Change Your Thing
I have been listening to older music over the last few days. I have been trying to listening to music I rarely put on my ITunes list. I have to admit some good music is not in my regular listening pattern. Looking back on my last six months of music listening, I have found how predictable my listening pattern is. I have songs in my ITunes list I have never listened too while some have been listened too as much as 100 times. It is not something I am very proud of saying, but I am working on correcting the short coming.
There is something else I have noticed. That is the number of times an artist in my catalog of about 1,500 songs totally switches format, genre or lyrical composition. Sometimes this switch works and other times it falls face down and is a total failure. Here are a few examples of success.
Alice Cooper, known mostly for his glam monster stage productions suddenly dressed up like a gangster and appeared on the tonight show with Johnny Carson in 1976. He played a song titled ‘You and Me Baby’, a slow rock ballad in which a man sings of his enduring love for a woman. He says this is part of the trio of songs written to express his musical depth. An answer if you will to critics who often complained that he showed little substance in his writing and singing. Cooper said of the song "I kept reading so many interviews and articles that I said I was never considered musical” (Antonelli et al., 2015).
Here is another one; The Doobie Brothers had a string of monster hits in the early 1970’s yet in 1976 one of the lead writing and singing contributors for the band grew ill and was unable to continue. Needing an album they hired a new lead singer to replace the very ill Tom Johnston, with Michael McDonald and a whole new style and type of lyric was released (Wikipedia, 2015a).
Over the course of the bands existence no less than 5 permanent band members had died and the music had undergone many transformations even as they continue to play to mostly sold out venues on summer tours. In 2014 the band released its 15th album this time turning toward a mostly American County Music style (Wikipedia, 2015a). Once again this 15th album is selling very well, even as the group continues to play most of the classic hits from its repertoire, albeit with new voices, and musicians.
Then o
ne final example, the Eagles, commonly referred to as a super group, this band started out largely as an American Country / Rock act. In that Country /Rock format the group had between 5 and 9 hit songs, (depending on how one defines hits). Yet in 1978 the members changed their style completely and they became a more hard edge band. They began by releasing a concept album ‘Hotel California’ which wrapped all the album music around a central theme instead of a strictly making singles and placing them on an album (Wikipedia, 2015b). This transformation was even marked by a record titled the Eagles Greatest hits Volume 1, which I have, and play often. Today there is also Eagles Greatest hits Volume 2 which covers the bands’ switch to more concept related albums and a less up-tempo style.
The bands do not need press from me or anyone else. They are big enough I am not helping or hurting them in the least. Each did just fine when they changed styles. And while these bands did just fine, it must have been difficult to switch formats. I am also prone to having serious ruts. I do something and it works, maybe it only works sort of well, but yes it works and that positive feedback I get stuck. Nowhere is this more evident than in my stubbornness surrounding Diabetes. I mean I get in some serious ruts.
Recently pump sites on my abdomen were failing. I mean sure I could put insulin in but because of the scar tissue and the issues from two years ago regarding the infected sites, my abdomen was not working as it should. I hung on doing this for way too long. I knew last year that the abdomen sites where failing too frequently and insulin consumption was almost 15% greater in my abdomen than legs which are my other go too location. Yet I hung on and over time these sites degraded more.
I have switched the location to my back and wow what a difference. I get almost instant insulin response when I put a site in and the total insulin put in is much less than any of my other go too sites. This change made a big change for me and I am glad I switched even if making that switch was not an easy thing to do. So are there other things I might do to improve my diabetes management? Am I too stuck in my ways to make positive changes? I hope not, but I am.
My goal this year, be stubborn about making a change, but also be open to other ideas that might work better. My back is a constant reminder of a change that worked well. I hope to add more change as the year goes on.
References
Antonelli, L., Catlin, R., Prato, G., Baron, A., Morelli, T., Grant, J., . . . Wiser, C. (2015). You and Me by Alice Cooper. Retrieved January 13, 2015, from http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=2859
Wikipedia. (2015a). The Doobie Brothers. Retrieved January 14, 2015, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Doobie_Brothers
Wikipedia. (2015b). The Eagles. Retrieved January 14, 2015, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eagles_%28band%29
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*Note Wikipedia is not considered a reliable source. However the facts used in this article support the authors’ general knowledge of events.
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