Dan Gould

New Percys uploaded to youtube: And even though I found out on my last BFT that more than one person around here can't stand "Sweet Georgia Brown":

I looked at the first month's schedule and thought it was an awful lot of road games for the Red Sox but playing more at Fenway isn't going to solve this team's issues, and at 7.5 out of first place, its not far from the point where it is getting late early out there.

If anyone has the album only - the CD has extra track - Blue Lament, which I want to say was otherwise only recorded on an unissued BN session, and Ken Dryden's Allmusic review confirms that.

Your math is completely off to try to get to 250,000 "explained" deaths because the Y axis is cases not deaths. How come Germany peaks January 15, 2021 and stays above Sweden the whole period thru to this supposed Swedish holiday effect? And, somehow Sweden had a Christmas/New Years surge one year, and then had none the next year and only increased in January 2022 for this holiday? Let's keep in mind too that Sweden had vanishingly small mask usage per the cited survey and Germany had quite high mask usage.

I was especially motivated to post by your specific statement: I am convinced at least 150-200K in the U.S. lost their lives unnecessarily I believe we're approaching 1 million deaths so at minimum, you are asserting 15-20% due to mask usage or lack thereof. Had you said something closer to 50,000 I probably would not have posted. It's fine to appeal to authority as you do, but why can't anyone answer the question of evidence? We've been told and in some cases forced to mask for 2 plus years. And we have 2 + years of data about cases and deaths and different mask policies and usages. Why does the effect of masks not show up in the statistics? Why are Sweden and Germany's experiences so similar, while mask usage was so very different?

OK, set aside the US State results, where one might reasonably presume an undercount in the states where masks were not mandated ... how does one explain the death rates in Germany vs Sweden, where approach to mask wearing was so obviously different? Germany had a worse and more sustained top peak, while Sweden had a marginally higher peak for winter 21-22. What accounts for it, with both rich Western nations with I am assuming similar access to vaccines when they came available? If masks were so important why doesn't Sweden, which was like an entire country of Trumpers when it comes to mask usage, show any sort of measurable difference in deaths? Again, I wore one. I insisted on buying a better one (my wife bought her own for her truck, shitty "surgical" masks that were barely a step above a bandana). But I'm looking at the data and I am not at all feeling what Aggie is asserting.

Please review these graphs and advise why they are not evidence that mask usage did not have a lot of effect. I am prepared to be educated (and I myself wore a mask quite regularly, KN95, until I was vaccinated and boosted.) First one is US States with and without mask mandates, cumulatively; second is Germany (effective mask mandate per survey results regarding use) vs Sweden (minimal mask usage per surveys).

That's a country that foolishly persists in "zero covid" with minimal vaccine uptake (and a shitty vaccine at that). I don't know what "zero" covid will do for future variants but the fact is that here in the states, weeks after Omicron 2 became main source of Covid, we don't have spikes in hospital usage or death rates. Something is different this time and is probably due to Omicron 1's trip thru the population, and its measurable reduction in potency. I do think Fauci is right about the pandemic in the US.

Hey I didn't say it, Anthony Fauci said it. https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/04/27/pandemic-phase-over-fauci-covid/ So time to look back and ahead ... while I hope no new variant shows up to make this moot. Evergreen:

Congressmen get money to operate local offices and do "constituent service" including fixing SS problems and a lot of other things. There was a time that measuring constituent service and vote share was a popular poli-sci research topic. No idea if it still is as that was about 5 or 6 careers ago. And of course, getting a new PO built was a big part of "bringing home the bacon".

Not at the moment.

Wish it were another Kenny Drew or the man from Catalonia but I'll almost certainly get this too.

A certain segment of the population setting its hair on fire over this is the best part of the story.

I should ask Mom but I think that's it ... the folks took us to see it sometime during a run at Radio City sometime after the initial run in theaters.

Sad to hear, great in the role on Mad Men. I saw the movie adaptation of How to Succeed in Business ... and remember laughing my head off. In fact I wonder if it was at some sort of revival theater with the family because I am certain that I did not see it in initial release (I was 2 years old) but also am certain that it wouldn't have been even an early VHS years film rental either. I feel like I saw it around the age of 10.

Jazz (that I like) is simply a feeling in the music that I enjoy. "Blues and Swing" may be Marsalis-speak, but it will always describe the music I enjoy. I know nothing about keys or structure and 30+ years in, I couldn't tell you when a chorus is going to end to save my life and I do not see how it could change my enjoyment one iota. (Then again I have a recording of Sammy Price's Two Tenor Boogie in which it is unmistakable that Percy France "lost track" because Leonard Gaskin's bass solo started while Percy was still going on his solo, and he just sort of let it peter out while Leonard took center-stage. Was Leonard early or did Percy F-up? I guess if I sent it to Jim he could surely tell.)

I was a little surprised to realize I had never done a Discogs search for the Candid label. It's an eternal mystery to me if I have truly never picked up the Fathead/Clifford Jordan release, Blue Head but I found on Amazon for $8 delivered. And, while hunting down Rickey Woodard's California Cookin' 2, I am happy to report I found it in the stacks. That one would have been a lot more than $8 if I hadn't found it ten feet behind me.

Sorry I am saving my money for super hot stampers only.

So our friend Allen Lowe made an interesting comment on FB and I thought I could turn it into a poll/discussion here. Allen said: I’m going to make a strong suggestion that unfortunately does not have the power of law, though I wish it did. It comes as a result of having seen two very fine tenor saxophonists recently who committed the cardinal sin of copying in the most shallow of ways: they started songs by doing what I will refer to as a “Sonny Rollins”: they played long, technically complex but artistically lackluster solo introductions on the horn, solo bits clearly inspired by Sonny, both of which came off, in his extended shadow, like treading water until the song actually started. I found it irritating and pointless, so proprietary is this technique in the way that Rollins has perfected it and turned it into the most personal of gestures. I want this technique banned. I find it embarrassing in its transparent Imitation, and maddening in its violation of that particular space that only Sonny can and should occupy. In each case it was like a violation of the intimate relationship between Rollins and song, and it was just wrong. And I find it shocking that neither of these two very brilliant players had the artistic sense or perspective to realize this. And I am not joking. An artist needs to be more introspective and self-aware ********************************* So what do you all think?

My problem is that a little of the "excitement" of a JATP concert goes a long way, for me. It took me a while to figure that out but that's where I am at.

I was told by someone on FB that Percy France actually sang sometimes, too. Here's proof.

I have to say the Lock/Sweets/Grey is the first or one of the first that I wholeheartedly endorse to date.

Yes, I had pushed for something about the site directly and it took from the summer to now to publish ... including I think about 3 months between the last Gazette update and this one. (And, since I mentioned the Night Lights program when it became archived, in the end Michael composed an entry all about that and didn't mention the site at all - I hoped for a two-fer but alas it was not to be.) But on the positive side, since you did such a good job promoting the site on the show, I have to believe that yesterday's traffic report of 13 total hits spending an average of over 8 minutes at the site is a very good indication that Mosaic's email and your radio show got people interested. So that is very pleasing.)

I got that recorded to the DVR - and when I see Mom in Naples tonight, need to make sure she knows of it so she can watch.

Update: Well since I felt that no option was very appealing or likely to succeed in any way, I've left this entirely alone. So you can imagine my surprise to find a box by the garage door when I ran out last night on a grocery run. And remarkably, I discovered this morning that there was no update at all to the tracking history, still shows delivered to an individual in Dayton OH last week, yet it must have gone back into the system, was never scanned once, and got to me intact. (And if you're wondering, the rest of the mail was on top of the box, so no, no one in Dayton hand-delivered it to Florida.)