Guy Berger

Shaq was terrible at free throws

So up to a point I agree. But as someone who isn't agnostic on Monk vs. Peterson, I feel quite comfortable blaming him

Anybody else think that version of MFT is mildly overrated? By which I mean that it's not obviously better to my ears than the 6 other versions Coltrane recorded in 1963. It merely had a better publicist

He's also good on Kenny Garrett's Pursuance

On some days it's my favorite. In my top 5 for sure.

After reading Jim's post I'm morbidly curious

So clearly it's a matter of taste, but compared to some of DG's other BN albums, Gettin' Around is quite underwhelming.

Solstice is a really wonderful album.

Thanks guys and gals! I really appreciate it

I love this one too, and really like his playing on it. I'm not a giant fan and find him somewhat tedious in a trio format, but the stuff that irritates other folks on this thread doesn't really bother me.

I've been thinking of picking some of these up... interested in folks' opinions. Ravi Coltrane, Spirit Fiction Rudresh Mahanthappa & Bunky Green, Apex Chris Potter, The Sirens Chris Potter, Imaginary Cities

Saw this group last night. Great music; more improvisational and harder-hitting than the album.

What do you think of the new album? I like it quite a bit, but it may be too ECMy for some.

For sure! Where the conflict arises is that a nontrivial share of fans simultaneously (1) believe that knowing the numbers makes you "a better fan" & (2) can't or don't want to the homework. That's a recipe for frustration. I agree with Paul that 1 is BS, 100%. But I get the feeling this is not a consensus among thread participants.

Miles Davis, in a blindfold test, commenting on Oscar playing "Joy Spring" [lifted from an Ethan Iverson blog item]: Oscar makes me sick because he copies everybody. He even had to learn how to play the blues. Everybody knows that if you flat a third, you’re going to get that blues sound. He learned that and runs it into the ground worse than Billy Taylor. You don’t have to do that. Now take the way he plays that song. That’s not what Clifford meant. He passes right over what can be done with the chords. It’s much prettier if you get into it and heard the chords weaving in and out like Bill Evans and Red Garland could do – instead of being so heavy. Oscar is jazzy; he jazzes up the tune. And he sure has devices, like certain scale patterns, that he plays all the time. Does he swing hard like some people say? I don’t know what they mean when they say ‘swing hard’ anyway. Nearly everything he plays, he plays with the same degree of force. He leaves no holes for the rhythm section. The only thing I ever heard him play that I liked was his first record of “Tenderly.”

But conversation in what context? In a fun, informal discussion among some friends/acquaintance it gets pretty annoying to have some know-it-all arrogantly lording it over everyone. But when people take things a little more seriously and results/reality-oriented - and fandoms are susceptible to this, not just GM offices - it's inevitable that someone will pull out the facts bazooka. Moose, I think you highlight something really important - this is a characteristic of fandoms; fans take whatever they love really seriously and get into ridiculous, trivial fights over it. The one twist is that sports aren't really subjective like musical tastes (unless people want to debate who has the most elegant fadeaway jump shot), even in the Trump era; teams win or they lose.

Absolutely. Any "data person" that tells you "instinct" (or for that matter "subject matter expertise") is worthless is full of crap. But it's also true that (1) most peoples' instincts are crap and (2) instinct/data work as complements not substitutes.

But "what you think will happen" is the most valuable information for GMs and talent planners, assuming it is reasonably accurate. And since fans place a higher value on winning teams than on flawed-but-easy-to-understand statistics, I suspect the more complex measures are going to become more, not less entrenched among professionals. As a result the amateur faux-statistics culture that exists within sports fandom will continue to struggle between the poles of accuracy/reality and simplicity.

Seems like we're arguing at cross-purposes here. Some aspects of science/technology keeps the devices we're all typing functioning and makes some devices better than others. Most people don't really want to know what makes some devices better than others, they just wanna type. The end.

I have one Spiritualized album - Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space - and I think it's OK. Not bad, not great. I've heard some Explosions in the Sky on Pandora and they're not really my thing - they kind of sound like generic instrumental guitar rock.

Another one that was released around the same era which might fit in the genre - Add N to X, AVANT HARD.

I went through a phase (almost 20 years ago - yikes!) where I listened to a bunch of this stuff - Tortoise, Stereolab, Labradford, Godspeed, Gastr del Sol, The Sea and Cake, Don Caballero (if you throw them into this bucket), Isotope 217 (which might be more jazz-rock than post-rock...) In retrospect a lot of it just elicits a shrug from me. "Djed" is a masterpiece and the Tortoise album TNT is one of my personal favorites, I also enjoy Stereolab, but if I never hear the rest of those bands again that would be no major tragedy. (Though it also would be no major tragedy if I did hear them again. ) If you like post-rock, you should check out the final two Talk Talk albums (SPIRIT OF EDEN, LAUGHING STOCK). Masterpieces that anticipated elements of the style. Another pretty good album is Bark Psychosis's HEX. PS Sigur Ros came around after I moved onto other music, but I've liked what I've heard.

Interesting to think of this as part of the overall global/social/political backlash against "elites" and "experts". (Which, at least in the US, goes back over 200 years, as the Federalist party discovered to its dismay.)

Faux-mathematical/faux-statistical debates are a big part of sports fandom and, as a result, there's demand for basic/comprehensible metrics, even if they're inaccurate or misleading, just so ordinary fans have something to cite in "debates". But that doesn't mean that the nerdier fans who want to "fundamentally understand" sports should stick to those same inaccurate, misleading metrics.

Scott, what do you mean?