u/BasilHuman

I am an old head....68 years. Saw my first show in Atlanta 77. I was perusing PlayDead last night and decided on 10/29/77. If I had heard this show before my brain cells had skipped town. This show is quite simply phenomenal. It hangs with any show from the infamous May 77 and if I were to go back and attend any show from 77 it would be this fucking gem. From start to finish the boys are dialed in and obviously having a blast. One can hear all in between song banter and this is the Dead as a Rock and Roll band and Jerry sounded like he was channeling 68/69. The opener of Might As Well is the best I have ever heard right into the best 77 Jack Straw I have ever heard. The Kid kills New Minglewood Blues. The second set is just mind blowing as well. Bertha kicks it off and the rest leaves me speechless. No drums which I loved....Eyes of the World right up there with the best I have heard. The Best ( I rarely say best regarding songs...so subjective)....but fuck that. The best post primal dead St. Stephens I have heard into a brilliant NFA into a Black Peter for the ages and then the best, yep I said it, Sugar Mag I have ever heard. Setlist from top to bottom is a monster. Those folks at Evans Field house in Dekalb were treated to one for the ages. How is this show not in the "Pantheon".of top 25 is beyond me. Rarely have I heard the boys so loose and Jerry, well what is there to say....it must heard and experienced.

I rarely see anyone post or talk of Ellroy's early works. I am 68 and picked up the Black Dahlia at a used book store in 1987 soon after it came out and never looked back. Of course this was his latest novel at the time so I poked around and found his early works....not an easy tasks. First two I found was Clandestine and Killer on the Road and eventually got lucky and found the Lloyd Hopkins Trilogy in one day! One can see in this trilogy what is to come. I enjoyed all his stand alone novels but Killer on the Road always stood out for me.

New readers often ask what to read first and no one ever mentions his early work. Personally, I would suggest My Dark Places as a introduction to Ellroy and then start with Brown's Requiem and work your way up. One can see this transition to his classic later works in action so to speak.

So just curious....it has been 35 plus years since I have read his early work and after taking a long break from life due to my love of dive bars, smokes and beer (living the life of Bukowski), I just got Perfidia...for the record, yes his L.A. Quartet is his masterpiece so to speak, but my favorite read is American Tabloid and My Dark Places is as good as any of his fiction.

I saw Tull 16 times between 1972 and 1999. Curious, has anyone seen the current tour? I have tickets to Belgrade, Serbia this Friday and am pondering at 68 whether I will go...in my gut it is Ian and some musicians...I have kind of felt this way since 1980. No Martin is a huge factor....

Her opinion is all that matters as far as I am concerned.

https://x.com/CoachEvans25/status/2077216643525075220?s=20

George Bernard Shaw once said (paraphrase): You read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man when you turn 18, You read Ulysses when you turn 50 and you start Finnegans Wake the day before you die. In my mid teens I began reading the "classics". I went through all of Poe, Hemingway, Dickens, Faulkner, Vonnegut, O' Connor, Dumas, etc. I later aquired a Masters in Russian Literature at Indiana, my thesis being Freewill and Necessity in Dostoevsky's Notes From Underground.

I have read the great majority of what I have seen mentioned here and also writers such as Bukowski, James Ellroy, Raymond Chandler, Tom Robbins, Tim Dorsey and others...a favorite being John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces. Also I have read "difficult" writers such as Thomas Pynchon (whom I love),

I am now 68 and in all my years I have come across one person who has read Finnegans Wake, and he a was Joycian scholar who devoted his life to that one novel.

Finally my question: Has anyone here actually read Finnegans Wake?

Caitlin's body language in the post game interview says it all. She is mentally and physically "out" and all the blame can be laid at the feet of Stephanie White. Her quote "The referees were not our problem tonight" says it all. Taking out your big 3 a few minutes into the game says it all. The off season aquisitons are...let's just say it....they are terrible. The FO refuses to look at foriegn players. I have defended White in the past but no more. Caitlin needs to speak up and let it be known she is Michael Jordan, she is LeBron James. Her agent needs to speak up.

The Fever was not my team until Caitlin came aboard. I, and many others, will follow her where she goes. The Fever need to understand this. She IS the Fever. All indications point to her leaving in 2027. She told AB basically you are here until 2029, but I am not on AB's podcast. I have never seen a generational player treated this way and I am 68 years old. Life long Lady Vols fan so I followed Candice Parker not any particular team. I will do the same with CC....she needs to speak out about the situation in Indiana. You life long Fever fans should boycott the games until White is fired.

Honestly the blow out did not really surprise me. It is obvious the situation there is imploding because of a lack of courage by owners and the front office. CC should be catered to in every way not shackled to a coach who refuses to understand her. I am dumbfounded by why White is still coach. CC needs to walk away if she is not fired.

This was written when I was 56....I am now 68 and still do not try......

I have lived the life of Bukowski yet lived to tell the tale. I dwelled in the wake of shadows drowned at sea, a nihilistic misanthrope and loved every fucking minute of it. In all honesty I am not always happy I lived to tell the tale. I am a low dive low bottom drunk who wallows in the sordid dark side of life. I hung at a place called Gryphons that was the seediest black hole in Knoxville and almost everyone there had at least BA's....crack was rampant but I was a good drunk and never touched the stuff... black tooth cranked women with nothing on but fishnets and skimpy bras giving 5 dollar blow jobs while you sit on a bar stool chain smoking Marlboros looking at yourself in the mirror behind the beer stained bar wallowing in madness and self pity...I fucking loved it. One winter witching hour I threw a bottle at that mirror looking for the heart of saturday night and cracked the hell out of it...nobody said a word. Leaving one morning the sun barely awake we found a body behind the bar nude battered blood seeping on gravel grey red...the guy had been stabbed to death...so we got a beer fired a smoke and talked about it. I wore my badge of membership proudly....this is my life...this is how I wanted to die...why I did not I haven't a fucking clue. I still walk the dark streets...broken wounded... and for the most part am indifferent to much that is around me. After all this time I still wear my badge proudly although I haven't had a drink in 7 years...after all these years I still feel as if I do not belong. I think I hear the bells ringing....  

I started drinking again soon after writing.