Author: Tim Jarrett

New Coltrane

VinylFactory.com: Previously unheard 1964 John Coltrane album released for the first time.

This is an even bigger deal, arguably, than last year’s Both Directions at Once, which I liked but which was ultimately a little … unmemorable? The title track of Blue World is a burner that reminds me of “Equinox” and other great John Coltrane Quartet classics. Listen now:

Unmentioned in the coverage I’ve seen is that you can pre-order the vinyl version of the album in the uDiscover Music store, ahead of its September 27th release.

“Fill Up Your (Old) Silver Goblet”

I’ve written before about University of Virginia student songs, including (infamously) “From Rugby Road to Vinegar Hill” (once or twice) and “Glory to Virginia,” the student song often performed with “Rugby Road.” As I noted in the latter case, many of these student songs follow the traditional pattern of oral transmission of ballads and other songs, in which old melodies gain new lyrics and vice versa.

This morning I found another example, in a most unlikely place. I’m working through a project to rip all the vinyl in my possession, which includes records that I’ve bought on purpose and that have been lent or outright given to me by friends and family members. One was an awful “Sing Along with Mitch” record. I rip the things so I can share them back to the donors if requested, and in the odd case I find some tracks that are meaningful or really good. In this case, it was a medley on the B side of “A Bicycle Built for Two” and “Put on Your Old Grey Bonnet.” And the latter song is the melody of “Fill Up Your Old Silver Goblet,” which is titled with and without the “old,” but is always sung with “Rugby Road.”

So I started writing the Glee Club Wiki article on the song, and as I went I found more and more examples of alternate versions of this song. “Red Sweater,” from University of Montreal and University of British Columbia, is almost identical in its first verse to “Silver Goblet.” Then there’s a lame Brown University version from an alumni magazine — so lame that one wonders if a more foul version was in play among the students. (Speaking of foul, don’t click that University of Montreal link — the song is cited among other student drinking songs, many of which are completely and astonishingly obscene.)

It just goes to show you: don’t look down your nose at old records, even “Sing Along With Mitch.” You never know what you’ll learn.

New mix: Exfiltration Radio: The Mighty Hammond

It’s another Hackathon at Veracode, and time for another playlist. This time around we get an hour of jazz and jazz-adjacent Hammond organ, for your ass. This is not your ballpark organ music, he said, glaring sternly at the interrogator; it’s something that should be deep in your soul.

There’s lots of Jimmy Smith on this, as God intended, but there’s also Groove Holmes and Ronnie Foster and Jimmy McGriff and Dr. Lonnie Smith and James Brown and the latter-day Delvon Lamarr and… just listen already!

  1. Iron Leg – Mickey & The Soul Generation (Iron Leg)
  2. The Cat – Jimmy Smith (Talkin’ Verve)
  3. Finger Lickin’ Good – Jimmy McGriff & Groove Holmes (Dueling Organs)
  4. I Want To Hold Your Hand – Grant Green (I Want To Hold Your Hand)
  5. Top Going Down, Bottom Going Up (Live) – Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio (Live at KEXP!)
  6. Mystic Brew – Ronnie Foster (Two Headed Freap)
  7. The Bird – Jimmy McGriff (Groove Grease)
  8. Sagg Shootin’ His Arrow – Jimmy Smith (Root Down)
  9. Devil’s Haircut – Dr. Lonnie Smith (Boogaloo To Beck)
  10. Grits (Extended Version) – James Brown (Grits & Soul (Instrumentals) [Expanded Edition])

Estévez, Cantata Criolla

Rehearsal of the Cantata Criolla, April 8, 2019, James Burton conducting

It seems like only a year or two ago that John Oliver was tapped on short notice to conduct the Beethoven Missa Solemnis, taking over for an ailing Kurt Masur (it was seven years ago last month). This week history (sort of) repeated itself.

We were due to sing with the great Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel in a concert of music by Venezuelan composers. Our piece was to be the Cantata Criolla of Antonio Estévez, a fantastical piece that combines Venezuelan folk music and stories, a singing duel with the Devil, high modernism and Gregorian chant into one spectacular cazuela gaucho.

And then, after a weekend in Boston conducting Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, among other works, Dudamel aggravated a wrist injury and was unable to conduct. Two of the works, never performed in Boston and little known, had to be removed from the program as there was no way to adequately prepare them in time. But James Burton, the TFC’s current conductor, had been working closely with us on Cantata Criolla for about six weeks, and was tapped to conduct the piece so that we would preserve at least some of the original plan for the concert run.

The first concert was last night and was incredible. James got incredible colors out of the orchestra and chorus. The attack of the cicadas was actually frightening. And I’ve never heard an orchestra produce a sound like steel drums before, but Estévez’s orchestration and the precision of James’s conducting brought out a distinctly festive flavor to parts of the singing duel between our complero protagonist Florentíno and El Diablo. It’s a fun work and I’m looking forward to a few more performances.

Kickoff 2019

One of the things I missed most about Veracode while we were part of CA Technologies was the company kickoff meeting. Starting around 2010 we brought all our employees together at the beginning of each fiscal year to check in on the state of the business, get excited about what was to come, and reconnect with our colleagues. There wasn’t really a budget for us to do that last year as a CA business unit. But this year, as a newly independent standalone company, we brought everyone together, all 700+ of us.

And it was pretty amazing. It was great to see all my coworkers from London, San Francisco, Singapore and Prague, to spend time with old friends, and blow off a little steam. But it was especially good to be reminded that what we do as a company matters deeply for our customers and their customers and that we are making a difference.

Spreading culture

I’m struggling a little with how to expose my kids to a broader range of interesting movies. I’ve given up on most TV; though I can usually get the younger one to watch Scooby-Doo, I don’t think I’ll ever get either one to sit through the original Star Trek. But movies seem like they’re so much a part of our cultural lexicon that I feel like I’m doing my kids a disservice if I don’t broaden their horizons at least a little beyond Disney and superhero movies.

But where to start? I haven’t watched films in the theatre for years, and I’m a little afraid to go too far back in time because most of the films I can think of will likely lead smack into a discussion about American racism.

Take the 1956 movie Around the World in 80 Days. I wouldn’t normally have thought of it, as I haven’t seen the movie, but the Victor Young soundtrack was in a pile of records given to me by a family member and it seems to fit the bill—big, epic adventure movie, no adult themes, iconic moments (the balloon scene!). But then, it’s a film that goes around the world, and I shudder to think how the different cultures visited are depicted. I guess there’s no substitute for seeing the film myself and making my own conclusions…

In clover

If you had told me five years ago that almost every lunch out I ate while at the office would be vegetarian, I would have asked you where you left your marbles.

It’s no secret that I love food. For many years at the office that translated to food runs for lunch that ended at delicious but fattening destinations. Among the stops in the rotation: chicken parm subs from the local pizzeria, loaded Bravo Italian sandwiches (prosciutto, sopressata, roasted peppers, fresh mozzarella, tomatoes, olive oil and basil) from La Cascia’s, Indian takeaway from the surprisingly good stand in the mall, and lots of H-Mart Spicy Pork.

Then I stumbled on Clover. I wasn’t thrilled by the concept of a totally vegetarian menu, but some of the other aspects—no freezers ever, 100% fresh locally sourced produce, seasonal fast-service menu—had me intrigued. And then I tried their falafel (aka the famous chickpea fritter sandwich), with a side of rosemary fries. And I was completely hooked.

At this point I’ve had every sandwich on the ever changing menu, even the BBQ Seitan (not a favorite), the Pushpir (spectacular), the secret-menu Mayor Menino BLT (with soy “bacon” and garlic mayo, which became an obsession for months), etc. Now I look in advance of my week to figure out which days I don’t have noontime meetings so I can go get my Clover fix.

I’ve gotten slightly more adventurous about cooking vegetables at home as a result of all this Clover. Not crazy, because most of the family are reluctant vegetable explorers, but I’m now trying things I never dared before—cauliflower, broccoli variations, random beans, ramps—and finding real winners. Useful when one lives across from a farm.

Reharmonizing

After many years of service, our trusty Harmony One remote bit the dust a few weeks ago. It turns out that the remote, while rugged, does not like being dropped on a hardwood floor—the touchscreen, while still intact and functional, no longer illuminated correctly. Sigh.

We had owned the Harmony One for quite a few years. I never blogged about it, meaning we acquired it sometime in 2008-2009 when my first blog slowdown hit. It replaced a Sony RM-AV3000 Universal Remote which was powerful but in every way impractical and unwieldy. The Harmony One was, by comparison, luxuriously easy to use. Harmony remotes differentiate between devices – directly driving components of your system by emulating their remote commands – and activities, like “watch TV” or “play games.” With activities, the remote sends a sequence of commands to the components required to do an activity, like “turn on TV,” “turn on Marantz receiver,” “turn on FIOS box,” “set TV to HDMI-1,” “set Marantz receiver to Cable,” and then the hard buttons on the remote are set to handle the most common tasks for the activity—for instance, the volume controls might go to your AV receiver while the channel commands go to your cable box.

The Harmony One was light years ahead of the Sony in usability, but it still had problems. One was programming it—you connected the remote to a Mac (or PC) with a USB A to B cable and then ran a Java application (!) on the device to assign devices and change settings on the remote or activity. Another issue, a daily challenge, was the remote technology. It’s an infrared (IR) remote, like most of the ones you’ve used, meaning it requires a “line of sight” to the device being controlled for the commands to work. Often that meant that one of the kids (or other family members) would inadvertently wave the remote away from the TV or receiver, resulting in cries that the TV wasn’t working and requiring my intervention.

I did some research and learned that the state of the art has moved along pretty far from the Harmony One. After comparing options, we bought a Harmony Companion. It’s light years ahead, though not without its challenges.

The Companion is really two devices, a universal remote without a display screen and a remote hub that sits near your devices. The universal remote communicates with the hub over radio frequency (RF) rather than IR, so you no longer have to have line of sight—you can pretty much aim the remote anywhere you like. The hub sends IR signals to your components, and it even comes with an attachable “IR Blaster” that you can position near components that are outside your cabinet (like your TV) to repeat the signal.

But that’s not the cool part. The best part of the setup is that the remote is fully programmable via an iOS (or Android…) app—and the app also serves as a remote that’s in some ways even more powerful than the physical remote, since it also allows direct access to the device remote commands in addition to the activities you set up. The app is pretty cool; when you set it up, it scans your local network for a hub, and if it finds it and the hub is already configured, it downloads the configuration to your device and you’re ready to go. Lisa getting full access to the remote 30 seconds after I told her which app to download was pretty magical.

So far the only pain point has been setup. I created an activity for watching Apple TV but, probably due to the way I used the wizard, it set the physical remote buttons to control our 55″ TV instead. I had to go through and reassign every button on the activity this morning, but it’s working now.

I’m also slightly irked that the Harmony Hub isn’t a HomeKit device. I suspect this is because Logitech views itself as a HomeKit competitor for controlling the entire home. There’s a workaround using an open source kit called Homebridge that I might check out.

Home theater technology has come a long way. But it’s noteworthy that most of the advances in controlling physical devices are due to investments in mobile computing rather than physical devices.

Music roundup

It’s a measure of how busy I’ve been over the past few months with work that I didn’t post at all in December. So much for New Years resolutions!

Here’s a few things that came across my radar while I wasn’t posting, starting with music:

Funky16Corners: The Return of the Mothership. Looks like I’ve been sitting on this one for a long time, almost a year! Great hour long mix of afrofuturistic funk, rock and related grooves (listen directly).

Stereogum: Ugly Beauty: The Month in Jazz – September 2018. Always a good read, I’m pointing back to this column from a few months ago thanks to its review of Randy Weston’s life and career. I got to see Weston play over 25 years ago at UVa and the fierceness of his playing stuck in my memory, along with pointers to the Alice Coltrane Warner Brothers recordings and Temporary Kings, both of which I need to actually go back and listen to…

Aquarium Drunkard: Spiritual Jazz Sunday. This came out as I was working on my “Holy Ghost” mix. It was worth looking over to see what I should include and where I should diversify (for instance, avoiding leaning too heavily on the John Coltrane/Alice Coltrane/Pharoah Sanders axis).

Doom and Gloom from the Tomb: Duke Ellington and His Original Cotton Club Orchestra – Publix Allyn Theatre, Hartford, Connecticut, April 11, 1932. Eight minutes of history from the earliest known existing Duke Ellington radio broadcast.

Stereogum: Watch Paul Simon’s Record-Breaking 9th SNL Performance. Because “Can’t Run But” is one of my favorite of Simon’s songs and I love that he decided it needed more attention.

Mark Guiliana: Thank You (featuring Brad Mehldau). A really lovely Thanksgiving present from Guiliana-as-songwriter, featuring Mehldau’s poignant performance of his tribute to his mother before she passed away.

Bach Collegium Japan Chorus: Verbum Caro Factum Est – a Christmas Greeting. I had the great pleasure to sing with Masaaki Suzuki a few years ago (Bach’s St. John Passion), and am looking forward to hearing this Christmas recording even after the holiday has been put away for another year.

Spain: Blue Moods of Spain: a History, Vol. 1. Archival recordings from before the band’s official birth.

Approaching the manger

It feels a little early to be writing about Advent. It’s a week past Thanksgiving but — thanks to the funny gap in the calendar this year between that moveable feast and the end of the month — Christmas seems like it’s still far away. And yet: we will put up a Christmas tree Saturday, Holiday Pops starts next week… and Sunday is Manger Sunday at Hancock Church.

There are so many things about joining a new church family that feel like learning to speak a foreign language. I remember listening to the pastors talk about Manger Sunday in our first full year of attendance, over ten years ago, and wondering what all the fuss was about. “Manger Sunday” seemed like another one of those magical words or phrases. You know the ones, if you’ve been in a church any time in the past forty years. The words that someone says, and you just know they’re freighted with all sorts of history and baggage, and that there are probably perfectly good English synonyms for them but that the preacher won’t ever use them. (“Covenant” and “stewardship,” for me, are in danger of being some of those words. It’s not just in churches, either; at my kids’ schools, I hear an awful lot of “growth mindset” uttered in much the same hushed tones as “covenant.” Or “lift up our joys.”)

So, Manger Sunday. I thought, It’s a bazaar. Or, It’s … stewardship? No, we did that already. Is it mission work? Well, kind of. What is it?

Manger Sunday has been observed in this way, for the past 149 years, at Hancock Church in Lexington: You bring an item that someone less fortunate than you might need—warm clothes, a coat, socks, mittens, gift cards, toys, books games—and you get up with the whole rest of the congregation, from four year olds to 94 year olds, and you walk down the aisle and around the pews while singing Christmas carols and you bring your gift and you add it to the pile in the unlovely but sturdy twelve foot by four foot by three foot wooden “manger.” By the end of the procession, which lasts for about six hymns (each sung with all the verses), the manger is so full that there are secondary and tertiary and quaternary piles all around it on the floor. The gifts are given to families in need through the City Mission Christmas Shop. 

It sounds so simple. It really is simple. But it makes a powerful impact. In 2017 City Mission, through Hancock and other churches, distributed 5,000 gifts to families through their partner agencies. That’s 5,000 happier Christmases right there.

And the impact doesn’t stop there; in fact, I’m not sure who makes out better, the recipient or the giver. There’s a world of difference between supporting “charity” by check and credit card, and going shopping for something that someone—granted, someone you’ll probably never know, but some one—will wear to keep warm, or find joy in playing with during an otherwise bleak winter, and taking it with your own hands and carrying it down the aisle. All, mind you, while singing about God’s magnificent leap of faith in our worthiness to receive his gift to us.

I don’t know what being a Christian means. But sometimes I feel like Manger Sunday is a pretty good answer.

In the name of love

Election Day 2018 has come and gone. And while no one got everything they wanted, I can reflect on two things in particular that give me some comfort. 

First, one-party rule in Washington is over. The Senate races in Florida and Texas were heartbreaking, but no legislation will be passed in the next two years without coming to terms with the new Democratic majority in the House. That’s a big deal.

Second, Massachusetts voters roundly rejected the attempt to roll back transgender rights.

So it felt good last night to be on stage for Tech Tackles Cancer, singing “Pride (In the Name of Love)” and knowing we had collectively raised almost (as of 11/5) a quarter of a million dollars for pediatric cancer research and care. And knowing that there is always hope for the future, even if you have to make your own.

Exfiltration radio: Thirty years ago today

This is the second of two recent Hackathon playlists, and where The Holy Ghost was all about the Spirit, this one’s all about the body.

I have trouble believing that 1988 was thirty years ago, but then I also have trouble believing that my being old enough to drink happened before some of my youngest coworkers were born.

Lots of material that I omitted that might have made a volume II, in favor of more recognizable (though still oblique) corners of 1988. But it’s worth recognizing that the iconic rubbery shredding guitar on that iconic early Morrissey solo number is by none other than Durutti Column frontman Vini Reilly. And that Janet Jackson wouldn’t do anything as innovative as Rhythm Nation for basically the rest of her career (though she’d have bigger hits). And that Madonna would ultimately prove more transgressive than what Thurston did to “Into the Groove,” but that the combination of the two would be as dark and unsettling as Leonard Cohen. And… Well, you get the picture. There was a lot of darkness around the corner everywhere in the late 1980s.

  1. Eye of Fatima, Pt. 1 – Camper Van Beethoven (Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart)
  2. Birth, School, Work, Death – The Godfathers (Big Hits, Skinny Ties:New Wave)
  3. In Your Room – The Bangles (Everything)
  4. I Don’t Mind If You Forget Me – Morrissey (Viva Hate)
  5. Peek-A-Boo (Single) – Siouxsie and The Banshees (Peep Show)
  6. Cupid Come – My Bloody Valentine (Isn’t Anything)
  7. Everybody Knows – Leonard Cohen (I’m Your Man)
  8. Into The Groovey – Ciccone Youth (The Whitey Album)
  9. Miss You Much – Janet Jackson (Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814)
  10. Silver Rocket – Sonic Youth (Daydream Nation)
  11. Coldsweat – The Sugarcubes (Life’s Too Good)
  12. Dad I’m in Jail – Was (Not Was) (What Up, Dog?)
  13. Don’t Believe the Hype – Public Enemy (It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back)
  14. Christine – The House of Love (The House of Love)
  15. Carolyn’s Fingers – Cocteau Twins (Blue Bell Knoll (Remastered) [Remastered])
  16. Under the Milky Way – The Church (Starfish)

Exfiltration Radio: the Holy Ghost

It’s been a hard day for many folks, after a hard year and 259 days. But in these days you have to do what you can, and not worry about what you can’t.

For me that translates to seeking out what’s important in music. Which is why the fifth volume in my series of one-hour Exfiltration Radio shows is about spiritual jazz. 

(Why that name? The music takes some of the techniques of free jazz and infuses it with the searching, looking beyond that Coltrane brought to the table with A Love Supreme. It’s a broad banner, as the multiple volumes of the Spiritual Jazz compilation series show.)

This one mixes up a track from one of my favorite McCoy Tyner albums, his Extensions, with other tracks from Alice Coltrane, Donald Byrd, Wayne Shorter, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, the redoubtable Pharoah Sanders, and a few other goodies that I’ve found over the years on Bandcamp or other spots. It’s a good one-hour introduction if you’re feeling sinister—and it’s a good reminder that not everything that is in the world is of the world.

Enjoy…

  1. Rainbow Warriors – Alan Braufman (Valley of Search (Reissue))
  2. Journey In Satchidananda – Alice Coltrane (The Impulse Story: Alice Coltrane)
  3. Message From The Nile – McCoy Tyner (Extensions)
  4. Dance! Dance, Eternal Spirits – Joe Bonner with David Friesen, Billy Harper, Virgil Jones, M (Black Saint)
  5. Elijah – Donald Byrd (A New Perspective)
  6. Ja Mil – Hastings Street Jazz Experience (Spiritual Jazz)
  7. JuJu – Wayne Shorter (JuJu (Rudy Van Gelder Edition))
  8. Spirits Up Above – Rahsaan Roland Kirk (Volunteered Slavery)
  9. Colors – Pharoah Sanders (Karma)

Marketing killed the telephone. Is it killing email?

I still have a landline telephone, albeit reluctantly. While it’s theoretically useful to have a phone number where we can be contacted at home, the theoretical usefulness of this concept is destroyed by the mounting avalanche of calls that promise to lower our credit card bills or switch us to a different electrical provider, to say nothing of the hangups, the “hello? are you there?” calls, and the well meaning seekers of local office. Of course all of the above come from our area code and exchange, meaning that it’s impossible for us in a thirty day period to tell whether the call coming through is from our child’s school or from a telemarketer using neighbor spoofing to look like they’re calling about something of local interest.

This is old news. I would guess that if you’re under 50, the only reason you have a landline is that it came as a bundle with your internet and TV service. (That may be the only reason you have old-fashioned TV as well.)

But what I’ve watched with dismay over the last few years is the mounting marketing avalanche that seems determined to kill my email inbox, just like it did my landline.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. I’m not talking about enlargement spam, or any of the other overt pests that used to fill our mailboxes. By and large, modern mail services and mail clients take care of that.

I’m talking about aggressive email marketing campaigns from companies that I actually do business with.

I have no idea why I receive three copies of newsletters from that bow-tie company in Vermont (though I suspect having filled in a different forwarding address somewhere along the way has something to do with it) or four copies of every email from Organizing for America. At least the latter is entertaining, since you can sometimes watch them test different optimizations for the subject line. But five or more emails a week from the kitchen store or the online music store, none of which reflect my interests or purchase history, seems to me like a bridge too far. 

That’s even before you count all the emails going to stupid people who think that my Gmail address is theirs. I’m looking at you, Teresa Jarrett and Taijah Jarrett and Ted Jarrett and all the other people who just can’t remember that they don’t have their first initial plus their last name at gmail dot com.

It adds up. I’m regularly deleting more than 50 emails a day unread. It’s worse sometimes when Teresa or Taijah or Ted sign up for a site that does its own marketing emails.

What kills me about this is that the failure of this communication channel that’s been a locus of my personal and professional interest my entire adult life is caused by the same thing that killed my landline. It’s marketing gone amok.

I have done marketing (of a kind) for a living, and I know the pressure of building the “top of the funnel.” The problem is that you can touch a heck of a lot of people at the top of the funnel and make your marketing numbers look great, only to have none of those people convert into business because they weren’t ever really interested in your product to begin with. But the challenge is that if you go the opposite route and try to target too precisely, then you’re dealing with the kind of surveillance technology that gives Internet marketing a bad name.

So what are you going to do? Well, it turns out there are a few sites that I regularly get email from where I actually read the emails. Religiously. Even though they update a couple times a week. Discogs is one, because it emails me about things that are relevant to my vinyl collection and my extended interests. But that’s information I gave them, not that they observed by watching over my shoulder. I think that’s the key — the information sharing has to be consensual and I have to get some genuine value from giving away my data.