JSngry

WS home field advantage now to be determined by team with best regular season record: http://mlb.nbcsports.com/2016/12/01/the-all-star-game-will-no-longer-determine-home-field-advantage-in-the-world-series/?cid=eref:nbcnews:text "Best regular season record" more or less meaningless in this context, imo. Still, better than All Star game as far as optics go.

Matt Kold Mark Chill John Burr

Please do! I have intermittent (at best) signal from work, so a DL is the only way I can listen for sure on my phone during the day. The work browser blocks Thom's site as well, so...

So far, streaming only, correct?

Nancy Kerrigan Ruben Blades Ice T

I'm a fan of subversive Easy Listening records, and Jack Sheldon made one of the best ever with this one: http://dougpayne.blogspot.com/2011/04/warm-world-of-jack-sheldon.html If you're genetically allergic to "this type of thing" then, no. Otherwise, it's a gas in its own ways on its own terms. The follow-up, The Cool World Of Jack Sheldon is kind of a drag, so yes, there is a difference in Easy Listening records.

I file them by the # of characters on the spine, sometimes ascending, sometimes descending, sometimes to male an arch, sometimes a dip. Sometimes I take them off the shelf out into the middle of the room and make the arch shape. Then I pretend they're a set of vibraphones and air-play along with whatever I want, often that clip of Dub Taylor on the Cosby show. Then my wife wakes up and makes me come back to bed, sometimes with a pill in hand, sometimes with just a baseball bat. Either way, I know what I have to do, so I do it. Collecting Mosaic sets requires a special type of determination.

Oh my...

Bumpy Regio Ellie

That mellophonium band made a helluva lot of records! Including the ones with Tex Ritter & Jena Turner!

Chicken George Link Wray Elijah Pitts

fwiw, the Kenton Christmas album makes no attempts at being jazz (or "jazz"). It's all pretty straightforward "brass chorale" type stuff. Not unlike his National Anthems Of The World thing.

Big Black Little Feat Terry Slippers

My work browser blocks both the image and Tumblr link. But I saw the photo at home last night...had never seen it before and found it quite striking!

This one, glad tidings for all!

Well, in my view, there are massive overlaps, overlaps that are natural, and, yes, obvious. But ours is not as widely held opinion as we'd like to think. Whenever musics turn to a more explicit/conscious/focused/whatever examinations of things like space and time, there are those who perceive it to be some kind of ART or other constructed artifice, when in reality, it's equally possible that it's little more than a natural outgrowth of what has already been going on in any culture. I don't know if "self-consciousness" and "self-awareness" equate to the same thing in the vernacular, but it seems to me that one is applied pejoratively and the other approvingly, and that runs the risk of then becoming a focus on minimalizing the process regardless of the results. I mean, and I'm just speaking for myself, the most "brainy" stuff gets to my "gut", and the most "gutsy" stuff gets to my "brain". It's the in-between stuff that I find myself equivocating, justifying, "consuming" rather than actually "engaging". As for "types" and "purposes", I think it's useful to remove barriers that exist only because of external or imposed constraints. The notion that a Bartok quartet should be engaged differently than a Little Joe Blue 45 which should then be engaged differently than a Coltrane LP or a Bulgarian wedding band or some Mali tribal music etc etc etc...of course there are differences, but they're all people making music, and at that level, there is at least as much to be viewed as common than as different. Pretty sure that this won't matter to most people, but it does to me, if only because opening horizons works for me a helluva lot better than does building walls, if those are to be the choices one is offered.

ORIGINAL AUTHOR'S NUTSHELL = philosophy is usually considered the normal medium for contemplations about space & time, i.e. - "being". Music perhaps offers a superior medium for the same contemplations. The author also notes how music, in this case "classical" music, reflects new realities of space and time as such realities are discovered/uncovered in a more tangible form than does philsophical writings. Also, the various "national" characteristics of compositional methods are rendered less relevant going forth, as the ability to absorb information globally and objectively (at least less geo-specifically) increases. MY OWN NUTSHELL = The author differentiates between "philosophical", "cuisine", "propaganda", and no doubt other types of music. I myself get his point, but would posit that perhaps he's on to more than he realizes here with this whole "auditory model of time and space thing", that all types of music provide such models. We talk about a band being "tight" or "loose", or "stiff" or "relaxed" or "in a groove" or any other number of such descriptions, these are all notions based on how the music occupies it's space in its time and how we feel about that. Statements are made all the time, consciously or not, made as well as received. Really, it's some very basic stuff. You can't avoid time and you can't avoid space. These are things that happen whether you choose to be conscious of them or not. Maybe for some it's more simple, or just more pleasurable, to not engage too consciously, if at all. Different strokes, then. Life goes on, and when's lunch?

Doesn't seem that complicated to me, not really.

That Carla Bley thing has been in the annual rotation since its release, and I'm a Bing Crosby guy fwiw.

The main thing that interested me about this is that we sometimes hear about "music as art" as if it's some abstract, high-falutin' self-gratifying wasteful foo-foo indulgence. I think that as a generalization that's just nonsense, although lord knows it can certainly happen, and not just in "art" music. But the notion of music being available as tool, perhaps a superior tool, for a creation of, a meditation on - and yes, a communication about - "an auditory model of time and space", well, that becomes less about a pursuit of vanity and more about a basic human instinct, probably a hardwired one at that. So of course as our perceptions of time and space change, of course do our musics change. This is every bit as true in popular music (see all the redefining of time and space in hip-hop, fundamental changes!). Same thing with "cuisine" music too, tastes change as perceptions change. And really - all post AACM music is based on overt assumptions about the natures of time and space, as overt about it as it's evolutionary ancestors were implied - the biggest of all Big Bangs of the African Diaspora was the introduction of and collisions with new notions of time and space, not just in music, but in every aspect of life, for All Concerned. But it's also cool that you can hear old musics form anywhere in the world and still get to that - auditory models of time and space being formed, created, and communicated. "Old" music in terms of age, perhaps, but really, at root, the same thing as "new" musics. And just as easily corrupted or stillborn by notions of control, imposition, as the man said, "propaganda" music, then, now, forever. Hipness is not a state of mind, it's a fact of life (the best Cannonball solo ever). Anyway, I found the whole notion of those introductory sentences to be one of those out-of-left-field things that was one of those "wow, yeah!" moments, some pretty obscure essay about an even more obscure composer, this guy is basically thinking out loud to himself, and he hits on something that has possibly/probably universal implications. Thank you, liner notes. Glad you're still working this particular room!

Barbara Carroll David Carroll Bakida Carrol

The pieces with electric guitar I do not care for all that much, just because I do not like the this timbre of the this guitar inside this string quartet. That's just me, and it's less than half of the music presented here. It's strictly a sonics thing, the writing itself is fine. The other music is unqualifiedly splendid. I am finding myself being quite attracted by and drawn into Mackey's compositional world, and find in it a somewhat parallel kinship to the less..."overt" works of Henry Threadgill, Wayne Shorter, Joe Zawinul, etc. Motifs stated, orbited around, pulled back into, shot back out, that type of thing. It's the type of thing I have no trouble grasping the logic and progression of, feels like "I've been here before" or at least part of me has been to a part of here...love it when that happens.

Oliver King Charlie Chan Ashby de la Zooch

http://www.newworldrecords.org/liner_notes/80444.pdf I found these liner notes on line, and the opening paragraphs seemed to me to be worthy of consideration, perhaps discussion here. It's written in terms of "classical" music, but I think it pertains across the board...and I would posit that the purpose of "cuisine" music is not just to impart flavor, but rather to deliver nutrition with an identity-relevant flavor. Of course, then I guess you can ask what music, what human, really, can ever be devoid of "identity"...is that even possible? anyway...