ghost of miles

Nice program from Afropop Worldwide on American jazz artists and African influence/heritage: Reimagining Africa: From Popular Swing to the Jazz Avant-Garde

How 'bout those Indians? And they won again today. Nice win for the Bosox today, esp. with King Felix starting for the Mariners. Too bad Wakefield didn't get the decision. Via Pete Abraham on Twitter: And glad, of course, to see NY 16-9 and atop the AL East, but they've played 18 of those 25 games at home.

Matthew, how 'bout those Mariners?

Fasstrack, the Chicago 1946 concert was previously released on MusicMasters and got reissued not too long ago: Ellington Chicago 1946 The recently-unearthed Savory collection includes an excellent track of Django playing with Ellington--can't remember if it's from the Carnegie Hall concert or not, but I'm pretty sure that it is. There'll be a brief sample of it on next week's Night Lights show.

We're re-airing this program this week (now retitled) and it remains archived for online listening: Handy With The Horn: The Rise Of John Handy

Papsrus, calling Papsrus--your Rays are on fire! MartyJazz, this just in--Nick Swisher finally knocked his first one out of the ballpark. And Bartolo Colon is looking to be the pickup of the year for the Yanks, right next to Russell Martin. Good thing, too, since Phil Hughes may be out for awhile... I wish some of the Yanks' "Killer B's" pitching prospects were ready to come up this year, but they're likely another season away at the earliest.

Happy b-day to a good Joe!

WBGO.

Dave, I hope for everybody's sake that Soriano can get it together in NYC. His velocity is certainly still there (he was hitting 95-96 tonight), but I'm not sure what other issues he might be having. I think people aren't ready to exhibit much patience with him because of an attitude perception that goes all the way back to his refusal to face AL East teams during spring training...and things like the popup incident last night certainly seem to reinforce it. Maybe Mo can help him out with the psychological end of things. Re: Boston, yes, CB may be struggling, but Beckett definitely seems to be back in an ace groove, Jon Lackey may have finally found his, and even Dice-K has put together a couple of strong starts. And then you have Lester. If I'm Boston, I definitely like the momentum right now, the sense that the team of pre-season hype has finally taken the field. The Yanks' first-place status feels like it's built on a bushel of home runs and luck, including subpar starts from the Bosox and the Rays. Again, though, I'm at least heartened that some of our offseason bargain pickups have paid off--Russell Martin biggest among them, but also Colon, Garcia, and Chavez. Now if we can just get the really expensive one to start clicking... Meanwhile, I'm still bummin' on Lillibridge: Robs A-Rod of hit with one out in 9th Robs Cano of hit to end the game Two very nice plays to snuff out the Yanks' rally.

Ah, but I'll bet the Baltimore game had you seeing red! Dave James, OK, maybe it's not too early to define two emerging long-term problems for this season: (1) The health of Phil Hughes' arm (2) The state of Rafael Soriano's mind If this keeps up, D-Rob may become the 8th-inning setup man, and Rafael may be scrapping with Joba for the 7th-inning role. Sure hated to see Ivan Nova finally go a good ways into a game pitching well, only to watch our much-vaunted bullpen blow another one.

Yes, starting to look like Cashman was right to balk at signing him. Hopefully he turns it around, but the signs so far don't look good. And WFT with Brent Lillibridge, eh? Dude robbed us of two game-tying or winning hits from A-Rod and Cano in the bottom of the 9th. Gotta doff your cap to that, though it doesn't tickle me to do so. (My realtime reaction was kind of blue, to put it mildly.)

Sunday Bosox-Angels recap Dan, you have to be happy with the way Boston's playing right now--they look like the team everybody expected them to be. NY, meanwhile, won in ugly fashion against the Orioles today... they can thank the baseball gods that they still have Baltimore to beat up on, especially with another mediocre bullpen performance (including a second, worrisome blown save from Mo, who was lucky not to lose the game altogether, aided immensely by a great catch by Brett Gardner in the 8th and Swisher/Cano's throw to the plate in the bottom of the 9th). The only positives for the Yanks in today's game were another excellent start by Freddie Garcia, some great defense by Gardner, and a 4-6 showing at the plate from Jeter, even if two of his hits were of the infield variety. (DJ is running up some monstrous grounder numbers this year.) Well, and Curtis Granderson's 7th home run... dude is on a tear. MartyJazz, I'm not worried about Swisher's HRs; he's only 30, and he's hit 21-35 HRs every year since 2005, so I think he'll start knocking out a few very soon, unless there's some sort of injury or mechanical issue that we're not aware of. The bullpen, though, does worry me, what with Joba starting to make me think he can't handle being a 7th-inning pitcher either, and Mo looking increasingly mortal. OTOH what a boon it will be to the rotation if we can get 12+ wins apiece out of Garcia and Colon... but I have to wonder how well they'll hold up across the long stretch of a season. Anyway, still very early to really get a strong sense of what long-running problems we might be forced to deal with this year.

Robinson Cano sure likes going to bat in Baltimore:

I'll say one thing about this year's Yankees: they can jack HRs like nobody's business. Great poetic justice that even Brett Gardner knocked one out right after Rupe drilled Russell Martin, he of the home runs in his two previous at-bats, between the shoulder blades. Dan, Boston's coming around quite quickly...only four games back of New York with a week of April still to play. If you keep ticking along like this you'll be in first before the end of May. Interesting quote from jscape at PA: Too much riding on A.J. Burnett, Bartolo Colon, and Freddie Garcia as well (not to mention The Incredible Shrinking Phil Hughes). Going into tonight's game, the Yankee starters were last in the league in innings completed. As for Boston's rotation, imagine if Lackey starts getting it together in any kind of consistent fashion. They're certainly living up to their pre-season buzz so far. A rotation like that will always keep you in the game, even if your offense goes lackluster.

For the Easter weekend, a wide-ranging survey of 1960s sacred jazz, with Duke Ellington, Mary Lou Williams, Ed Summerlin, Paul Horn and Lalo Schifrin, Vince Guaraldi, Joe Masters, Herbie Hancock, and even a humorous take on the jazz-mass trend from Al Jazzbo Collins. Much more on the program's website page, including a clip of Ellington's first sacred concert, performed at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco in September 1965: Sacred Blue: Jazz Goes To Church In The 1960s

Any advice as to what computer program will run the newsreel clip? (Track 22 on disc 2.) I've tried it in several different players on the computers here at work (QuickTime, Power DVD, Windows Media) and can't seem to get it to play... the booklet doesn't appear to offer any information about it.

Nice start last night from Bartolo Colon!

Best birthday wishes, Mark, and congratulations on your growing prominence as a jazz photographer.

Interesting PA post on why it's highly unlikely anybody will hit .400 again.

Ugly meltdown from Mo and the Yanks tonight against the Jays, not to mention how badly A.J. Burnett came apart in the 6th.

Boston has plenty of time. A lot of ink spilled about their bad start, but look at the 2007 Yankees--they were 9-14 at the end of April, 21-29 as of May 30, and still ended up winning 94 games, finishing just two behind the Red Sox. And the 2011 Red Sox are (IMO will prove to be, anyway) a much better team than the 2007 Yankees were. If Beckett's regained his form, that's huge for you guys. I still think you're going to win at least 100 games and take the AL East... the start of the season will end up being a quirky statistical anomaly in the annals of Red Sox history.

One more one more!

Redux, and throw Eric Chavez into that equation as well. And Mo already has seven saves!

I was caught off guard by how much I enjoyed Gala. A friend played it for me and I wound up listening to it several times in a row. Probably easy to find pretty cheap at used stores in larger towns. Also a big fan of Spiritualized and, to a lesser degree, Spacemen 3. Never could get into MBV, despite the best efforts of various friends. Lush's SPOOKY is also very good, though I didn't get into it as much as GALA at first--but the Emma Anderson songs on there are pretty much on par with the GALA material, and Miki Berenyi's "For Love" is good as well. I really like "Love Life" and "Lit Up" off SPLIT, but haven't warmed to the rest of that CD yet. Not too long ago I made a mix CD-R of all of my favorite GALA and SPOOKY songs, some early b-sides/rarities, and those two SPLIT songs, and it's made for very addictive listening. The best Lush songs have a sort of transcendental charge to them. Matthew: if you dig LOVELESS, then ISN'T ANYTHING is certainly worth checking out. I'm partial to the EPs before that as well, gathered on a single LP/CD called ECSTASY AND WINE (there's also a double LP floating around that yokes that material to two more EPs released around the time of ISN'T ANYTHING). The TREMOLO, GLIDER, and TO HERE KNOWS WHEN EPS all have a bit of overlap with LOVELESS, but there are non-LOVELESS tracks on there that would have sounded right at home on the CD itself.

I had a problem with track 1 on disc 1 skipping the first two times I played it--but on subsequent replays it didn't skip, leading me to think that the problem most likely stems from my rapidly-aging CD player. The packaging/box itself was fine; no problems there.