Aging

I guess one of the hard things about a blog is whether what you want to write about should be written about. Privacy issues abound. My parents are aging, and the ramifications are enormous for my brother Mark and me. My parents want to continue to live in their home, isolated in the middle of the woods on an island with only ferry boat access. Unless you have a stroke, even a small one, like my father suffered two weeks ago, and get airlifted off island by helicopter.

The question my brother and I wrestle with is how to keep my parents in their home, independent. I guess the answer is that we can't. We have to convince them to sacrifice bits and pieces of independence. For example, we want to get someone in at least fortnightly to clean the house for them. Dad does this himself now, and he does a great job, but it's just too much. He has to cut back.

Mom can't see, so Dad has to do all the cooking as well. This is not one of his strong suites. Still, he does admirably.

To compound things, my father-in-law is having his own health crisis here in Japan, and has had to be hospitalized. What we're going through as a family with him is at least as intense as what we're going through as a family with my father.

Of course, all of this seems like a harbinger of What is Yet to Come in our own lives. My parents are 83, I'm 55, only 28 more years to go! It is all too real.

But this is not about me, it's all about my parents and in-laws. What can we do to make their situations better?

the top three in a row

Sorry for my prolonged absence.

I just got through listening, again, to the Beatles' remastered stereo CDs of Rubber Soul, Revolver, and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, one right after the other (OK, a break in the afternoon when we went shopping), and I have to conclude they are the greatest three albums in a row ever produced. Part of it is the progression, the transition from 'early Beatles' to 'psychedelic Beatles'. Another is how they changed our perception of pop/rock music over the course of the three albums. Each album seemed to grow exponentially, and in the end Sgt. Pepper's mass critical acceptance, which was really a mass critical acceptance of rock 'n' roll music as a valid art form.

Of course, this got me thinking about other great threesomes. I came up with the following: first, and the closest I could come up with as a decent challenge, is Bob Dylan's Bringing it All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde. Dylan is probably my all-time favorite artist - certainly I own more Dylan CDs than any other artist - but so many people just can't get past his voice! Also, Dylan was more an album artist as opposed to a singles artist. There is absolutely no doubt he influenced other artists, including The Beatles (Lennon's You've Got to Hide Your Love Away is one prime example), and he influenced me, but he didn't influence Kaoru ("I like Dylan songs much better when someone else sings them."), and though his shift from folk to rock was vitally important, we all know the general public loved The Beatles and only tolerated Uncle Bob.

Second, The Rolling Stones' Beggars Banquet (playing now), Let it Bleed (playing next), and Sticky Fingers (you get the pattern). Actually an extremely strong case could be made to include Exile on Main Street and say they're the best four albums in a row. Great albums all, but not transcendent; they're all Stones' albums, and while they are great, they don't challenge or change the Stones' music very much. These capture the Stones at their peak, though.

Third, and still in the sixties, would be Jimi Hendrix's Are You Experienced, Axis: Bold as Love, and Electric Ladyland (and then he died). Here we see an artist's potential transition. Later, on posthumous albums like Blues, we sense that this transition was actually moving towards a more traditional genre (and I don't mean to insinuate that's a bad thing).

Finally, and now we're in the seventies, would be Bruce Springsteen's The Wild, the Innocent and the E-Street Shuffle, Born to Run, and Darkness o n the Edge of Town. Again, this is an artist's transition (and one that I continue to embrace). Springsteen synthesized so many genres and styles, thus reaffirming, but not redefining, rock and roll in a glorious way. Coming of age in the '70s, Springsteen was my god, and he herked and jerked the music world out of disco and into topical rock and roll. New Jersey was alive and well.

I'm sure many will feel I've short-shrifted many important artists, from Madonna to U2 to Beck to Pink.  Disco (The Bee Gees), punk (The Clash), new wave (Elvis Costello), hip hop (Vanilla Ice...just joking!).  And I haven't even mentioned Country, Jazz, New Age, or whatever. But I honestly believe what The Beatles did over those three albums was never done before or since. That said, I'm always willing to hear dissenting opinions, and would love to hear about your choice of an artist's three consecutive albums.