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Dave Garrett
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There was some speculation that the Astros were interested in Paxton. I would've been happy if they'd managed to reach a deal for him, not least because he's been like kryptonite to our lineup, but I assume Seattle was somewhat less than interested in seeing him go to a division rival.
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Haven't seen this mentioned yet, but earlier this month "Live in Boston 1968" was released on iTunes in the UK. It was only available for about 24 hours before it was removed, and speculation is that the hit-and-run release was only intended to maintain copyright, similar to the various "copyright collection" releases in Europe from Dylan.
Of course, now that it was out there, someone put it up on YouTube, which was also taken down in short order. Having heard it, it's absolutely worth seeking out if you like Van.
The text from the now-deleted YouTube post has more details on the recording:
QuoteHere's something very new, very great, and very unexpected. In November 1968, Van Morrison released the album "Astral Weeks," which is so acclaimed that on an average of greatest albums of all time lists, it ranks number 15. He spent most of 1968 living in Boston and developing the unique sound that would result in that album. There never have been any publicly available audio recording of his time in Boston that year... until now!
A few days ago (early November 2018), Morrison's record company released the album "Live in Boston 1968" that has long been the unattainable holy grail for Morrison fans. Unfortunately, they only released it on iTunes in Britain for about 24 hours, and it's already gone! This apparently was done to maintain legal rights to the recording, given that there is a European copyright law that says the rights are lost after 50 years unless the recording is made available for sale to the public somewhere in Europe, if only briefly. Since this recording dates from 1968, the deadline would be the end of 2018. This appears to have been an attempt to make the recording public but in the most low key, unnoticed method possible. Here's an article about it:
https://www.spin.com/2018/11/van-morrison-catacombs-1968-legendary-recording/
Here's another very interesting article from March 2018 on what Morrison was doing in Boston in 1968, and how this concert was recorded:
http://www.wbur.org/artery/2018/03/06/ryan-walsh-van-morrison-astral-weeks
It turns out that the show was recorded by none other than Peter Wolf, who was a Boston D.J. at the time, but would become the long time lead singer of the J. Geils Band. He used a reel-to-reel machine set up on the stage, at a small Boston club called The Catacombs in August 1968. So while it is an audience recording, to my ears it sounds as good as many soundboard recordings, especially considering the concert recording standards of 1968. If you're a fan of Morrison's music, you need to hear this!
It contains three songs that would appear on "Astral Weeks" later that year: "Beside You, "Madame George," and "Cyprus Avenue." Also, there's a version of a legendary still unreleased "Astral Weeks" outtake previously known as "Train," but which appears here under the title "Train, Train." He also does a Them song ("One Two Brown Eyes"), another unreleased song ("He Ain't Give You None"), a song that would appear on a 1970 album ("Virgo Clowns"), and his great 1967 songs "T. B. Sheets" and "Brown Eyed Girl." The band consists of just Morrison on acoustic guitar plus a double bass and a flute, so the whole recording has an "Astral Weeks" vibe, even including "Brown Eyed Girl."
Unfortunately, the recording ends at the end of the last song, "Madame George," as one can hear the sound of the tape running out. So it's too bad we don't have the rest of the show. But still, it's a miracle that at least this much of Morrison live in 1968 was recorded at all, and with such quality sound.
This album needs to be heard by lots of people. If and when it's ever for legal sale in the U.S, I'll take this down. But it's quite likely that it's going to stay in the vaults after this one brief appearance in Britain, done for legal purposes only.
For the cover, I used a handbill of the Morrison shows at The Catacombs where this was recorded. (For a very short time in 1968, his band was going by the name the "Van Morrison Controversy.") I resized the top left drawing of a female head so the best of the rectangular handbill could fit on a square album cover. I also replaced some text relating to other shows at the club on the upper right with the title of the album.
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On 11/13/2018 at 10:38 AM, JSngry said:
Always a treat to hear from Dana Delaney! And to have a The President's Analyst reference dropped!
I posted that in another forum, and after a bit of discussion, someone finally responded "You guys are burying the lede! The important takeaway here is that Dana Delany's a fan of THE PRESIDENT'S ANALYST!"
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Not to advocate for the wholesale bypassing of paywalls, but http://archive.is/ is your friend if you don't want to screw around with resetting cookies or incognito mode. Drop the paywalled URL in, hit Save, and wait a bit for the article to appear after the archive genies do their thing. It doesn't work 100% of the time, and when it does, formatting may be a bit off and some graphics may be missing, but those are minor quibbles for what is generally a useful tool. And yes, it does work for the Boston Globe.
There are also some Chrome extensions to neutralize paywalls, but those generally require sideloading as they tend to get yanked from the Chrome App Store.
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Something you don't see very often: a short clip in color of the Polo Grounds in 1963.
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6 hours ago, Rooster_Ties said:
Well, physical copies certainly won't disappear. But I don't trust that everything that's currently available to be reliably available forever. 80% or more, yes, probably all safe (so maybe my 20-30% is a bit high -- maybe it's more like 10-15%).
In any case, it's not some NON-trivial small number of recordings (like 2%). As Jim eluded to before, companies come and go all the time, and so do agreements. Not, not most of them (I realize), but who's to say that something semi-obscure won't be in the next batch of stuff that doesn't seem to be "accessible" any more, for whatever reason.
I agree, the great majority of "popular" jazz recordings will probably be accessible via streaming for decades to come. But how much stuff that has only ever come out on CD once (or maybe twice), might either never be available -- or maybe be available for a time, but then in some huge acquisition, be easily excised because the costs don't outweigh the benefits.
For instance: How many movies and TV series have been on Netflix for quite a number of years, only to disappear. I'm not on Netflix, mind you, but I've read about that numerous times (meaning a couple times every year, for several years now). It's not boatloads of material, but it's not a non-trivial tiny amount either. It used to be a really good, art-house-oriented video-rental store would have TONS of films that I understand only a fraction of which can be streamed today. Maybe 75% of all of Hitchcock's sound-era films can be streamed today (I don't know), but it was just 28-ish years ago that I remember going around to every video-rental place in the small town where I went to college (population 30,000), and collectively in that tiny town, I personally binge-watched 80% of Hitchcock's sound-era films, JUST FROM WHAT WAS IN THE 5 VIDEO-RENTAL STORES IN THAT TOWN OF 30,000. In a much larger city (back then), I could have probably rented 90% of them, I'm betting -- which is probably WAY more than you can stream on-line now.
The music holdings owned and license by huge conglomerates stand the best chance of "survival" -- but that still leaves a ton of lesser-known stuff, that's more likely to get the axe at some point or some of it, at least). How about Charles Tolliver's or Billy Harper's great 70's recordings? Most of Woody Shaw's studio dates are probably safe (most were on major labels), but how about all the live stuff? - and there's TONS of *live* Woody Shaw, close to a dozen CD's (give or take, hell it might be 14-15, I've lost count), just off the top of my head -- but most of THAT hasn't been on majors.
Spot on. It's not any technical limitation that will cause streamable/cloud-based music and movies to suddenly disappear, it's the whims of fewer and fewer huge multinational corporations who suddenly decide that something isn't profitable enough to bother with anymore.
Consider: when AT&T acquired Time Warner, there were plenty of indications that this would not be a good thing for TW. The attached screenshot is but one data point of many similar ones. In short order, the new sheriff put in charge of the newly-reorganized WarnerMedia has pulled the plug on the highly-regarded video streaming service FilmStruck, which was home to not only Warner's huge library of classic movies but also the Criterion Collection. Oh, they say they will be rolling out a "new, improved" streaming service in the near future, but given the well-documented arrogance of AT&T, no one will be surprised if the more obscure and less-popular stuff has been pruned, because who really needs niche product that's only marginally profitable, anyway? Meanwhile the Criterion folks are left high and dry and trying to figure out next steps to rehome their streaming catalog elsewhere.
All of which is not to say that one should completely forswear the cloud (or technology in general for that matter). But use it with clear eyes and no illusions. Anyone who advocates completely discarding physical copies under one's own control in favor of digital files on a remote hard drive owned by someone else is going to eventually wind up very, very upset. Such an argument reminds me of people who use "it's all on the internet now" as a straight-faced rationale for decimating library holdings. No, it's not, and even though it may well be in the future, your access can still be instantly revoked as the result of a business decision, and if you don't have your own set of backups, there's not a damn thing you can do about it.
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On 11/5/2018 at 3:59 PM, Brad said:
He’s got a piece in today’s New Yorker but it’s not about baseball but about voting. He’s 98 and legally blind so that may be why he doesn’t write baseball articles anymore.
Yeah, I saw that yesterday, and the revelation of his blindness confirmed my earlier suspicions. Although I subsequently saw an exchange of comments with someone saying much the same thing, to which a blind person responded that he didn't think impaired vision should be an impediment to writing about baseball, as baseball lent itself more than any other sport to listening to games on the radio.
While true, I think that's sort of missing the point. Angell has certainly earned a well-deserved retirement, and I'll be glad to read the occasional piece from him for as long as he continues to write them.
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On 11/5/2018 at 0:36 PM, Chuck Nessa said:
I spoke with her while working on Eager's "In the Land of Oo-Bla=Dee". I mentioned I remembered a piece she wrote about shopping for Ferraris with Miles Davis. She told me it was in a collection of her work and sent me an inscribed copy.
That is a great book for anyone with even a passing interest in automobiles or auto racing. She was a fine writer who had seen a lot and done a lot. I've been a subscriber to AutoWeek for over 30 years, and her columns there were always a must-read, but I was still glad to have many of them collected in one place when the book was published.
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I saw him when he was touring with Crisol to promote Habana. The show almost didn't happen as several people in the local expat Cuban community got pissed off and pressured the promoters to back out, as detailed here:
https://www.houstonpress.com/news/the-insider-6570802
I don't recall how it ultimately got resolved, but the show did indeed go on eventually, and was sublime and magnificent.
RIP
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8 hours ago, mjzee said:
BBC - Culture - The 100 greatest foreign-language films.
Discuss.
I can't find much to criticize about that list. I've certainly seen far worse "100 best" lists over the years. Plenty of unimpeachable classics represented, but there's some newer stuff as well. It remains to be seen how those will hold up with the passage of time and increased historical perspective, but from where I sit, there don't seem to be any obvious howlers.
Edit: OK, one nitpick - no Melville?
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9 hours ago, Dan Gould said:
As far as well-positioned I am not entirely sure just because of the starters. Sale may only be here two more years and hasn't really proven himself across an entire season and post-season, Price isn't quite all that and a bag of chips, you never know about Porcello and Eovaldi probably signs elsewhere now. The core of the team is so young though, and JD is signed for a while and I can't imagine him opting out anytime soon.
I have seen at least one article speculating that the Astros may try to sign Eovaldi, although that may well have been wishful thinking.
It sure would be nice, though, as we are facing the potential loss of 3/5 of our starting rotation. Keuchel and Morton are free agents, and Keuchel will almost certainly opt to cash in on a big payday elsewhere. He has earned it, as he was one of the few bright spots in the rebuilding years of 100-loss seasons. Morton is a bit more likely to return, as he's said he would like to retire as an Astro and will probably only pitch for 1-2 more seasons anyway, but he might have to take less money to remain. And after McCullers' uneven performance during the postseason, he implied that the arm issues that sidelined him toward the end of the year were more serious than had previously been disclosed and might require surgery in the offseason. Rumor has it that it's TJ surgery that's being discussed, in which case he'd be out for the entire upcoming season.
It could be worse, though, as we still have Verlander and Cole, as well as a couple of guys (McHugh and Peacock) who pitched out of the bullpen this year but were formerly starters. But Verlander and Cole will likewise both be free agents after next year. I can't help but shake the feeling that this year was the Astros' best chance at another title. Unfortunately, it also happened to be the year they ran into a historically great Boston team.
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6 hours ago, Brad said:
From the New Yorker:
The Red Sox Win the World Series Again, Putting Old Narratives Finally to Bed
It's strange to see another name besides that of Angell on the byline of their annual Series wrapup. I guess this is a tacit acknowledgement that he's no longer able to manage even the shorter pieces he's done in recent years.
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3 hours ago, Dave James said:
Would someone please explain what Dave Roberts was thinking when he pulled Rich Hill? Just to clarify, that's the same Rich Hill who had just thrown 6+ innings of one hit ball with seven strikeouts when he got the hook.
Apparently Roberts said he was just going out to the mound to talk to Hill and didn't intend to pull him, but Hill assumed he was getting pulled and handed Roberts the ball before he could say anything, so Roberts went to the pen.
If that's true, well...
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32 minutes ago, Matthew said:
What is amazing, and so common no one says anything, but every pitcher was 95+ mph, back-in-the-day, that was very rare.
Last time I looked at this list, it was pretty much Chapman all the way with a handful of other names interspersed throughout. Things have changed rather quickly.
http://m.mlb.com/statcast/leaderboard#pitch-velo
Eovaldi has been tremendous, but with the velocities he is consistently hitting combined with his medical history, I have to wonder about his durability. Even so, he has certainly improved his standing in the free agent marketplace with his performance this postseason.
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On 10/19/2018 at 8:04 PM, Brad said:
Pretty soon both teams will have been in California longer than in NY. Both teams were established in 1883 so they played 75 years in NY and have played 61 years so far in California. The people who remember them playing in NY is dwindling. Although my Mother was a Giants fan and my Father a Dodger fan and I was born in 1950, because we lived overseas in the 50s I never saw them play in NY, except against the Mets in the 60s.
As luck would have it, I ran across a related anecdote over the weekend. Any doubts I may have previously harbored regarding how seriously these things were regarded in New York back in the day have been laid to rest.
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8 hours ago, JSngry said:
and by the time it's over, you'll have a million dollars!
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The region-free hack for Blu-ray players is a hardware hack which is usually easily reversible (typically a dongle that plugs into the main circuit board inside the player). Unlike DVD players, Blu-ray players can't be region-unlocked with just a firmware upgrade, which is why a hardware dongle of some sort is required. I'd assume the sellers of region-free players are the ones installing the mods. I've never bought a player from 220 Electronics, but they are pretty well-known and reputable among those with multiregion needs.
I've had my eye on that Woodfall box set for some time. The BFI's releases are usually excellent and feature-packed.
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8 hours ago, Brad said:
Okay, historic, I agree. Historic as in being two of the teams in the American League and National League as they existed in 1900. Even though they are now the LA Dodgers, they’re still the Dodgers. You’d be surprised at how many fans they still have in NY.
It's often overlooked that Dodger Stadium is the third-oldest MLB stadium after Fenway and Wrigley, so it's at least approaching "historic" as a legitimate designation (granted, there's a significant gap between the latter two and Dodger Stadium in terms of age). Baseball's probably the only sport in which the 60 years that have elapsed since the Dodgers and Giants relocated to the West Coast is still considered to be recent history by more than a few people.
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10 hours ago, Aggie87 said:
Just read Betts' description of the play. He said he jumped and "went over". That means the contact was not over the field to me but in the stands, and it should have been ruled a 2 run HR. In a game the Astros lost by 2 runs.
I get that the Astros pitching isn't producing like it has been. I get that perhaps their best player is hobbled with a knee injury and has to play DH.
It's tough enough to overcome that against a quality team like Boston, but to have to fight against questionable calls too is difficult.
Regardless, Betts and Bradley have impressed me. They are carrying the Sox in this series.
I agree with all of that, as well as the sentiment expressed earlier that you have to be both talented and lucky. Unfortunately, the Astros have not had much luck in this series, and have suffered from way too many uncharacteristic mistakes and failures to execute. Correa, who has otherwise been tremendous on defense, doesn't touch the bag last night while trying to turn the double play, so instead of the inning being over, the runner is safe and eventually scores. More wild pitches and passed balls than I care to remember, and too many runners left on base when scoring opportunities have arisen.
The starting pitching hasn't been what it should've been with the exception of Verlander - Morton hadn't pitched in a game in something like 16 days, and the rust was apparent. And the bullpen, which everyone expected to be our ace in the hole, has looked quite mortal. McCullers walking in a run last night was a low point, and Maldonado clearly hasn't spent a sufficient amount of time catching McCullers to be comfortable handling his signature breaking ball. If I'm Hinch, I don't pull Pressly last night and bring in McCullers in a high-leverage situation to get the last out of the inning, especially since most of the damage Boston inflicted came with two outs.
Given everything that happened, I guess it's a bright spot that we still managed to get into a position to win the game in the bottom of the ninth. Hard to fault the hitting that kept pulling us back into the game, after the bats had been largely silent the previous two games. But this time the Red Sox had both the skill and the luck that we seemed to be short of, and Benintendi makes that tremendous game-saving catch to decisively swing the pendulum toward Boston. 1-3 is a lot different than 2-2, and although it's not an impossible hill to climb, if the Astros don't rediscover their mojo quickly, I don't see this series going past game 6.
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13 hours ago, Dan Gould said:
and I will say this - two dome stadiums in the Series would suck, if its Astros vs Brewers. Pitchers licking their fingers and trying to execute pitches in the cold is what it's all about. Short-sleeves - don't think so.
Minute Maid Park has a retractable roof. But they're apparently going to keep the roof closed for all three of this week's games in Houston, which from the baseball purist POV doesn't sit well, especially since we're finally getting the first taste of fall in Houston this week with temps in the 50s and 60s.
I don't have as much confidence in Keuchel as I do in the other starters (although to be fair his record this year is more a reflection of how uneven he was early in the season, and he has been mostly solid since then), but I certainly didn't expect Osuna to be the real weak link tonight. He's occasionally gotten into trouble since becoming the designated closer but has always managed to pitch out of it until tonight, and had likewise never given up a grand slam previously. Combine that with Cole's worst outing of the season in game 2, and we're setting the wrong kind of benchmarks at a very inopportune time.
On to game 4 tomorrow, and hopefully a better performance by the home team.
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20 hours ago, Kevin Bresnahan said:
Back in the days of CD-Rs, I only used a special felt marker made for writing on CD-Rs because there was talk that Sharpies could eat through the lacquer. I still have a couple of them around here somewhere. I used to buy them from American Digital.
IIRC the ink in Sharpies has a high alcohol content, which doesn't mix well with CD-Rs. Sakura Identi-pens are recommended by many folks for use on CD-Rs - I've used them for years without any problems, and they're readily available.
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On one of the Astros forums there were people practically screaming for Hinch's head for not pulling Verlander as soon as he started issuing walks in the 5th inning. That got louder when he loaded up the bases and walked in a run, and when he was sent back out in the 6th, one guy almost had a stroke. I figured there was no way Verlander would repeat the woes of the previous inning, and sure enough, nine pitches later the side was retired.
The big difference between this year and last year is clearly the Astros' bullpen - last year it was more often than not ass-clenching time when the pen was called on, and no lead was safe. This year, it's a night-and-day difference with the additions of Pressly and Osuna, and with McCullers moved from starting to relief duty after a stint on the DL, you've got a lights-out pen that many teams would kill for. The only question mark is whether Rondon, who was left off the division series roster but added back for the ALCS, has fully regained the form he displayed earlier in the season when he was the unchallenged closer, before a string of putrid outings near the end of the season spiked his ERA by over a full point.
Is streaming technology saving the music industry?
in Audio Talk
Posted
Food for thought (particularly the bit about streaming being essentially a surveillance-based ad delivery system, something that is often glossed over):
The Last Format