Fringeville #212: I’ve got my music back! ...and don’t be a bunch of wusses!

I finally have my new cochlear implant processors!

They are N7’s by Cochlear, and these puppies offer some pretty impressive iPhone compatibility via wireless technology. In addition to controlling the processors right from my iPhone instead of with a separate remote, I can take phone calls or listen to music via Bluetooth. It’s private. It’s awesome. It was worth the long fight with insurance to finally get these replacements.

Whether I’m using my iPhone for calls or to stream music, the clarity is phenomenal. It’s like having my ugly brother from New England right in my head when he calls or being in the studio with The Beatles while they seemingly knock out a tune just for me.

And the coolest thing? When I’m listening to anything over wireless, I’m the only one hearing it. Unless I sing along (which frightens animals and small children) one would never know I’m listening to Harry Nilsson singing Coconut, Mark Williams performing Out Past the Moon, or Clapton wailing his guitar on Motherless Children.

Listening to music is my once again my greatest joy.

That’s no small thing.

Music, you see, is by far the biggest challenge for many folks with cochlear implants. With this processor, listening to much of my favorite music is approaching (for me at least) a quality close to what I remember before my hearing loss began as a teenager.

I understand lyrics better than I can ever remember doing so. Even before losing my hearing entirely, I struggled with that. Back when I used to play in bands, I often deliberately slurred words I didn’t know simply because I couldn’t make them out. (There was no Google in those days, and most albums …yes, those vinyl things that we put on turntables back in the stone age …didn’t include printed lyrics. Did anyone notice I was fudging? Probably not. We played in noisy bars, most of the audience was drinking, and it was loud rock-n-roll.)

It's not perfect. There may never be a perfect replacement for natural hearing. Some musical artists remain more challenging for me to listen to than others. Bruce Springsteen’s E-Street wall of pure sound is still somewhat overwhelming. The same with ELO. But Springsteen’s bare-bones Nebraska, always my personal favorite by Bruce, is something I love even more.

Neatest of all, I hear things in the background I never even knew were there. Instruments I never noticed before on a track. Crosstalk in the background. Sometimes, even the clash of a pick against a guitar string.

Before this upgrade, my brain sometimes had trouble identifying songs on my iPhone that I’d listened to countless times before. If I knew the song was coming, there was no problem. But if I was shuffling songs on my phone and didn’t look at the screen to see what track was playing, it might take anywhere from ten to thirty seconds to recognize the song …even if I’d heard the song a thousand times before.

This issue has been virtually eliminated. I either know what the song is the moment it starts, or within a few seconds. It’s because, I believe, that the quality of sound is so much better that my brain recognizes the song immediately, or very nearly so. I haven’t had a chance to see what happens if I catch a song already underway. I suspect that I’ll recognize songs faster than I used to because the clarity is so superior to my previous processor technology. I also haven’t really listened to any music that wasn’t delivered by Bluetooth, so radio and live music are still untested, but they will certainly be superior to what I had before.

One problem I don’t any more have is an inability to listen to new music. That was an annoyance for the first few years after my implants were done in 2009/2010.  I’ve been blessed that I am one of the fortunate CI recipients who can experience and enjoy new music (or at least new to me). Carlene Carter and Jill Hennessey were artists I’d never heard before and all their music was previously unknown to me. (Carlene Carter was also the first performer I heard live after my implants. She opened for John Mellencamp in Hershey and I fell in love with her work. She’s a hard-working gal, too. She performed a magnificent solo set then hustled right out to the lobby to talk with fans and sell her CD’s. As to Jill …can someone ask her to perform here in Da Valley? I’ll buy her wings if she does 4 Small Hands and Edmonton. Oh, hell, if she does ANYTHING. I love her work.)

And it is a special treat when I get the opportunity to listen to Mark Williams, who has become one helluva songwriter. Perhaps it was all those practices we had in his family’s garage in West Pittston or in that hillside tilted shack just off Route 92 in Harding, but my brain seems almost pre-wired to anything he does. I am thankful for that.

Long and short, I went from being single-sided deaf with one barely functional processor on my left ear to being fully bilateral again with the latest and greatest technology. I still have at least one more visit to my audiologist to tweak the mapping for the right ear a bit. My brain must adjust to the right implant working again. (The right side used to be dominant, but now the left side is strongest after carrying the load alone for nearly a year.)

As I’ve said before, we live in an age of miracles. It remains to be seen if I can write music again or sing on key, but I think there is an open door there that was previously shut tight.

* * *

I am writing fiction again, though it is most definitely not like riding a bike. There’s been an erosion of skills, and that can be a tad overwhelming. I have lot of self-doubt and some trouble concentrating. I think the only solution is just to write every second that I can. Just keep at it, and perhaps I can get back on track.

I’m also doing “car chats” which are short little posts on Instagram. They are generally humorous. I get to let my hair down. What hair I have left, that is. I might do more with that because it’s a good pressure-release for me. I’m also fairly certain I’m entering my second childhood (assuming I ever left the first one) so I make no excuses for my behavior.

When I did a car chat on Sunday, my wife asked why I would post about the topic (erectile dysfunction commercials -OR- the great wussification of the American male, whatever you believe my point was). Hey, I’m a recurrent prostate cancer survivor. If want to spit in cancer’s eye, I’m qualified.

Here is the post. Think whatever you wish. If you don’t like what I said tell me. Don’t be a bunch of wusses.

You bunch of wusses! 

 * * *

JUST SAYING.

* * *

Finally, I’m pouring y'all a double shot.

First up, a song of great social and political import:

Next, a song of hope and inspiration. After all, if life’s been good for this guy maybe it can be good for all of us:

* * *

…and now a message of perhaps the greatest social and political import of all:

...Be good to each other.

* * *

Fringeville #208: A NEW FEATURE! ...AND A DOUBLE-DOUBLE SHOT-SHOT

Tonight is the debut of “Ask the Fringe” here at Fringeville. The advice is absolutely free, and hence very likely useless. But it was doing this or a feature on politics.

The first and mercifully only question this week is from Bert in Cumberland County, who doesn’t want his last name released so that customers of his bait shop, located across from the Taco Bell on SR9999 and next to Lou’s Quality Used Cars, are unaware of the embarrassing situation he finds himself in.

Confidentiality rules on Fringeville.

Dear sir:

I am in a romantic pickle with my wife. I’m writing you because my buddy Roy said the French know a lot about romance. He told me about this “Ask the French” column, so I packaged up a bunch of bait, closed up the shop, and sat down to email you my plea for help.

Bessie and I have our 50^th wedding anniversary coming up in two weeks. We started dating in high school, and we’ve never been separated from each other by more than a day (fishing, hunting, golfing trips and a dozen or so gambling cruises excepted.)

I was sitting down for a fine meal of her sloppy Joe’s (she kicks ‘em up with diced jalapenos, and that’s two days of the runs but lord they’re good) and I says to her, “Bess, the 50^th anniversary is coming up. What do you want?”

Now I figured, maybe a new dishwasher or washing machine with a nice dinner out at Perkins. Good turkey dinner there. Lots of mashed potatoes, and they’ll put the gravy on the side if you ask.

Well, she looks at me and she says, “You know what I want, Bert? After fifty years, I want you to find my clitoris.”

Well, son, I damned near fell off’n the chair. But I kept my calm and promised her I would.

After dinner, I flat-out panicked. I obviously lost the thing long ago, and after half a century the sumbitch, whatever it is, could be anywhere. We’ve also moved twice, so good luck if it’s in the old house on Maple because that got leveled for a parking lot. We had that cute apartment on Main street but it burned down when that blimp hit it. There’s a damned tattoo joint there now.

Well I looked everywhere. Her jewelry box. My tool box. All the drawers in the kitchen (found my good pair of vice grips). I went through every box in the attic and cellar. I even emptied out the medicine cabinet. Found an old bottle of Mercurochrome, Lavoris, but no clitoris.

Well, now I needed one and I don’t even know where to get them. I called her best friend, Babs, and asked if she could help me get one. She shrieked and hung up on me. That’s when I realized it must be some really personal woman thing.

The only place I could think of that might help me was the drugstore downtown. I walked up to the counter and told the fellow I wanted a clitoris.

He leaned in close and said, “So do I.”

He gets out his wallet, gives me a doctor’s card and says, “She’s the best. She’s giving me one.”

Well, I called this doctor after the Phillies game on Monday and she starts off right away by telling me I’d need surgery. She started to go into details, and I hung right up. This woman is a psychopath, and that fellow at the drugstore needs to be warned. I’m fixing to do that tomorrow after I stock the shelf with fishing line.

Well, anyway, and sorry for the rambling, but can you help me find one of these things?

I am desperate, and you’re my last hope.

--Bert

Dear Bert:

Two things.

First, this feature is “Ask the Fringe” not “Ask the French.”

Next, I’m not qualified. I’ve been told a number of times I can’t find the damned thing either.

Good luck.

Jimbo

(Editor’s notes. Future “Ask the Fringe” columns are cancelled, largely because the columnist is a nincompoop.)

* * *

I’m easing back into posting as the busiest part of my summer ends. To celebrate, I’m having a double-double-shot-shot.

No, it’s not a beverage that will knock me on my backside. It’s four videos from my favorite band, The Beatles.

I discovered them late in their career. I really didn’t pay a lot of attention to their early work until years later. My loss.

How good was the old stuff?

There’s a great scene in The Sopranos " episode "A Hit Is a Hit" where a band Christopher is pushing, "Visiting Day," is recording a demo. Their song sucks. The guy at the mixing board gives Christopher a free lesson on song structure using She Loves You as an example. (Someone on that writing team was a huge Beatles fan.)

Enjoy.

* * *

If I Fell

Mark Williams and I recorded a version of this back when I could still sing. It’s a truly lovely song, and it was a sign of the genius to come. You don’t hear it these days, but someone ought to take a shot at it.

* * *

I Feel Fine

A big deal was made at the time of the feedback that starts this one. It still has that early Beatles sound and structure, but they were clearly growing.

* * *

We Can Work It Out

 

This is a mid-career piece that really showed how far they’d come in a few short years.

* * *

Lastly, I’m going back to the big hit that started it all in Britain: Please Please Me.

At the time The Beatles biggest achievement was Love Me Do, which cracked the bottom third of the top twenty in the UK (and didn’t even have Ringo on the drums).

They were pitched “How Do You Do It” and told it would be a number one hit.

The boys weren’t impressed (John Lennon thought the song was ‘crap’ and would get them labeled as sellouts).

They promised to come back with something better.

 

That’s the definition of having balls, folks. (How Do You Do It would, in fact, hit number one… for Gerry and the Pacemakers.)

The Beatles did come back with something better: Please Please Me. The rest is history.

How powerful was this song?  The version here is from Paul McCartney’s 2006 tour. Watch the crowd. Some of these folks were babies (or not even born) when the song originally came out. And they smile. And sing along. Perhaps you’ll do the same.

* * *

...Be good to each other.

* * *

Fringeville #206: Father’s Day 2019

(Note: The first part of this post was copied from a Facebook post I wrote this morning. That is followed up by a link to a post I did back in 2014, which featured a piece I wrote about my father at least a decade earlier than that.  So, yes, I'm a bit lazy today. But it's Father's day and I am feeling my father's loss keenly today, despite the passage of more than a quarter century. Kindly forgive me, friends.)

Dad and my niece, Meghan. Megan is grown now, with a little girl of her own.

I don't have nearly enough pics of my dad.

I still dream about him. Our relationship was complicated. He was my hero the day he bought me a tape recorder for my 11th birthday, but he outdid himself on my 12th when he got me a ride on small airplane. It was just me and the pilot. I don't think Wally had the money for both of us to go. We lived in New Jersey, and the pilot at the small airfield flew us once around the Statue of Liberty. What I remember most, though, was looking out the window on takeoff and seeing him standing in the grass next to the runway. He was wearing his favorite bright red sweater, and he gradually became a small red dot in the distance below as we flew away. It was the best birthday present I ever got.

From that point on, like so many dads and teenagers, we were at war. We fought over haircuts, because I'd discovered The Beatles and wanted my hair longer. We fought over loud music, or whether I should be watching the Smothers Brothers at my age. We eventually moved to Pennsylvania after a short stint on the eastern shore of Maryland. Our low-intensity war continued for years. I was always on the margin between being a good kid and a bad one. There were skipped days of school, underage drinking citations and a year of my learner's permit in his wallet to successfully teach me a lesson.

Still, I wrote him off as incapable of understanding me. Yet after my fiance died some years later, he was the first to talk to me man to man about loss. In my 30's we grew closer again. I'd turned out OK. I think he had a hell of a lot to do with that.

I remember near the end of his life, he was in the emergency room. He was zonked from whatever they had running into him. He complained about the wall clock. It was running backwards, he said. Then he looked at me and calculated almost instantaneously the exact number of hours he'd been alive. "I guess that's enough," he said.

It wasn't.

He bounced back from that episode, but I knew we were losing him. He died at home. He'd been often incoherent over the last few days of his life, but I sat with him and we spoke a while just a few hours before he passed. He was lucid. Energetic. What we talked about I cannot recall because the only thought going through my head was I was losing him.

When the phone rang a few hours later, I knew before my wife answered.

I miss him. I'm almost as old as he was when he died, but I miss him now perhaps more than I ever have in my life. Like all of us, he was flawed. At times he could also be magnificent. Even when he was a tiny red dot far below as the plane I was in climbed and banked toward New York City, he was bigger than life. He is still a giant in my dreams.

He was my dad.

* * *

I will take the opportunity to share one other piece I wrote about my father back in 2004. He loved the water but didn’t have much luck with boats. He was never a threat to the legacy of maritime giants like Magellan. He did, perhaps, rival the captain of the Titanic for sheer bad luck.

Here’s a link to that post:

Dad and Boats

* * *

Be good to each other.

* * *

Fringeville #192: The Blue Team Wins One…and a Double Shot

...your Election Analysts hard at work...

The 2018 midterms are in the books. All in all, not the huge victory or disaster (depending on whether you are on the Blue or Red team) that was predicted a while back.  The Federal candidates for NEPA pretty much did as predicted. On the state level for NEPA, not a hell of a lot changed.

One thing that may likely be dead is property tax repeal. And you know what kids, we’re still going to see a sales tax increase because that door has been kicked open.

Way back in 2010 when I ran for State Representative, I remember all the GOP candidates being plopped into an auditorium. Someone asked about repealing property taxes. They were immediately shut down. “There’s all kinds of ways to go at this, but none of them have a chance until Republicans control Harrisburg."

Which Republicans went on to do.

And nothing happened. Looking back, that was a watershed moment for me. That's where the seeds of skepticism were planted within me.

As to my run at state office, I didn’t mind the ass-kicking I got in the race. I still look back at that as the most rewarding thing I ever did in politics. I knocked on a huge number of doors and met some amazing people. My favorite door-knocking memory was at the end of a brutally hot day when I walked up to an elderly gentleman on his porch. The sun was setting, and he asked his wife to bring me lemonade. He gave me one piece of advice I never got to use, but never forgot, either: “If you win, as soon as you know the combination to the safe, get the hell out of there.”

Last note on politics:  America needs gerrymandering reform. Badly. We are tribalized and on the road to Balkanization. We can do better than that.

* * *

I am 100% confident that Penn State will beat Rutgers. That's as far as I'll go on the rest of the season.

* * *

Double Shot!

First a little Beatles for you. I find this version of Revolution a bit curious. They include the ‘shoo-be-do-wah” background chant, and yet never show Billy Preston doing brilliant keyboard work. That would have been a bit of a revolution right there: showing the 5^th Beatle.

…and I’ll wrap up with some live Sheryl Crow. I love this song. And despite everything, I still believe…

* * *

...Be good to each other.

* * *

Fringeville #181: …Moon! Moon!

…when I was a very small child, my mother would come into my bedroom to check on me and the bed would often be empty. She would find me lying on the windowsill, pointing at the sky and saying, “…Moon! Moon!”

She would put me back to bed, but some mornings she would come to wake me and find me fast asleep on that windowsill. I don’t remember this, but I was told the story many times. I’ve no idea why I am thinking about it today, but I would love to meet that little boy again who marveled, as did his ancestors, at that great, comforting globe in the night sky.

***

…most mornings I wake up and read the usual slew of depressing news. Then there’s mornings like this when instead I see that an act of kindness and love makes global news.

We need more of this.

***

There have been many, many pieces of music which have moved me. But my love for music had to start somewhere, and there had to be something that moved me to start thinking about doing some music myself. I’ve been pondering this a while. There were two watershed moments.

The first came in the 3rd Grade, when we were taken to see The Sound of Music at a theater. I was stunned. It is still a favorite of mine. If it is on TV, I stop what I am doing and plop my butt in a chair to watch.

The day after we saw the movie, I marched into the music teacher's office and sang the song I've featured below from memory. It brought tears to her eyes. I can't remember her name, but I remember the look on her face.

 

...then, when I was in grade school in New Jersey, came the seismic event. I was in a van with my mother and Hey Jude started playing on the radio, WABC, New York. Up until then, I played whatever music was around the house, which wasn't much and certainly wasn't The Beatles.

My mother reached for the dial and I slapped her hand away, pleading to let me hear the rest.

Life ain't been the same since.

***

Be good to each other.

***