and his wife were so keen on him. I listened to several songs on You Tube and was sold. This will be painful and hard for some to take, but I believe this album is better than Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On" and makes at least as good a statement on the plight of those on the bottom rung of socio-economic status in our country. There are five or six standouts on the record and "Home Is Where The Hatred Is" is among those, along with "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" and "Lady Day & John Coltrane". If you like soul or R&B, I'd be hard pressed to recommend any album in that line of genres to you ahead of this one. 

  

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Seed Of Memory: Terry Reid (1976)

This is a fantastic album and honestly, my music loving life would be worse off having not heard it. Terry Reid is the guy who turned down Jimmy Page to be the lead singer of Led Zeppelin. One of rocks great blunders, but it gave way to this hidden gem, called "Seed Of Memory". The sound is definitively "70's", but as much as you can hear the well that Reid draws from (Neil Young, Byrds, etc), you can really hear where he was influential to those who came after him. His voice is so good and with the songwriting on this album, it bears repeated listening. 

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The Band: The Band (1969)

It depends on when you catch me, but this may be the best album I have ever heard. Over the years, I had heard several songs off the album, but never took it in as a whole until this past year. Lyrically and musically it just delivers with an eclectic batch of tunes that weave into one another seamlessly. The voices of Danko, Manuel, and Helm are earthy, real, and at times, beautiful. It's hard not to love an album with "Up On Cripple Creek", "The Night They Drove Ol' Dixie Down", "Whispering Pines", and "King Harvest" on it. George Harrison once called them the best band in the universe and after hearing this album I can see why he thought so. 

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Pacific Ocean Blue: Dennis Wilson (1977)

An unheralded classic that is getting its due now more than it do when it was released. Most of the record is a departure from the Beach Boys sound that he helped create, though you will find some moments here and there that recall the Beach Boys at their best. I think this album has some great songs and it's a shame that it didn't receive more acclaim at the time. Perhaps the momentum from a hit album could have saved Wilson from his downward spiral. There are some beautiful songs on this one, including "Thoughts Of You" and "River Song" (co-written by Carl Wilson with a bit of a Beach Boys feel), but my favorite is probably "Dreamer". 

I hope everyone has a wonderful 2013. I'm sure, like any other year, it will have its ups and downs, but try to take it all in stride. It's just life we are living and I believe we only get one shot at it. With that, I'll say enjoy your family and friends, don't sweat the small stuff (and really, it's ALL small stuff), and find some good music to soothe your heart, mind, and soul whenever possible. 

12/21/2012: I'm Still Here, Now What?

Alright then.....thanks for nothing. Fuckin' Mayans. All this build up for the past four or five years and here I sitting in a warm house with my little ones safely tucked in and me in my pajamas with the feet in 'em typing on my computer. Where is the mayhem? Where are the meteors? Where is Planet X? I was ready to embrace the horror and this is the devastating scene from my back yard as winds whipping at speeds of up to 50 MPH struck!?!?

I know I should be thankful, but I am decidedly NOT thankful. I've invested some time and effort into this day coming. I was ready to have the last laugh and now I have to deal with the aftermath of nothing happening. How do I come back from this? 

For the past two years, I watched about 37 You Tube videos and kept up with 11 blogs that laid out, in perfect detail, the end of times. They couldn't all be wrong, could they? Why would they tell lies and deceive me? I took them to heart and just stopped caring about what I ate and what I did. Does anyone know how awesome that is? To just not care! Oh, how grand it was. I put Elizabeth Taylor and Chris Farley to shame. Chicken wing Wednesday. Steak Saturday. Sundae Sunday. Muncho Monday. Saturated fats at every one of the six daily meals I had! I super sized everything. I haven't had a glass of water or a piece of fruit in 23 months! I did a reverse Jonah Hill!! Do you appreciate how hard it's going to be to lose the 100 lbs I carelessly gained? 

I also quit my job! Can any of you even know where I was in life just a couple of years back? I was living the dream in middle management. Working hard to make sure the last line of defense between the company and the customer was up to par. Getting groused at by people who weren't my boss. Had my own office with a window that over looked shelving full of awesome internal engine parts. Two weeks of vacation time every year! Managing people who could barely make it in sober if they made it in at all and then having to hear shit if I couldn't get them to work like they were on a southern cotton plantation in 1855. I had it made. I was going places. Hell, after 16 years, I had $7,000 in my 401K and would have been able to retire comfortably at the age of 149. I was living a dream!

For the sake of full disclosure, honesty, and transparency, I did some things that in retrospect probably weren't so smart now. You have to know though, that I would never do these things if I didn't think the world was coming to an end. 

1) Told my kids that every sneeze took a week off their lives and they need to hold it in. 

2) Tipped a stripper $600 last May for grinding on my Pepe' and had to take my wife to Sizzler for our 20th anniversary. (hell, I didn't think it would matter, you would have done the same)

3) Watched "The Walking Dead" straight through on Netflix. Now what?

4) I was asked to co-host a late night Internet radio show a few weeks ago and told the guy ; "Saw off a chair leg and sit on it you asshole, don't you know the world is ending?" (kind of wish I hadn't done that now)

5) I left the lights on, the heat blasting, and all of my water faucets running for the past month. I'm guessing those bills are going to have to go on a payment plan.

6) I've been littering, speeding, driving without a seat belt, jaywalking, and tearing tags off of mattresses for months and never paid any of the tickets I got. 

7) I've been stealing my neighbors Wi-Fi and downloading scat porn using his accounts. I mean, one of my other neighbors has been stealing that neighbors Wi-Fi and downloading scat porn using his accounts.

8) Before turning in last night I called and told my cousin her husband had been sleeping around on her and he had another family living in the Highlands. It's not true, but a great end of times practical joke. 

9) I used my kids college savings to buy a Mickey Mantle rookie card, and then set it on fire. (I always thought it would be cool to be able to spend money like that)

10) I purposely got hooked on heroin. It felt great. Not really sure what to do about that now.

11) I haven't paid taxes for three years and sent a certified letter to the IRS yesterday mocking their inability to collect.

12) I bought $13,000 worth of furniture on a "Pay Nothing Until 2013" deal. 

As you can see, I put a lot of stock in this Mayan calendar thing. I feel jipped this morning. It's not fair. I did what any normal person would do upon finding out the world was ending. If anyone would like to help me out, I really would like to know when the NEXT end of the world deadline is so I can start planning now. Perhaps this hasn't all been a wash and I'll just have to shine all this on for a little while longer. Oh, well, at least I enjoyed myself! What the hell have you done while I was having fun over eating at strip club buffets, having promiscuous and unprotected sex with men and women I met on the street, sharing needles, watching reruns of Different Strokes, choking the life out of stray kittens and giving my kids bad life advice for laughs!?!?

Don't you judge me!

Sandy Hook, Connecticut: Sadness, Anger, Hopelessness

This probably isn't the time to write this, but I'm pissed off and sad and I damn well want to vent. 

We have almost thirty dead people in Sandy Hook, Connecticut today and twenty of them are kindergarten students. The shooter? He's dead too, along with six to eight other adults. We don't know much about the shooter and really even the particulars of how it happened. What we do know is enough for now. Twenty dead children. Twenty dead kindergarten children. Twenty children around the age of five. 

First, I'll deal a little with my anger. There is no justice for this. How can there be? Even if the shooter were still alive and I could be alone in a room with him and a hammer, where would the justice be? Am I angry those children are dead? Of course, but my anger is more immediately aimed at nothing. I'm just angry, because I know that no justice can be done. Those twenty children and the their families have forever.....FOREVER been destroyed. That's beyond our control and it angers me. 

My sadness obviously comes from place in my heart that is touched because I'm a parent and even beyond that, these folks are my fellow human beings. I can't imagine the terror, the distress, the hopeless feeling, and the helpless feeling that has to be hanging around the necks of those parents right now. That's a pain that will never heal. Fade? Yeah, time does have a way of lifting a burden, but their hearts will never be the same. That makes me sad. Nothing anyone can say or do can make it better for them. I'm also sad that those children will never get to experience life. The good, the bad.....all of the shit that goes along with being a human being. They will not get to experience it. The thrill of competing in a sport, learning an instrument, getting a scholarship to college, having fun with their friends, their first kiss, their first true love, their first child..........none of that is in the cards for twenty children today. Yeah, there are thousands of kids dying every single day. Circumstances mean that there is loss of life in our world, but this wasn't a loss, it was a theft. A human being, likely a broken human being, stole their lives. He stole hope. He stole the future. He stole love. It's been replaced with grief, sadness, anger, and confusion. 

For those of you with children, try for just a very brief period to imagine your child's last moments. The terror, the fear and confusion that had to be rolling through their minds. Calling out for you and then being silenced. You having to go to the school and come to the realization that your child has been stolen from you.  It only takes a few seconds for my eyes to tear up. I can stop my pain, those parents can't. 

I'll make no bones about it, because I never have before; I don't care to pray for them. That implies that I would be believing that some greater entity cares enough to comfort us and the families or cares enough to usher those children into heaven. I don't believe that. I do not wish to feel better by believing it's a part of some grand plan. We just live and die. Looking to a god for comfort in times of death only serves to push the truth away, when we should embrace it. The truth is that life is very precious. Every second that ticks away is one less second you have to be here. The truth is not comforting, but that's the way it is. I don't begrudge anyone who believes or prays. If that happens to comfort you, do that. 

I've done my best to make sure my children understand that death is always with us. That may seem a bit odd or cold, but I don't want my kids to take anything for granted. I don't dwell on it, but when things like this happen, it's a good time to help them understand that the world is mostly beyond our control. As free human beings, we do things. We do some marvelous and breath taking things, but we also have the capacity to do great harm. I do my best to tell my children how much I love them at every chance I get. I'm sure they get tired of hearing it, but it's important to me that they know I love them. Love and truth are the most important things about our humanity in my opinion. Those are the only things that can ever unite us and help us understand each other. 

So, I'll turn into a preacher for a minute if you will allow me. I want to preach love. We should love as much as possible. It's not always easy, but it's the only thing that can truly change our world. We can't always agree. We can't always believe the same things. We can't always do the right thing. We can't always love. We can try though. If you want the world to change, then change yourself. Do your level best to put the ego aside and love people. Put aside petty differences with your friends and family and let them know you love them. Show love to others in how you treat them and the world around you. It will come back to you, even if it's not apparent immediately. Love now and it will make life easier on you down the line. 

The bottom line is, we will never be able to make sense of this, because there is no sense to be made. There can be no justice for this, because the incident was so unjust. We can only learn that life is short and we need to do all we can to appreciate and love one another. This happened to all of us. Not directly, of course, but those people are us, they just live in a different town. 

I hope I have not offended anyone. This is for me anyhow. Just wanted to pull some stuff out and express how I feel. Take care and give an extra hug to your loved ones. Let them know you appreciate them. 

**Perhaps I will address the gun issue and all that later. Right now, I just don't care about it as much as I do the bad feeling I have in my heart and stomach for the people in those families and that town.**

2012 Man Of The Year

Making cake for the hungry. My kids were hungry for cake.

Each and every year, major publications and news organizations announce their "Man of the Year". Sometimes the "Man of the Year" is not even a man. Hell, sometimes, it's not even a human being. That is where this blog comes in. You get it straight here, without influence from the "Jersey Shore" or hipster crowd. Freddy's Open Mind is a blog for the people. I will not bow to pressure from shameless self promoters, celebrity agents, networks, film studios or record companies. I will not cave in to the demands of the political elite! This blog hits upon the toughest issues facing our world today and is a vital part of my news cycle. 

The "Man of the Year" must be an individual force, who is not afraid to be on the cutting edge of thought, even if those thoughts, more often than not, lead to inaction. My readers deserve a true representative that they can look up to and use as a beacon of hope for themselves and their children.

Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls, circus clowns of all nationalities, I present to you;

Freddy: 2012's Man of the Year

Wondering if stuff in florescent lights really cause cancer. 

That's right. Your humble blogger (sounds like a bad job doesn't it? blogger) wishes to accept on behalf of himself, the Freddy's Open Mind 2012 Man of the Year Award. It's not every day that I receive an award. Hell, it's not every lifetime that I get one. I have been here, writing a bunch of bullshit that few see and even fewer read, and it makes me proud that I continue to tell myself that someday, someone will read one of these articles and it will make a difference. Perhaps 100 years from now, when someone finally gets around to cleaning up the Internet (what a vile and disgusting place), I will get my due. Yes, some over paid nitwit in Washington D.C. will be hired to take a bunch of trash out and he'll discover this site as he is headed for the dumpster. He'll read so many great articles about "douche bags", Sammy Sosa, mix tapes, hell, and Star Wars that he'll be inspired to publish my work and celebrate it as "great lost art"!  Seriously, is there any way that "You Might Be An A-Hole" isn't put into the National Archives at some point? How can any reader walk away from "Soccer Suuucks" and not be touched to his or her being? 

Not realizing I don't have to get married again because I caught a bouquet.

Why did I choose Freddy for Man of the Year?

 This has been a big year for me. I broke away from a job I had for 16 years (really disliking the last year or so of it), went from being a sarcastic, discontented pud to just being a pud (progress, right?), and have reduced my carbon footprint by working at home. Yes, I'm helping to change the world. I watched "Tree of Life" and didn't hate it. I listened to some YES songs and didn't hate them. I foiled a plot by evil ground hornets to infiltrate my yard and terrorize my children. I did try to watch "Super Troopers"again and continue to hate it and still have not made it to the end. I committed myself to lose 15 lbs and even though I gained 10 lbs, I made a commitment to do something and that felt good! Over the past 12 months I have managed to not say "Hot enough for you?". I have also not watched a single second of "Jersey Shore" and I couldn't pick a "honey boo boo" out of a lineup of two. I am also one of only 15 or so people who realize that we are not literally going over a cliff if DC doesn't come to a budget agreement. In 2012, I stopped using prescription drugs and started using drugs for recreation and man....do I feel great! One of my greatest ongoing accomplishments is that I am a lot a hearty and brave soul, much like Lou Gehrig. No, I'm not battling a disabling disease, but I have now gone 31 consecutive years without being in a fist fight. Those are admirable accomplishments for me and I've decided to recognize that by bestowing my highest honor upon myself. Congratulations to me and may I have a stellar 2013!