Happy Friday! I hope everyone has enjoyed the week and has great plans for the weekend! Once again I am coming to the end of a week having run in sub-zero temperature … But since I PROMISED no more ‘sub-zero selfies, I didn’t take one.
I have often talked about how much I really enjoy the blogging community both in terms of people who stop by here and reading everyone else’s amazing content. But I have also noticed that as I find more great blogs, my ability to keep up with them all diminishes … and I feel that putting out more than one post per day is just too much.
That is why I held off on my ‘What I’m Listening to Wednesday’ and ‘Thought for Thursday’ – I am not abandoning music posts, but will include them as part of daily posts. And I think I am already doing enough ‘thought’-oriented posts!
1. Blogging ‘food groups’
This is a bit meta, but since many of the people who will read this have their own blogs, it seems to be appropriate. LinkedIn Marketing put together some thoughts and an infographic about how to maximize the value of your blog for your readers.
Audience engagement is the definitive measure of a blog’s success, whether you’re blogging for a marketing firm or simply to indulge your own interests. You’ve probably watched as some posts go viral while others sit quietly in the corner.
This goes along with a similar theme from Net Translators, again taking a food theme and comparing bloggers and dieters. The info graphic at the top is just a snip of the full one available at Mashable.
Since my basic approach is writing about what I like and what interests me, I am not as interested in ‘marketing’ … but the audience engagement is wonderfully addictive, so I read through these articles. Not sure if I will do anything with it all .. how about you?
2. ObamaCare and ‘Woman’ as a Pre-Existing Condition
I liked this set of infographics from UpWorthy about the impact of ObamaCare for women, but what really caught my eye was the statement that one benefit of the ACA is that ‘being female can no longer be used as a pre-existing condition’. So I did a quick search and found this blog at the NYT from 2010. What it noted was:
some companies charged women who did not smoke more than men who did, even though smokers have more risks.
Personally, this is the type of thing that reminds me WHY despite certain political groups constantly crowing how we in the US have hte ‘#1 healthcare system in the world’ … there are NO surveys done that take the patient cost and coverage and experience into account that even rank us in the top 10. I think at best the ACA is ‘flawed’, but anything that removes some of the most brain-dead restrictions is better than where we are.
Basically, it notes that the term ‘bossy’ is always negative, and almost always used to describe women. This has been true historically, dating back to the first dictionary appearance in the 1880s:
Ngram analysis of digitized books over the past 100 years found that the use of “bossy” to describe women first peaked in the Depression-era 1930s, when popular sentiment held that a woman should not “steal” a job from a man, and reached its highest point in the mid-1970s as the women’s movement ramped up and more women entered the workforce.
The article also notes that in dictionaries where a sentence is used for content, a female description is almost universally used, and even in current books the term is ascribed to women at a rate of four times more often than men, and again – always as a negative.
So what Sandberg recommend? Follow CBS anchor Norah O’Donnell and the next time you hear a girl (or woman) called bossy, say “That girl’s not bossy. She has executive leadership skills.”
4. 15 Must Share Science Gifs
OK, so I am a science nerd, this we all know … so I have been mesmerized by this set of 15 science gifs all week. I could have chosen from several … but I really love this candle relighting gif:
As an aside – how do YOU pronounce ‘gif’? Like ‘jif’ (as in the peanut butter)? Or like it is pronounced in ‘gift’?
The one I really plan to try soon? A healthy peanut butter centric breakfast! OK … so I actually made it last night and had it this morning. Behold my food photography master skills! (haha)
Bonus. Best Books of the 21st Century
[UPDATE: The creator of this info graphic contacted me, so I wanted to be sure it was properly attributed!]
You know, the 21st century has actually seen some really good books published! How many of the ‘best books’ have YOU read? Check out this great infographic from MAT Online at USC Rossier:
Explore more infographics like this one on the web’s largest information design community – Visually.
What have you been reading or thinking about this week?
Happy Friday everyone! Over the course of this week we went from nearly 50F to getting wind chill warnings and a few schools in our area getting a two hour delay as we hit another nearly -20F wind chill morning. Let me say it again – Ugh.
On Instagram and Facebook this morning I posted another selfie of myself alongside the temperature. Needless to say I looked the same as every other Polar Vortex run … and I just couldn’t use another one of those pictures! So – you get the condition of my New Balance Minimus shoes. I first showed them here … and now they are just past 550 miles. They still feel great and seem to have plenty of life remaining.
I have continued to enjoy finding things to share – enough that I have this list and will have more running-centric things tomorrow, so here we go with this week’s Five Things Friday!
1. Is your iPad Making You Sick?
For years there has been research into the impact of viewing motion-based content on computer screens – the oldest example I could find quickly was from 2006, but I remember having these discussions back after Doom came out in 1992!
Anyway, now researchers from the University of Minnesota have done similar studies with playing games on the iPad – looking also at accelerometer-based controls compared to touch controls. Here is just a sample:
Half of the participants played the game in “tilt control” mode, controlling the game by manually moving the device. Those participants rarely became sick. The other half that played in “touch” mode, using fingertip contact on the screen exclusively, were nearly five times as likely to get motion sickness.
I have been fortunate – FPS games never bothered me, and I don’t have any issue with motion sickness using my phone or tablet. How about you?
2. Losing Our Personal Cultural Heritage
This week a couple of celebrities died – Harold Ramis and Paco De Lucia. Do you know them? Probably you know Ramis for his work in Ghostbusters at least. He was also a hige contributor to SNL-rival SCTV, Animal House, Caddyshack, both Ghostbusters films, Groundhog Day and more. He left a huge impact on the world of comedy as we know it today.
Paco De Lucia is someone you wouldn’t know unless you follow guitar players closely, or Flamenco music. He is one of the great masters of the style, and is legendary in the genre. But around 1980 he broke out with a set of trio acoustic guitar recordings with jazz fusion legends John McLaughlin and Al Di Meola. The recording ‘Passion, Grace and Fire’ summed up the different approached of the musicians.
Here are two clips from Harold Ramis, one from SCTV and the other a New York Times bit putting some context around his contributions.
And here is a video of Paco De Lucia playing with Al Di Meola and John McLaughlin. This would have been around the same time as I saw them live a couple of times.
As a result of these losses, I have been listening to the Paco De Lucia recordings in my iTunes library, and looking back at the work of Harold Ramis. The realization is that each of these men contributed to parts of my cultural development – and as is true when people like this die, it causes us to look back at their contribution in the context of our own lives.
It is also a realization that as we age, just as we have friends and relatives passing away more frequently, so too are many of our heroes and icons leaving us. I think that the impact is related to our own mortality – just as we grew up watching our grandparents age and die, so too do we as adults watch our parents age and see our ‘timeless icons’ become elderly and die. It is the natural cycle of things, but it makes sense that it has an impact.
3. Simple Test to See if Your Religious Liberty is being threatened
With the now-vetoed law in Arizona being alternately called ‘anti-LGBT’ and ‘religious freedom protection’, an article setup as a ‘quiz’ by a minister in 2012 has been recirculating. Here is what the author says:
I’m a religious person with a lifelong passion for civil rights, so this is of great interest to me. So much so, that I believe we all need to determine whether our religious liberties are indeed at risk.
This is definitely worth checking out – because it serves as a reminder for all of us: this is about religion, but the reality is you could change up the questions and have it about most things, and it reminds us about the meaning of ‘liberty’.
Here is one of the questions:
9. My religious liberty is at risk because:
A) My religious community is not allowed to build a house of worship in my community.
B) A religious community I do not like wants to build a house of worship in my community.
4. Military Justice Improvement Act
More and more I like Senator Kirsten Gillenbrand from New York – she came in to replace Hillary Clinton and then won re-election, and has proven a champion for people and businesses around the state and the country.
An estimated 26,000 cases of unwanted sexual contact and sexual assaults occurred in FY2012, a 37% increase from FY2011.
25% of women and 27% of men who received unwanted sexual contact indicated the offender was someone in their military chain of command.
50% of female victims stated they did not report the crime because they believed that nothing would be done with their report.
Of the 3,374 total reports in 2012, only 2,558 reports were unrestricted, which means they were actionable. Of those unrestricted reports, 27 percent were for rape, 35 percent were for abusive and wrongful sexual contact, and 28 percent were for aggravated sexual assault and sexual assault. The remaining cases were for aggravated sexual contact, nonconsensual sodomy, indecent assault and attempts to commit those offenses.
Across the Services, 74% of females and 60% of males perceived one or more barriers to reporting sexual assault. 62% of victims who reported a sexual assault indicated they perceived some form of professional, social, and/or administrative retaliation.
This week partisan bickering blocked a vote on the MJIA, instead focusing on attaching sanctions against Iran. Which is too bad, because rather than debating about making a ‘muscle flexing’ show, we could be working on actually helping out those who serve in our military.
The aftermath of Kenyon’s rape left her feeling ostracized and depressed. She was disciplined for getting treatment and therefore chose to leave the military to help other victims. Since her honorable discharge she has worked with thousands of veterans, active duty members, and their families, and founded MilitarySexualTrauma.org.
“I currently suffer from severe depression, bouts of insomnia, debilitating memories and thoughts, triggers of all sorts, anger, chattering in my head, and constant anxiety to the point where I am forced to use all of my concentration to appear normal,” Kenyon admitted to the Senate panel. She says these conditions hinder her ability “to read, write, have a conversation, or remember things in the short term.”
To me this epitomizes the hypocrisy of so much of our government – they are first to call our service men and women ‘heroes’, but when it is shown that some members of the military are being assaulted and victimzed and that the chain of command is often complicit in cover-ups … they would rather engage in international sabre-rattling than helping those who volunteer to serve their country worldwide.
5. Radio Stations Playing Fewer Songs Than Ever Before
When we took our vacation in Washington DC a few years ago, we laughed about the local pop station (Hot 99.5 I think?) – it had an incredibly shallow playlist, generally rotating 5-10 songs. Since then we have continued to notice a drop-off in the number of songs played on pop radio wherever we go – there are fewer songs played more often.
Apparently that perception is actually real – new data shows that there has been a HUGE compaction of playlists in just the last decade … and anyone listening back then would have told you that deregulation was already leading to smaller and more common playlists dictated by labels. According to DMN:
Major radio station are playing less music than ever before, according to playlist data now surfacing. And the reason is simple: fewer, more familiar songs keep more people listening more often, which means higher ratings and more advertising revenue.
Which also means that there are few winners, though the songs that are played are blown into the stratosphere.
In what has to be one of the most saddening things for me – which shouln’t be surprising to anyone who has checked out the music choices I post each week – this trend has to do with the tendency to shun the new and unfamiliar:
The strategy is based on a growing amount of research that shows in increasingly granular detail what radio programmers have long believed—listeners tend to stay tuned when they hear a familiar song, and tune out when they hear music they don’t recognize.
So rather than give a new song a chance, people will change channels until something they recognize comes on. So the strategy of constant repetition plays into that by giving listeners familiar music, but also by adding new songs to the rotation in a ‘deluge’ format.
This is also why a song like Lady Gaga’s ‘Applause’ can be all over the radio but lose tons of money – the label had to BUY those radio slots, which they do to get it into the popular mind. But once the purchase period ended, no one cared and sales had already plummeted.
And in case you were wondering – this is also the reason (a) this year’s hits bear more than a passing resemblance to last year’s hits and (b) artists like Bruno Mars and Justin Timberlake have great success playing songs that are very much modeled on the popular work of other artists.
If you went back just 20 years, guess how many planets we had identified aside from those orbiting our sun? If you guessed ZERO … you are RIGHT! And even after the early discoveries, a planet-by-planet verification was required. In a stunning new paper, researchers from Nasa revealed that using the Kepler space telescope has enabled them to identify 715 new planets orbiting 305 stars, including some multi-planet systems.
The research team used a technique called verification by multiplicity, which relies in part on the logic of probability. Kepler observes 150,000 stars, and has found a few thousand of those to have planet candidates. If the candidates were randomly distributed among Kepler’s stars, only a handful would have more than one planet candidate. However, Kepler observed hundreds of stars that have multiple planet candidates. Through a careful study of this sample, these 715 new planets were verified.
“Four years ago, Kepler began a string of announcements of first hundreds, then thousands, of planet candidates—but they were only candidate worlds,” said Lissauer. “We’ve now developed a process to verify multiple planet candidates in bulk to deliver planets wholesale, and have used it to unveil a veritable bonanza of new worlds.”
What have you been reading or thinking about this week?
From the moment I left work on Wednesday until nearly 6PM on Thursday we were in ‘birthday mode’ – cooking, prepping, baking and so on. All for Christopher’s 16th birthday tea party. He wanted it small – six people – but due to school vacation week it ended up as a party for four. That was fine – two of his best friends were there for what ended up as an extended party. So while I had a post in the works along my normal lines, I thought it would be interesting to look at why you might want to host your own tea party. It was a lot of work, but we had a blast!
1. Tea … and a formal setting
This is the most obvious ingredient of a tea party, and also one of the most fun! We bought FIVE different teas, just an ounce or two of each. Loose quality teas can run from $4 – $10 per ounce, so it can add up quickly. But if you are a fan, it is worth buying! The teas we bought ranged from black teas, green teas, flowering, oolongs, and so on. The pot at the top contained a tea blend called ‘Paris’, a huge hit with everyone.
Also, it is nice to sit at a real table with china and silver and a fully set table.
2. Great Friends
This is Chris with two of his best friends. This was a dress-up affair, and Chris got to work on tying a bow tie for the first time. One reason having tea is so much fun is that it is relaxing – the goal is to relax and enjoy good food and good company in an environment with food served slowly and in stages.
3. Great food
As I said, we were busy, busy, busy with food prep. We planned multiple stages, from a light breakfast through a dense cake.
We started with appetizers – punch, a marinated tomato mozzarella on baguette, and baked camembert cheese round. The cheese round was split and a sweet brown sugar-based filling added before enclosing with the pastry.
The next thing was to sit at the main table and have some broccoli cheddar soup. This is one of those reminders that eating vegetarian isn’t the same as ‘healthy’! The fresh vegetables and cheese were great, but this is still a very heavy soup!
Next we moved on to finger sandwiches and scones. For sandwiches we made smoked salmon with herbed cream cheese, dill-cucumber sandwiches and a paprika egg salad. These sandwiches require you to remove crusts, roll bread and work on preparation and presentation – which makes for fun!
Scones are another staple of a tea party. We were originally going to make three types, but with the huge amount of food we’d amassed we cut back to two. There was a date scone we’d never tried before that came out nicely, and also an excellent buttermilk scone.
One cool thing was making condiments – we made a lemon curd, whipped caramel butter, and a berry cream. These all complemented the scones wonderfully!
4. A Variety of Sweets
For our sweets we made four very different desserts. We started with a coffee cake – this is a standard breakfast recipe we use frequently, but took and cut it up into small chunks for the platter. We also made berry cakes – berry soaked cakes covered in coconut with berry cream in between. Then we made another new item, ‘melting moments’ – lemon pastry with a refreshing lemon frosting center. Finally, we had a tradition British ‘Jammie Dodger’ – very popular for Doctor Who types. These are shortbread cookies with a strawberry jam filling.
5. And if it is your birthday … a cake!
Of course, once the tea party itself has wound down, it was time for fun, and eventually time for cake and presents. For his 16th birthday we found a cool recipe for a pecan torte with chocolate ganache … it was really good!
The kids had an amazing time, watched some YouTube videos, laughed and chatter for hours, and still kept their parents waiting outside for a while!
Happy Friday and Happy Valentine’s Day if you are celebrating! I have to confess buying flowers for Lisa while I was out getting a few groceries (we had set a $0 budget) … and she also bought me a chocolate heart. Not budget-busting as <$15 was spent in total … just fun. 🙂 I have been veering pretty 'heavy' with some of my links and topics, and will do so again today, but want to make sure to mix in some lighter stuff as well.
Are you enjoying the Olympics? I love them, but always find that the further away they are in terms of time zones, the more the US network hosting them struggles to balance coverage of live events with what to hold back for 'Prime Time'. I was reading a friend on Facebook ranting about being home with a sick child and trying to find the halfpipe snowboard race live … but due to the ratings pull of Shaun White it was held until later – when we all knew the outcome already (again because of Shaun White).
So with that – off to the links!
1. Olympic Viewership – And let’s start up top with a very timely infographic looks at how people are watching the Olympics. This is from Arnold Worldwide and I found it at the Economist, and as you can tell from the left side it is largely marketing-focused.
But it also has some cool info about Olympic viewership habits. Here are some of the quick stats:
– More than 8 out of 10 plan to watch: 82% will or might follow Sochi Olympics – 47% will watch, 35% might follow the games
– Multi-Screen Consumption: 74% of Sochi Olympics followers will consume content on multiple devices/screens
– Live access everywhere on any device key: 64% say it’s important to watch it live
– Social sharing on the rise: 62% likely to share Olympics content via social media
– Most popular platforms: 35% to use Youtube, 34% to use Twitter
Personally I have been keeping an eye on things on my phone and iPad and watching stuff on TV. It is too easy to ‘spoil’ things by knowing the results, so knowing Bode Miller was going to end up in 6th made watching the endless (and commercial-laden) runs dreadfully boring.
Oh, and on the subject of Olympians, over at Kitchen Daily they have a great article which looks at diet staples of more than a dozen olympians at Sochi!
2. Rape Culture – OK, so right back to the heavy stuff! 🙂 I definitely have a sensitivity to gender, LGBT and women’s issues, and appreciate all of the great comments I have gotten about highlighting these topics.
As I’ve noted, I definitely fall into the ‘people of privilege’ bucket – white, male, relatively affluent, middle class, conservative-looking, and so on. Police cars wave to me as I am out running rather than looking at me with suspician. So I am always affronted when I see a girl who has been sexually abused torn apart in the public eye while there is much hand-wringing about ‘the future’ for the white middle class football player kids who raped her.
“Rape culture” is a culture in which sexual violence is considered the norm — in which people aren’t taught not to rape, but are taught not to be raped. The term was first used by feminists in the 1970s but has become popular in recent years as more survivors share their stories.
3. Appeal of Top Artists by Gender – If you think about the audience for The Who or Eminem, chances are you are thinking mostly men; for Bette Midler or Justin Beiber you are more likely to think female. And while as listeners we don’t – or at least shouldn’t – care, if you are an artist or producer you really should. Which is any this article at Music Machinery is interesting, including this graphic:
So … why does this matter? Well, if you are a musician it should be of obvious importance. Sure you want EVERYONE to like your music, but as you are trying to target your marketing, where to put up posters and so on, whether the people most likely to enjoy what you play are male or female could matter to you.
Similarly, if you are a DJ or providing music for an event, understanding what type of music your audience is likely to prefer can make a big difference in how well you are received.
If you just like music … it is an interesting curiosity to see how you fall compared to the statistical trends.
4. Crisis Hotlines in the Texting Era – imagine getting a text that said “He won’t stop raping me. It is my dad. He told me not to tell anyone. Are U there?”. That was one of the motivating events that kicked off Crisis Text Line.
We have always taught our kids that when it comes to dealing with an issue, face-to-face is best, followed by phone, then written forms of non-anonymous communication. BUT central to that is this: when there is an issue, communication is key. Our kids send thousands of text messages every month, and my wife and I handle loads of random daily exchanges by text – there is no doubt about how vital and useful it is.
But in the past, agencies couldn’t really DO anything with a cry for help via text like was shown above … and that is a shame. Im my opinion, that request – in any format – should trigger immediate action. Fortunately now we are starting to see that happen. I just hope that the word gets out quickly so that kids who are afraid to call can send a quick text and get the help they need.
5. The Best Time To Drink Coffee … according to science! – The site I Love COffee has a fun infographic that looks at the science of when caffiene would best work with your system. Here is the first section:
To see more you have to head to the site! But it is definitely worth it!
Bonus. Facebook Recognizes Gender Diversity – similar to how they have relationships beyond just ‘married’ or ‘single’, Facebook now allows members to describe their gender status as something other than ‘male’ or female’. Here is a look at their new gender selection screen:
Facebook has just updated to let users choose the gender pronoun they associate with. Aside from the usual “male” and “female” options, users can choose up to 10 different gender definitions to describe themselves out of more than 50 options, including “cisgender,” “transgender” and “intersex.”
They also allow you custom options on who can see your gender status, giving you control to prevent some people from seeing it for whatever reason. I think this is a great move – it recognizes the non-traditional gender roles that have been around for ages but always hidden until very recently, and allows people do control how it is viewed to avoid abuse or harassment.
Happy Friday! Between the Super Bowl and Sochi there is a lot of sports-related news this week, so I have a couple of links related to those to share. But it is also interesting that those stories don’t drown out the rest of the world – in fact, side-stories from each threatened to drown out the main event – and spawned their own spin-offs of related issues this week. I have some of that as well!
There has also been a lot of chatter about the ‘Biggest Loser’ winner, but as someone who has body image issues and was told I ‘lost too much weight’ when I was 50lbs heavier than now … I really have no desire to touch that one. My only thought there is I hope she comes to a ‘happy place’ with her self-image once the limelight turns away from her.
So let’s get right to the link!
1. The Mess that is the Sochi Olympics – by now the sports have started and the opening ceremony is tonight, and I am really hoping that Russia learns some lessons from the harsh global criticism of its abusive LGBT policies. I have already said that this is the LEAST excited I can ever remember being about an Olympics – and that is the reason. And it isn’t fair – I have always been a huge Olympics nerd, driving my family nuts every 4 years in winter and summer! Here are a few bits of coverage:
– Few companies have taken a stand on the Russian laws for obvious commercial reasons, but many have made subtle endorsements of LGBT people and athletes recently. Google is one, changing their doodle to highlight the olympics … with rainbow colors of inclusion.
– And I’m not sure whether the sports will be able to compete with the social media traction gotten by the abysmal state of readiness of Sochi. Some of the pictures are totally hilarious … Buzzfeed has a good roundup here.
OK … now let’s get on with the sports and hope that after the Olympics Russian LGBT community can safely get on with their lives.
2. A Sobering Look at the Body Image Issues Women Deal With – linked from Upworthy comes a great (but sad) infographic called ‘Women are Dying to be Thin’. I talk about my own body image issues, but one look at the male-female pairings on most sitcoms is enough to tell you that there is not equal pressure applied to men and women in terms of appearance – there is an entire main section on TV Tropes about it.
3. Gender Issues – Video Shows Men What It Feels Like To Be Subjected To Sexism And Sexual Violence – now this is some pretty important stuff. I talked about child sex abuse in my ‘Thought for Thursday’ (about separating art and artists), but the extent to which sexism and various forms of harassment and sexual violence runs rampany in our society is just appalling.
This week at THIS is Thirty, Laura brought back some of her very first posts, ones that she had done anonymously and later taken down before she took the blog public. They deal with her history – last year – of workplace sexual harassment in a small company where the management team chose to take the side of the harasser and subject her to a hostile environment that caused her mental and physical distress. It is an amazing series of powerful stories, and I applaud her candor. Check them out starting here.
Anyway, check out this compelling and powerful (and sorta NSFW) video that was featured at BuzzFeed:
4. Is America No Longer the ‘Melting Pot’, ‘Mosaic’, or ‘Land of Opportunity for all’? – So apparently there is an entire group of people found Coca Cola’s commercial ‘controversial’?
We watched it and found that it was amazingly well done and communicated the spirit of the inscription on the Statue of Liberty:
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
You don’t have to search much to find examples of the critics of the video … or to assess the demographics of the critics.
Anyway, here is the excellent video that celebrates the diversity of individuals with origins all over the world who make up what it means to be an American today:
5. Want to have kids? Be ready to earn less! – there is a ‘conventional wisdom’ item that women earn ~25% less than men, but lately those numbers have gotten more scrutiny and have been estimated at more like 5-10% for “doing the same work as men for the same number of hours”. But the bigger concern? The ‘Mommy Track’, according to the Atlantic:
One recent paper found that women with kids make roughly 7 to 14 percent less than women without them.
And more than just earning less, mothers in the workforce often come back and are given either less work or less significant assignments than non-parent female coworkers. The result? They lose out on potential promotions, high profile assignments and become more vulnerable during down-sizing and restructuring.
Of course the concept of a ‘mommy track’ is not new, and was discussed here:
And among all workers, women are more likely than men to take a significant time off from work to raise children, and they tend to be re-hired at lower wages than their counterparts who remained in the workforce.
But what IS new is much of the research in the Atlantic article looking at efficiency and productivity, and how employers with outdated concepts might be hurting themselves by ascribing to the idea that a returning mother is of lesser value.
Bonus: A typical iPhone would have cost $3.6 million two decades ago – this is a great look at the rapid evolution of technology.
I’ve talked about being (a) a total tech-head all my life and (b) working in the semiconductor industry for years, and how both of those things landed me in a place where I have always had cool new gadgets and been working closely with those who make the ‘internals’ of those devices.
So when I think back to 1991, I had a HP 95LX ‘handheld computer’, was already running mostly on a laptop, would soon have a Blackberry (pre-phone version) and cell phone and Newton and so on. I resisted so-called ‘convergence devices’ for a long time because … well, because none of them were as powerful as separate devices. So 10 years ago I would have had a Psion 5mx (PDA), Nokia phone, iPod, Powerbook and Dell XPS laptop.
Now? Now I still have my work laptop and my home Mac & PC … but 90% of my life happens between my iPad and iPhone. AND – I have MUCH more capability in my hands than I did back then.
This weekend brings us the Super Bowl, which is ostensably an important championship football game between the Denver Broncos and Seattle Seahawks. But more and more each year, people make the day an event, eat great food (perhaps the Asparagus Feta Pizza or Veggie Fries that Megan shared this week), tune in to see the crazy-expensive commercials, and watch the half-time show.
The concept of the huge half-time show is relatively modern – from 1967 – 1989 they stuck to the traditional marching band show and had all the retired players in the booth pontificating about what had happened on the field. But then suddenly they seemed to realize that rather than lose viewers like they traditionally did (apparently 22 million left to watch Living Colour on FOX in 1992) they could actually GAIN viewers … and the huge spectacle was born.
Readers will know that my music tastes don’t exactly run to the popular side (or even music with words for that matter). But I am a lifelong student and lover of music, so we watch the Grammies, Super Bowl half-time shows and so on. But because I am a lover of MUSIC, I find lip-syncing absolutely unforgiveable.
This year we get Bruno Mars, who we actually saw live at the New York State Fair, so I know that he can put on a great show – he is a real singer and performer in what I would call the ‘James Brown tradition’.
One comment – I chose the image of Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake because it changed Super Bowl half-time history. Things were getting better year after year, they were starting to take chances … then one nip-slip and we end up with 6 years of old-fogey rock including snooze-worthy bits by Stones, Bruce, Petty and The Who. That 2004 show itself is largely forgotten – and was pretty mediocre by itself – but it left an indelible shadow over the half-time show.
Let’s take a look bad at the last 20 years of shows, taking 4 of the worst and 4 of the best as examples.
The Bad:
1. The Who – it is worth taking a moment to reflect that these guys were the great stars of Woodstock alongside Jimi Hendrix, and in 1970 produced perhaps the greatest live rock album with ‘Live at Leeds’, and are generally seen as one of the greatest live bands in the history of rock music.
You really need to let that wash over you … and in that light this performance becomes not just a mediocre but safe show by aging rockers (like the Stones or Tom Petty), but an appaling, atrocious and embarassing spectacle that is for me the absolute nadir of what rock music has become.
2. Madonna / MIA / LMFAO – Look, I love Madonna, and I know many people love this show. But beyond having someone in their 50s looking and moving like that, it is pretty clear she was largely lip-syncing her performance. Oh, and the moment she started sharing the stage with everyone else things tool a clif-dive. Vogue grabbed me, the rest was awful.
3. Black Eyed Peas (w/Slash and Usher) – I have little use for the Black Eyed Peas as a general rule, think Slash is a great but highly over-rated guitarist who has spent more time collecting paychecks for showing up with his iconic look than actually creating art with his prodigous talents. This show was cringe-worthy from beginning to end.
4. Aerosmith, NSync, Britney Spears, etc – deconstructed this isn’t really terrible, it just makes no sense, is generic and bland and a bit creepy at times. Aerosmith is reigned in, and everyone else is lip-syncing through their dance steps. Add Ben STiller, Chris Rock and Adam Sandler and you have a real hot mess of trying too hard.
The Good:
1. U2 – in the wake of 9/11, U2 took the stage and reminded us what it was like to have a stunning and moving performance by people who could sing and play and electrify an audience. Add to that the tributes to the victims of the attacks, delivered by a group from Ireland, a country torn by war and terrorism most of my life, and you have an incredible event.
2. Prince – too often Prince stood in the shadow of Michael Jackson, and too often the Super Bowl has featured over-choreographed bombastic dance & pyrotechnic shows. On this night in the rain, Prince came out and did what he does best – siing, play his guitar, and just put on an amazing spectacle. Of course, since he is a litigous luddite the show is gone from pretty much everywhere … but I did find this video on Veoh (which wouldn’t embed properly, so you have to follow the link … ).
3. Michael Jackson – the mother-effing king of pop. This was the first time we got a major spectacle, and the NFL really made a statement. Michael Jackson, popular songs, great production, visual spectacle worth watching … score on all fronts. You could tell he was singing at times … and not singing at others. But it was such classic MJ even I can forgive it.
4. Shania Twain, Sting, Gwen Stefani – I am not a huge fan of Shania Twain, but she came out that day and showed her talents extended beyond being the pretty face of modern country music with a stirring performance. Then we get Gwen Stefani doing (proper) push-ups and reminding us what someone who tries to sing while jumping and dancing and running around a stage SHOULD sound like (take note Madonna and Beyonce, etc). Finally a duet with Sting. Great organic, genuine moments that all worked.
The Rest:
The reality is most everything else I have seen during Super Bowls is mediocre from my standpoint. It is often like they are trying to be like the Grammy Awards, constantly ‘making history’ (note: when you script a moment to ‘make history’, it seldom does).
I expect that this weekend we will see some decent football, some amusing commercials, and a show that will be enjoyable and entertaining. And that is pretty much it.
Thanks so much for all of the great feedback from last Friday. Now I am bold and am going to embark on another list of 5 links of things that made me think this week. But before we start, I have a question:
Pinterest: so I was asking Olena at Candies & Crunches about her infographics after reading this post and she noted finding them on Pinterest. That hadn’t even occurred to me. I have a Pinterest account and do Pin things on occasion, but have just never connected.
I have had a couple of people suggest it is a male/female thing, but I don’t know if I believe that – I don’t tend to fall on those sorts of lines anyway. I think it is more a ‘dinosaur’ thing …
So I will ask you guys … what suggestions do you have for getting more engaged with Pinterest?
OK, so here we go with another set of links I found interesting this week!
1. OK, this is totally meta, but here is a link to a set of links from Greatist. I like how they do round-ups, and this one is on ‘gender and feminism’ issues. There are several great links, looking at strategies for winning Oscars to ‘boyfriend-zoning’ to proof guys are more absent-minded (I still call it a cop-out!) and more.
I really enjoyed all of the links (and the minutes just disappeared as I worked from link to link and so on). But there was ONE I really connected with – it is a VR syste, allows one person to see life through the perspective of another – male to female, black to white, short to tall.
Be Another Lab takes a different, more visceral approach to exploring empathy. Instead of using digital avatars, the group uses performers to copy the movements of a subject: for example, racial bias is studied by having a subject’s actions mirrored by a performer of color.
I know it is only an experiment, but the thought of allowing others to gain empathy through this type of things really intrigues me.
2. Here is a unique perspective highlighted at UpWorthy – Eat anything you want … just cook it yourself. The main theme is that the things fast food does best are often things that are laborious in small home batches – so we end up eating those things much more frequently than we would if we had to make them ourselves. The video is just a couple of minutes long and definitely worth watching.
While we’re talking food, Greatist had another link list about ‘Odd Eating Habits’ … definitely some fun things including articles about using expired food for cheap meals, eating roadkill, how baby smells trigger the same brain centers as delicious foods, and more!
Just because you’re fit doesn’t mean you’re healthy, or vice versa. Knowing the difference between the two will go a long way to a sustainable lifestyle. Racing or recreational running doesn’t intrinsically make one healthy.
OK, so I lied … one more. I have always talked about how my running regulates my eating – when I run, I automatically eat better. Turns out it is ‘a thing’ because … SCIENCE! A study highlighed at Runner’s World looked at what you craved after exercise compared to non-exercize. Cool!
3. OK, so I have never worn Spanx – though apparently it is not unheard of for men to wear them, particularly on camera. But for women, shapewear has become something as natural as underwear or shoes. But according to an article at Huffington Post, all that “Spanx And Other Shapewear Are Literally Squeezing Your Organs”. Here is just a taste:
Shapewear couldn’t do its job if it wasn’t tight. Unfortunately, this leaves your stomach, intestine and colon compressed, which Dr. Kuemmerle says can worsen acid reflux and heartburn. Restrictive clothing can also provoke erosive esophagitis.
Your digestive tract is also affected, explains Dr. Erickson. The intestines are supposed to contract and move food along, but when they’re compressed over a long period of time, the flow of digestion is stifled. “It’s like when people eat a huge meal and then unbuckle their jeans,” Dr. Kuemmerle says. This damage, though not permanent, can lead to unpleasant symptoms like abdominal discomfort, bloating and gas.
Another hallmark of shapewear? Shallow breath. When you inhale, your diaphragm expands and your abdomen flares out, Dr. Erickson says, but shapewear restricts this movement and decreases the excursion in respiration.
Definitely go check out the full article … and after reading I would bet that guys will start asking ‘WHY do you think you need to wear that’ and women ‘do I REALLY need to do this to myself’?
4. Parenting – exactly where are the boundaries?
I am certainly not going to jump on a ‘parental judgment’ train here, but this week there was a post at Gawker featuring a picture someone snapped of a kid climbing all over a piece of art valued in the millions while the parents just stood by and let it happen. Here is the picture:
We have always been pretty strong with the boundary limits for our kids – look but don’t touch, no ‘visiting other booths’ at restaurants, and so on. But at the same time, we don’t pretend our kids were perfect (more than one full grocery cart was left behind over the years) – so when I see a kid who is a little fussy and the mom/dad is distracted by another fussy kid, if I can give a distracting smile, I certainly will. But there need to be some type of limits … and personally I think that climbing on art falls on the far side of that line.
Thoughts? Not just about this – but what as a parent has changed in how you now view other kids, and as a non-parent what drives you nuts about parents and kids in public?
Also on parenting, over at Neatorama, there is an amazing comic looking at the first year of parenting through the perspective of comic artist Grant Snider of Incidental Comics.
5. I used to be very quiet, but got better after losing weight … and now after moving to Corning Lisa says I am a total chatterbox who will talk to just about anyone! Yet I still dno’t have an issue with silence. I have no problems making smalltalk – do you?
A person with oppositional conversational style is a person who, in conversation, disagrees with and corrects whatever you say. He or she may do this in a friendly way, or a belligerent way, but this person frames remarks in opposition to whatever you venture.
I noticed this for the first time in a conversation with a guy a few months ago. We were talking about social media, and before long, I realized that whatever I’d say, he’d disagree with me. If I said, “X is important,” he’d say, “No, actually, Y is important.” For two hours. And I could tell that if I’d said, “Y is important,” he would’ve argued for X.
I saw this style again, in a chat with friend’s wife who, no matter what casual remark I made, would disagree. “That sounds fun,” I observed. “No, not at all,” she answered. “That must have been really difficult,” I said. “No, for someone like me, it’s no problem,” she answered. Etc.
I have definitely dealt with this too many times through the year – people who absolutely need to be right, and have the situation corrected, politeness and decorum be damned.
Bonus: Did you watch the State of the Union? Apparently they scheduled it during Supernatural so we missed it. I heard it largely consisted of one guy promising free beer even if he had to buy it himself, and a bunch of other guys nobody knows or cares about scrambling to find microphones (and occasionally threatening the people WITH the microphones) to tell people that they do NOT want the free beer but instead want what they have in a bag somewhere, but wouldn’t say what was in the bag, where it was, or whether or not it would be free if and when they DID talk about it. 😀
Here are some I thought were particularly interesting:
1. New income generated since 2009 that has gone to the top 1 percent: 95 percent
2. Financial wealth controlled by the bottom 60 percent of all Americans: 2.3 percent
8. What the minimum wage would be if it had kept pace with gains in worker productivity since 1968: $21.72
13. Years since the turn of this century that have ranked among the warmest 15 on record: All 13
15. U.S. defense spending as of 2012: $682 billion (which is $516 MORE than China spent)
25. Alternate unemployment rate including Americans who’ve given up looking for work, or have only been able to secure part-time employment: 13.1 percent
26. Number of jobs the United States is still down from 2008 employment peak: 1.69 million
You know what is funny – today was -2 when I went for my run, but after being this cold all week I found today to be quite comfortable. In fact, rather than focusing on my cold hands I was noticing that the front of my thighs were cool as I ran – something I hadn’t noticed at all before. Funny how you adjust to just about anything.!
For ‘five things Friday’ I am shamelessly ripping off Megan’s idea of sharing some links to interesting articles … because I think it is an awesome idea. These are things I have left open in my browser, read at least once, and thought that other people should know about. There is a mix of heath and non-health stuff … oh, and I am also not shy about offering some relatively harsh opinions.
1. Oxfam Healthy Eating Report – I have never been shy at saying that I think much of the ‘obesity epidemic’ in the US is not only self-inflicted but is also orchestrated by large food conglomerates and with government support in the form of helping farmers get corn put into everything (and thereby making any farmer who likes money a corn farmer). Certainly there is individual responsibility, but it is trickier as we have learned that the chemical make-up of our so-called ‘healthy’ foods actually messes with our natural ability to detect fullness.
“one clear explanation for America’s high rates of unhealthy eating has to do with what food is available, not just how much. Processed, high-fat foods are often significantly cheaper than fresh fruits and vegetables. Despite many Americans’ efforts to eat healthier, not everyone can prioritize healthfulness over sustenance.”
One thing that has always bugged me is the ‘processed foods are cheaper’ thing, and for a couple of reasons. First, if you actually plan out full meals in both systems then you find it isn’t as true as it initially seems.
Also, it shouldn’t be remotely true – because my manufacturing brain reminds me that in any process the raw materials are only a fraction of the cost, and that each ‘value add’ step brings in additional cost in terms of overhead, machinary, and on and on. What that tells me is that to be price competitive, processed foods need to have considerably cheaper raw materials – aka FILLER!
2. Global Income Disparity – ‘The Rich get richer, the poor get poorer’, ‘income elasticity’, and so on – these are all things used to describe how year after year the wealth of the world gets concentrated into fewer and fewer hands. This isn’t meant as political commentary – it is just a reminder that in all areas where money can make a difference, there are fewer people weilding more of an impact with each passing year.
An Oxfam briefing has noted that the richest 85 people in the world control the same amount of wealth as the bottom half of the world’s population. That means about seven dozen people (the number of people it would take to crowd one subway-car) have as much of the world’s wealth as 3.5 billion people put together.
About half of the world’s wealth is owned by the richest 1% of the population and that wealth (all $110 trillion of it) is 65 times the wealth of the bottom half of the population.
To put that 3.5 billion into perspective – you would have to add up the 7 most populous nations (China, India, US, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan and Nigeria) to approach 3.5 billion.
3. OK, let’s jump into a ‘hot-button’ issue – Guns. I really don’t plan to get into the 2nd amendment vs. ‘right to be alive’ debate. Instead this week there was a report that many people considered common sense and others are challenging – as usual based on politics. Here is a bit from NBC News:
Studies looking at homicide found that if people had access to guns, they were two to three times more likely to be killed themselves.
“Firearms cause an estimated 31,000 deaths annually in the United States,” they wrote in their report, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. “Data from the 16-state National Violent Death Reporting System indicate that 51.8 percent of deaths from suicide in 2009 were firearm-related; among homicide victims, 66.5 percent were firearm-related.”
While it seems like a simple leap that having guns around would lead to more gun use, and since guns are designed with a singular purpose (i.e. death), increased use would mean increased death. However, much of campaign against gun control centers on getting MORE guns into the hands of people in order to DECREASE death. This report indicates that the ‘more guns theory’ doesn’t hold in the face of reality. Of course it is also one of those ‘correlation not causation’ things, and doesn’t provide answers … just more questions.
4. Detox – for me that is a bit of a catch-word. Because it has been shown pretty convincingly that your body is ALREADY a detox machine and therefore juice cleanses are not needed, and can actually be disruptive and potentially dangerous. When done carefully they can make you feel great … but as this article at Greatist shows, perhaps a better idea would just be to focus on clean and healthy eating:
The word “detox” tends to bring to mind scary-intense juice cleanses or a gluten- dairy-meat-grain-sugar-caffeine-free diet that will make you run away screaming (and hungry). But never fear — when we say “detox,” we’re talking about refocusing the mind, body, and palate on healthy, tasty, and nutritious foods. Instead of going crazy-restrictive and nixing all food groups except kale and steamed fish (not exactly a sustainable diet), let’s use the first weeks of 2014 to explore new tastes, textures, ingredients, and cooking techniques. Most of these recipes are based on healthy staples like whole grains, fresh fruits and vegetables, and both vegetarian and meat protein sources.
Again it isn’t about whether or not you should supplement, but instead about how to get those vitamins in the first place so that a supplement might not be needed at all. The article didn’t link to the original graphic (tsk tsk), so I wanted to share it from the original site that created it:
Bonus: While we are talking supplements, I know a lot of folks are into protein powders. I have always wondered about those – particularly when people talk about them linked to ‘clean eating’. Something about powders made in a factory doesn’t scream ‘real food’ to me. Apparently I am not alone, as I came across this post with some links questioning the benefits of protein powders, saying:
Alarmingly, the amount of lead in a single serving in 8 of the tested protein supplements would require a warning label in the state of California.
I really don’t know what to think – I know loads of people are into using them to mix into smoothies and so on, I would just advise everyone to be careful and make sure that they are balancing all of their nutritional needs – and to ALWAYS check into the stuff you put into your body!
And how about an added crazy bonus?!? Any Supertramp fans? I remember when they were HUGE back in the late 70s / early 80s, and their ‘Breakfast in America’ album tore up the charts. Now according to the UK Mirror, a poster on the David Icke forums cites a whole conspiracy around the Supertramp album and the 9/11 terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center. It is super-crazy in every way … yet somehow I think that ‘Eve’ should be given creative control of a TV show RIGHT NOW! Who knows what would happen!
Happy Friday and I hope everyone has a great weekend! Keep warm!
Since I did my favorite bass players, I thought it on this Friday Playlist I would look at the guitar. Once more this will be an unordered list of ‘quick hits’ – just a quick statement and a video of something I love from them.
So … let’s get going with a ‘Baker’s Dozen’ of my favorite guitarists!
Mary Halvorson – I just posted about her new album, and like it or not (mostly not) my whole family knows her music. She plays with an incredible intensity, weaving broad angular melodies and harmonic structures that aer never stable or predictable, but always exciting. As I mentioned, I love her in a trio setting, so here she is with Jon Hebert and Ches Smith from last year.
Al Di Meola – No one defines the over-the-top technical prowess of 1970s fusion quite like Al Di Meola. His incredible guitar skills are legendary, but as you listen to this you will hear the subtlety and nuance he communicated that made him unique. Transitioning from ‘guitar hero’ in the 90s proved more of a challenge for him, and only in the last decade has he found his mojo again.
Alan Holdsworth – When you listen to Alan Holdsworth, you hear an amazing style and fluidity that was incredibly influential to guitarists from Alex Lifeson or Rush to Eddie Van Halen and beyond. I first heard him with Bill Bruford’s group, and his solo work in the 80s and beyond is equally stellar. You might not have heard of him, but you can be assured your favorite guitarist has.
Derek Bailey – Perhaps the most controversial ‘major’ guitarist in history, Bailey almost totally eschews the traditional concepts of rhythm, harmony and melody … yet comes up with some incredibly infectious and enjoyable. Well, for me. Most people absolutely can’t stand him.
Jim Hall – Jim Hall is one of those guys that everyone knows but no one sits in awe until they really listen. Yet he was one of the greatest guitarists to come out of the 1950s and amongst the best jazz guitarists ever. Here is a live TV recording of Jim Hall with the Sonny Rollins quartet playing the classic song ‘The Bridge’.
Pat Metheny – Metheny is one of the most lyrical guitarists, and early on some purists used that to label him as a ‘smooth jazz’ player, but we have seen through the years that is not remotely true. As a player, composer and bandleader (and sideman) he has made some of the biggest comtributions to the genre in the last half century.
Jimi Hendrix – Hendrix is an obvious choice for any of these lists, but a correct one. He possessed incredible talent, but also a vision for music that was as transformative as the pop-rock of the Beatles and the blues-rock of The WHo and the Rolling Stones. And his guitar playing brought together blues, rock, and jazz in a way that had never been heard. His scope of influence extended well outside of the rock world.
Emily Remler – One of my favorite all-time guitarists, Remler had a taste for cocaine that landed her dead from a heart attack at 32. She was ground-breaking as a female guitarist, but that means nothing to her music, which did a great job of bridging classic guitarists like Jim Hall and modernists such as Pat Metheny. Listen to her playing in the video and you hear a style that has classic ‘American Songbook’ appeal, a latin rhythm, and also some more smooth jazz and fusion styles, with a complex solo that extends and branches the harmony.
Frank Zappa – Although most known as a composer, singer and all-around weirdo, Zappa was an incredible guitarist. His live shows were full of guitar pyrotechnics and extended unison runs, and later he brought on some of the great young guitarists to fill in added solos, as in this live duet with the amazing Steve Vai. What I always loved about Zappa was not just his prowess but his harmodic inventiveness – he played things in a completely different way from any other rock guitarist.
John McLaughlin – Yet another guitarist I have seen multiple times (like Metheny, Di Meola, Beck and Holdsworth from this list), he made a name for himself with Miles Davis on Bitches Brew, but it is through his Mahavishnu Orchestra of the 70s and 80s he made his mark on jazz history. Here is the band I saw twice in the mid-80s, with bassist Jonas Hellborg who featured on my top bassists list.
Steve Vai – Am I featuring Steve Vai mainly just to use this scene from Crossroads? Maybe, but the reality is that Vai took what Eddie Van Halen had innovated from Holdsworth and Beck and Page, and turned it up to 11, and in the process re-spawned a new set of guitarists truly interested in craft as well as antics, including Joe Satriani. Reason why he should NOT be on this list? There just isn’t much substance there, so once you get past the amazing technique, you are done.
Jeff Beck – In my opinion Jeff Beck was the greatest rock guitarist to emerge out of the British invasion … and inarguably the one with the longest history of reinventing himself. From blues to rock to psychedelia to early heavy metal to funk to jazz to fusion to pop to techno to … well, we will know in 2014 what he is up to next!
Joe Pass – Imagine someone naming their own album ‘Virtuoso’. Now imagine everyone nodding their head about it. Joe Pass was making some of the most exciting music available just as The WHo and Hendrix were playing deafening loud ‘walls of sound’. This sooo performance from 1992 is a reminder of just how broad his palette was.
Eddie Van Halen – Ever heard of Rick Emmett of Triumph? Well, Eddie Van Halen certainly did – while Emmett didn’t invent hammer-ons, pull-offs, pitch bends, or any of his other techniques either … he was majorly influential on the young EVH. Here is a link to a video from well before Van Halen arrived. But when the first Van Halen album landed I was floored because he brought all of these things together with an ease and fluidity that we hadn’t heard before
Wes Montgomery – Wes was a gifted improviser with perfect tone and a great ability to work in any situation. Sadly his career was mis-managed and after the success of pop-centric ‘A Day in the Life’ his last two years were mostly filled with fluff until his early death of a heart attack at 45.
Well, this was less of a ‘quick hit’ than planned … but I love looking through these things and hope you enjoyed the cool guitarists I featured! Do you have a favorite? Someone new for me to check out? Let me know!
Well, 2013 is over, and it was again an amazing year in music – there was cool new pop by all kinds of artists, a rap album from Kanye West I actually liked, Daft Punk returned and more. But my area of interest is jazz … and there was TONS of great jazz! So I wanted to detail some of the best stuff I heard all year.
I have never been great at just doing a Top 10 list, so I didn’t! I worked on a list, eliminated and added things, and ended up with 15 recordings … well, 15 JAZZ albums, plus one each for Clasical, Rock, Rap and R&B. So let’s get right to it!
The amazing Wayne Shorter made his name as a Blue Note recording artist even before joining Miles Davis in 1964, where he became a key composer and celebrated improviser. He formed Weather Report and has continued to be active ever since.
This past year Shorter did an amazing thing – at 80 years old he released an album that ranks with some of the best work of his career, taken from live performances. This is not some ‘oldies revival tour’ – this is hardcore mainstream jazz played at a very high level!
Here is a video of him with the quartet live at Marciac in 2013:
Speaking of Miles Davis, Kenny Garrett was the final saxophone player for Davis and the best since Dave Liebman in the early 70s. Garrett is an incredible player, composer and bandleader. I have really enjoyed his last few releases, but this newest one is his best stuff to date.
Here is a live recording of his classic song ‘Happy People’
Dave Douglas is one of the most vibrant and exciting trumpet players and composers working, and will tackle just about anything – so why is his most straight-ahead effort the first one that hits my ‘best music’ list? Because it is excellent. The band has evolved and is more in touch than on last year’s ‘Be Still’, which elevates the proceedings.
Here is a video of an alternate take to the title track ‘Time Travel’
I will admit that one of my favorite things about the recent Gary Burton Quartet is guitarist Julian Lage. But then again, Pat Metheny was a featured player with Burton back in the 70s. This new group has matured since their first album, and just keeps getting better. This is mainstream jazz, I can’t wait for where they take us next.
‘Tap’ is an amazingly adventurous work. It reminds me of the stellar classic Ornette Coleman collaboration ‘Song X’, in that both artists are fully engaged, and the results show clear impact from both but also a transcendant quality that was only possible by having both acting together seeking something more from the music than either alone could create.
Since he hasn’t performed Tap live, here is the album version of Tharsis.
I have loved Matthew Shipp for years now, and he has never failed to entertain and challenge listeners. When rumors had him retiring, this release was extra-sweet: it has classic melodies throughout but never follows a classic A-B-A structure, and yet never drifts into the free jazz tradition. It is full of surprises and rewards you every time you listen. Definitely the best solo piano all year.
Throughout the recording there are up and down tempo pieces, moments where there is more atmosphere than composition, times of intense group improvisation, and some gorgeous ballads. But while the album is clearly a concept piece, there is no particular order I found works best – I often listen straight through, but have also shuffled the songs and not had an issue. So while it is a concept album, more than that it is just a great jazz album.
It was funny listening to this with my older son in the car, because every time he started to find the beat they would switch it up – it was frustrating. But that is the point, Berne and his group play with time expertly in this recording. The original Snakeoil album I found decent, but this one renews my love for Berne and his group. This is challenging listening, but also rewarding.
The remainder of the compositions are some of Halvorson’s best. What really concerned me initially was that in a septet setting her sense of intimacy would be lost amongst the harmonies and rhythmic counterpoint. Fortunately she manages the septet in much the same way as she handled the quintet – as an expanded trio. That sounds odd, but for me the key to her music is rhythmic and harmonic juxtaposition. That all comes from the guitar, bass and drums at the core – and the horns serve as larger extensions of those stations and add melody and timbre as well as further counterpoint.
From the album this is the song ‘Four Pages of Robots’:
This album has a GROOVE – Coleman describes the beats as the interconnected systems of the body, which sounds better than all of the cardiac words in the song titles. But the greatest thing is how Coleman just keeps churning out great compositions, and the quartet keeps getting better and better! This is ‘modern jazz’ in how it has elements of funk and free jazz mixed in with more compositionally based music.
Here is a recording of the group playing live in Paris in 2013:
The other thing I love is the use of space – and I don’t just mean playing around silence. For me the interesting use of space involves overfilling it as well as leaving it wide open. There are some extremely dense moments on Chants, and others where there is very little being said overtly – and each one is handled deftly by all three musicians. This speaks to the high level of musicianship and the communication between the artists.
I first heard Terence Blanchard on his own with Donald Harrison in the mid-80s as one of the ‘young lions’, and have enjoyed his development through the years. But recently he has been tied up with so much other stuff that it seems like forever since he released a good ole’ jazz album. And this one reminds us why it was worth the wait!
Here the group plays some of the title track from Magnetic:
I have been a fan of David Sanborn for decades, and this album shows the amazing evolution of Sanborn and James through all of the years since they first collaborated. They each add great contributions in terms of playing, arraning and composing, and the improvisations are deep and poignant and exciting. I wasn’t a big fan of ‘Double Vision’, their first collaboration from 1986 as it was really just ‘smooth jazz’, but this is something I loved much more than I expected.
Here James and Sanborn explain the making of the recording:
Argue’s ‘steampunk big band’ amazed everyone on ‘Infernal Machines’, now he is back with more depth, breadth and scope. This is atmospheric, cinematic, moody, dark, bright, intimate and pretty much every other adjective I could toss in. Darcy James Argue has become one of the great composers and bandleaders in all of jazz with just two albums … I can’t wait to see what comes next!
Here is a portion of the composition live from 2013:
With a name like “Subatomic Particle Homesick Blues”, do you expect seriousness? No – you get loads of playful, fun, funky jazz. But that doesn’t mean these aren’t serious compositions played by top-level musicians. I hadn’t heard Ben Goldberg before, but he released TWO great albums in 2013 alone! Definitely one of my favorites, as he weaves a path through mainstream and free jazz that neither bores nor alienates.
Am I cheating? Who knows … Maria Schneider is nominally a ‘jazz’ composer, but this music falls more into classical based on a survey of those I forced to listen (i.e. my family). For most people, the intervallic leaps and ebb and flow of the structure will be off-putting, but there is amazing stuff going on that reminds us why Maria Schneider is such a treasure.
With his last album my review basically said “great music ruined when Kanye opens his mouth”. On this album Daft Punk sets a stage with the opening songs that Kanye actually makes work well. There are a few clunkers, and some of the usual garbage lyrics, but there is a raw energy and a ‘realness’ to the music that really surprised me.
I actually did a review of this along with Jay-Z’s boring album:
For ‘Yeezus’, let me offer a similar summary: this album is so good that Kanye can’t mess it up when he opens his mouth! In fact, on many songs, he intensity and the ferocious growl of his voice adds to the urgency and dark thematic material.
Here is the song ‘I am a god’ from the album, because everything I found recorded live sounded like garbage:
Since ‘Black Radio’ won the Grammy for R&B I figured I could put it here without being accused of cheating (true confession: I’m cheating!). Just like on the original there are great songs, great musicianship and tight production. I definitely prefer the original to the new album, but this is a solid release with some very good music.
Here is the music video for ‘Calls’ featuring Jill Scott:
In my review I said: One of the cool things about the album is that it feels like a collaboration throughout – ‘Descent’ is very bass-heavy, but Minneman is all over the beat and Rudess provides essential lightness to the heavy proceedings. And you really need to check out the video below for ‘Scrod’. The closing song ‘Service Engine’ is long and winding and a really great closing journey for this epic record.
And this remains on my regular rotation on iTunes. The energy and musicianship is just amazing, and there is a rewarding depth.
Running Around the Bend 