Dave Koz Archives - Page 2 of 2 - Ramblin' with Roger

Nov. rambling: systemic oppression

Rebecca Jade touring with Dave Koz!

Scientific American: People Who Jump to Conclusions Show Other Kinds of Thinking Errors; Belief in conspiracy theories and overconfidence are two tendencies linked to hasty thinking

Homelessness: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

Data Debunks Insidious Myths About Immigration

Freedom Isn’t What It Used To Be

In Re-Analysis, Ivermectin Benefits Disappeared as Trial Quality Increased; Andrew Hill, Ph.D., received death threats

Fox News host who told the audience to get COVID vaccine reads hate mail on the air

Ted Cruz Criticizes Big Bird for Getting Vaccinated and Satire from The Borowitz Report: Oscar the Grouch Cuts Ties with Ted Cruz

The high cost of living in a disabling world

A Brief Overview Of Systemic Oppression – Lynae Vanee

Ahmaud Arbery suspects’ trial defense taps a racist legal legacy

Ed Gainey, who will be Pittsburgh’s first Black mayor and Aftab Purevale, picked as Cincinnati’s first Asian mayor, and Michelle Wu, Boston’s first woman and first person of color elected mayor

Requirements for travel into the U.S.

The Greatest Unsolved Heist in Irish History

A spite fence in Virginia Beach

Walking America part 5: Breezewood

Balance

Self-compassion can help build a more balanced, healthy perspective

Mispronunciation: why you should stop correcting people’s mistakes

How To Get Rid of Lots of Old Books

Now I Know: The Luggage Loophole That Isn’t and How to Brew an Economy and The Swampy Loophole in the Georgia Constitution and The Costume That Was a Trick and The Odd Depths of Preserving Plutonium

Hiker lost for 24 hours ignored calls from rescuers because of an unknown number

Why Avocados Still Exist

Forbidden love. A new comic strip, about corn. Sort of.

We fed the hungry with ONLY 7-Eleven Rewards points.

R.I.P.

Aaron Feuerstein, known for paying Malden Mills workers even after the factory burned down, has died at 95

The Rise and Fall of Mort Sahl, the Comedian Who Revolutionized Stand-Up

Former VA administrator and US Senator (D-GA) Max Cleland died at home. A savage political attack suggesting that he was “soft on the war on terror” caused him to lose his Senate seat in 2002. A live grenade dropped by a fellow soldier in Vietnam had robbed him of three limbs.

I neglected to acknowledge the death of Diane Westwell, one of our loyal ABC Wednesday contributors, on 20 September 2021. She was a very sweet person.

Greg Hatcher, a founder of Atomic Junk Shop and Brianna’s Nerd-Dad has died

The Weirdest Way The Earth Can Kill You

MUSIC

Nightbirde Sings Psalm 88

Music from The Lord Of The Rings, arranged for solo piano by Leiki Ueda

Coverville 1377: The Beastie Boys and Beasties Episode and 1378: Led Zeppelin IV: 50th Anniversary Album Cover to Cover

The Mighty Rio Grande – This Will Destroy You from the movie Moneyball.

The Ghost Rejoins The Living – Freezepop

Rachmaninoff’s Isle of the Dead

Sara Lee – Liza Minelli

While You Wait For The Others – Grizzly Bear

I’m Looking Through You – MonaLisa Twins

When “Man of 10,000 Sound Effects” Blew The Audience Away With His Voice Guitar

Mozart Doesn’t Make You Smarter

Paul McCartney re: You Gave Me The Answer – ‘The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present’

Dave Koz and Friends Christmas Tour 2021 with Richard Elliot, Rick Braun, Jonathan Butler, and Rebecca Jade!

October rambling: doing an impression

old blogger, newish home

**From https://wronghands1.com/2021/09/21/blue-whale/**

The ivory-billed woodpecker, 22 other species extinct.

Pandora Papers: The largest investigation in journalism history exposes a shadow financial system that benefits the world’s most rich and powerful.

How decades of security blunders led to the formation of the TSA and forever changed the way we fly.

Texas’ Sweeping Abortion Ban Gives New Meaning to Oft-Misused Handmaid’s Tale Comparisons.

The Big Lie Refuses to Die.

Your gas stove, your health, and climate change.

The American West is running out of water—and Big Oil, of all things, can help fix it.

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: PFAS and Voting Rights.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuf1m1VGu8Y Call Your Senator to Support the Equality Act

I saw the stories about the Facebook outage but kept reading it as the Facebook outrage. How Facebook’s Response To Whistleblower Could Make Their Crisis Worse. Incidentally, when Facebook was down, I went to Is It Down Right Now but it TOO was down. I ended up using Down For Everyone or Just Me and Is Your Website Down Down Right Now?

Why Is the U.S. Housing Market So Out of Whack?

Garbage odyssey: San Francisco’s bizarre, costly quest for the perfect trash can.

Inventions That Changed the World

Ted Koppel pays a visit to Mayberry (Mt. Airy, NC)

You’ve just been ‘ghosted’ after a job interview. Here’s how you should respond.

New York Public Library is ending fines on overdue materials forever. Albany Public Library did that a couple of years back.

Butt-dialing 911 is a challenge for police dispatchers

Why Seinfeld is the Worst Sitcom of All Time

The Peace of Wild Things – Wendell Berry (born 1934)

The medical ward

Pandemics are beaten by communities, not individuals. This describes my risk/reward calculations pretty well.

How Jared And Ivanka Botched Trump’s Pandemic Response.

Combating Anti-Vaxxers and Vaccine Hesitation.

Why Mandates Make Us Feel Threatened.

Albany Med prize winners: Coronavirus vaccine was years in the making.

Cognitive Bias Is Influencing Forensic Pathology Decisions

I had gone to the dentist this month to get a tooth uncapped because a cavity developed. It is one of those things that might have been prevented but for COVID. Anyway, they said, “We’re going to do an impression.” I knew what they meant, but my mind wandered to Rich Little doing John Wayne or Richard Nixon.

More Empathy Means Better Care, Less Medical Liability.

A Gene-Editing Experiment Let These Patients With Vision Loss See Color Again.

People with vitiligo debate whether to treat or embrace their condition

Race in America

Calls to Ban Books by Black Authors Are Increasing Amid Critical Race Theory Debates

Origin and Meaning of Critical Race Theory.

How Do We Dismantle Structural Racism in Medicine?

Manhattan Street Names Tied to Slavery Listed from A to Z.

Meet The First 2 Black Women To Be Inducted Into The National Inventors Hall of Fame.

Bruice’s Beach in California can return to descendants of a Black family in a landmark move.

Byzantium Shores, no. ForgottenStars, si!

I’ve been following Jaquandor at Byzantium Shores for well over a decade. He’s another upstater from the other end of the Erie Canal. His birthday is 45 years to the day after my late father’s.

He started blogging in 2002, over three years before I did. Eventually, he’s let the pseudonym go. Now Kelly Sedinger is blogging at ForgottenStars.net, where he promotes his books, two of which I have. He knows a ton about classical music, many of which I have linked to. I don’t quite get the pie in the face thing, but that’s OK.

Now I Know

The Problem with Space Pirates

Why the Ace of Spades is So Darn Big

The Worst Way to Get People to Watch a Movie?

Why Teams Wear Gray When Not At Home

How South Korea Massages Its Workforce

The Road Where Seat Belts are Banned

The Oldest PhD.

MUSIC

You’re Not Alone album by Roy Buchanan.

Feeling Good – Nina Simone.

Eine Alpensinfonie by Richard Strauss.

Coverville 1374: Cover Stories for John Mellencamp, Bob Geldof, and Chrissie Hynde.

The First Moonwalk? Bill Bailey tapping to an instrumental version of the Larks’ hit “The World is Waiting for Sunrise” performed by the Paul Williams Quartet

Autumn Leaves – Ebene Quartet.

Stuck in the Middle with You -MonaLisa Twins

Capriccio Italien by Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Robert Russell Bennett’s Selections from Camelot. (Lerner and Loewe)

I Am Waiting – Ollabelle, a cover of The Rolling Stones song

The Final Act. 60 Minutes story on Tony Bennett.

Dave Koz and Friends Christmas Tour 2021 will be on the road, maybe in a town near you, between Nov 26 and Dec 23 with Richard Elliot, Rick Braun, Jonathan Butler, and… Rebecca Jade!

Arthur’s Law, Pre-Fab 4, smooth jazz

We get the funniest looks

In response to my Phil Collins post, Arthur, who I’ve never mentioned, wrote: “As well you know, ‘Arthur’s Law’ keeps me from getting too worked up about what other people like or don’t like…

“This post reminds me of all the fashionable pile-ons over the years—Kenny G, Michael Bublé, Justin Bieber, etc., etc., etc. That’s a topic you could work on for the future?” Nah.

Arthur’s Law, as you all know, is: “Everything you love, someone else hates; everything you hate, someone else loves. So, relax and like what you like and forget about everyone else.”

Two things come to mind, one a group, and one more a subgenre. I know there are others, but usually, I had so absorbed Arthur’s Law so completely that it became a non-issue.

Or I have no real idea about their oeuvre. I’ve heard the music of Bieber, for instance, and it just doesn’t stick to my brain. You could play My World, and I’d say, “Who is that?”

Here We Come

The group is The Monkees. They were the Pre-Fab Four, a created group who didn’t even play their own instruments! And I suppose I bought into that disdain for a time.

Eventually, they did play some of their instruments and write some of their own songs. More to the point, lots of singers and groups couldn’t, or weren’t allowed to play on their albums in the day.

As I recall, most of the Byrds were piqued when only Roger McGuinn was allowed to perform with the Wrecking Crew on a particular album. The next time out, with the Byrds playing, the process was considerably longer.

Or Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, studio musicians besides Herb in the studio, and pickup bands on the road. The Beach Boys was a working band, but the music they created in the studio was often augmented from Pet Sounds and forward.

Walkin’ Down the Street

The Beatles’ legendary Sgt. Pepper album came out in 1967. It was #1 for 15 weeks on the Billboard charts. Do you know the number one album in 1967 in the US? More of The Monkees, on top for 18 weeks, following the eponymous first album, #1 for 8 weeks in 1966, and 5 more in ’67.

Plus 1 week for Headquarters and the last 5 weeks with Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, and Jones, Ltd. That’s 29 weeks for The Monkees at #1 in the Summer of Love.

Now, success is a weak reason to laud a band. But I learned to actually LIKE many of their songs. Pleasant Valley Sunday, with Mr. Green, “he’s so serene.” Words. Going Down. Listen to the Band.

And Mary, Mary, which was originally performed by the Butterfield Blues Band. When The Monkees covered it, the rock intelligentsia was appalled. But the song was written by Michael Nesmith of the Monkees. So there, music snobs!

Music lite

The genre is light jazz or smooth jazz. REAL jazz was Ella or Satchmo or the Count or the Duke or Miles. That commercially successful stuff of Kenny G or Chuck Mangione – is that REALLY jazz?

Here’s a definition: “The fundamental difference… lies in the chief instrumentalist’s approach to improvisation. Typically, at least on record, smooth jazz musicians just don’t improvise. …

“As the artists found on smooth jazz playlists make clear, the ‘smooth’ is usually more important than the ‘jazz.'” Here’s the thing, though. If jazz is limited to mostly dead people, or people emulating dead people, the genre will die.

Moreover, a lot of those smooth folk are extremely talented. I caught the Christmas 2020 program of Dave Koz. He and his contingent (including one Rebecca Jade!) could really cook! And I don’t mean in a culinary way.

As one sage person once wrote, “Music is music if the feeling’s right.”