JSngry

When it comes to conspiracy theories, make mine The Blacklist. That one actually makes sense - and it has a pretty girl in it. Plus it's only on for an hour a week.

That's a complicated group questions you ask...Do you sing back everything that you write? Or try to? If/when you can't, do you blame your singing skills or what you've written? Have you've ever written anything you knew was asymmetrical or otherwise not "singer-friendly" and been able to vocalize it to the point where you knew it was right anyway? I'm trying to think of an answer from my own experience, and all I can come up with is that the better I can hear an idea, the better I can sing it, and that hearing it comes first. Even if it's hearing it more as shape and durations, then figuring out how to get the notes in, if I can hear it strongly enough, eventually I can sing it. So I go with that, because if I went by initial self-singability, geez, that would be SO not pleasurable.

I dunno man, I'd feel better - at some level - if the whole Sandy Hook "truther" thing was a genuine lie instead of just some batshit crazy "not mainstream" view.

Thanks for sharing this.You're right, it is of interest. It's a fascinating tradition that runs deep, especially in the American South. Have experienced not a little of this tradition first (or nearly first) hand. Our local school system fully integrated in 1969, and our new high school band director had been serving as the band director of the Black school as well as working in the lower grades of the White schools. When he took over the now-one High School in 1970, the first thing he did was put the African-American drummers in charge of parade cadences other non-competitive maneuvers. That caused some people to undergo a reassessment of what "marching" was all about, and also to confront "swing" more directly than they had before, and probably have since. Of course, before that, the Grambling marching band was well known to locals of all races, and as time went on and people starting realizing how much of "this" there was (and had been)...Jarvis Christian College was in the immediate area, and the DFW area had HBCUs as well, and if you went to a football game, you saw the bands. And as social circles expanded, so did a realization of where all this was, and ...yeah, a rich heritage indeed, and still not completely vanished as America's attempts at integration have resulted in plenty of de facto segregated schools in the urban areas. It's still there, just go to a football game or an MLK Day parade. The thing about most of these bands is that they play...loud. LOUD. It's a joyous sound usually, but it's always LOUD. At some point, I looked back on the sounds of the horn sections for The Ohio Players, early Kool & The Gang, The Counts, all those bands that had roots in playing frat parties (another world largely unknown to the "general population"), and I'd lay dollars to donuts that if they were playing frat parties, they were also playing in some college's marching band. The horn sections on those band's records play like the marching bands play - loud, strong, they gonna be heard, perfect tuning and such things be damned, they will not go unheard! Funny how in some cultures, marching is associated with military proclivities, standardization, "stiffness", precision, execution, and in other cultures with parades and parties, being loose and moving ahead with an air of bon-vivance, the march as one more form of dance...life as a dance! I still think fondly upon Gerome Holmes and Harry Glenn Sutphen, the two drummers who Buzz Mezzner put in charge of instilling that into our high school marching band. Truly a lesson that has lasted a lifetime.

If everybody's selling, who's buying? And why?

PVC has made my life all kinds of easier in all kinds of ways, so I still appreciate your product!

Dude, you work for ALCOA? http://www.alcoa.com/locations/usa_point_comfort/en/info_page/home.asp Aluminum has been a central part of my life for as long as I've had it, so I appreciate your product. As for Victoria, it's an "oil money" town and has its "cultural" element that stems from that. I've played they symphony's debutante ball there more than once. But that does not explain Marilyn Crispell performing there! I'm tempted to go just to see who wins that one.

When is Rob Manfred going to punish the Cardinals? Probably never. http://www.mlbdailydish.com/2016/1/11/10750140/cardinals-hacking-correa-manfred-punish-commissioner?_ga=1.46462432.63955067.1442335336

Klaus Voorman Glenn Spearman Elder-Beerman

Is he the guy who had a collapsed lung? Or was that Marty Keough? Ah, Gary Geiger. Never mind.

I have as a US BASF/MPS lp. Remember when those things happened?

I've had Blackstar on order from Dusty Groove since last week, should arrive sometimes this week (Media Mail...didn't know the cat was gonna up and die, would have gotten faster shipping if I had). Earthling & Reality are on order thru Amazon Marketplace. Should be fun, thanks for the tips!

Can you give me the one "start here" recommendation for this material, the one record to spur me on towards more, if at all? I'm interested, maybe?t

Just to clarify, that is a method. I do all of those things every night. I have to, my,,,circadian rhythms (?) have not been "normal" for as far back as I can remember, I mean, literally, back to when I was 3 or 4. Aging and weight gain hasn't helped any, either, nor has living a life that was mostly nocturnal for all those years.My case is no doubt extreme, but where I once scoffed at sleep, I now treasure it.. Ambien works, I can vouch for it. There is a bit of a learning curve, though. You need to be ready to take it and lie down in bed. Don't take it and walk around waiting for it to work. Don't go online waiting for it to work. Just take it, lie down, and stay down. And DO NOT go to the icebox and open it up, do not start conducting taste symphonies with the contents, especially if you're in the middle of a period of contemplating orchestration and counterpoint, yes, you can do that with food, and no, Ambien Time in front of an open refrigerator is not when you should be doing it. And if you fall asleep to music like I do, set a sleep timer on your tV or whatever else it is that is playing it, if that applies, unless you sleep alone, in which case, here's the silver lining to that cloud. Ambien tripping is real, and it seems like a LOT of fun at the time, but I've never had any "day after" embarrassments on alcohol or anything else, but with Ambien, yes I have. So own the regimen, do what you have to do to NOT do all the other stuff. Because that good sleep you get is precious. Also, if y'all are waking up in the middle of the night...see if it's tied to the need to urinate, and get that prostate checked if it is. Or even if it isn't. And ask your partner if they notice you experiencing any signs of sleep apnea during the course of an evening. Oxygen deprivation can wake you up too. Go to a sleep clinic and take a sleep test if you even think you're having apnea. CPAP machine are wonderful devices, actually, appearances to the contrary. One thing I have learned about all of this, though, is that natural peanut butter and cream cheese on a rice cake is delicious, as is a natural peanut butter and pimento cheese sandwich on a good, nutty, whole grain bread. Just...fix them and eat them before you take your Ambien.

So he's still alive?

Didn't care for him except as an occasional singles artist until the Berlin trilogy came out, Heroes in particular. Never did become a serious fan, but have looked at the career in retrospect and found more there that I did first around. Ordered the new on last week, should be arriviing this week, very much looking forward to it, to what the "collaborations" with the "jazz musicians" yielded. RIP, and here's to the courage to change.

Gene Page Gene Barge Etterlene DeBarge

Sleep is chemical, so I use chemistry. Tried to avoid it for years, but it got to where my sleep was, like, 1-2 hours at a stretch, and that's just nuts. Sooo... Ambien. It's legal. It works. Does it create a dependency? I don't know, does one become dependent upon sleep? Sleepytime Extra (Valerain) tea - It's legal, It helps. 40 mg Melatonin - it's legal. It doesn't hurt. CPAP machine - I was having pretty bad apnea, this took care of it. Covered my most insurance plans. This regimen guarantees a good, hard, fully effective 8 hours of sleep every night, from which I awake refreshed and alert...except on the odd nights where it doesn't, But those are very rare. The problem I still have is taking everything early enough in the evening for the 8 hours to end in sync with my work schedule. I still like the night time. But as long as I'm out by 1 AM, I can still get up at 7:30 or so, bolt up with some stong coffee, and get going, achieving full alertness in the still early (enough) AM.

...something involving the unilateral rearranging of furniture?

Thanks for that...looks like those sessions have been reissued but are now either quite pricey:http://www.amazon.com/Les-Rarissimes-Rarities-Olivier-Messiaen/dp/B000LPRNUO/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top?ie=UTF8 or flat-out "unavailable": http://www.amazon.com/Petites-Liturgies-Voyante-Piano-Orchestre/dp/B00000G2AR/ref=cm_cr_dp_asin_lnk

Three different manifestations of that dynamic (no pun intended) last night: Long Yu conducts/Kirill Gerstein, piano QIGANG CHEN The Five Elements (Wu Xi) - This was a beautiful piece, but tragically inappropriate for an audience who had no idea about respecting silence. Coughs, seat shuffling, throat clearing, you name it, it was there. When the audience noise masks the orchestra...perhaps a recording is better than a live gig, at least with this type of audience. I don't have this problem at chamber concerts. There was at best polite applause at the conclusion, but you could tell that the bulk of the audience, this was just some "opening act" that they were neither inclined or obligated to pay any attention to. Pity, because it is a wonderful work, and kudos to whoever decided to program it. More like it going forth, please, sneak all of it in you can! MUSSORGSKY-RAVEL Pictures at an Exhibition - I've never really been drawn to this piece, maybe due to hearing it first through the EL&P take on it, but still...it's sorta "slight" thematically, I think, and goes on past the point of mattering, concept or not. But the Ravel orchestration holds many moments of individual delight, so there was that. What there also was was some of the most rigid, almost militaristic/borderline bombastic time and dynamics I've ever heard out of the DSO. Watching Yu's conducting had me formulating a scale that ran from uncomfortable to creepy to fuquitous. He hit every point on that scale at least once, no breathing, no flow, just a hammer of a metronome gathering momentum as the piece went along. But the orchestra was with him, and they did as told about as well as it could done. So..."5 stars" for execution...but I was very uncomfortable applauding when it was over. Intermission - the general audience seemed to have loved it though, singing bits and pieces on the way out and in the lobby, some women even dancing in some weird ritualistic robotic dance-along thing. I don't know if Yu was aiming for a popular favorite or revenge for the cloddish response the the Chen piece, but whatever he was aiming for, he hit it. Peoples of the world, pray for our nation. RACHMANINOFF Piano Concerto No. 3 - After that, I had no small amount of trepidation about what was going to happen next. I'm not really a fan of Rachmaninoff the composer...respect the hell out of it, but the whole florid, ripey Romantic thing...a very little generally goes a very long way for me. Plus, so much of the harmonic vocabulary of this music has infiltrated jazz, and not in a positive way, usually. Ripey is ripey, period. And after the assault that had been Pictures At An Exhibition, I was filled with apprehension about how THIS one was going to be hammered home. But - that did not happen. Gerstein had a very good flowing time, full of breathing, full of nuance, and totally absent of bombast. Yu conducted accordingly, and again, the orchestra played as requested. Yu looked like a different guy, perhaps not amazingly, but I was left wondering...if he can do this with Rachmaninoff, why does he want to hurt Mussorgsky so bad? I don't get it. And soon enough, that was all lost as the "rightness" of the moment took hold and held. I'm still not a "fan" of this type of music, but it was played so well, presented so wonderfully, made its points so reasonably, that I found myself in the rare(for me) position of absolutely enjoying music that I pretty much don't like "on paper". I felt very good about applauding at the end of this one, especially for Gerstein, whose approach of firm gentility really worked for me. Like Goldilocks, neither underplayed no overplayed...just right. We got an encore of Felix Blumenfeld,'s "Etude For Left Hand", which sounded like two hands but only used one. As a parlor trick, it's wonderful, as music, it's quite ripey, but, oh well, show bizness, right? It didn't hurt. So...three pieces, three approaches, three differeing impressions, one orchestra, one concert. Otoh, I'd have loved to not have had any negative fellings at all. Otoh, hey, live music, real people, and further proof that no, it's not "all the same", this music, just as not all jazz sounds alike, not all classical music sounds alike, not all symphonic music sounds alike, not all piano concertos sound alike, not all pianists sound alike, not all pianists play the same piece the same way...so, you know, real music made in real time by real people in real places. No matter what else comes along in our evolutions Long may this live along with it!

Currently listening to The View From The Edge some PD(?) UK collection and there's portions of Yvonne Loriod recordings of Messiaen from 1946 & 1947. Looking for any kind of reissue of a fuller set of these recordings has proved futile. am I just looking wrong, or is this one of those be thankful for what you get things? From Amazon:

I did find this: http://news.uhv.edu/release.aspx?id=2176

Andy Messersmith Anthony Fokker. Ernst Heinrich Heinkel

RIP This is somebody I've long known about and vaguely "knew", but only recently have I begun to explore his work (as conductor and as composer) with any real effort. It has been my loss to have taken so long.