Guy Berger

Fuck. Really sorry to hear that Dave. Hope your buddy pulls through and has a thorough, rapid recovery.

Favorites: Paul Motian, I Have the Room Above Her Billy Hart, One Is the Other Charles Lloyd, Lift Every Voice David Torn, Prezens David Torn, Sun of Goldfinger Tim Berne, Incidentals Michael Formanek, The Rub and Spare Change Fly, Year of the Snake Lee Konitz, Live at Birdland Vijay Iyer, Far from Over Jack DeJohnette, Made in Chicago Mark Turner, Lathe of Heaven Michael Formanek, The Distance Tim Berne, The Shadow Man Tim Berne, You’ve Been Watching Me Paul Motian, Lost in a Dream Charles Lloyd, Rabo de Nube

So a story about a close acquaintance. I’ve known a few people who have gotten COVID - either co-workers or former high school classmates. But someone i know well came down with it recently. Fortunately it was a very mild case. Symptoms were like a cold - and not a very serious cold. Cough for a few days, a lot of congestion. No fever. They got really lucky. They also have no idea how they got it. They’re working from home and have been fairly careful. Their spouse and kid tested negative, as did the nanny and her family. Maybe at a recent doctors appointment or via a surface or getting to go food? (They live in a place where outdoor and indoor dining are currently prohibited.) A few other comments... they had a first hand encounter with the unreliability of antigen (rapid) test. After a few days of symptoms they got such a test and it came back negative! Then just to be sure the following day they took a PCR test which came back positive. So they only found out they were positive 6 days after symptoms (=8 days after being contagious).

Btw it’s kind of tangential to this thread but the version of “How Long Has This Been Going On” from Getz’s Blue Skies is incredible - my favorite version of that standard.

Love this album. Hart was also on 4 Charles Lloyd ECMs, of which my favorites are Canto and Lift Every Voice. And of the 2 ECMs under Hart’s name, One Is the Other is really really great.

I like the 3CD set (especially for Bennie Maupin) but this band wasn't anywhere near as good as the other two you mention.

One thing we're relatively lucky on with a coronavirus pandemic (vs. an influenza pandemic) is that it tends to mutate more slowly. Most experts aren't terribly worried about the vaccine's effectiveness against this new lineage, for instance. The worry about extra contagiousness is that even if the virus isn't inherently more deadly, there could be significant 2nd order impacts on mortality from deterioration of the health care system. Yup. Travel restrictions can be pretty effective at limiting pandemics, but only when you do them well ahead of time. The horse left the barn a long time ago.

This isn't true except in a fairly limited sense. Plenty of rural areas are being really hard hit in the US right now. Density of real-life social/economic networks probably matters more than physical density.

Enjoying this album over the past 2 weeks.

What’s the story behind Eckemoff, out of curiosity? She has top notch musicians on her records, but to my knowledge doesn’t perform as a sideman.

Do these labels typically have a backlog of recorded sessions? It might simply be that they don’t have much to release.

Nope. Roy, Smith and Khalil Balakrishna left the band just before the 1973 Japanese tour. The photo would have been from a US gig between January and May 1973, during which the 10-musician lineup existed.

It was a good movie, and I enjoyed Connery/Slater, but it was much worse than the book, which is brilliant. Re Umberto Eco and Dan Brown, at some point Eco was asked about The DaVinci Code and he said:

Dan - masks aren’t perfect. Being in an enclosed space with an infected person over an extended period of time is a high risk even if both people are wearing a mask. (And wouldn’t they take off their masks to eat?) can you get a different caretaker, at least for a short span of time? Have you considered offering the caretaker a $$$$ bonus not to attend that gathering? If not... make sure you get them both KN95 masks. Have them spend as much time as possible outside. Leave the windows open to the outside. Might be a good idea to get both tested daily until the 2 week window is over.

This kind of thing is as American as Apple Pie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paranoid_Style_in_American_Politics

Agreed on the 1st one being a classic, but the next 4 are not far behind. An impressive body of work!!!

SUMMIT CONFERENCE with Workman, Sam Rivers, Julian Priester, Andrew Hill and Pheeroan Aklaff is really good. IMHO Jazz at Massey Hall is good but falls far short of any participant’s best work.

Also interesting that once Wayne joined, this duality became much more fluid. both horns could wear both hats

I strongly agree w/JSngry's thesis that race in America and our attitude toward it has a lot to do with soul jazz getting overlooked in most jazz discourse. It was music closely connected to 1940s-1970s African American popular music that was either ignored, or looked-down-upon, by the people writing about and talking about jazz (now and then). Some artists like Horace Silver, Jimmy Smith, Herbie Hancock, Cannonball Adderley achieved crossover success within "straight ahead" jazz and have been treated more kindly, but these are relatively rare. (For that matter, think of the "white" artists drawing upon this style since 1990 - John Scofield, MMW, Soulive, etc... interesting story in itself.) I really liked the Gerald Early interview. I wonder how much of Baraka's reaction reflects Cannonball's genesis. He was from a relatively middle-class, Episcopalian background, right? Haven't read this book but seems indicative of how "mainstream" jazz historiography approaches the style - "soul jazz was something straight-ahead jazz musicians dabbled in"

Have listened to these 5 so far. I'd score them: Dresser, Nourishments 5/5 (great quartet, great compositions; love Denman Maroney's prepared piano) Dresser, Sedimental You 4/5 (I thought this one was a little lethargic relative to Cyber Coup) Dresser, Cyber Coup 5/5 (love the Arthur Blythe tribute that opens the album) Ehrlich, Frog Leg Logic 4/5 (nice but didn't grab me) Ehrlich, Trio Exaltation 5/5 (really great playing by Ehrlich and his trio)

In general I'm pretty supportive of strong public health restrictions but IMHO we had the opportunity to safely reopen in-person schools (especially for younger and at-risk kids) and screwed it up - either by doing it unsafely, or by not doing it at all.

I was a little underwhelmed by Eternal Spirit but really enjoy Shades.

In Israel the 2nd wave was definitely initiated by schools but... was that also the case in France? In Spain, from what I understand, there are just a lot of bars and restaurants open... i.e. they're getting a 2nd wave for the same reason that Florida/Georgia/Texas got hammered.

This wonderful album and a lot of other items from the Palmetto catalogue were just added to Spotify.

We also do exclusively delivery (and occasional pickup) rather than restaurants, but worth noting that eating outdoors is MUCH safer than eating indoors. And bars seem to be a lot riskier than restaurants.