JSngry

It was all the rage at the time.

The best background vocals in that era drove the thing like a sax section in the big band days..all the lead vocal had to do was ride that pad and fly! (hello The Ravens!). "In The Still Of The Night", sure, you got a song there, but is it really necessary? Perhaps not! What gets me about "Come Softly To Me" is the part where the women hit those sforzando notes, the only really "loud" thing on the record...it's like a sudden gasp that has to be quieted, because, you know, somebody might hear. SO real. Looking at these guys in photos and on the Bandstand video, I have no idea if they really knew what they were doing, much less the extent to which they were doing it, but they did it, for real. and if it really was as naive as that they had no idea, that makes it even more better. Just innocence, instinct and imaginatio. Think about that, Rock AND Roll Hall OF Fame, innocence, instinct and imagination.

This may or may not have been incorporated into Cold Mountain, Higdon's first opera, which recently made its debut in Santa Fe. Excepts of that performance can be heard here: http://blogs.wfmt.com/relevanttones/2015/10/09/live-from-the-santa-fe-opera-festival/

Pacific Jazz DID produce LPs in what I guess you'd call "large numbers", whatever that means. Mulligan/Baker together and then Mulligan and Baker separately were really popular. the Bud Shank/Lauriendo Almeida things were 10" at first, on and on. Pacific Jazz 10" LPs of the more popular items are not extraordinarily impossible to find, although they do tend to be pricey if they're in any kind of "carefully owned" condition. Mercury, with Granz and without him, albumed early and often. And yet also in Chicago, yeah, ChessCheckerAristocratParrot...going for the single Same thing with Brubeck and Fantasy, those were 10" albums (mostly) and they sold well. I've seen some, but they're all trashed. I do have a copy of Oberlin, though, on 10". Green vinyl, no jacket, totally garage sale item, literally. Art Pepper, I don't know about, but In Pacific Jazz and Fantasy you had two modern jazz labels who were definitely producing product for popular consumption. It seems like the California labels were actually ahead of their East Coast counterparts in this regard. Prestige seemed to be doing pretty well, too. Mercury/Emarcy too, that was an indie label too, remember. Don't know if Emarcy was designed to fill any gaps left by Norman Granz going solo, but they put out a lot of stuff. I have Art Blake & Joe Gordon on Emarcy 10" LPs. Not sure if the first Raoch/Brown thing was originally a 10" or a 12" though. Let's not forget about the "speed war", the record album equivalent of VHS-vs-Betamax, Columbia LP vs RCA 45 EPs. I took a while for the marketplace to come to their senses and decide on LP, but I could see all the entrepreneurial WC Jazz lables not really giving a flip. I know there were some early Pacific Jazz 78s, as well as EPs well into the mid(?) 1950s, but West Coast Jazz on the whole seems to have been a LP-centric medium, if not from the beginning, then fairly early on, 10", then 12". Aware of plenty of WCJ albums, not very many (none, really, but that's just what I know about) 78 albums. Speed wars...why would you plan for an "album" that might have to be released as both 33 1/3 AND 45? I have a Serge Challof Capitol EP, and it's got two songs on one side, and a longer one on the second. Even if you had a full 15-20 minute jam at the ready, that's gonna be a little bit too much breaking up for 45 (at least back then), you might as well do 12" 78s, although who the hell was still doing THAT? So as far as planning, I think you ask yourself, what's going to be the easiest to cross-platform, and that might be why so many of the earlier 10" LPs had shorter cuts, not so much that they were still thinking in terms of singles as they were flexibility of release. Oh, GNP, they did a good number of 10" releases too. and on the East Coast, Bethlehem, although from what I know of that label's chronology, it sure seems like they were right on the cusp of the 10'-12" shift. Nocturne, that stuff that's "legendary" now, all of it 10" LPs, I think. What happened to the product, though, that's the question. I think it's probably easier to pursue 78s than it is 10" LPs. 45 EPs, intact, difficult too, especially if they were released in a box rather than as individual items. Seems like once the 10" stuff got ported over to 12", people just threw that 10" stuff out or something (and with good reason, who wants a "part one" and a "part two" of an album when you can just have it all on one record? Hello instant obsolescence).. Maybe there was a government recall, who knows? And I don't think it's a question of production #s either. Mulligan, Baker, Chico Hamilton, those guys were selling in good numbers. There was product available. But that speed war shit, all i can see is the aftermath as far as what survived, and that shit looks to have been one of the more insane and self-retarding things the record business ever did in the 20th century. Gotta say, though, if you want to look at the history of the jazz 10" LP and not look at the West Coast labels, you're not going to get at too much more than it seems you already know. But please lordjesus help me understand what this look was intended as, other than a possible Halloween present? bottom line, market drives product, right? The market for "West Coast Jazz" seems to have enjoyed the 10" LP earlier and more readily than did the market for "East Coast Jazz", and if Chicago-based Mercury is any indication, that might have been more a matter of Prestige always looking to get the hit jazz singles, Blue Note in kinda of an early 50s A&R slump (although, Gil Melle..and didn't they nearly go broke deciding to finally port over to 12", like geez, we just got done doing 10" and now THIS?), and focusing on regrouping 78s , and Savoy just being Savoy, Herman Lubinsky. what, ME work? It still surprises me, though, how much jazz Atlantic did in the early 1950s, some of it leased, some of it not, but...still kind of a wild card, that whole period seems to be, it's like, oh, that's over, let's forget about it, and they pretty much did. But again, East Coast market a different dynamic seems to have been in force. Consider patterns of consumption, too. Some demographic groups were probably more interested in hearing the same songs at home that they heard on the jukeboxes, while otehrs might have preferred sitting down in fromt of the record player and checking out an entire album.

I do appreciate the blatant disregard for avoiding the shin-revealing socktop line.

Neat pictures, anyway.

Pacific Jazz was issuing 10" LPs regularly. As was Debut, and, I think, Fantasy, especially of ther live Brubeck recordings. Here's a very nice compilation of 10" jazz covers:http://www.gokudo.co.jp/Record/10inRec/index.htm More than one page, click the "Next" links at the bottom of each page to move on. The first generation Prestige 10" covers are like something from a prehistoric world.

I only ask after stumbling across this clip, that is so ALMOST perfect..Ronettes recast as Marvelettes, damn, more rehearsal, maybe, and yeah, damn... But anyway, thinking about the possibility of this being either Carol Kaye on bass is not without its rewards.;..

I always thought that it was Little Richard who got the kids horny, but The Fleetwoods who best captured what they hoped it would be like once they actually got around to doing it. Ok, other than "Come Softly To Me", ehhhh...but that one record has -still has - more pure sexlove mojo than all cockrockers' lifetimes combines. It's a wave of continuous opening and closing in and out between male and female, come softly to me, hear what I'm saying, please hold me all through the night, and at the end, no words, just that sound...cosmically perfect tender lovesex. If nothing else, put the record in, not the group. But damn rock and roll, all the people that made babies with that record in their minds and all the babies that THOSE babies made have pretty much made your business possible, so...time to recognize, that's all I'm saying. Time to recognize.

I kinda feel that way about The Fleetwoods.

Bunk Gardner Buzz Gardner Jennifer Garner

Look out for falling houses.

I can recall ca. 1965-6 reading articles in places like Sport Magazine (RIP) explaining why Roberto Clemente wasn't better known than he was, and it seems like they always came down to A) he wasn't particularly "media-friendly" (meaning that he didn't really suck up to writers or play Chico Escuela) and that B) he played in Pittsburgh instead of a "major city", which in turn meant that he didn't get major media coverage like the guys in NY & LA did. For that matter, did hte Angels ever get the visibility of the Giants & Dodgers in the early days, and how much of that was due to the folks back east missing them some Willie & some Duke? The legacy of pre-cable/pre--internet life...Roberto Clemente did not have a Twitter account. MLB as a brand did not exist, Sporting News was actually timely news, and who the hell was the "national writer" in Pittsburgh, anyway? "...a home run they'll be talking about in Pittsburgh for years and years..even FORVER" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhkOV9DcjdU

Wild dramathought here - any word floating out about Utley getting death threats in NYC? Just wondering how scared MLB is of what kind of "controversy" at Citifield to hand out such a...situational suspension. Imo, football will be king in Texas becuase of the heritage created by high school and college being the only game in town for a whole helluva lot of generations. I can remember a time when the right SWC matchup could generate more frenzy than anything NFL. Plus, you know, college athletics so often end up being these little richdick cartels that are all about their owners dickswinging against each other, And really, let's face, if you're in or around someplace like Lubbock and it's time for sports, what the hell else ARE you going to do? And if you're a rich guy who wants to whip that moneydick around, what are you gonna do, go to St. Louis and hang out with the Buschses? No, you're gonna invest locally and then branch out from there. That, for the longest, meant football, and especially SWC football. I know the percentages, but this is where things get dicey for the Rangers, I think, the whole streaky offense/schizo starter thing. Derek Holland tomorrow, the guy's either going to be a freaking stud or a total flop, and the thing is, at this point in time, neither would be a surprise. Can't start Colby b/c he gives up the long ball, get by on Beltre-like guts and run support, and, really, too much tempting of too much fate. So Holland it will be, good lord, Rangers, couldn't all this have waited until NEXT year? A loss tomorrow, and then you go back to Toronto, narrative in full force, baseball loves it some narrative (as do I, but mine are more about personal burns than Ken Burns), but bottom line is that the Jays are the better team over the long haul, and I like to see that play out right, if only because right now, baseball not looking so good as far as that whole "in the end it all makes sense" thing, Joe Torre in Arlington tonight, must've needed a day at Six Flags to get his head right. But dude, all them coasters not good for the equilibrium or the backbone, trust me, I know. Although if it doesn't work out that way and the Rangers do win, oh well!

van Zweden did not get out of his band what Horenstein did his, but I have the feeling that he wasn't trying to. What he did get was nice enough, maybe a bit lacking in "edge" but compensated enough for with a really good feel for transition passages, this group is really playing together these days, looking forward to a whole season's worth. Recordings might bore me, but live shows, where it's totally a Dolphy-an "and then it's gone" thing, not bad at all, although...is an orchestra prone to coasting on a day game following a night game? No charge or hassle for swapping our Saturday night seats for much better seats today in the same price category, and if you want to get better seats on any night, your price differential is based on subscriber, not list, price. I'm looking ahead already, and the options are many... Benjamin Beilman was a sub for Midori, who's apparently under doctor's orders not to travel, and, geez, the kid's only 25, and he's going for it right now. Perhaps lacking a bit of "star power" in his gestures, but you know me, that's not what I'm there for, and I think he played his ass off. Definitely got a higher ceiling, sure, but I dug him. My first time knowingly hearing the Sibelius piece, but hasn't that opening of the 3rd movement been adapted for Swing Era at some point? Sure sounded familiar, and for a few bars, the violin/tympani thing put me in mind of Krupa/Carnegie Hall Swingx3, and I was like, oh geez, are these feelings appropriate? and no, probably not, but personal chronology gonna do what personal chronology do. I read where the DSO is making a "European Tour"in April 2016, and...how/why is that happening? Does Europe (whatever that means) need to hear the DSO? I mean, it's pretty much what we got here, and, yeah, they're moving ahead nicely, fun to be around that, but...Or is this some kind of conductor-pimping? I have NO idea what the business side of this type of thing looks, like, but...do, say, Russian bluegrass bands tour Kentucky and West Virginia? And if so, again, how? Why? Oh well, show business! One more sweet deal about subscribing - apparently the Brucker is a "bonus" concert for subscribers, meaning that it's not included in your 14 concert package, but you can get ANY available ticket for just $10.00. We got primo seats that list at significantly more than that for ten each, because, as the phone rep said, "you're a subscriber, we need for y'all to stay happy". I wanted to say, hey lady, I'm eating off your dollar menu, not sure if that qualifies me as a "regular customer", but then again, hell, I AM a subscriber, it's not like y'all GAVE me this shit, right? So, yeah, good attitude, DSO, and points scored for the whole "accessibility" PR thing. I guess that endowment shit only goes so far. So I would say, if you live in an area that has a group you think you might enjoy hearing on a regular-ish basis, ask about more than just ticket price. DSO be perk-ing their asses off in that regard. Figuring in free parking, we're getting guaranteed seats that would at face value, for two, cost about 60 bucks for less than half of that, 14 + change per ticket + 10 bucks of free parking, plus incredibly user-friendly seat-shifting ability. Now, if I can just talk my wife into going to an opera, just one, just once...I think I'm ready, but not ready enough to go solo. Yet.

Word.

Being a Rangers fan the last few years means that the phrase "just one _____ away" is at least as much threat as comfort.. Neal, your logic seems sound to me "not out" does not necessarily equate to "safe"...it's not unheard of for a runner to cross the plate without actually touching it, the umpire gives no safe signal, a catcher notices, then scrambles to tag the runner before he gets too far gone, and then up comes the ump's thumb. The suspension seems like a half-assed attempt to admit to a blown call without actually admitting to it. And just two games, Utley free to resume play if the series goes back to L.A., what is this some kind of baseball Witness Protection Program? And the notion that the odds of sports fans in Texas' two biggest cities being more invested in baseball than in football on a Sunday where the NFL season is fully underway are at least 50/50 defies any type of physics, known or unknown.

So, this is essentially a release of the one concert, correct? Or what else?

The interference rules (at least the ones stated above) don't seem to deal with the neighborhood play explicitly, they deal with the runner's intent in trying to break up a double play. The causative action that activates the rules are those of the runner, not of the fielder. Well, are we to assume then that anything that is not a neighborhood play ceases to be an attempt at a double play? That seems absurd, hell, that IS absurd, but even If so, isn't there a rule against some psycho thugging you just because you're there? I think there might be? and still, this, because it's relevant here and it will surely be relevant again - is the petition for review one meant to address one single issue, or to review all the elements of the play in its entirety and then make everything right? I would really think it's the former, because on the missed-base thing, nobody's gonna call that for you, you have to ask for it and then see what happens. And if that is a case - is there not an incumbency for the allowability of a legitimate counter-appeal on the part of, in this case, the Mets, to address a different element of the play. Yes, the runner should be called safe if the point is that the second-baseman failed to have is foot on the bag, but does it therefore follow that there was also no interference by the runner, and if that indeed does not follow, can we get a review of and decision on that? Or, like balls and strikes, is runner interference something that does not qualify for a replay challenge? It either is or it isn't, right? And why does it look like the deeper this goes, the more interpretational it all becomes, and why does it feel like that is exposing some pretty basic logistical/workflow failures/laziness in the way this whole thing was set up? Did they REALLY think that it was going to be just about fair/foul calls, fan interference, and missed/made tags, obvious fuck-ups easily made right? Seriously, talk about "human element", nothing is more human than the desire to make something that didn't go your way the first time do so the second without actually having to do it again. It's starting to look like MLB's replay system is a can of worms that got opened at the bait shop, not on the lake with hooks at the ready.

One more question, since I really don't yet know the finer points of the MLB replay protocols... I'm assuming that the safe call on Utley was based soley on the Dodgers' contesting whether or not Tejada actually touched the base for the force, and the call was made strictly within those parameters. Apart from the appeal play at second, do the Mets not have a parallel challenge on the batter being called safe at first in what was a pretty clear case of runner interference? Or is runner interference not a reviewable situation?

Hypothetical scenario - batter hits home run that is just barely fair, quite iffy. Umps call it an HR on the field, runner trots around the bases, HR immediately goes into review and the call is upheld. But wait - the 3B noticed that the batter kinda skipped over the base on his way home - can an appeal play then be made that overturns the decision of HR because ball was fair? Does a replay decision essentially (and officially) "seal" an entire play, or just the element of that play that was challenged? This was one of my favorite books as a kid, so, believe me, these type of questions need to be asked and answered by citing written rules now that replay is a reality. Because before then, there was a definitive answer for damn near every scenario.

This afternoon: Jaap van Zweden conducts Benjamin Beilman, violin SIBELIUS Violin Concerto BRAHMS Symphony No. 1 I've yet to hear anybody play the opening of the Brahms the way that Horenstein did, Horenstein pulled all kinds of darkness and dissonance out of it. Everybody else I've heard, not so much. Here's to hope for today! Thursday evening: Jaap van Zweden conducts BRUCKNER Symphony No. 5 My first live Bruckner, looking forward to it.

http://espn.go.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/64132/the-slide-that-ruined-everybodys-night-except-the-dodgers

Also, thank to a poster on Lonestar Ball for pointing this out: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/04/sports/baseball/safety-sometimes-prevails-over-accuracy-on-the-first-out-of-a-double-play.html?_r=0 Looking at the replay, admittedly not obsessively, but more than once, it is still unclear to me whether or not Utley followed this rule. It's one thing for the replay to go one way. It's another thing to preemptively disallow the Mets an appeal play, that is some pea-brained shit. At best... Now, if Terry Collins just took the first explanation he got and didn't push ahead to see what happened, that's his bad. Do we know how that all went down? Either way, the lack of an appeal play, whether enforced or accepted without pursuit, is unacceptable. Watching some more, an not seeing even a pretend effort by Utley to touch any kind of dirt before or even while going into Tejada. Rule clearly violated in both spirit and letter. Fuck The Dodgers. I was already softly leaning that way, have been since Tommy Lasorda, really, but ok, be that way, then.