ghost of miles

AL West has become a dogfight alright, and there are six teams overall in the AL at 70+ wins. Yankees are 32 games over .500, second-best record in the majors and on track to win 102 games, and yet at both teams’ current rate they’ll end up 12 games behind Boston, on pace to win 114. Most NY fans online seem to prefer Oakland over Houston as a potential WC opponent because they’re wary of facing Verlander in a one-off, but given the way the A’s have come on (and they played both NY and Boston tough early in the season), I think any WC game is going to be a nailbiter. Seattle’s obviously still within striking distance as well, and if NY collapses, you could have an all-AL West WC game. Shades of the NL Central 2015, right?! (Though that really was ridiculous—the teams with the second and third best records in the MLB relegated to a sudden-death playoff game.) Good Lord—now it looks like Didi Gregorius is headed to the DL. If so, three NY starters will be currently out of commission, though Sanchez is now on rehab. No idea yet of when Judge will return. And Stanton’s been DHing because of hamstring tightness, which has led to the unpleasant spectre of Neil Walker occasionally playing rightfield. (Clint Frazier still trying to come back from a recurrence of concussion issues.) Yet more fodder for why NY is by no means a lock for a WC spot.

Surely SS meant that the Red Sox would sweep?! 😜 Has anybody swept the Sox this year, even in a shorter three or two game series? In any event, given Boston’s blistering pace of play over the past few weeks (and throughout 2018 in general), even the biggest booster of his/her favorite team would be stepping into the Big Foolhardy with that kind of prediction.

There was an Apple rep at the JazzSummit last week, and he didn’t repudiate it when the organizers made their statement. It came up in part because smaller independent labels are evidently worried about their viability once it comes to pass. I mentioned it to a jazz prof here at IU a couple of days ago, and he already knew about it. (He’s dismayed as well because iTunes is generally considered by jazz musicians to be better in terms of artist compensation than Spotify, which gets little to no love from the artists I know.) Evidently Apple really wants to push people towards their streaming service.

So will Apple/iTunes’ move to stop selling downloads next year make Amazon the default download place to go? What other major online music distributors sell downloads? (I’m unacquainted with the market for downloads, CD dinosaur that I am—have used iTunes only for the initial Savory volumes and Amazon occasionally for tracks that I needed for radio shows.)

Given the Yankees’ struggles of late, there’s still great pleasure to be taken from a Giancarlo Stanton moonshot: https://www.mlb.com/video/c-2396342783 Paul O'Neill's always a lively, entertaining, and insightful announcer to listen to as well (I really enjoy hearing him with David Cone and Michael Kay... Ken Singleton's fantastic too for the road games, glad to hear he's coming back for another year).

New NY Times interview with Musk.

Jim, they eliminate the need to even give a s*%^.

I'm with Dan on this one. I don't really follow the Braves or Marlins, so when the buzz about this incident began last night online, I assumed it had to have been retaliation for the Braves throwing at or hitting a Marlins batter... but beaning a guy because he's been hitting homers off you? "Lame. Stupid. Pathetic" sums it up quite nicely.

You gotta get the new Alexa brain-chip, man! Everything you'd ever want at your command, streamed directly into your noggin... just tell Alexa to cue it up and pay your bills while you're at it. Of course your mental autonomy will be placed directly at risk, but that's oh-so-20th-century, what they might call a "legacy" concern.

This is an older story (from April of this year), but the organizers of JazzWeek Summit confirmed it at the conference in San Jose last week: Apple eliminating iTunes music downloads in 2019 From the article: Additionally, the sources stressed that music downloads will always work on all Apple devices and the iTunes platform, across all versions. That includes music purchased on iTunes, or uploaded from any other source. So you’ll always be able to play MP3s, iTunes-purchased AACs, and even older, DRM-protected iTunes songs (many years ago, song downloads were ‘DRM protected,’ creating limitations on file-sharing and other uses). Other variations, including ‘iTunes Plus’ downloads and video downloads, will always be playable. You’ll also be able to manage your music download collection on iTunes without issue. Apple will only be ending its paid download offering.

Well, geez, just don't pre-order it then, right?! I mean, if this set doesn't come to pass, I'm not going to be sitting around thinking, "Damn, if just a few more of the Big O guys had put in an order, it coulda been a contendah..." I'll make do with the fifty million other things I have to listen to. Would it have been preferable if they had announced this first, instead of the standard Mosaic roll-out that was followed only a couple of days later by this qualifying email? I can understand a sense of grievance about that, perhaps, but not so much that they're looking to gauge bottom-line interest in new sets before moving forward with them. I'm surprised they didn't start doing this sooner, actually. But maybe I'm an easy mark; I paid a year in advance for the Smithsonian's forthcoming hiphop anthology when they put it up on Kickstarter last year (and I gotta believe the Smithsonian has more resources than Mosaic, which, whatever its lingering ties to EMI or any other corporate entity, is pretty much a mom-and-pop biz run by three people these days). I have no problem with Mosaic doing this if it's necessary to sustain the production of new sets. (Just noticed btw that I paid only $100 to get the Smithsonian box, and it's listing for $159 by street date, $139 pre-order... so I actually saved some money as well through contributing to the Kickstarter campaign. I passed on any of the various bells and whistles they offered for higher pledge levels; just give me the box set, dammit. But glad that they did it that way if that's what it took to make the set possible.)

Yeah, it strikes me as more of a quasi-Kickstarter approach--understandable, given the way things have gone for the past few years. I'll definitely call in a pre-order today.

Just got this email from Mosaic: New Woody Herman Release? We are currently determining whether to a release a new Mosaic set THE COMPLETE WOODY HERMAN DECCA, MARS AND MGM SESSIONS (1943-1954), which will include 131 tracks on 7 CDs With the slowing of sales of CDs, we need to be assured that there is enough demand for this set before incurring the costs and commitment to issue this body of work. The Mosaic business model is becoming harder and harder to sustain and therefore we'll need a strong response for preorders before we are able to proceed. If you place an advance order for this set, your credit card will not be charged until we create and press the set and ship it to you (however PayPal is immediately deducted from your funds). We strongly suggest that you not combine this advance order with any existing sets. We expect to make a decision by the end of August and the set would be available at the end of 2018. We regret any pressure or inconvenience this may cause you in your purchasing decisions, but this is the only way that we can safely proceed. Thank you for your support and understanding, Michael & Scott

Right, the "Lexit" camp. What a cluste*$%# that vote's turned out to be, eh? Hopefully there'll be a second referendum, though a UK friend of mine thinks it's more likely we'll see a two-year extension of negotiations that results in a very soft final Brexit deal.