Dan Gould

I used this track on a BFT. A lot of people missed it, iirc. And if you never heard, Aric, Hank's presence on this Montoliu session was like a "tryout" to determine if Steeplechase would be willing to give him his own date as a leader. "Autumn Leaves" was the only track deemed worthy of release, and that came only in the CD age.

If you must know, in my limited experience (3 XRCDs, two of them found used) XRCD is far and away the best sounding remasters I've ever heard. If I had the money I'd consider some of these and if I knew sessions like Blue Hour or Moods were on the production schedule, I'd do whatever it took to find the money.

I don't know - the fact that there was wall-to-wall coverage of the events in Austin yesterday, when it was actually news but not much to report today. Or maybe the fact that no official - local/state/federal - is calling this an act of terrorism?

And who was right there by the wronged-skanks side? The equally lovely and shameless (one of those adjectives is inaccurate) Gloria Allred.

Tiger Woods Announces Return to Sex

If you are saying he was some sort of right wing terrorist (as opposed to just a fucked up loser who blamed the IRS for his problems) how do you explain his complaints about the health care system, his attacking Bush as a "puppet" or his sign off (which, in fascinating bit of white-washing, managed to get dropped from many left-wing blogs and media outlets): :rolleyes:

You need to get your facts straight.

I was thinking of Wide Open Spaces but now I realize that is Fathead with James Clay, not Wilkerson.

I don't understand MG's comment at all. To me, there is a real and impossible-to-miss stylistic difference. The Riversides are Wilkerson's jazz sides and the three BNs are his havin' a party/good time/R&B sides. For some reason I have never gotten into the Riversides but regard the BNs as desert-island recordings. Well at least one or two are since there always seems to be a problem with space even though its a deserted island.

That was the weirdest public statement from a disgraced public hero I've ever watched. Someone ought to have told Tiger "treat your family, friends and business associates like they are your family, friends and business associates. You apologize to them one-on-one and in private. Deal with the public in a public way. Deal with your friends in a private way. If you aren't ready to answer questions, don't say anything in public." I mean really, WTF was that?

Pitchers & Catchers! I said, Pitchers and Catchers

Well that's just petty. There's just no need for such a personality cult, a bit of humility goes a long way... Ah, but it is a personality cult, and humility is antithetical to that concept.

I don't think its remotely surprising that information directly contradicting a Hoffman claim would be sent straight down the memory hole.

Must be true - that definitely looks like the view of the east side of 7th Ave, directly across from the Vanguard. No, wait a minute, I might be wrong.

But there's only one dead voice in the video.

He deserves it, being stupid enough to agree to the commercial but doing no throwing off a mound before filming. He's lucky it isn't more serious than missing ten days of spring training.

Interesting article, I hadn't considered how Safeco would help him and may be fairly expected to protect him going forward. But what I see is a drop in walks and a huge drop in hits allowed - he gave up the same number of hits as in 2008 while pitching about 60% more innings. And what does BABIP tell us? Unbelievable drop is what it shows - .257 when the previous two (bad) years he was at .341 and .385. Now it may not be fair to expect him to duplicate the worst numbers, but a regression to the mean coupled with any sort of regression in his walk rate is going to result in some bad outings, certainly more bad outings than last season. Unless he's somehow really harnessed his talent and can keep it going. I'm not sure though that his minor league stats show someone that you would think should be better than he's been in the majors. I think he always projected to be a middle-relief guy, maybe a reliable setup man. Not a closer on a team with championship aspirations. On a separate note, has anyone else noticed that the Orioles made some pretty good moves this offseason? Garrett Atkins apart, Tejada figures to hit much better than Melvin Mora did. Millwood in the rotation is a solid addition, and Gonzales in the back end of the bullpen should mean fewer bullpen meltdowns. Add them to the core of Markakis and Roberts, with Adam Jones and Weiters (presumably he'll live up to the hype) and it seems to me that the Orioles should be no pushovers. It won't be enough to get to the playoffs or anything but I think if everything goes right and one of the Big Three really underperforms, they could even push one of the Rays/Red Sox/Yankees to fourth place, in a perfect world. I think there's definitely a chance that they'd be more than competitive with whatever team wins the Central. I'm quite confident in believing they'll outplay the Blue Jays for fourth place though.

Do the Mariners have any back up plan if/when David Aardsma proves that last season was a fluke and the bullpen starts torching games? Take a look at his stats and its clear that he was a completely different pitcher last season then the previous three. Predicting bullpen performance year-to-year is the hardest thing for anyone to do, and how often do mediocre-to-awful setup men become elite closers and then stay at that level? If Aardsma keeps his mojo, the other improvements the M's have made should make them very tough and highly competitive for the division crown. It just seems to me that its a mighty big if.

Why am I not surprised? My theory is this: This recording essentially coincided with the moment in time when decent singing talent was eliminated as a prerequisite for any kind of pop stardom: The hip-hop/rap revolution was about to reach the mainstream Madonna had only two LPs to her credit at this moment in time The only exceptional voice missing that would have fit alongside Tina, Diana Ross, Ray (and a few others) would be Whitney Houston, and her career had just gotten started Then you go past Whitney and you get Mariah Carey and on to her appalling progeny, leading inevitably to skanks who look good but need autotune to make a record and on to the nauseating voices heard on that remake.

No one should have had to check their egos at the door for this one. Which isn't to say they don't have them, just that its unjustified.

Yes, but this POS also serves as a documentary about the frightening decline in pop music voices in just 25 years. I'm wondering if there was any effort to duplicate the bizarre appearance of Dan Ackroyd in the original. And yes, there he is - Jeff Bridges. Perfect. Ackroyd "sung" with the Blues Brothers, Bridges just made a well-received movie about an aging country star. Well done. I kept my dinner down even when Babs appeared, but I couldn't handle that ending. Anyone got a spare keyboard? I don't think this one will last much longer.

Ken Dryden gave it a rave at AMG, which I heartily second.

Sounded way strange to me because I've only heard that tune sung by Joe Williams, and it was medium-up, not molasses-slow.

Yes, but when cancer is progressive and incurable, as it often is, people often still talk about "fighting" or "battling" it -- which, again, can really fuck with the minds of the parties involved. Agreed, and its an unfortunate by-product of the tendency of medical professionals to favor ongoing treatment vs palliative care/end of life decisions.

Sad to hear about Ms. James. I hope she has some good days ahead of her before the darkness closes in. As for Larry's point, I think if the "battle" is properly understood as a very hard one, there ought not to be any such recriminations if the fight is in vain. At the same time, I don't think "battling Alzheimer's" is a proper description for the fact that its progressive and incurable. One can "battle" cancer because people can and do beat it. YMMV.