#1334: Monday, December 22 - Cocker

Post 1334, Day 356 of 2014
- 1,452 days since I started this blog -

Daily Comment

For better or worse, I don't listen to music like an audience member anymore. I get crazy analytical. It isn't anything I try to do, or anything that I turn on or off.

It is the rare performance that takes me out of that place. I am very, very grateful when that happens.

I'm thinking about this today because one of the first people who ever sparked this overly-analytical approach to music, Joe Cocker, died today.

To be clear, I really, really loved Joe Cocker, the vocalist.

Not so much the bands that were put behind him. The first album, full of British studio aces, was also full of over-the-top and, to me, tasteless arrangements. An attempt to put him squarely in a Ray Charles-if-he-did-rock'n'roll bag. But Brother Ray didn't do r'n'r - he did Ray Charles. He wrote the music, did the arrangements, hired and rehearsed the musicians himself. He controlled his music.

Joe Cocker wasn't a songwriter. He wasn't musically literate, did no arrangements. Maybe that's what led to the disconnect for me.

What happened to him, being handled, being told, "Just sing, we'll take care of everything else." may have been exactly what he wanted, but it resulted in the original 'Star Search'-like music settings. Only the quietest ballads (You Are So Beautiful) escaped.

The song selection and vocals (including backup singers) from the Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour/albums/movies were even more excessively wrong, as far as I was concerned. As great a keyboardist, producer and sideman as Leon Russell is, I disliked the band arrangements. So over-the-top. And, although everyone that ever played with Cocker was an A-list, virtuoso musician, for the most part, I didn't like the bass player's lines. I saw the Grease Band and Mad Dogs and Englishmen live, and felt totally isolated in the audience of uncritically cheering fans, screaming encouragement for every musical (and non-musical) excessive gesture (throughout the performance), obscuring the performance of Cocker himself.

This type of musical grand-standing is also the polar opposite of what I do when I make music, and what I try to do when I'm figuring out my bass lines in the songs I play.

Both of my bands do covers of songs covered by Joe Cocker, and in both bands, everybody but me prefers his version (the musical arrangement) over the original. I do my best to undermine that intent by playing a bass line as different as it can be from what Joe Cocker's bass players did.

RIP, Joe Cocker. To me, you were always the brightest light in the music you made.

Food and Diet Section

2014 Daily Weight

Today's Weight:                   208.0 lbs

Previous Weight (Friday, 12/19):  208.2 lbs

Day Net Loss/Gain:                - 0.2 lbs

Diet Comment

I ate well over the weekend, but ate for taste, not for health, then cut back on Sunday, and this is the result.

Food Log

Breakfast
A Quest bar.

Lunch
A cocoa-hemp-kale protein shake (almond-coconut milk, kefir, kale, large organic egg, whey powder (36g protein), hemp seeds, hemp protein (7g protein), celery, raw organic cacao powder, fermented coconut water, chia gel, moringa leaf powder, cinnamon and stevia-inulin blend.

Dinner
Pepperoni and aged provolone cheese with cole slaw and black beans.

Snack
Celery and home-made mayonnaise.

Intake   
Coffee:  44 oz.   Water: 64+ oz. 

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