JSngry

Theo Huxtable Bill Cosby Indra Kishore Kacker and Syed Hussain Zaheer

Bruckner's grave to Mahler's house to a nudist camp? Please chart that progression for us, Bev, please! I've long known the sensory difference between live and recorded music, as well as the possibility for different emotional things to happen, but for something like this, I really don't think there's a substitute for sitting in a big hall with a good orchestra playing well and getting pretty much literally enveloped by the sound. Even the best record players are used at home, right? Even with headphones and eyes closed, getting totally out of that "enclosed" feeling tends to require drugs or meditation or cognitive dissonance or....it's just easier to go buy a ticket, ya' know? Not a question of "better", just of "different".

??? Was that meant for me? No, man, sorry for the confusion about that, my bad. That's another Utley we won't have to worry about getting to the World Series this year.

Looking forward to hearing Donald Fagen (of Steely Dan)'s lyrics for "East Broadway Rundown"!

Yeah, most positive vibes out to the kid, and to Moose as well. It's a trip to me how the body can be so vulnerable and so resilient all at once.

Milton Banana Milton Berle Charles Ives

Is this it, Larry? http://www.amazon.com/Schubert-Geringas-Thunemann-Vlatkovic-Zimmerman/dp/B003V4VYEI/ref=tmm_msc_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1444969813&sr=8-1

Just as there is no clock in baseball, there was no clock in Bruckner. That might seem absurd, but, really, this was not the work of a man who was concerned with a timely summation or any other urgengy-induced need to finish. There's a repetitive, almost OCD like return to themes, not because the themes need to be reexamined, but because Bruckner himself seems to have had a need to reexamine them, to make sure they're where he left them, don't want to Home Alone them, get on the plane and realize you've left one behind. I was reminded of watching a baseball game from before the days when they were all on TV, how things would take their time, how pitchers and hitters both went through all their rituals, you know, those really quirky guys who got weird with it almost, over and over and over, and there wouldn't be any action until there was and then BOOM, YES there was action, and then...back to the rituals. Now, imagine a baseball game that not only was not on TV, but was not on radio, and did not have scoreboard entertainment, or Pavlovian pretend organ or any of that stuff, just baseball being played unhurriedly, no pressure to anything, really. Just start the game early enough to beat sundown. People used to be able to live like that, I'm told. Especially when was there was no baseball, espcially in places that were not even thinking about getting it. So, no real sense of urgency to complete, a lot of looking back to look forward, god, a continuous head count, how annoying is that? Well, it could be really annoying, but, geez, I think Bruckner might have had some kind of OCD, really, but OCD brilliant is still brilliant, and I heard nothing but brilliance in this piece. Slow to unfold, but no lags, no stalling, everything moving forward in its own sweet way, no fat at all. If you didn't know what the themes were by the time it was over, it's not because they weren't put into play every freakin' second. Amazing, just amazing, that somebody could sustain it for that lengthy of a piece, never mind move it ahead that far for that long. I don't know if it's amazing that an orchestra could sustain it for that long, I mean, that's their job, but I gotta say, the DSO was always, always moving the thing ahead, and there were a few passages where I was thinking that this is a good place to get listener fatigue, I can afford to take a break for a second or two, but they did not allow for that. I know that Bruckner didn't allow for that, but how many times have you found yourself momentarily, just momentarily, 2-3 seconds tops, taking a break while listening and then picking up where you left off? Some things will let you do that, either in the writing or in the performance. Sometimes both. Not Bruckner, and not the DSO. Not that, not tonight. I'm beginning to get a feel for the "real" van Zwedin, and that seems to be that above all else, he values flow, blend, and precise dynamics. Sometimes the "edges" seem like they're being rounded off, but that seems to be more of a conscious choice than a basic blandness, although, it also seems like this works better on some things than on others. Tonight, it really worked. I really don't have any real reference point for this work, but there were points where it seemed like there could have been more "drama", but it was like a river in that way, just keep on flowing, the undercurrents not letting down for one second, literally. I think it's sometimes easy to confuse drama with movement. The band played with tremendous unity, both rhythmically and with dynamics. The drama was more in the cumulative movement than in any one specific moment, and, really, that seems appropriate for the material. Anyway, this might well be the most ignorant thing I've ever written, not at all qualified to give anything but personal impressions with no objective reference points, but all I can say is that yo, Bruckner quietly mad genius?, and yo, van Zweden, keep making me glad to leave the house and do battle with Central to get there.

I heard some Rangers fans comparing this to Game 6 of the 2011 WS, trying to decide which one hurt the most, and I'm like, are you serious? 2011 was a fiery, dry reaming by the Baseball Devils, no other way for us to lose that game that way.That one hurt. I think I even had Baseball PTSD for a year or two afterwards, maybe still do. Last night was just...baseball critical mass happening. The team had avoided too many weaknesses for too long. And then, they happened all at once. Again I ask, even if they did win, where were they gonna go after that? The team was picked to finish last in the division (not without at least some reason, although I myself thought that was just a tad harsh) and they won it. They were given no chance against the Jays and they took it about as long as they could, and they got DEEP inside their heads, maybe even the heads of an entire country while doing it. You want more out of this team under these conditions, Rangers fans? Not me, I had a blast! I'm also looking at an organization that has played meaningful September baseball - and played at lease a Game 163 - five of the last six years now, and I'm thinking, hey, we finally have a real team in Arlington, an organization that is in it to win, if not everything all the time, to at least never again have a season like 2014, unless, like 2014, everybody gets hurt all the time, all day, every day. To always be seriously in the mix come September. And I'm thinking that the folks in Houston are thinking the same after this year. Believe me, that is nothing to take for granted, it's not the legacy of major league baseball in Texas. Yet...

Well, if Mr. Sprey is telling the truth about what Davis Jr. said to him, it was something of a ghost story (or whatever) to Davis Jr. Or at least that's how Davis Jr. processed what he experienced. And if Davis Jr. was in fact (in Sprey's words) "a deeply mystical man," who are we to disparage his mystical bent and characterize whatever the heck happened to him there as nothing more than "a basic ghost story." Also, if there was a mystical aspect to whatever happened or what Davis thought happened, why would that rule out the presence of "lucidity, experience, openess to memory as simultaneous past, present, and future." Geez, the question of sound quality aside, it seems like on this one we've switched our normal positions (mine often being that of the "don't give me any of that touchy-feely crap" rationalist). It's not Davis I don't trust, it's Sprey's presentation of what I guess is how he perceived it. Sprey's one of these uber-high-end audio gadget guys and his background as as a military physicist (I guess that's an accurate description?) is not a secret. None of which disqualifies him as either recordist or producer, I mean, Mapleshade's done some GREAT records, and many of them sound really fine. I just don't know that his interpretation of "mystic" and mine are gonna line up, if you know what I mean. This guy's into fighter planes and speaker spikes and shit like that. I'm not. I'll humbly suggest that a deeply mystical person is probably not gonna be thinking in terms of ghosts and spooky shit. Spirits, vibrational planes, and that, yes. But LORDY LORDY I DONE SEEN A GHOST! No, not that. I got a buddy who was living in DC around the time Sprey was beginning to get rolling (no pun intended) with his label, and I get the impression that he's one of these guys for whom physics and mysticism are equal means to the same end, namely, superior mechanics. That's a ride I ain't gettin' on. And the piano still sounds funny to me. Maybe it was the ghost plasma clogging he mike, you know how that can be. Still, it is indeed a special record.

Tommy John E.L. Bowe Tommy Shoulders

The last time I saw them with Jaco was at whatever that summer music fest is outside of Detroit, 1981(?). Jaco started the show being obnoxiously loud and overplaying - and by getting all up in Wayne's stage space, very aggressively territorial., and Wayne just was not having it. Wayne always dug in live (at least every time I saw them), but this time, he was going to draw blood, and he did, musically, psychologically, and body language. He was aiming everything at Jaco and damn near literally shooting bullets with his horn and his body. Jaco pulled back into his space and stayed there the rest of the show. Wayne kept shooting him daggers every time he even began to edge over his way. Wayne might prefer to be all Zen-y peaceful and shit, but dig, the guy still came from Newark, still came up with Blakey & Miles, and I don't think that you would want to get into any kind of a showdown with Wayne Shorter, even today. Power in reserve, and do not presume to know how much of it there might be. Odds are, you guess wrong. My feelings about Jaco are not simple...amazing player and mind, but other than his work with Joni Mitchell, not particularly appealing to me musically. But there's no way to deny his genius, and there's no way to deny his catalytic effect on this version of Weather Report. It's one of those things that you can think what you like, feel what you feel, but it's gonna be what it is no matter what you think or feel about it. And now, it's history, so...yeah. If you want to look at it at all, you just gotta accept all of it as what happened and start from there. Like I said, bad taste aplenty, and even more brilliance, you don't get the one without the other, at least from this thing you don't.

Dal Maxvill Del Shannon Sherry Dyl https://therapists.psychologytoday.com/rms/name/Sherry_Dyl_MA,LPCA,NCC_Cornelius_North+Carolina_213969

I'm just bugged be the inevitable (but why does it have to be inevitable?) reduction of an obviously transformative experience that involves lucidity, experience, openess to memory as simultaneous past, present, and future. and an obviously personal willingness and ability to FLOW down to a basic ghost story. And I still think the piano was not recorded well.

or Players.

ok

I'm about he least Jaco fan you'll find. But Wayne & Joe were frequently spectacular during these days, which were ironically the peak of everybody bitching about why Wayne didn't play more. That was on the records. Live, the guy was on fire.

Anna Sage Nicholas Cage The Old French Trader DuPage

The Joker The Smoker The Midnight Toker

I know that Monk album and agree that it's excellent, but I still don't get the "channeling" Monk, thing. Or maybe that means something different than what I understand it to mean. There's not any place on that record where I think "damn, that's actually Monk". I do agree that it shows a very deep and thorough understanding of Monk's...impulse, but to me that's significantly more impressive than the "not Walter" thing. It's profound, it is perhaps even intuitive on a supra-conscious plane, but it's not "magic". "Magic" is, like, when you eat spinach and shit lettuce, it's something that neither could nor should happen, and in reality probably didn't, but, hey, let's move on to the next one. This is not that, this is one man living a live absorbing and processing all this knowledge.and then being captured in a very lucid, perhaps rarely this lucid, moment of transmitting it back out. Such a level of lucidity is indeed rare, and special, but it's not in any way "magical". Uber-lucidity is indeed worthy of awe, but it's not going to happen to just anybody about just anything at just any time. You gotta be alligned for it, gotta be ready to not fuck it up if and when it starts to happen. "Not Walter"? What an insult to the man. Like all anybody needs to do is to know how to play and then wait for the magic to happen.Pshaw. Ok, call it "magic", that's a good shorthand, if used with advisement, just don't believe that it really is, that's all I'm saying. Ain't nobody gonna eat spinach and shit lettuce, ever, not in a linear manner, anyway. Gotta be some lettuce in there to begin with, somewhere. On an unrelated note, I know that some people swear by Mapleshade's sonics, and I know that Sprey has all this audio voodoo that he uses, but the piano on this thing just sounds poundy and plingly, and not in a Monk way, either. Monk never got a piano to sound like that, and I'm not sure that Davis did either. In spite of all this rantiness, I second your recommendation.

John Broad Dame Judith Anderson Jim Reeves

Good to see it back, preordered. Thanks for the heads-up! Amazon calls it "completely, totally, unapologetically and insanely live" which is no doubt code for overflowing with bad taste, but I'm ok with that. I saw the band a few times during those years, and not once was there more bad taste than there was brilliance, and at least once the brilliance came from Wayne being obviously pissed either at or about Jaco. Wayne didn't bring a knife to a gunfight, he brought a freakin' atomicbeamlaserbomb.

I don't know if it's badly written or not...if the guy makes a bad throw back to the pitcher, runners can move, right? And that's really what this was, a bad throw back to the mound. Choo and his bat were both in the box and not subject to any kind of interference call, so it's a live ball. Maybe not a bad rule as much as it is probably the weirdest playing out of it ever? But credit Odor, paying attention, again, acting like he belongs there. Take a lesson, Elvis! Where I did get a little crosswise with Bannister, though, was when he questioned the slide at home. Taht was kind of reachy, and just...don't go there dude. #NEVEREVERQUIT d/n mean that kind of move, #NEVEREVER. But as far as the Odor play goes, yet another Knotty Problem Of Baseball, in loving memory of Nippy Jones.

And now on the radio, Reliant Energy offering free Elvis Andrus autographed baseball for signing up. Baaaaaaad timing. But, team far exceeded expectations this year, and is positioned to be that good all year next year. But this year, total gravy. I was listening to the game and thinking, wow, even if they do win this one, what happens next, there's no there there, ya' know. So, baseball justice. 2015 AL West Division champion Texas Rangers, no complaints, much appreciation. But Toronto, y'all need to learn how to bitch and moan w/o getting stupid about it. Odor paid attention. You don't bitch about a guy paying attention. You get fired up and win without throwing shit on the field and having police all over the place. Save that shit for when y'all get rid of the Queen, or something like that. In the meantime, just wait for baseball justice, for all that improbable shit to even out, if you don't believe in that, you're in the wrong game. Beltre forever, and if he shoots Elvis dead in front of the whole country, hey, I didn't see it, did you? He's already dead to me now, so what's the dif? He'll be back alive for ST, so let it happen. Meanwhile, Go Cubs, Go Astros or Royals. If Mets vs Jays in WS, Go Mets.