Brad

I finished All for Nothing and started this book A very odd book. Written during the Ceausescu regime, it is absurdist literature but a little too out there for me. I read one review saying that it’s best digested in small pieces. Not for me. I have picked this one up by the great crime writer Dorothy Hughes

In our area we don’t have many record shops. I thought one that had, art one point, multiple locations had gone out of business. However, I discovered today it’s still in business and went over there today and bought Grant Green Funk in France Monk’s Les Liasons Dangereuse Coltrane’s Heavyweight Champion I could have probably found them cheaper on line but it’s also important to try to support local record stores, even if it cost me a few extra $.

In today’s New Yorker: Travels with Anthony Bourdain

I received an email from Pledge Music indicating you can buy a reel to reel version for $500.

A real shock. Some big losses in the last few days due to suicide.

Thanks for the link. Enjoyed listening to it.

I think that's a good path to follow. I'm going to wait and see.

Although not 110 wins, in 1993, the Braves won 104 and the Giants won 103 when they were both in the Western Division of the NL. Due to the playoff format then in use, the Giants missed the playoffs. I also saw that in the 1980 ED of the AL, the Yankees had 103 wins and the Orioles 100.

Love the album photo.

LeBron James: The Strange Thrill Of a One Man Show

There is no present need for them to make a trade. They can make a trade all the way up to August 30; players acquired after July 31 just have to go through waivers: that's how Verlander was acquired.

Yes, and what stopped them: good pitching, which -- and I hate to sound like a broken record -- the name of the game in the post-season.

In the playoffs, it’s all about pitching. Do you think the Astros would have won had they not traded for Verlander? That would be no.

Over.

If you want to get to the promised land, it’s going to cost. The Cubs needed a closer and they had to give up quality, Torres, to get Chapman. We’re not going to accept shit and Yankee fans shouldn’t think the Mets or any other team will accept garbage. Now that you’ve lost Montgomery, you’re not dealing from strength.

No offense but if we’re going to trade one of the top pitchers in baseball, we’re going to expect equal value. They will start asking for Torres but then settle for Andujar, probably someone else from the major league roster (possibly Frazier) and two can’t miss prospects. It’s never going to happen though because Mets management doesn’t have the courage to break it down like the Braves and Astros did. We will just piddle along and stink.

I’m not adverse to trading deGrom, considering how the Mets are playing but the Yankees are going to have to pay dearly.

Severino is having just a good a year as Kluber — his WL percentage is actually a little better — so you’re a tad premature. Stop reading the Plain Dealer

This was at the end of part 3 and I hope it’s ok to reproduce it in full: ______ Whether they liked Ervin's “angry charm” or hated his “bag-pipish tone” all of these writers had agreed on one thing; that these albums had successfully captured a sound unlike that of any other jazz saxophonist. To their respective producers, The Book Cooks, Cookin' and That's It! had also revealed much about Ervin's working modus operandi while in the studio, one refreshingly free from egocentric concerns and creativity-sapping multiplicity of retakes. Another musician who recorded frequently with the tenorist – drummer Alan Dawson – remembered how liberating this attitude could be. “Ervin in the recording studio, playing with him was as close to a pure emotional experience as you could get,” he told Bob Blumenthal in 1977. In a memorial for the saxophonist penned shortly after his death in 1970, he went into more detail; “the way he went about his recording sessions was always the way that I felt I would want to do jazz records...we would only do one, two or three takes maybe and that was it. And he was willing to stand up and be counted and say, 'Well, that's the way I play and that's the way we play. Go ahead and take it.'” Dawson's recollections provide yet another example of the quality Ervin appeared to have by the bucket-load, both on and off the stand – honesty. And it is this frequent and consistent display of confidence in his own identity that makes all the Coltrane and Rollins comparisons both redundant and insulting. If Ervin ultimately lacked Coltrane's harmonic savvy – so what? If he didn't quite have the high-level rhythmic nous of a Sonny Rollins – who cares? His recordings – right from the off - proved that he had the most valuable assets a jazzman can ever possess – his own voice, and that must remain something worth applauding in its own right."

I find their internet player annoying, not that it’s not good, but I can’t always access it. I have Sirius and XM in our cars and would listen to the app in the gym. Then one day it didn’t work. A few days later it came back. Then a few days later it didn’t. After that, I didn’t try again as I can access the stations I want to listen to on Tune-In.

While reading Part 3 just now, I came across this paragraph: “Online music forums are rarely the place to get a balanced, authoritative take on a jazzman's work but a few years ago one such board – Organissimo – contained a heated thread in which Ervin fans defended him against some extremely pointed criticism. Inevitably his ‘moaning’ tone was a talking point, coming in for a thorough hammering from one especially virulent individual, while another contributor described how he thought Ervin had two solos - ‘one fast and one slow.’ ”

I’m sorry, but I don’t get it.

Disc 4