JSngry

Well then, I don't know. Might be time for some more hardcore Phil Woods fans to pick up this one.

Donn Clendenon The Donnn https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-DONNN/133405936820287 Donnnn http://www.bandmix.com/donnnn/

Ah, looks like there were two tapes edited from the one taping: https://books.google.com/books?id=8FwyY-6IveQC&pg=PA111&lpg=PA111&dq=Phil+Woods+Quartet+at+the+Maintenance+Shop&source=bl&ots=R1P6-qWZD6&sig=WaA-0wLu5qzQrOWZMXu7i_2GBTI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CEkQ6AEwCWoVChMIzoWM-5GxyAIVST4-Ch20dwNX#v=onepage&q=Phil Woods Quartet at the Maintenance Shop&f=false If I did it right, a quick bump against existing YT videos of other versions of the originals listed here leaves "A Little Piece" as the sole choice for the selection presented by the OP.

Trout's a serious badass, but he had this "aw shucks" thing going on in the outfield when he was a rookie, kinda "yeah, I'm the next Mickey Mantle, you know it, I know it, we all know it" that just bugged the dogpiss out of me. In an Angels uniform, it only got worse, of course, but even if it would have been a Ranger player...grrrrr...It would be like if you took the goofy out of Elvis and just left the cute. Ugh. Broadcasting thing is entirely subjective, of course, but the Angels guys just bug me in general, maybe it's a SoCal thing or something. Again, that they're Angles guys is just gravy on the BugMe Biscuit. Really, though, Angles/Rangers rivalry has roots going back pre-Division. They were the two expansion teams of 1961, one thrived, the other floundered. Kinda like the twin bothers found on the side of the road and adopted by the rich family in town, one earns favor, the other doesn't, bad blood just waiting to happen once the Bad Son gets it together. Bottom line - if you can't bring your irrational peeves, phobia, distrusts, and and outright hatred (and their counterparts in irrational positivisms) to the arena of sports fandom, then where can you bring them? I mean, isn't that what it's there for? We grew to hate Short here too, and it didn't take long. But that gave us Eddie Chiles, and lordhavemercy, you talk about "local flavor" that was equal parts fun and pain...that was Eddie Chiles. Broadcasters, though...the MLB AtBat app gives you, like, the ultimate transistor radio, and I find that there's this guy in Baltimore, Joe Angel, who has a voice and a cadence that is music to my ears, he really stands out as unique in the really good way. I've been known to listen to Rangers/Orioles games on AtBat just to hear Joe Angel for a couple of innings.

per http://www.worldcat.org/title/jazz-at-the-maintenance-shop-the-phil-woods-quartet/oclc/36723474 Change partners -- Body and soul -- The scene is clean -- Along came Betty -- How's your mama?

Narrative or not, nobody ever has any real idea of what's going to happen after that first pitch is thrown. I know a certain class of, shall we say, "speculative investors" who wish it were otherwise!

Dude, I remember when the Royals were a GREAT team, and one of my favorites. One of my best buddies in college was from Overland Park, and the ritual of Royals/Yankees ALCS was a part of my life in those years. I liked the Yankees then, watching the pain was kinda weird, but when the Royals finally came out on top, I found myself glad that the Yankees had gone down. And then the tide began to turn, once and for all. Sure, the game is always the thing, and a good game is a good game, no matter what, I'll take any kind of a good game. But with sports, I'm kinda like, these are pros, it should be SOME kind of a good games nearly always, and my time is my time, my money is my money, etc, so what's gonna make me WANT to invest my time and money (and emotion) into anybody's game, because hell, EVERYBODY'S got a game for you, you can get a good game 24/7 these days, live, recorded, whatever. And I'm not the type of guy who "needs" sports in his life, that's what music does for me. But I do really enjoy sports if there's enough of a personal attraction to get me hooked. Fo me, that's baseball, the only sport I can sit down in front of and in less that...90 seconds get totally sucked into. Now, if the Rangers played the Padres X number of times EVERY year, home and away, then, yeah, there would be some back story developed, and something I would feel like following as part of the bigger, ongoing story. but right now, they just feel like exhibition games. We're not playing them again for, what, another 3 years? So...yaaaaaawn. They still feel like exhibition games more or less, even though they count in the standings, and that's where my personal disconnect come in. MLB TV helps, I mean, you can pretty much follow every team every day in more or less real time during all the games, if you have the time and interest in that. I wish (maybe) that I do, but I so do not. I've tried, too, it was fun, but not sustainable. It's a looooong season!

Dude - I can tell you about the Angels stadium, how that bigass "A" behind home plate looks like something that somebody painted on the side of a shed out in the country somewhere. I can tell you haw the Angels announcers get under my skin in this really creepy way.. I can tell you how their Wally World outfield park and how Mike Trout robs a hit it makes him look like some freak superhero and how when he gives that "aw shucks" throw in on a routine fly (which he doesn't do as much these days?) it makes him look like some punkassbitch you just love to hate. I can tell you how I went to see the DFW Spurs (AA Texas League) play an Angels farm team in old turnpike Stadium, which a few years later was expanded into Arlington Stadium, home of the Texas Rangers, and how at that game, I, a 100% asshole of a kid, relentlessly taunted a catcher names Tom Egan whose baseball cards I had of him as an Angel, and hey, Tom Egan, you're not on the Angles NOW are ya! HAHAHAHA. I can tell you how the Rangers & Angels both came into the American league as expansion teams (we were the "new" Washington Senators then) in 1961 and how the Angels became a good team pretty damn quickly whereas the Senators were even worse than the team whose name they took over, but they had characters such as Frank Howard, Ed Brinkman, both of whom came over as Rangers ,iirc. But the Angels had already had Jim Fregosi, Dean Chance, Bo Belinski (HA), and some other names I can't recall, and they had established themselves as a legitimate pro team, something that eluded us here until, really, the Bobby Valentine years (late 1980s) , and REALLY really until the Johnny Oates years (late 1990s). In th interim, the Angels had produced so good teams and some GREAT players. To this day, there's a pocket of condescension towards the Rangers by "deep" angels fans, and there is definitely an air of Fuck The Angels amongst the same type of Rangers fans. And a guy named RevHaloFan who keeps (or kept?) the Angels Halos Heaven SB Nation Blog does his damndest to make sure that those traditions are carried forth. The Angels have won just one WS, we have won just none, and those type of Angels fans love to crow about how "Flags fly forever" every time we beat them out of a division title or playoff spot, or damn near anything. So yeah, that gets pretty local, built up over time and a sustained, shared history. The first thing that comes to mind about the Padres is Preston Gomez and then Steve Garvey, Ozzie Smith, Heath Bell, and I guess they play in a pitcher-friendly park now, couldn't even tell you what it looked like except that the old Polo Grounds come to mind for some reason.. And of course Tony Gwynn. the GREAT Tony Gwynn, RIP. But past that, not too much.

Fan of the DH here. I went over to that dark side a loooong time ago. Inter-league play is something I'd love to see, but only if it's a fully integrated concept. As it is now, you get these weird windows where you're playing teams that you know you've seen before, and that you will see again, and then, hey what's this? Why, we have an exchange student visiting! and you know how it is with exchange students, it's fun, it's cool, y'all tease each other, you learn a few of each other's words, get into as much safe trouble as you can, and yeah, you make "a friend that will last a lifetime", but shit, you both know that this is all gonna be over shortly, after which time you both going home to tend to your real business. That's what interleague play as it is now structured is - perioodic visits from exchange students. REAL interleague play would mean that you're going to a real school, the same school. with these people, and that they're ALL gonna come to your campus, you're ALL gonna go to theirs, and the fact that the exchange student aced all the history tests and flunked all the English tests will no longer be cause for momentary frustration/amusement. Teacher's gonna put the exchange student's grades into the pool to figure the curve? WTF?OHHELLNO!!!!! It's gonna take some rebooting, for sure. But I say it'll make more sense when it happens. There won't be any more exchange students coming over to teach you what flerpenerfin means, no, you gonna need to know that, because it WILL be on the final, everybody's final.

Well, this is where it gets into possible Culture Punching...this particular gig was all about fund-raising, and this group obviously draws a crowd, and this was obviously a "social event" was well as a musical one. When you get into that world, the whole notion of "classical music as class weapon" that some of our UK posters reference has a much clearer face on it than it does at other events..you see a lot of people who give off an air (perhaps entirely imagined on my part, but...probably not, from my experience) of being of a "type" who are delighted, comforted, and made to feel justified by by this kind of self-fulfilling notion of "perfection", and "quality". It's the they are great=we are here with them=we are great equation one of its oldest and finest manifestations. Whereas, I've been to more than just a few classical concerts where the music was pretty damn edgy, even when on repertoire of an older vintage. I heard Alisa Weilerstein play some Bach that had me sitting on the edge of my seat with my eyes and ears WIDE open, it had that kind of immediacy going on, like, by god, this needs to be happening now, both for her and for me. And string quartets, heard the Tackas quartet play a varied program, and each piece was dealt with on its own merits. It wasn't like they were going to play everything to be one kind of "perfect", they confronted the music head-on to bring what IT needed, not what THEY needed. Or looked at antother way, they gave of themselves to make the music come alive, they did not take from the music to make them seem alive. And of course, the music paid them back in kind, but those are different propositions going in, eh? And see, that's where I got off from classical music for a long time, this notion that there was one way to play it, no room for real passion or spontaneity, that is was all "acting" to one degree or another, all that. And there is that school, but....there is another world that is a lot more real-time about the music, and they're out there performing and in their own tuxedoed/formal-weared way are pretty much raising hell, not by doing mike-drops or anything (HA!) but by just showing up and bringing music to life, not Disney-Animatronic life, but full, bloodflowingdeepbreathing LIFE, you know? REAL people summoning spirits through sound, that type of thing. There's any audience that is not comforted by that, they enjoy seeing the ghosts put on display so they gaze on them with a steady pulse, and play the "that's what I am a part of" game. Me, I like to leave with more than I came with, be it excitement, serenity, clarity, questions, whatever. I'm not going to say which one is "right", because if it works for you, it works for you. I will say that at this point, I know what I don't like a lot more clearly than I know what I do like, and what I don't like is getting Culture Punched.

I don't feel particularly local when the Rangers play the Padres and it's not, like, a spring training game. Why we playing these clowns? They're not if our league, for damn sure not in our division. We doing this for charity, like for the Shriner or somebody, right? They're gonna play a few innings and then, what, Tommy :Lasrda's gonna come out and say a few good words about the RBI program, and then they play a few more innings, and if it's a tie, hey, ok, we gotta get ready for the real game tomorrow, the one against the Twins, but on the way out, you'll have an opportunity to speak to the players, get autographs, and make contributions. Oh, whaaaa..we're playing the Padres, and it COUNTS? Like, in the STANDINGS? WTF? Fuck that, I'll go over to Six Flags then, see if I can get me a piece of that wrongful death money.

I don't know, man, it means what it says, that pretty soon gay dogs will be playing baseball and people will be getting married by lotto tickets.

Astros comin' to play, y'all. Royals, Astros, Jays, Rangers, not a team in this set that I've ever not liked. Go Rangers! #NeverEverQuit of course, but it should be all good no mater what happens.

The Thumper Thumper Tom Thump

I knew "Down Here On The Ground" only as an isntrumetnal for a long time before finding out that it had lyrics, never mind lyrics by Gale Garnett...who knew? I was like that with "Sack Full Of Dreams" too, only knew it from Gene Ammons' epic version for the longest, then heard Donny Hathaway's version, and finally found out about Grady Tate's, which made sense, because that's a Gary McFarland song & Grady Tate recorded it as produced by Gary McFarland. But ti took me years, decades, to find out about that. Why is discovery such a non-linear process, anyway? Funny thing, I guess, Jug's version is still my favorite, but now, knowing the other vocal versions, I can dig it so much more than when it existed in a vacuum. And on any given minute, I'll turn to Donny's. That cat was...special. Seems trite to say, but, really, what else can you say about Donny Hathaway? "Bridges of steel and love"....wow. Goofy as hell, but wow, what an image of a fully reconciled opposite.

Neither Gene nor Loel were not for dabblers, each in their own way. Gene's in Cooperstown now, right? Loel lives on only in our memories, but DAMN, what crazyass memories they be. "PEPPY-TONE!!!!" And any single win could be the start of a World Series run, fans! I was a kid, and believe me, I halfway believed that to be true, in the part of my brain that had no interest in reality, real or potential. Tell me how that in ANY way is normal or healthy. But, you know, who cares, it was real at the time! My mom threw out hardly any of my baseball stuff, so I can't really be angry about this, but...remember when Merrill-Lynch began their "Merrill-Lynch is bullish on America" campaign, the commercial with a herd of bulls stampeding? Well, that year, the Astros had a promo poster (a bigass cardboard one) with a picture of the Astros running like that herd, with a replica font Loel Passe Is Bullish On The Astros all the way across it. We just happened to be in Houston on the day of that promo, totally random luck, but good go, I LMAO-ed for YEARS after that. It was one of those things where if you didn't get it, you really didn't get it, but if you did... Mom threw that one out, god rest her soul, and I've yet to find it reprinted on the net. If you happen to see it anywhere, in any form, please take a picture and post it here. Loel pretty much stayed hot: http://www.astrosdaily.com/audio/63bateman.mp3 http://www.astrosdaily.com/audio/67wynnhr.mp3 http://www.astrosdaily.com/audio/70wynn.mp3 http://www.astrosdaily.com/audio/72ccitphr.mp3 See-Sar suh-Dayna...an inside-the-park home run for The Superstar of the future!" Gene getting hot, he could do it when he felt it: http://www.astrosdaily.com/audio/72griffin.mp3

Yeah, I did the homework about the band when they started soliciting participation for the pre- and post-concert events. Happy to sense that the "blandness" that I felt was not necessarily entirely my fault. Sounds like this might have been one of those gigs where you need the money the band brings with it, so that's the band you hire. I will say this, on a positive note - the bassoonist (Lawrence O'Donnell) and the clarinetist (Timothy Orpen) were both young-ish and played with what seemed to be a lot of attempted verve. Not idea what that scene is like, maybe this is the gig for the rest of your life, but if I saw them in a different band and/or a different program, I would gladly give it a shot. The other folks, maybe not so much. Larry, who would you call on for the Schubert? Like I said, I heard interesting music not being particularly interesting. Different interpretations seriously being sought. Scott, if you're interested, here's a possible chance to play contrast and compare for maybe not a whole lot of money. You can get many great used classical CDs for almost literally next to nothing on Amazon.

Dude, you were not around for the whole AFL-NFL thing, and just how much of an earthquake, like, civilization-destroying earthquake the whole merger thing was for some people. I tell you - there were early rumors that the Cowboys were going to the AFL (iirc, the Colts went in their place?), and there were people, grownass men, mind you, who were holding back tears about that happening. And I'm still not sure when the whole interconference play thing started. Not sure if it was right away or not. But your example of the New England/Philly thing that one year, hey NFC/AFC, that's how that happened, that's the only way that happened. Justice be damned, gotta maintain those borders at all cost. Basketball seems to absorb all this stuff without missing a beat. NBA/ABA merger went off pretty happily, iirc. Must have something to do with the ball almost always being in motion. either that or Dr. J. What I otherwise distrust about these trends is not the broadening of the competition, that's a wonderful thing, actually, but how it is, as I see it, coming at the expense of a real sense of "local" to the process. I think we as people like to have "our team" represent "us" in some sense, and then to have "us" "evaluated" on what is essentially a level playing field. To the sense that interleague scheduling is arbitrary rather than uniform, it feels to me like the teams are becoming less "local guys" and more and more mercenaries who wear our uniform. We, in turn, are increasingly being asked to consume a product rather than invest in it. Now yeah, I can hear everybody, myself included, hollering, well hell, free agency did that decades ago, why are you just now getting crotchety about it? Fair question, and the only fair answer is that that's where my line is. Nothing more complicated than that. We all got our lines, that's where mine is. I'm a lot more ok personally with labor having the right to determine its own destiny than I am with being sold on the notion that a "championship" is basically just hitting the lottery. The more people who buy lottery tickets, the lower your odds of winning are, but when it's just you and a few other people, your odds may be higher, but the sweating in awaiting the outcome seems more justified, you know, I got a 1-1,000,000 chance of winning this vs i got a 1-10 chance of winning this, or hell, i got a 50% chance of winning this, i know which set of odds I'm gonna be more personally invested in. And that's why I don't play the lottery. Ever. Never. But you wanna play coin toss with a few quarters and try to make Dollar Menu Money, hey, that I'm good for. but again, that's esthetics. Art vs Commerce, never will be decided once and for all. I'm actually in favor of full interleague play (which would then be inter-what, exactly? The NFL stayed the NFL, is MLB gonna have to change to the MLBL?), and maybe this period is a period of transition towards that. I hope it is. Just keep in mind (and this is jsut between us, ok?), that in every corner of the universes known and unknown, there are sensors that listen 24/7/365-6 in 360 Surroundsound for the sound of anybody - anybody - saying "it doesn't matter, really". As soon as that happens, flashing lights, screaming bells, and honking whistles all proclaining OPPORTUNITY go off in two distinct offices - one, The Office Of Giving You What You Think You Want At A Price You May Not Want To Pay Right Now, the other, The Office Of What You May Not Really Want But Are Willing To Take Right Now Because The Price Is REALLY Attractive. Both offices hope to have representatives come to your door shortly. Ask for positive ID when they do!

Thanks, soulpope, I'll check that one out. Stefan - excuse my ignorance, but what is this "naive Vivaldi" thing? that sounds...interesting. Scott - Yes, "instructions" = notes on page. Not a proper technical term. For everything going forth, please understand that "classical" music is not my "native tongue". Although i received 4 years of pretty damn good instruction, I didn't always welcome it at the level that it was offered, my interests and passions were elsewhere. But i paid enough attention to have retained the basics, and really, at some level, music is music, period. But there are people on this board who know a helluva lot more - infinitely more - about the breadth and depth of this tradition than I do. I hope i don't spread any outright misconceptions in what is to follow, but consider it a very broad understading, the tippiest tip of the iceberg. The biggest room for interpretation is in the phrasing, which involves tempo, and beyond that, pulse. Tempos within a phrase are not necessarily a rigid, metronomic steady beat. Also, tempos cover a certain range of metronome markings, not an exactly specific one, unless specifically indicated. Again, lots of room for interpretation, including improvisation. As with any kind of speed limit, some people take those things as suggestions instead of requirements.. The way a solo or group gets through any one phrase can have more variation than you might expect, which then carries out into things like transitions, variations, all the written elements. Even if two groups start and begin a phrase in the same points in time, what happens to time in between may not be identical. Same thing with dynamics, even when there's a set point for certain moments, how you get in and out of it has room for interpretation. As to whether or not it becomes improvised music when you interpret it, yes, actually, i think it does. Not wholly imporivsed, obviosuly, but definitly not "palying by numbers", exectuion for the sake of execution, no. And actually, it works to incredibly exciting effect when it happens in an orchestral setting. We also subscribed to the DSO this year (lousy seats from a visual standpoint, but perfectly good sonically), and we heard them do Mahler Symphony 1 this past weekend. The one good thing about our seats is that we can see the conductor in profile, or, at times, full on, and there were time when there was this really intense "come with me, now" thing going on, not unlike the night i got to sit behind Betty Carter and see those looks she would flash to the rhythm section as she went along. Some of a conductor's "posturing" is for show, no doubt, but not all of it, perhaps not even most of it (although Bernstein...still wonder about that with him). You hear stories about "temperamental conductors" and it's often about overall personality, but Furtwangler was famous for really, really, improvising with tempos on the stand, right in the middle of a gig. It's a different dynamic than jazz, obviously, but it's still music, still a human endeavor. "Perfection" means different things to different people, so consider this - if there was one "perfect" way to play anything, then you would be able to replicate it, and then have overlapping recordings of different performances that, other than the recording quality itself, would be perfectly synced up all the way through. I don't know that such a dynamic exists in the realm of "references recordings", so hey. Although that type of robotic replicability does seem to be the goal of any number of individuals (and not just in classical music, but in all music, hell, in life in general), especially at the student level), the goal of "perfection" is to expand the options, not limit them. And if that seems to be a contradictory notion, perhaps it is. that's why to me, there's no such thing as an absolute "perfection" in music, but there are any number of perfect outcomes. The whole "know the rules so you can break them" thing, an informed opinion about a piece, equal emphasis on "informed" and "opinion". Chuck has noted here before that Toscannini's tempos got faster as he got older, and Solti's got slower. There are cases (don't ask me to recall anything specific at this moment, please!) where a later Solti piece goes on, like, 5-6 minutes longer than an earlier performance of the same piece. These are still wind and percussion instruments (and human voices, as the case may be), so when you alter the duration of note values to that extent, there is of necessity an alteration of what the players have to do to make that happen and still sound "right". It not a digital thing where you can slow the tempo down and keep everything else identical, there are real time performance implications, very real, very real time. Just as in jazz, lots of people can play slow, but playing Shirley Horn slow are two totally different considerations. So yeah, lots of room for things to happen every time out. The program we saw presented a string quintet for the Mozart, a quintet of violin, clarinet, bassoon, french horn, and bass for the Strauss, and the combined ensemble for the Schubert. You'd think that the varied instrumentation between pieces would create its won contrast, but if it did, it did not occur in a manner which i could meaningfully discern. Then again, maybe it was me. Or maybe it was nobody,

Would the outcome have looked any different if your iTunes was on a not particularly personalized cloud drive instead of a more personalized physical one? Probably not, right? Just curious, in the context of how software in general seems to be evolving away from "owning" into just "using'...it's interesting...

"Wiggle room" = interpretation, and there are divided schools of though about that, to put it mildly. Not just from a performing, but from a listening standpoint. Comparisons...compare the Bartok String Quartets as performed by the Emerson Quartet to those of the Julliard or the Tackas Quartets. Or get that really cheap Sony Rite of Spring box with 10 different versions recorded between 1929 & 1988, including two conducted by Stravinsky himself. It's awesome (truly awesome, not today's "hey, you show up for work every day, you're AWESOME" type awesome) music with quantifiable, and I would think often enough audible differences. Of course, this is not free improvisation, so, yeah, more or less the same "instructions" every time out. But past that, there is a lot of room for interpretation, at times on the spur of the moment, once or twice I've heard a group play and it was obvious that there was something going on that was very much "in the moment", and that's as exhilarating in composed music as it is improvised. A lot more than I would have appreciated until I started really paying attention, which has just been in the last year or two. And that's what was missing from (or perhaps more accurately, what I did not get out of) last night's gig, that sense of "in the moment", that this had to happen right now, and by god, what a privilege it was to be there when it did! Thanks for that perspective. I'm not big on Mozart in general, just because, but I did appreciate their, as you call it, "precise view". @soulpope (and others) - who's a good/preferred "go-to" for the Schubert? I heard a really wonderful composition going on, just could not engage with the performance. Would love to meet again under better circumstances, so to speak.

What the real pisser was...not that the music was "too perfect", i mean, hell, there is no such thing, really. It was the notion that the music could/should be "perfect", like perfection is an attainable goal with one end result. And that might be true, but if it is, once it's been achieved, why keep trying? Because you need the money? I told Brenda on the way home, I would feel horribly wrong taking a young musician to hear music like this and telling them not to aspire to this. But i would feel just as bad telling them to aspire to it.

And there was. After some level though, I feel that that's a choice with broader implications, and I felt like I was being asked to participate in a choice that I did not endorse. Guess we could have gotten up and left, but that would have been a bit boorish.