JSngry

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonic_seventh

That works when the talent level of an "average" player stays the same relative to the entire talent pool every year/decade/whatever, which is does not. Skill sets evolve, talent pools strengthen and weaken, somebody who could kick ass today could take a time capsule either forward or backward and find themselves either even more or even less kickassable. WAR is probably not a good "fan stat" at this point, and may never be. But it is not "utter nonsense". It's an imperfect - and hopefully still evolving - performance metric of an individual relative to a general population. Most stats just measure the individual alone, and then the results are compared. With WAR, the general population is a factor at the beginning of the calculation. That's different, and that has the potential to be quite meaningful. Consider driving records. If you're not all that great a driver but drive in a low impact traffic area, your driving record could make you look like the best and safest driver ever. But take your driving habits in relation to all traffic areas, not just yours, and maybe you're a bad driver after all, maybe it's your environment that's kept you out of the hospital, maybe your driving is really not that good at all. I've not had experience with these little driving monitors the insurance companies will try to give you to see what your driving behavior is and how "safe" a driver you are, nor do I know what their baseline is for "safe driving" when they look at your driving data. But I could easily see scenarios where, once enough data, refined data, is collected nationally, a national minimum of "replacement level driver" is established. How sharp are your turns? What is your average stop time? How soon do you signal before turning? What is the average distance you leave between cars? Etc. Of course, driving is not baseball, but the notion of comparing an individual's performance relative to a collective performance instead of a set of individual outcomes is not without meaning, even if the methodology is far from perfected. And personally, I very much like that something as "rigid" as metrics can be so fluid in interpretation. Metrics really don't mean a whole hell of a lot with context, and the deeper and broader the context, the more - or less - meaningful is the metric. As an evolutionary conceit, I think it's inevitable - and hopefully wonderful - that we are essentially attempting to expand our consciousness with the tools at hand. Of such things are progress made, except when they aren't, but that's what happens when you've yet to determine a Global Replacement Level Reality...so...strap it on and Science Up, World!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_over_replacement_player

Happy Jack Hungry Jack Rebbie Jackson

BOOM!

Good, good stuff!

That's more true when you're 25 miles from home than when you're just 90 feet.

I look at it as a work in progress, really. The fact that there's different methodologies is telling, but so is the notion that they're all trying to evaluate the "worth" of a player in a more objective (or at least, less subjective/emotional) manner. What remains to be seen is if anybody really wants that, or if indeed it will ever be possible to be totally objective about anything involving "value". But even if eliminating the subjective proves to be neither possible nor desirable, I don't think you face eternal death by fine-tuning perceptions about what "is" really is. Just, you know...allow that moving forward sometimes involves getting it wrong and getting it right. Like the man said, you'll know when you get there, and really, do you ever? yeah, if Phil Rizzuto had spent his career with the St. Louis Browns, would we today even know who he was? Of course, he didn't and of course we do. But... Perceptions is a tricky little imp, that it are.

Yeah, that's right, thanks. Also about the sound...don't know what the CD versions say, but the LP credits RVG with "rerecording", which to me sounds like Wolff brought the Barclay tape back to America and said hey Rudy, make this sound like a Blue note, to which rudy probably said something, like, yeah, ok, let me see what I can do, and then he reverbed the fuck out of it, to which everybody then said close enough, and then bam, onto the shelves it went.

It's a metric. If the input is accurate, then you have an accurate metric. The question is not does it have merit in terms of accuracy, the question is what does it really mean/measure, and I think people are still figuring that out. "Value Added" is a real thing, and WAR is one way that people are trying to more specifically quantify it. I'm still a fan of "intangibles", but these days, everybody wants "proof", and to have proof, you gotta have metrics. Or so it seems. And so the hunt begins. As far as WAR itself goes, I do think it means something in terms of probable long-term performance. The "problem" (such as it is) is that what people remember are situation-specific outcomes, not overall general performance. Some generally lackluster guy can have a set of "memorable moments" and hey, Beloved Figure Forever, perception becomes reality becomes legend becomes mythology. This is life. But that's the way shit goes, right? You can work your ass of at your job every day and some scrub pops up with a little bit of ability, a little more luck, and a whole lot of fortunate time/space placement, BAM, off they go. Still, if you're a Sabermetric Sensitive GM, and if you have a Sabermetric Sensitive manager/organization, I think you can look at WAR along with a lot of other metrics and look at is Player X likely to give us more shots more often than Player Y, and if so, how, and then proceed accordingly, realizing - one would hope - that it really is a game that truly exists only in the moment. "Gut instinct", I still like that, but an educated gut is probably going to have better instinct over the long haul. The problem is that people want immediate gratification, one championship means more than decades of non-championship excellency. I don't buy into that in the least, but that's just me.

There's a wealth there. I'm ok with people running out, especially when, as in Hentoff's case, they put so much in before they did.

Was this really Hank's last BN record? Not contemporaneously released, but recorded? Seems to me that he did some more stuff when he got back, one or two of the LT things? The band here puts it more in line with an MPS record of the time than a Blue Note record (thinking in particular of Dex's A Day In Copenhagen, Dizzy Reese & Slide Hampton), the sound more like...one of those highly reverbed EZ listening records of the era, go figure that!. I think it's a pretty invigorating listen, a lot of voices that you didn't hear around Hank from that time, and a recorded sound that forces one to "hear" him differently (as do the BYG performances of the same time). Philly in particular, because he had kind of fallen off the American jazz-record radar by that time, and for whatever personal/logistical reasons there were about that, as shown here (and elsewhere from the same time), the cat was not afraid to get ALL up in there with it.

Seems to me that he ran out of things to say about jazz a while back, but what he said until then remains notable. And as noted by all, his other endeavors were, and remain, notable and significant. And some of the most WTF! eye opening stuff I've ever heard has been his announcements on the very early Brubeck/Storyville bootlegs. He's downright silly (and somewhat intentionally), and it's a hoot! RIP to somebody who never stopped being engaged with life.

Berio is always some serious shit. Berio and voices...seems to always be an extra-exceptional occurrence.

How old do you have to be before they let you be 40?

This is the room. Literally, a room. That empty space in the middle was pretty much all piano. Made it down for this last night, ended up sitting front row to the right hand side of the piano, about even with the dampers about 3 feet from the piano played by Ran Blake, who is now 81 and gets around with a walker. Seems that he had been in Houston for a few days, and had visited the grave of Jean Tierney while there. Was able to hear the instrument fully from both above and underneath it's soundboard,, as well as watch the pedal work. Believe me, it was as close to total immersion in Ran Blake's music as you can get in a public performance setting. Two sets, solo, the first one continuous medley, the second broken by a quite startling stop to allow him to stand up and rotate around the room to say hi, thanks for coming out tonight, now we'd like to play, all while really twisting his legs around while holding on the the chair, it was very dramatic. And then he sat down and played the rest of the set, again uninterrupted.and SRO crowd in a very small space, plenty of body heat warming up the room, and this old man is playing piano with a full size knit scarf/muffler/whatever it is wrapped around his neck. Beside Autumn Leaves & Laura, he also played Let's Stay Together & Never Can Say Goodbye, and at the merchandise table in the lobby, besides the usual merchandises for sale, they were giving away free uninflated balloons with the Ran Blake "black bag" logo on them. "Take as many as you want" they said. The concert was free, started at 5 PM, and although the capacity of the seating looked to be about 125-150, there was still overflow crowd, literally SRO. Even with stopping for dinner on the way back, we were back in Dallas at 11:30. It was a very powerful, impactful evening. Ran Blake is a very weighty proposition no matter what, but live, at this age, in a venue like this...wow.

Did you get that press release in that form from ECM or from Newbury?

ECM (and/or Newbury) should read the amended law (bold added): https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billCompareClient.xhtml?bill_id=201520160AB1570 Not knowing Newbury in any fashion apart from online CD shopping thru amazon, I guess maybe they really do still deal in comics? Even at that, are they "principally in the business of selling, or offering for sale, collectibles"? And of course, this exhibition of possible nomophobia raises the possibility that maybe those autographs really aren't real..."offer valid while supplies last"...how many is that going to be, exactly? And autographed by whom, exactly? The whole band? Just Abercrombie? Whoever is handy at the time? "Limited to 5 per customer"? I know jazz don't sell shit, but even at that, it sounds like they're ready to move these out in some vague, non-fixed quantity, so order now and order a lot, get ready resale market?!?!?! "Nardis" aside, the ECM cover ethos isn't the only fuzzy thing going on here, at least looking at the facts at hand...

Ward Bond Burt Ward Ward Wardy https://www.facebook.com/public/Ward-Wardy

EXACTLY! It's one of those tunes where certain "types" will go to the greatest imaginable lengths (and some unimaginable ones when they've exceeded those) to play everything that everybody all already knows, only because it's "Nardis", you're supposed to think/feel it's "creative", or "searching" or some equally projective bullshit. Don't believe the hype, etc. I'd like to blame Bill Evans for it, but full props to him, he got started on it and did his best to finish it (and truthfully, probably did). But Bill Evans is dead, right? And ain't nobody that I've heard played anything new on "Nardis" for decades. And yet they not only try, they PRIDE themselves on it, look at that blurb, OOOOOOHHHHHH, NARDIS!!!! EXOTIC-SOUNDING!!!! IN THE SPIRIT OF BILL EVANS!!!! No, I'm not genuflecting, I'm on my knees barfing. I'm kinda like, fuck "Nardis". Seriously. Find some other tune to do that on, I mean, ok, that's what most people do on ALL tunes these days, but "Nardis" is like, wow, Bill Evans, exotic song title, we can VENTURE on this one, and no, you can't. Stop trying, please. And see, it's not just old white guys! DUDES! Buy a Chico Hamilton record from, like,,,,ANY time past 1962!

Or maybe it's because the band has a few gigs in California and expect enough of a turnout that they'd rather sell the merchandise themselves while there? Or maybe Manfred Eicher hates surf music and is making a point. Or maybe ECM is working on a deal with another California record store? Or maybe California has a defensive missile shield up against ECM, and who wants that kind of excitement these days? Who knows, and in my case, who cares? They're playing "Nardis", gag reflex fully stimulated. Old white guys playing "Nardis", it's my nightmare scenario, and it's gonna come true more and more as time goes on.

Can I have your records when you die?

Bob Turley Your Uncle Everybody's Favorite

The Nutty Squirrels ACORN Pecan Patty

Conoco Cowboy Marlboro Man Wrangler