HutchFan

Dan, I agree with you 100%. It's indefensible, a complete sham. I follow the Georgia Bulldogs. We didn't win, and we were rightfully excluded. I just say this to let you know that not all people who follow SEC football are "SEC homers." It's RIDICULOUS that FSU was excluded. They should have been the three seed, and Texas should have been the four seed. Records have to matter. Otherwise, why play the game? Your right. It ends up being a "beauty contest." And they can base it on anything they wish. It's absurd.

Akira Miyazawa - Bull Trout (Victor JP, 1969) Tenor Saxophone, Percussion – Akira Miyazawa Piano, Percussion – Masahiko Satoh Bass – Yasuo Arakawa Drums, Percussion – Masahiko Togashi Percussion – Yohnosuke Segami

Last night: This morning:

Yep. It's special.

Now streaming: Imada Masaru Quartet - Now!! (TBM)

A disc that goes to my desert island.

Next up: Jerry Gonzalez and the Fort Apache Band ‎- Moliendo Café (Sunnyside)

Gene Clark - White Light (A&M)

I agree 100%. It seems like there's relatively little info available (in English) on J-Jazz. So I can scarcely imagine not taking the plunge on this book. Makes sense to me.

Yeah, I've had the same experience. Not sure why there's a pre-order option sometimes and not others.

Thanks Rooster!

Looks very interesting. Hopefully, Dusty will stock it, since shipping is $38 from the UK to the US.

😄 Is there ANYTHING that you guys HAVEN'T heard ?!?? 😉

My best friend from high school hipped me to the Pogues.

Now playing:

Thanks for checking, T.D. Looks like it'll be the on-demand book for me.

That's a bummer. I guess I missed the boat, music-wise. Oh well. At least there's the book.

Any initial impressions that you'd care to share about the music or book, @sidewinder? I'm very tempted to order it.

Thank you, @mjazzg! I think you'll enjoy hearing the music. NP: Disc 1 - The Many Facets of David Newman

More jazz from Japan: Masahiko Togashi & Isao Suzuki - A Day of the Sun (Paddle Wheel, 1979) and Masahiko Togashi & Masahiko Satoh - Sōshō [Twin Crystals] (Trio, 1973)

Gheorghe, the two vocal cuts with Earl Coleman are on Sonny's Tour de Force.

One of my musical heroes, the composer Charles Ives, wrote a series of essays to accompany his Second Piano Sonata. Logically enough, he titled these program notes Essays Before a Sonata. Since many listeners (both then and now) consider his music to be "thorny" and "difficult," Ives hoped that these essays might provide a bridge for listeners to make their way in to his music by providing some insight into his thinking and his musical goals. Ives gave his sonata the subtitle Concord, Mass., 1840-1860, and he structured it around four New England Transcendentalist authors. The dedicatee of the sonata's fourth and culminating movement is Henry David Thoreau. In his essay on Thoreau, Ives describes how Thoreau once heard the ringing of the Concord Bell across a great distance while on Walden Pond. Ives quotes Thoreau, describing how, "At a distance over the woods the sound acquires a certain vibratory hum as if the pine needles in the horizon were the strings of a harp which it swept. . . A vibration of the universal lyre." If I recall correctly, Ives later combined Thoreau's ideas in a new phrase, calling this exalted state of awareness (through music) the "vibratory hum of existence." For Ives, the most important and most impressive music somehow captures this elusive, ephemeral quality. A life vibration. I'm just saying all this stuff about Ives and Thoreau and vibrations because it came bubbling up while I was listening to this music by Masahiko Sato. Which is to say: I think it is magnificent, stunning, phantasmagorical music -- music that's as good as it gets. And Ives' words somehow explain very well how certain types of music (like his and Sato's) work (in figurative terms, not musical terms) -- and how it affects us (or me, at least). I hope these ramblings make some sense to you, and I'm touching on an idea with which you're familiar through your own listening. . . . If not, my apologies for the long digression! Now, back to your regularly scheduled programming.