Big Wheel

Well, this is fun. Some asshole did indeed rip off my SSN and seems to have filed a return with it to defraud the IRS out of a refund. Unexpectedly on this week's agenda: call 1) the IRS ID theft group 2) call the FTC 3) call the SSA 4) call the credit bureaus 5) round up copies of my birth certificate and other important ID documents to file with my return. Goddamn it.

My report was written 3 days before the Union Square store closed, I think. Maybe 4. Selection by that point was already miserable - if you weren't a Matt Wilson completist there was absolutely no music worth buying. The book sections were almost entirely bombed out. I actually recommended that an artist friend check out the cheap fixtures to see if anything was worth salvaging for an art project. They were selling everything except the carpet and the paint off the walls.

In the UK most people are on the "pay as you earn" (PAYE) system. Income tax is deducted from your monthly or weekly pay before you get it and sent to the revenue by the employer. If you're self-employed you have to make an annual tax return. We have that also EXCEPT you ALSO have to make an annual tax return anyway. There's no good reason for such a system. We only have it because a) Turbotax and H&R Block and other tax preparers always lobby hard against this kind of simplification and b) the Republican Party wants to make doing taxes as painful a task as possible for average people because it helps their anti-tax jihad. Nice country we've got here, eh?

I just e-filed in California a minute ago through Turbotax, but am getting an error that my federal return cannot be e-filed because someone else has apparently filed a 1040 already using my SSN. Getting up tomorrow to call the IRS to confirm this. #@$^%$!

Probably, but that's not really what we're talking about. Would Horace Parlan be able to play the Hammerklavier? Almost certainly not. Which is not to say that Parlan sucks. Or that anyone who can play the Hammerklavier and get the notes right is a musical genius. It just means that the style that Parlan plays in doesn't make nearly the same physical demands of him as does Beethoven. That doesn't mean that style sucks. How is this controversial?

In today's daily lesson of Why You Should Never Believe 100% of Anything The British Press Says, the quoted bit (from the Daily Mail originally I think) drops whole sentences that came out of Seinfeld's mouth and thus twists Seinfeld's tone into something he didn't really intend. The original interview (skip to 2:00 for those comments): When you leave the parts in about how the whole dressing up/theater thing is a particularly British phenomenon, Seinfeld comes off as a Yankee who finds British pretensions more absurdly amusing than anything else. When you strip them out as the Daily Mail did, it sounds like he's making a significantly more sarcastic and politically oriented statement.

"...narrowing the capabilities of the piano." Huh? Bebop/bop requires the ability to improvise on the fly as well as provide accompaniment for those who are doing so. By its very nature this sort of playing demands full and complete control of the keyboard. Mentally, but not physically. Even in comparison with playing Cherokee at breakneck speed in B major, an average Beethoven sonata places far more demands on both hands (especially the left). Are we really going to try and claim that comping behind yourself with the left hand maximizes the capability of the instrument as much as a Bach 3-part invention? Uh uh. It takes a lot of physical stamina---on any instrument---to keep up those tempos, execute, etc. It's a discipline and this is why there are relatively few dedicated bebop pianists. There are hardly any chances to play that music in the purest sense. The term 'bebop' itself is bastardized and now means just 'mainstream' to a lot of people---or nothing at all. But it---the true, undiluted thing---is as technically exacting---physically---as music gets. I'm not even touching the mental part. We'll be out of here next Thursday.... Sorry, but no. How much piano have you played? I've played for roughly 20 years now and can hang passably on an average straight-ahead gig. As much as I love what Bud/Haig/Hank Jones/Marmarosa/Monk do, and as much as I'd agree that there are technical demands the music puts on you (especially at that exalted level), it's just ridiculous to claim that the style "maximizes the capabilities" of the instrument. It doesn't, and it's a good thing for me that it doesn't, because I'm sure I'd really sound like shit if it did.

"...narrowing the capabilities of the piano." Huh? Bebop/bop requires the ability to improvise on the fly as well as provide accompaniment for those who are doing so. By its very nature this sort of playing demands full and complete control of the keyboard. Mentally, but not physically. Even in comparison with playing Cherokee at breakneck speed in B major, an average Beethoven sonata places far more demands on both hands (especially the left). Are we really going to try and claim that comping behind yourself with the left hand maximizes the capability of the instrument as much as a Bach 3-part invention? None of this is to denigrate the abilities of Horace Parlan, whose playing I very much enjoy. Nor the great bebop pianists, many of whom had plenty of technique to spare. But to anyone who has spent more than a little time with the instrument it's pretty clear that bebop piano is pretty minimalist compared to other styles.

Please cite a single legal case where the RIAA or any record label sued consumers for legal purchases of gray market/parallel imports goods at mass-market retailers, as opposed to piracy via filesharing. It's not even clear that it's illegal to sell parallel imports of intellectual property goods, let alone buy them. In Costco v. Omega, did Omega go after everyone who bought a European-market Omega watch at an American Costco?

Only if you apply that special filter that makes it impossible for americans to view the link... if you actually buy these things from yurp, I guess you'd be doing the illegal thing. If you buy them from US vendors, I guess they'd cut you some slack since you acted in good belief... in short: no links allowed, no matter how you turn it. Who is this "they" you speak of? What next, are we going to ban all links to breweries in the "What are you drinking right now" thread? Heavens to Betsy, somewhere an Iranian, Afghan, or Kuwaiti might click it and that would be <gasp> ILLEGAL! To say nothing of what the Indonesian authorities think of "Sexiest album covers"....

This. What is the outcome that this rule is attempting to prevent? We're supposed to believe that Sony isn't bringing its legal muscle to bear against Amazon.com, a $30 billion corporation, but it's going to start sending Jim Alfredson mean C&D letters if one of us links to the product's page? I can see how trading/sharing boots introduces a level of legal liability into the mix that Jim might not be comfortable with, but merely linking to reputable retailers should not be proactively monitored and edited. How do the moderators know what is legally kosher and what isn't? Is there an Organissimo Board General Counsel that is advising them on these matters? And if the idea is simply that it's immoral for board members to buy gray market records and we want to prevent them from doing so...then we probably need to ban talking about gray market records, period. Because discussing bootlegs probably leads to a lot more sales than linking to them. FWIW, I have never bought a bootleg, outside of a session or two that Sue Mingus whines about but is too inept to ever release. But this rule and the overall level of interference from moderators is getting out of hand.

What is that noise at 11:10 of Autumn Leaves? It sounds to me like Eddie Harris's amp is picking up CB or police band radio...

One week later, we learn what was basically obvious from the beginning: that celebrities have gatekeepers who do not tell them about every single request they deal with. http://www.chow.com/food-news/77531/the-high-tech-smearing-of-ina-garten/

If anyone else in SF was thinking of getting a great deal on music at the closing Post/Powell or Westfield Mall stores....you probably shouldn't bother. I went to the former a few days back and got John Abercrombie's Gateway at 50% off, then made a mental note of some pricier items that I wanted to come back for once the discounts went to 60%. Went back today and found that they had indeed gone to 60% off, but the entire music stock was gone except for like 4 Christmas CDs (including one from drummer Matt Wilson, which they had like 100 copies of(!)). The Westfield store appears to be a few days behind and is still at the 50% level. There were still some CDs there but selection is very grim. On the bright side, nobody took a Sharpie to my Abercrombie CD... My suspicion is that they are hiring the same kind of liquidation firm to run this thing as other chains use for these sales, and in this case they are not giving consumers great discounts on most stuff. Instead they are sending anything that isn't grossly overstocked around to other surviving stores rather than discount it past half off. Or maybe cutting deals with local used bookstores who buy up stuff in bulk. Pretty disappointing when I think about the haul I ended up with when Tower shut down - a couple dozen discs at 90% off!

In other words, being honest instead of trying to put on a fake persona. This column doubles as good advice for how to be a douchebag.

How complete are the sessions in that box? Are there tracks left out, or do you get everything that was recorded? (And are there any good Cole discographies online that make it easier to piece together this info myself?)

Do not hold your breath. My guess is that you will not see anything come out of the kitchen for at least another year. This has been in development for at least 5 years by now. (You can approximate some of the functionality now with Google Docs, but as a real commercial product this doesn't exist yet.) $1000/year for a terabyte is way too expensive for average users with lots of data, but once competition (and bigger hard drives in datacenters) leads to declining prices things will eventually become reasonable. And of course if all you want is a place to back up your dissertation or important documents you probably don't need more than the free 5GB now.

"Feet Music" it is...thanks Frank! Sounds like Ornette is playing tenor on the track, maybe that's why I thought Dewey was on the record. In case anyone cares why I wanted to know about this tune, a DJ who used to have a late-night avant show in Miami (Steve Malagodi) used this as his theme song during the breaks. Hadn't heard the tune in years.

Can anyone ID this Ornette blues head for me? I think it's on one of the records with Dewey, but a quick check of the Blue Note records on Amazon didn't turn it up, so maybe it's on a post-BN album? I may not have the correct key, but here's what I'm hearing in my head. Absent any access to notation software I tried to space out the notes according to where I'm hearing them. Closer together are eighth notes, farther apart are quarter notes (edit: on my screen at least this isn't working - the board appears to be disregarding extra spaces between letters): G F D B G D | F G Bb B | G F D B G D | F G Bb B | second phrase is similar, except it first outlines C7 instead of G7: G E C Bb G C | E G A Bb | G F D B G D | F G Bb B | third phrase is completely different: (quarter note rest) D D F A G | (quarter note rest) G G Bb D1 C1 |

...from the 4 prefectures closest to the plant. NOT from all of Japan.

I transcribed the title track in high school. The interesting part is the bridge, during which, IIRC, Hill is playing a G flat and D flat with his left hand, but a G, C, and F in his right (before he takes the voicing up a half step). Not exactly a typical harmony.

That sounds grim all right. Is that midnight Eastern time? It just completed. They are telling people within 30km of Fukushima I to stay indoors. The radiation readings they are taking now are significantly higher than before, but there's no info on what radiation levels in the surrounding areas are like.

Listening to the announcement going right now on NHK. Apparently there *are* problems now with reactor 4 - while no fuel rods were in it at the earthquake, it still contained hot spent fuel and is currently on fire.

Wrong and outdated to boot. Fukushima I has six reactors, not 3. Reactors 4, 5, and 6 were undergoing repairs at the time of the earthquake and thus have no heat problems. All of the reported trouble has been with 1, 2, and 3. The second explosion, in reactor 3, was yesterday, not today. There has now been a third explosion in reactor 2. Information right now is sketchy but does not sound encouraging.

Shirtless, leather pants-clad guy plays the alto intro to George Michael's "Careless Whisper" all over suburban Southern California: