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5
Apr 23

The changing weather and such

Today started last night, at 10:55, because I checked my email at 11:32 p.m. And then the day began anew just before 8 a.m. with what had to be the loudest clap of thunder not recorded directly below a lightning bolt. A bit later, I drove past a duplex that was fully ablaze. First, I saw a big plume of smoke, around a curve. When I drove by, a quarter-mile or so later, the police had just arrived. The roof of the building was already gone.

The local paper tells us that the residents were evacuated and no one was hurt. But it was a substantial fire, taking the BFD about three hours to put it out.

At work, work stuff, and the view was this:

A perfect day for more jazz!

At this prolific rate of the Re-Listening project, we are now only three CDs behind, and as I’m working my way through this in the order of acquisition, I know we are somewhere in 1998 right now. Acquisition is an important term here, because this is one of those that I impulsively picked up from a giveaway table. It is a sampler, and I can find no reference to this compilation on the web which is … weird.

So, look out the window, stare at the rain drops or the sunshine or the stuff in between, and press play. Or, if you don’t have exceptional peripheral vision, press play, and then stare out the window.

Tony Gil has one of those voices that makes you wonder why you haven’t heard of him. And after 10 minutes of searching, I wonder why I can’t find out much about him. I can tell you this song appears on the Felix Grant tribute record, which won The Washington Area Music Association’s album of the year. No small feat there, as it is an organization that represents the whole area.

Paula West has been singing for three-plus decades at this point, she’s still singing across the country and the record on which “Peel Me A Grape” appeared recently got a retrospective review from The New Yorker.

I’ve confessed to my inability to properly appreciate or express anything about jazz music. But when I think of what a jazz singer should sound like, I always hear Cleve Douglass in my head. If there was nothing else on this sampler, there would be that.

But there’s a lot more! There’s Mark Rosier. On the record that spawned this song, an independent release, he played all of the guitars, all of the piano, all of the keyboards and some of the percussion. Born in New York, he found himself in Texas by way of Florida, and then charmed the locals and the tourists with his music across the White Mountains in New Hampshire and in clubs in Maine. He died in 2020, after a long bout with cancer.

Everything on this CD is worth a listen, and I wish I could share the whole thing with you. But, instead, here’s the track listing. Pick out some of these things and dig for them.

Tony Gil – I’m Old Fashioned
Maua – Devil May Care
Pam Bricker – Long As You’re Lookin’ Good
Paula West – Peel Me A Grape
Cleve Douglass – Woman
Hinda Hoffman – I Just Found Out About Love
Donna Smith & The Vintage Jazz Quartet – Get it Straight
Valucha – Voce
Sally Richards – Old Devil Moon
Jass Street Station – El Ritmo de Amour
Fred Sokolow Jazz Quarter – Delilah
Karen Moore – What a Little Moonlight Can Do
Tony Gil – No Me Platiques Mas
Suzy Nelson – Am I Blue
Rose Russo – Uptown Baby
Mark Rosier – I’m Just a Memory
Steve Bulmer’s Kinetic Jazz Band – Just Friends

I was on that last track, from Steve Bulmer — who, today, teaches bass at UConn — and wondering if people have spent the time and effort to create some of universally accepted spectrum of jazz. You know, ranging from the deeply important things I’ve never heard of all the way across to the stuff you might hear at a grocery store, or on hold music. There have to be lists like this, and most of them not at all derivative. And where, I wondered, would I place some of these songs, because they are just different enough. The originals, the covers, the playful stuff, the smooth and easy and the best representations of the art form, all of it. Or most of it anyway. And where would I slot in this song or that song? Then I heard the jazz violin, and now I have a new rabbit hole to explore.

The rain moved out late in the afternoon and the clouds, which hung around for a few hours, thinned. Suddenly, the light went from diffuse to directly sunny, and then it was time to go into the studio. On the third of four late days this week, I left just in time to catch a bit of the sunset.

The timestamp on that photo is 8:25. Tomorrow, another late night in the studio, but I’ll be out of the office by 7:30. The long days of the coming season are always preceded by some long nights of the present.

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4
Apr 23

There’s a nice, easy recipe here — goes well with jazz

I attacked the morning with zeal. Zeal, I say. That was what the morning was attacked with, zeal. And urgency, and enthusiasm. The first alarm went off and I got up and put on the bike riding clothes and I went downstairs and rode on Zwift for 96 minutes, putting 36 more miles under my shoes.

One of the routes I did today included Neokyo All-Nighter, the fever dream of some poor game designer. What even is that thing floating in front of me?

The 2023 Zwift route tracker: 95 routes down, 34 to go.

Later in the morning, I found myself reading copy aloud so a student could master the teleprompter. My voice was still thin in that way that’s difficult to control after a big workout. The was just coming from the back of my throat. There was no projection, no commanding news voice, no soothing tones, just a bleating, busted reed of a sound. Didn’t sound like me at all, especially to me. Even though I know it happens with a big workout, and in an hour or two I’ll sound more like myself, it’s always a tiny bit unnerving. What if it takes too long? What if this is the way I sound now?

But it was only a practice, for someone else. For some reason it got a polite bit of applause.

“Huzzah! He’s literate!”

That happened to me in a newsroom once, too. New job, second day there. The news director was the anchor, he pitched to me for my first story and I glanced over at him just in time to see a wide-eyed, stunned look on his face. “He can do that?”

And I thought, If you’re surprised, why did you hire me?

I googled this tonight, why my voice does that, not the former news director. (He’s in sales now.) It apparently has something to do with exertion and the way the muscles get used. But people seem to have different responses to this. Some people’s voices get deeper after a big workout, for example. This was a medium workout for me, though, and when I found that different people have different reactions, I knew it was time to close the tab.

Speaking of which …

While I closed that one to avoid diagnosing myself via Dr. Duck Duck Go, I am closing these tabs because … I don’t need this many open browsers in my life. The information could be useful, so I’m keeping the notes here for me, and sharing them with you, just in case.

I did an overdue phone upgrade late last year and, surely, there’s something useful to do with the old one. 10 ways to reuse your old iPhone in 2023:

Recently upgrade to a newer iPhone? We bet you have your old one stuffed in a drawer left to gather dust because you can’t figure out what to do with your old iPhone. But, lucky for you, we’ve got some fantastic ideas to reuse your old iPhone.

It is sitting on my desk, waiting.

I wanted a light and bright pasta one night the last time I had a bachelor weekend. I started pulling things out of the cabinet and then though, No, I’m hungry, not feeling experimental … and found this recipe, which was almost exactly what I was imagining. Light & easy garlic lemon pasta for two:

Ingredients
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 1/2 tablespoon olive oil
juice of 1 lemon
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese
handful of fresh basil leaves, chopped
enough cooked angel hair pasta for 2
salt & pepper, to taste

I ate that two nights in a row.

This came up right after the first balloon craze last month. When China shot down five U-2 spy planes at the height of the Cold War:

The U-2 has a long and storied history when it comes to espionage battles between the US and China. In the 1960s and 1970s, at least five of them were shot down while on surveillance missions over China.

Those losses haven’t been as widely reported as might be expected — and for good reason. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which was responsible for all of America’s U-2s at the time the planes were shot down, has never officially explained what they were doing there.

Adding to the mystery was that the planes were being flown not by US pilots nor under a US flag, but by pilots from Taiwan who, in a striking parallel to today’s balloon saga, claimed to be involved in a weather research initiative.

And, after closing these three, I am down to just 34 tabs on my phone.

I am still catching up on the Re-Listening project — playing all of my CDs, in order, in the car. These aren’t reviews, but mostly just an excuse to share good music and write about whatever comes to mind about it, the time, or whatnot. And right now we are somewhere in early 1998, I think, when I was adding a bit of jazz to the collection. Most assuredly I was trying to bring some class to my collection.

So today we’re listening to Charles Fambrough’s 1992 The Charmer. This is the second album from the late, great bassist and composer. This still plays as a great easy jazz listen.

I don’t have the education or jazz vocabulary to appreciate the composition — or the talented interplay between the musicians — as I should, but reading comments online I have come to understand it was apparently under-appreciated in it’s time.

To me, this is perfect for ambience — say you’re making a nice lemon pasta — or as something quiet in the office, or simple and unobstrusive for the car. Which sells Fambrough short. He appears as a contributor on 17 other records, plus releasing nine records of his own between 1991 and 2003. He died, at just 60, in 2011. One of his obituaries called this record the high point of the CTI label’s 1990s output. It also used two exclamation points and the word “splendiferously” in the same paragraph. This was, one presumes, written by someone with a much better sense of musical appreciation than I have.

And so, for your musical appreciation, here is the complete Charles Fambrough album, The Charmer.

I attacked the deal with zeal; I will end the evening with the jazz.

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3
Apr 23

New old books, new old music, and much more

Today was the first of four, no, perhaps, five late days in a row. It’ll be a long week. But it won’t feel like it, until it does, which will probably be … Wednesday.

I walked outside twice today. Once, in the middle of the day for a reason I’ve already forgotten. And then, in the evening at about 7:45. (As I said, long week.) This was the first day of the year I’ve been surprised by how warm it was when I took that step across the threshold. And then I wondered why I couldn’t conduct today’s meetings, and emails and all of the rest, outdoors, under a tree.

Tomorrow it will be a mind-boggling sunny and 82 degrees. Wednesday, rainy and 72. Then the 50s and 60s into next week.

Spring officially begins in 16 days.

Time to return to the most popular feature on the site, the weekly check with the kitties.

Phoebe has re-discovered the guest room, and a great place to hide from me before I head out in the morning.

What doesn’t make so much sense is how habitual she is. This is the time of morning when she should be sunning herself in a window — she will wait in our bedroom until we open the heavy curtains, because she knows where the sun is — but this room, the guest room, faces the west.

Poseidon was cold this weekend. And shy.

He also was able to wriggle his way into forcing me out of that chair, which was an impressive feat for a 10-pound cat.

I finished the Willie Morris memoir this weekend. He took a plane from New York back to Texas, to speak at his alma mater, and then drove over to his home in Mississippi. His little boy in tow, seeing the old places with his mother and grandmother, and then, the next morning, he caught a plane back to New York. An altogether unsatisfying ending, but that’s a memoir at 31, for you.

Still, some 36 pages before the end, this is the part that has stuck with me.

So I started, yesterday, a journal by the poet May Sarton. A local author I know quoted her last summer on the anniversary of her death. “Keep busy with survival. Imitate the trees. Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember nothing stays the same for long, not even pain. Sit it out. Let it all pass. Let it go.” I did a little research and bought four of her books, her journals, just on the basis of that quote. I’m now on the second of those four books, a year of dear diary of a woman trying to figure out life, herself, her poetry and her gardening. But around all of that she will make you sit up and re-read a passage now and again, like this one.

I figure I should read a month at a time, and in two weeks I’ll need another book.

Another book to go with Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, which I also started this weekend. This is a 2000 Pulitzer Prize winner, and I am reading it on my Kindle, where I have a collection of dozens of books waiting for me.

I need to read more books, and so I will.

Believe it or not, we are still playing catch up on the Re-Listening project. I am playing all of my CDs, in order, in the car, and I am woefully behind in writing about them here. These aren’t reviews, just for fun and, sometimes, memories. And, at this point in 1997, we are entering a jazz phase.

And there’s some really good jazz in here. Up first, is a 1993 record from Jay Thomas, a multi-instrumentalist, with, now, 50 years of music on the books. Even back then, he’d been at it for a long time. You can hear him playing trumpet or flugelhorn or alto, tenor, or soprano, or flutes on more than 100 records. He’s fronted almost two dozen of his own. And you may not know his work, if you, like me, aren’t deep into jazz, but you’ve heard it. He shows up in commercials and movie scores quite a bit, too.

That’s the title track Blues for McVoughty. I wish I could say I had a good ear for jazz as a young guy, but I picked this up by chance off the giveaway table.

Somehow, sadly, most of this record hasn’t been uploaded to YouTube, but if you need an entry point to jazz, or easy atmosphere, or need to know what all the cool jazz aficionados were listening to in the 1990s, this is a fine place to start.

I am sure I picked this up to add something more sophisticated and mature to my collection. Can’t imagine why, though. And we’ll have two more jazz records back-to-back in our next installment(s) of the Re-Listening project.

For now, enjoy some of this nice weather, before it grows stormy again mid-week.

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29
Mar 23

People I know earn well-deserved awards

Here’s a little something I put on LinkedIn, which I basically use to occasionally brag on people I know. For whatever reason, I get more “engagement” on LinkedIn than any of the social media platforms. Which is great, since I just brag on people I know. Anyway, time to highlight on the award-winning IUSTV folks once again.

I counted and this year’s batch makes 73 IU student awards and honors that I’ve had the privilege to work with. We’re quickly running out of wall space for plaques ~~mostly because we refuse to give any of the individual awards to the individuals~~ because of the terrific talent I am fortunate to work with from time-to-time.

And because the days are (thankfully) getting longer I was able to catch a bit of the sunset after watching the award-winning sports division produce two shows tonight.

We’re in the Almost Spring now, a welcome arrival after — I guess I can say it now — a mild winter. Spring finally arrives in 22 days.

I believe I am still five CDs behind in writing about the Re-Listening project. But, today, we’re going to quickly get two discs closer to catching up. It’s a car experience, playing the discs in the order in which I acquired them, and then writing a bit about them here. Since I’m behind, it’s a scant bit. Which actually works out for this particular stretch of music.

Take this one, for example, one of the dozen or so Marvin Gaye greatest hits records. This one was released on the Motown label in 1976 on LP and then in 1987 on CD. I picked this up in 1997, because everyone needs a little Marvin Gaye in as many formats as possible. As true a statement then, as it is today.

It is as perfect as you would imagine. The first eight songs make the best part of the argument of why there are so many compilation releases:

Let’s Get It On
I Want You
How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You)
I Heard It Through the Grapevine
Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)
What’s Going On
After the Dance
Can I Get a Witness

I’m barely equipped to go on at length about Marvin Gaye, and there’s not a lot of new things to be said about a musical genius at this point, anyway. But, as I listened to this disc I found myself wondering, a lot, about how even the greats can transcend time. Marvin Gaye died young, of course, and he died while I was young. Generationally, I came about his music almost secondhand. Today, it’s been almost four decades since he was killed. What do young people today know about Marvin Gaye? You look at the first eight songs there and think some of those are just downloaded into the brain naturally, surely as oxygen or evolution. Which brings us to the ninth track.

“Trouble Man” was in the MCU, you say. Surely it was.

A decade ago now. Time marches on, but the music of the masters really ought to be immortal.

This is the last track on the CD. An argument could be made that this is the greatest live recording ever. I would not dismiss the argument.

I don’t know, yet, what the consensus best live recording is, but that’s on the list. It’s a 1974 recording in Oakland and that crowd made the thing work in some special ways.

The other CD we’re featuring in the Re-Listening project today marks the beginning of jazz albums in my collection. (I’d reached the point where I realized I needed some jazz. What of it?) I have no recollection of how or why I picked up the Holly Cole Trio in particular, but listening through this thing in the last few days, I do wonder why. And, also, why are we ruining The Jungle Book, right off the bat?

Lyle Lovett wrote this song. Sounds like a soundtrack tune.

I’m glad I didn’t give up entirely on this one, though. This song has some sass, at least. Which, hey, it’s a Fats Waller classic.

I thought, at first, I was being trolled on the last track.

And this, I think, is why I don’t have any memories associated with this CD. I decided, early on, I wasn’t going to listen to this one a lot.

I did 16 slow miles this morning. Felt slow, anyway.

But, still, three new Strava segment PRs, including two on climbs. (I am not a climber.) I took 3:24 off my best time on one of the little climbs today. Good legs, even if it felt slow.

The 2023 Zwift route tracker: 88 routes down, 41 to go.

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28
Mar 23

Cats, a book, a bike ride, and music

I have been twice informed that we are way overdue for a check in on the kitties. This is, of course, the most popular weekly feature on the site, woefully neglected these last few weeks, and how dare I? “Oh. big cats, oooooh. Not the point, friend.”

Twice I have been thusly informed.

Mainly by Phoebe, sitting on the stairs, as if to say “What gives?”

And also by Poseidon, who can’t even cast his gaze upon me in disbelief.

The cats are doing great, even if they have been thusly neglected. Oh, so tragically neglected, just ask them.

I am sadly nearing the end of North Toward Home. I want to continue, but I want it to continue, you see. It’s an odd sensation, even as I have a small stack of other Willie Morris books in the To Read collection. I don’t pretend to understand the phenomenon, not wanting to finish things I enjoy. Is this a vein of anti-completism? An unwillingness to part beloved things? There are TV shows I’ve never finished for the same reason. If I don’t watch the finale or read the last chapters, it is all still out there and we never have to part.

Here he’s talking about his friendship, and his readings, of Albert Murray and the great Ralph Ellison.

I haven’t read this memoir before, but it isn’t my first time around with Willie Morris. I know the broadest strokes of his life and have a comfortable understanding of the style he’s using in this book. In the last 40 pages of so, which I read tonight, he’s written about the changes coming to the upstate community in New York where he’s bought a farm to escape the harsh realities of the city. He wanted to give his son and family a life, while he took the train 70 miles into town. He detailed seeing accidents on the train, the shifting attitudes of people as they got closer to the city, or closer to their homes. He wrote about how he learned about the sniper shooting at his alma mater, the University of Texas, while on the train. He wrote painfully, rawly, about how aghast he was, while his fellow passengers noted the news, and moved on. Suburbia is creeping in on that farm, which is too close to the big city, and too far away from the idyllic small town world he grew up in. He wrote about that too, watching the developers drive out, point this way, look at maps, buy that plot, cut those trees.

“It was impossible,” he wrote, “not to become deeply attached to this old country of the Indians and the Dutch and the Yankees, to the quiet hills and farms of western Connecticut, to the great sweep and flow of the Hudson Valley.”

He quotes the passage from Sleepy Hollow, about “A drowsy, dreamy influence seems to hang over the land, and to pervade the very atmosphere.” Morris tells us that reading Washington Irving to his son on a windy November night, writing that he was glad, for the sake of the child, that a real writer had lived in the neighborhood years before.

By then, before then, it had grown obvious where he was going, but it was breathtaking all the same.

The thunderclap of rightness, which he says came upon “not apocalyptically but slow as can be, slow as good sourmash gets its mellowing or as a young man matures and finds balance” is, somehow, why I don’t want to finish the last pages of the book.

I had a fast little ride this morning, getting in a quick 19 miles before work. I set PRs on four Strava segments, including on two climbs.

It felt like I could have done a lot more, but for time.

The 2023 Zwift route tracker: 87 routes down, 42 to go.

Finally, we continue to catch up on the Re-Listening project. Each CD, in the order in which I acquired them. It’s a thing to do in the car, and to write about here. Mostly it’s music and memories and a bit of whimsy, which is what music should be about.

The memory I have with this CD is that I picked it up off a giveaway table because the cover art was great. Otherwise, I have discovered, over and over, try as I might, that Michael Hedges just isn’t for me.

But if you like technically proficient guitar work, new age lyrics and a classically trained flute, the posthumously released “Torched” might be for you.