Well, this post is long delayed, behind the last 2 posts on the climate crisis & MMT. It's nice to be getting caught up.
#1, "Mythago Wood", by Robert Holdstock, 2003, 331 pages, 95k words. I suspect this was a cheapie from BookBub. So, virgin growth forest somewhere in rural England has magical powers: it instantiates corporeal instances of archetypal figures from the subconscious of humans living near it. A bad parent father & his 2 sons of course fixate on the warrior-princess Guinevere & succeed in creating several instances of her. I don't think you could write something more masturbatory if you tried. I won't be continuing with the series, LOL!
#2, "The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories" by Susanna Clarke, 2008, 243 pages, 66k words. 8 short stories set in the universe of "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Morrell". In general charming and, given Clarke's known issues with chronic pain which greatly limit her output, I was very appreciative to get to read these. And, again, "Piranesi" was 1 of the best books I have read in the last few years.
#3, "The Iron Dragon's Mother" by Michael Swanwick, 2019, 402 pages, 109k words. Swanwick was 1 of my favs Back In The Day. "Vacuum Flowers" was totally iconic when it 1st came out in 1987. This story is not bad, faerie overlapping with the mundane world, lots of plot, yak yak yak, etc. But, a bit too feudal for my current tastes.
#4, "The Once and Future Witches", by Alix E. Harrow, 2020, 555 pages, 151k words. What a great read! Totally conflating the women's suffrage movement of the early 20th century with a movement to restore women's witchcraft to public life! I'm so proud of Harrow, a fellow Kentuckian, who I believe lives in Madison County, 30 or so miles SE of me. How has no one else ever remarked on the fact that witches instantiate most effectively as trios of sisters: the 3 witches in Macbeth, in Cinderella, in Hocus Pocus! Oops, I have 3 daughters!!! A really great read, I was sorry when it was over.
#5 & #6, "The Dreamblood Duology", by N.K. Jemisin, 2016, 948 pages, 257k words. The original 2 novels were "The Killing Moon" and "The Shadowed Sun". A very unique mythos, with a monkish sect which has a few different flavors who manage life, health, dreams, and death. A very compelling read.
#7, "Robot Artists & Black Swans", by Bruno Argento (aka Bruce Sterling living in Turin (Torino) Italy), 2021, 311 pages, 84k words, 7 stories. This is a totally great collection of stories. I really wish Sterling were more productive, he has written so much groundbreaking SF over the last 35 years. And he actually follows me on Twitter, FTW, thanks Bruce! 1 thing I love about this collection is that several of stories have quantum endings: is the cat alive or dead? It doesn't matter! IT DOESN'T MATTER! What a great storyteller!
#8, "Little Brother", by Cory Doctorow, 2008, 399 pages, 108k words. I bought this in hardback several years ago (so I could pass it on), I think that contributed to my just getting around to reading it. What a great book! I read it in 1 day, I totally haven't done that in a while! Teenagers vs the fascist Department of Homeland Security - who are you going to root for? Kudos, next up "Pirate Cinema". Doctorow is indeed the Bard of the Revolution! Preach it!
Yay, caught up on blogging books read! What can I get caught up on next?
My last post was my review/summary of Bill Gates' book "How to Avoid a Climate Disaster". As I mentioned there, throughout most of the book, he kept talking about "how much this would cost", and "how expensive this is", and "Green Premiums" (cost differentials). And as I mentioned in that post, the whole time, I'm like, "wait a minute - MMT sez, worrying about costs is stupid. Money is software. The Fed can print as much as it wants."
At the end of the post, I proposed the following:
I kept having this thought as I approached the end of this book: how about we put 2 grad students to work and rewrite this book making the following changes: 1 grad student tallies how much everything costs - pretty much just as a thought experiment (Gedankenexperiment).
Meanwhile, grad student #2 identifies what the resources involved are, and where there are potential shortages thereof. We then know what we REALLY have to worry about trying to avoid a climate disaster. The other, the $$$, is BS.
OK, so now we've got the 2 grad students' data. What do we do with it? Why, we use it to support My Latest Mad Scheme, of course!
We clone both grad students for every country on earth. The clones replicate the computations for every country on earth.
We total up all the $$$ that are required to save the planet from the climate crisis for every country on earth. This total we call "$$$NeededToSaveThePlanet"
The World Bank creates a "Save The Planet" GL account.
Every country in the world with their own fiat currency computes their share of $$$NeededToSaveThePlanet from the following chart, taken from this Jan 2020 article.
I think that this is fair - current wealth is probably fairly proportional to a country's share of CO2 that is in the atmosphere.
These countries then direct their central banks to create their share of the $$$NeededToSaveThePlanet and put it in the World Bank "Save The Planet" account. They do not create any entry for these $$$ in their national accounting or debt. This is something that the world will share together. As far as their national accounts are concerned, it is if these $$$ never existed.
For countries without fiat currencies, the fiat currency countries pick up their share, proportionally. The ECB covers all the EuroZone countries.
We then solve the climate crisis. The world spends from this account as is needed. If it runs short, all the contributing countries contribute again proportionally. What do they care if they do this? It is not going against any of their national account balances. Their Fed equivalent just creates a $$$ amount & places it in the World Bank "Save The Planet" account and forgets about it.
At 1 point I thought, withdrawals are based on a country's population. But this is wrong, population doesn't matter. What matters is past, current, and future CO2 produced. But again, who cares? When the $$$ run out, the printing presses roll! MMT, FTW!
Grifters & other deviant capitalists (they're all just trying to make a buck, i.e., practice capitalism) will of course be a problem. We fund as much % of $$$NeededToSaveThePlanet as is needed to identify and remove from circulation the grifters. And, regardless, if they screw the $$$ #s up, we just PRINT MORE $$$.
So, that's the easy part. Let me repeat it - let me shout it out loud: THAT IS THE EASY PART! [And I think Bill Gates will still be worth > $100B after we do it. So, come on Bill, get on board! MMT FTW!]
The hard part is the resources. And tallying and computing the resources required.
And I think the even harder part is the tech: the 19 technologies Gates identified as being needed to save the planet.
But, following the flow above, we don't have to worry about funding the research for new tech. Just print the damn $$$. And keep our fingers crossed that most of the 19 techs Gates indentified (1 of which was nuclear fusion) are NOT like nuclear fusion, which has been 40 years away for the last 70 years.
OK! Climate crisis averted! Thank you in advance for all your hard work saving the planet! And remember, cost is no obstacle! There is no cost too great, no amount of meaningless $$$ we cannot create, if we can save the human race from extinction!
"How to Avoid a Climate Disaster", is a recent book by Bill Gates, 2021, 275 pages, 74k words. It is subtitled "the solutions we have and the breakthroughs we need". It has an Introduction, 12 Chapters, and an Afterword.
[Well, I finished this book in early April, and I have waited too long to write this review. In the meantime, Bill & Melinda Gates have announced they are divorcing after 27 years of marriage, possible driven by Bill's ties to sexual offender Jeffrey Epstein. Other tales of bizarre, entitled sexual practices by Bill are also circulating.
Meanwhile, among others, our previous author Cory Doctorow has called out Bill for his priorization of intellectual property rights (aka maximizing corporate profits) in the handling of the COVID-19 vaccine: talking Oxford University out of giving their patents to the world for free and instead giving them to AstroZeneca; and heading the to-date toothless vaccine charity program COVAX.
Professionally, I have disliked Bill Gates and Microsoft going back to the 1980s. Microsoft's monopolistic practices (make it child's play to pirate Word and Excel until they have driven WordPerfect and VisiCalc out of business, then start harping on intellectual property) were rightly busted by the Feds. Then W took office and it all went away. The complete lack of security in MS-DOS and early Windows still plagues the computer industry today.
Oh well. On to the review. I suspect I will be making short shrift of it.]
The introduction is titled "51 Billion To Zero". 51 billion is "is how many tons of greenhouse gases the world typically adds to the atmosphere every year". That the 1st 2 words of the book represent a number tells us that Gates is going to take a quantitative approach to this topic.
Gates gives us the motto of his foundation: "Everyone deserves the chance to live a healthy and productive life". This is a similar sentiment to the George Orwell quote which is my pinned tweet: "Either we all live in a decent world or no one does". So this is a good sentiment.
Gates also introduces us to Vaclav Smil, the Czech-born expert on ecology, particularly focusing on energy.
Chapter 1 is titled "Why Zero?". It lays some scientific groundwork.
Hotter air can hold more moisture, and as the air gets warmer, it gets thirstier, drinking up more water from the soil.
In the regions that are most in jeopardy — the Persian Gulf, South Asia, and parts of China — there will be times of the year when hundreds of millions of people will be at risk of dying.
Chapter 2 is titled "This Will Be Hard". Right at the time then the developing world can start to see the light at the end of the tunnel in getting lifestyies somewhat like the developed West, we realize that the light is the headlight of the onrushing train of the climate crisis.
Gates states that
The best books I have read on this topic are Vaclav Smil’s Energy Transitions and Energy Myths and Realities ...
This is a pretty strong statement:
Unless we move fast toward zero, bad things (and probably many of them) will happen well within most people’s lifetime, and very bad things will happen within a generation. Even if climate change doesn’t rank as an existential threat to humanity, it will make most people worse off, and it will make the poorest even poorer.
Chapter 3 is titled "Five Questions To Ask In Every Climate Conversation". The 5 questions are Gates' "mental framework" for understanding the climate crisis. They are:
How Much of the 51 Billion Tons Are We Talking About?
These are great numbers to have - the numbers are probably the book's greatest strength.
What’s Your Plan for Cement?
Who knew that cement (which holds concrete together) was such an environmental disaster?
How Much Power Are We Talking About?
Another great table.
How Much Space Do You Need?
And another great table.
How Much Is This Going to Cost?
Gates defines the term "Green Premium": how much more does the green, i.e. no CO2 emitted, solution to a problam cost than the current, presumably fossil fuel-based, solution.
[I found myself at a disadvantage throughout these discussions - I think MMT has ruined me. Because once you start thinking in MMT patterns, the question "how much does it cost?" immediately triggers the MMT truism, "cost doesn't matter - only the availability of resources does". I'm going to try to put that aside for now and just address it at the end.]
Meanwhile, Gates puts the "Green Premium" concept to use:
Looking at all the different premiums, we can decide which zero-carbon solutions we should deploy now and where we should pursue breakthroughs because the clean alternatives aren’t cheap enough.
The next 5 chapters discuss in turn the 5 "things we do" listed in the 1st box above.
Given it's foundational nature, electricity generation ("How We Plug In") is discussed 1st. Clearly energy storage for renewables is 1 of the critical technologies that must be improved. Gates also is an advocate for (and investor in) nuclear power. I also believe that nuclear power should be vigorously developed.
It would surely be a lot easier to "avoid a climate disaster" if nuclear fusion power generation had been developed at any time in the last 70 years. This is a place where science and technology have let us down.
Gates provides many computations and estimates of the Green Premiums associated with activities and objects within these 5 domains.
Chapter 9 is titled "Adapting to a Warmer World". Gates raises an interesting point about the developing world - that helping them adapt to our warming world is more important than reducing their miniscule carbon footprint.
Please don’t take away vaccine money and put it into electric cars. Africa is responsible for only about 2 percent of all global emissions. What you really should be funding there is adaptation. The best way we can help the poor adapt to climate change is to make sure they’re healthy enough to survive it. And to thrive despite it.
Gates introduces us to CGIAR. Per Wikipedia, "CGIAR (formerly the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research) is a global partnership that unites international organizations engaged in research about food security." Gates is apparently a leader of the Global Commission on Adaptation.
Chapter 10 is titled "Why Government Policies Matter". Gates begins by talking anecdotally about the creation of the EPA as an example of government addressing environmental issues. Other successful government projects:
Electrification;
Energy security - pursued after the Oil Embargo of the early 1970s;
Economic recovery - as was done after the Great Recession of 2008.
Gates lists 7 "high level goals they [government] should be aiming for." I think these section headers could have been a lot more explanatory.
Mind the Investment Gap ...
Level the Playing Field ...
Overcome Nonmarket Barriers ...
Stay Up to Date ...
Plan for a Just Transition ...
Do the Hard Stuff Too ...
Work on Technology, Policy, and Markets at the Same Time
Chapter 11 is titled "A Plan For Getting To Zero". Gates divides the elements of "the my plan" into 2 categories:
expanding the supply of innovations; ...
accelerating the demand for innovations.
Under the 1st branch, Gates details 19 innovations we need - quite a laundry list.
Hydrogen produced without emitting carbon
Grid-scale electricity storage that can last a full season
Electrofuels
Advanced biofuels
Zero-carbon cement
Zero-carbon steel
Plant- and cell-based meat and dairy
Zero-carbon fertilizer
Next-generation nuclear fission
Nuclear fusion
Carbon capture (both direct air capture and point capture)
Underground electricity transmission
Zero-carbon plastics
Geothermal plastics
Pumped hydro
Thermal storage
Drought- and flood-tolerant food crops
Zero-carbon alternatives to palm oil
Coolants that don’t contain F-gases
Gates states that "To get these technologies ready soon enough to make a difference, governments need to do the following:"
Quintuple clean energy and climate-related R&D over the next decade. ...
Make bigger bets on high-risk, high-reward R&D projects. ...
Match R&D with our greatest needs. ...
Work with industry from the beginning.
Gates subdivides the second branch, the demand side.
The demand side is a little more complicated than the supply piece. It actually involves two steps: the proof phase, and the scale-up phase.
...
The proof phase is a valley of death, a place where good ideas go to die.
...
Governments (as well as big companies) can help energy start-ups make it out of the valley alive because they’re massive consumers. If they prioritize buying green, they’ll help bring more products to market by creating certainty and reducing costs.
This leads to the demand side list of goverment to-dos [I guess his editor didn't notice the lack of parallelism in these section headers]:
Use procurement power. ...
Create incentives that lower costs and reduce risk. ...
Build the infrastructure that will get new technologies to market. ...
Change the rules so new technologies can compete. ...
Put a price on carbon. ...
Clean electricity standards. ...
Clean fuel standards. ...
Clean product standards. ...
Out with the old. ...
Gates discusses the roles appropriate to various levels of government:
The federal government ... collects most tax revenue, which means that federal financial incentives will be the most effective at driving change.
...
Two things are clear. First, the amount of money invested in getting to zero, and adapting to the damage that we know is coming, will need to ramp up dramatically and for the long haul. To me, this means that governments and multilateral banks will need to find much better ways to tap private capital. Their coffers aren’t big enough to do this on their own.
Second, the time frames for climate investment are long, and the risks are high. So the public sector should be using its financial strength to lengthen the investment horizon—reflecting the fact that returns may not come for many years—and reduce the risk of these investments. It’ll be tricky to mix public and private money on such a large scale, but it's essential. We need our best minds in finance working on this problem.
State and local governments also have their role to play, via state legislatures and agencies, and city councils and municipal agencies.
Chapter 12 is titled "What Each Of Us Can Do". Gates provides to-do lists for our different roles in society.
As a Citizen ...
Make calls, write letters, attend town halls. ...
Look locally as well as nationally. ...
Run for office. ...
As a Consumer ...
Sign up for a green pricing program with your electric utility. ...
Reduce your home’s emissions. ...
Buy an electric vehicle. ...
Try a plant-based burger. ...
As an Employee or Employer ...
Set up an internal carbon tax. ...
Prioritize innovation in low-carbon solutions. ...
Be an early adopter. ...
Engage in the policy-making process. ...
Connect with government-funded research. ...
Help early-stage innovators get across the valley of death. ...
Here's the last paragraph of the book (not counting the Afterword on the COVID-19 pandemic):
I’m an optimist because I know what technology can accomplish and because I know what people can accomplish. I’m profoundly inspired by all the passion I see, especially among young people, for solving this problem. If we keep our eye on the big goal—getting to zero—and we make serious plans to achieve that goal, we can avoid a disaster. We can keep the climate bearable for everyone, help hundreds of millions of poor people make the most of their lives, and preserve the planet for generations to come.
This book is a quick read, and chock full of facts and figures. Thanks Bill! Kobo says it takes 5-6 hours to read, I strongly recommend that you do so. Meanwhile ...
At the start of Chapter 11, Gates states:
In energy, software, and just about every other pursuit, it’s a mistake to think of innovation only in the strict, technological sense. Innovation is not just a matter of inventing a new machine or some new process; it’s also coming up with new approaches to business models, supply chains, markets, and policies that will help new inventions come to life and reach a global scale. Innovation is both new devices and new ways of doing things.
To me this totally begs the question: what about innovation in our basic society, our basic economy, our basic monetary system? Particularly on the issue of money, we saw in Chapter 11 Gates talked about playing fast and loose with $$$ moving between governments, banks, and private capital - "We need our best minds in finance working on this problem". But he still is worried about investment and ROI.
I guess it goes back to the title of Naomi Klein's 2014 book "This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate". In Chapter 2 Gates admits that the climate crisis might represent "an existential threat to humanity", but then when it comes to addressing the threat, he takes pretty much a "business as usual" approach to the crisis.
Note, just to make sure we are all on the same page, "an existential threat to humanity" means that the human race could completely die out, could become extinct, could be totally wiped from existence.
What if "business as usual" is not enough? What if we need a "This Changes Everything" approach?
But of course Bill Gates is not going to go there. Why? Because he is 1 of the richest men in the world. So, by and large, he's really pretty OK with the status quo just as it is now. Capitalism, A-OK. Free markets everywhere, even when inappropriate, A-OK. And modern money theory (MMT), which says, money doesn't matter, only resources do?
LOL, probably the main purpose of money is to keep the rich people rich, and the ultra-rich even more so. So of course he's going to take a "business as usual" approach. [snark]He's in the finest 1st class suite on the Titanic, but he's still got to hold onto that privilege, and the power to abuse women and underlings that comes with it.[/snark]
I'll repeat a statement from Chapter 11:
To me, this means that governments and multilateral banks will need to find much better ways to tap private capital. Their coffers aren’t big enough to do this on their own.
Government "coffers aren't big enough"??? MMT completely disagrees - any government with its own fiat currency has infinite coffers of money. Gates probably knows that, but, again, that's not something 1 of the world's richest men is going to admit to.
But before that, I kept having this thought as I approached the end of this book: how about we put 2 grad students to work and rewrite this book making the following changes: 1 grad student tallies how much everything costs - pretty much just as a thought experiment (Gedankenexperiment).
Meanwhile, grad student #2 identifies what the resources involved are, and where there are potential shortages thereof. We then know what we REALLY have to worry about trying to avoid a climate disaster. The other, the $$$, is BS.
What does the book read like then?
[Updated 2021-06-01 2:18 pm]
1 thing I meant to mention and forgot: why aren't insurance companies being more activist in the face of the climate crisis? The continuing worsening of natural disasters is surely costing them $B or 10s or 100s of $B. I would think at some point it will become existential for them. Why aren't they acting?
I am a big admirer of Doctorow. He seems to be a really hardworking guy. In addition to his fiction and non-fiction writing, he has been very active in the EFF and a champion of "right to repair". I just recently found his blog, "Pluralistic", which amazingly has I'd guess an average of 2 articles/day - and they are well-thought-out, well-written, and interesting.
I got to meet Doctorow in maybe 2012-13, when he and Charlie Stross were promoting "Rapture of the Nerds" (released September, 2012), at Joseph-Beth Bookstore in Lexington. I told him that he was a bard of the revolution, and to please keep it up. He totally has not disappointed.
In his blog, he describes this book as "an anti-monopoly pamphlet analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a solution." "Surveillance capitalism" is easy to spot: think Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, aka Big Tech.
I tweeted my initial reaction to Doctorow's solution:
This is indeed Doctorow's solution: break up the monopolies, bust the trusts, make Teddy Roosevelt proud.
Why are the online surveillance companies bad? Why are they evil? Well, for starters, they allow Nazis to thrive & prosper. Even when they try to police the content on their platforms, Nazis can add new stuff as fast as Big Tech can take it down.
1 thing Doctorow contends that I thought was really interesting: that Big Tech vastly exaggerates the effectivity of their targetted ads.
Big Tech lies about just about everything, including how well its machine-learning fueled persuasion systems work.
Doctorow also contends that, by and large, the vast amounts of data collected by Big Tech are worthless. Location-based data is indeed highly useful (you're right out front, come in our store & buy something), but it has a very short lifespan (oops, you're no longer in front of our store). Seems to me, tho, that collating this data into 2nd order data (this person is often in front of our store between 12 & 2 pm on weekdays) would be less time sensitive. But Doctorow contends that, once the Big Tech companies are broken up, their mountains of data will quickly become worthless.
Whatever happened to antitrust? When was the last time a corporate merger was shot down as being monopolistic?
It seems like, increasingly, you can identify people who basically have been incredibly successful at fucking the rest of us under the radar. Like the Koch Brothers, who, via their minion Mitch McConnell, have succeeded in filling the Supreme Court with Federalist Society indoctrinated judges. If originalism is not lame, I do not know what is. I mean, of course, absolutely nothing meaningful has changed in the world since the US constitution was written [sarcasm]. I'm sure that the slave-owing Founding Fathers all treated their slaves very humanely.
Doctorow introduces us to Robert Bork: The Man Who Destroyed Antitrust.
Originally, antitrust legislation defined monopolies as bad - period. Bork's book "The Antitrust Paradox", published in 1978, said, "No, no, no, monopolies are only bad if they adversely affect consumers". In the 4 decades since then, this has become the accepted approach.
But, come on - hire expensive PR firms and lawyers and EVERY merger can be made to look advantageous to consumers. Of course in practice, if it doesn't work out, what happens? Nothing. For the last few decades, I've been asking "Why does the FTC or the SEC not break up {$monopolist}'s monopoly?" Well, now I know the answer. Robert Bork, fucking us from beyond the grave. Well, at least the son of a bitch is dead, as of 2012. He's probably gloating his ass off as he burns in hell.
Doctorow dismisses the argument that we should own and commoditize our own data.
It’s tempting to reach for the property hammer when Big Tech treats your information like a nail—not least because Big Tech are such prolific abusers of property hammers when it comes to their information. But this is a mistake. If we allow markets to dictate the use of our information, then we’ll find that we’re sellers in a buyers’ market where the Big Tech monopolies set a price for our data that is so low as to be insignificant or, more likely, set at a nonnegotiable price of zero in a click-through agreement that you don’t have the opportunity to modify.
Doctorow discusses the roots of current online Nazism, concluding:
Inequality creates the conditions for both conspiracies and violent racist ideologies, and then surveillance capitalism lets opportunists target the fearful and the conspiracy-minded.
...
Antitrust was neutered as a key part of the project to make the wealthy wealthier, and that project has worked. The vast majority of people on Earth have a negative net worth, and even the dwindling middle class is in a precarious state, undersaved for retirement, underinsured for medical disasters, and undersecured against climate and technology shocks.
I am so pleased and hopeful that our new president Uncle Joe appears to be trying to address inequality - or at least trying to make life easier for the working man or particularly woman via things like universal preschool and child care. Hopefully this can restore some faith in government and keep people from giving credence to the lies of wannabe dictators like our prior president. But Doctorow points out that this will be a slow process.
Wouldn't be great to once again have trustbusters, righteously smiting the monopolists!
But trustbusters once strode the nation, brandishing law books, terrorizing robber barons, and shattering the illusion of monopolies’ all-powerful grip on our society.
Ha ha, I was thinking about removing the f-bombs above, but I don't think I will. I seem to be following Doctorow's lead:
“Knock it off. We all know what the Sherman Act says. Robert Bork was a deranged fantasist. For avoidance of doubt, fuck that guy.” In other words, the problem with monopolies is monopolism — the concentration of power into too few hands, which erodes our right to self-determination.
In the end, it all flows from 1 wellspring: capitalism.
As to why things are so screwed up? Capitalism. Specifically, the monopolism that creates inequality and the inequality that creates monopolism. It’s a form of capitalism that rewards sociopaths who destroy the real economy to inflate the bottom line, and they get away with it for the same reason companies get away with spying: because our governments are in thrall to both the ideology that says monopolies are actually just fine and in thrall to the ideology that says that in a monopolistic world, you’d better not piss off the monopolists.
Surveillance doesn’t make capitalism rogue. Capitalism’s unchecked rule begets surveillance.
Doctorow concludes by getting back in touch with his inner geek, and stressing the importance in today's automated and connected world of getting the tech right.
I am, secretly, despite what I have said earlier, a tech exceptionalist. Not in the sense of thinking that tech should be given a free pass to monopolize because it has “economies of scale” or some other nebulous feature. I’m a tech exceptionalist because I believe that getting tech right matters and that getting it wrong will be an unmitigated catastrophe—and doing it right can give us the power to work together to save our civilization, our species, and our planet.
Please read this book. Kobo says it only takes 1-2 hours. I have been watching a lot of movies lately, each about the same time investment as this, reading this book is definitely time better spent.
It seems like it is getting easier and easier for me to let things slide. I'm not as slack on book reviews as music in, but, getting there?
1st up, "The Unfinished Land", by Greg Bear, 2021, 369 pages, 100k words. Greg Bear was one of my fav authors for decades. To my knowledge, this is his 1st novel-length foray into fantasy since "The Infinity Concerto" (1984) and "The Serpent Mage" (1986). I have done rereads of both of those, and in fact recently purchased a bargain e-book version of "The Infinity Concerto" contemplating another reread.
"The Unfinished Land" is set at the time of the attempted invasion of England by the Spanish Armada (1588). A young English boy whose ship is sunk winds up aboard a Spanish galleon that winds up in the magical islands of the North Atlantic, in particular High Brasil. The ruler is a Vanir godess (never directly encountered), there are various (semi)immortals, magical beings, etc. A decent page-turner, but I never really engaged with it. Also, it was 1 of those stories where things seem to get destroyed as the central characters pass through them, which I usually find annoying.
#2, "City", by Clifford D. Simak, 1952, 302 pages, 82k words. I'm sure I got offered a cheap ebook on this. I always liked Simak, and I remembered this 1 as being good. It was good, a collection of short stories with narration in between tying them together, following humanity going post-singularity (but a completely 1952 version) and leaving the world to robots and uplifted dogs. I enjoyed the read.
It was funny, tho. I have kvetched lately about the preponderance of LGBTQAZ issues in recent sci-fi, this book definitely was a blast from the past. There are 2 female characters with very small parts, other than that all (white) men. Even the uplifted dogs all seem to be male. The lack of diversity was actually jarring.
I will be 70 years old in June. This may be the best story I have ever read. It's just perfect. It is the stuff of dreams.
I sleep and dream a lot, and my dreams had been getting stale. My dreaming actually did get some new energy from this story. Beautiful, haunting, full of love, and with a very sweet ending. Also, 1 of those books that presents as fantasy but is actually science fiction.
#4, "Make Shift", subtitled "Dispatches from the Post-Pandemic Future", 2021, 247 pages, 67k words. This year's installment of "Twelve Tomorrows", published annually by MIT Technology Review. I was excited when I saw that this had come out, dug right in. I got a story or 2 in and was like, "Oh crap, these are all pandemic stories, I don't want to be reading pandemic stories right now." I got my 1st vaccination March 4, but, I have been a hunkered-down fool for 1 year now, and I have a pretty bad case of pandemic fatigue.
Still, good stories by some of my fav current authors: Cory Doctorow, Ken Liu, Malka Older, and Karl Schroeder. The last story, "Vaccine Season" by Hannu Rajaniemi, gave an incredibly hopefully future vision. Phew, thanks Hannu, I needed that!
#5, "Klara and the Sun", by Kazuo Ishiguro, 2021, 330 pages, 89k words. A totally charming book. Klara is an AF - Artificial Friend, who are sold to be companions to tweens and teens. AFs are solar-powered and as such worthip the sun - Klara does anyway. She strongly reminded me of ... Piranesi!!! Both are unfinished, child-like individuals, and as such form completely bogus theories about reality and their place in it. (1 of the things I love about children is their persistent but usually spectacularly failing attempts to do science, to explain the world.)
This book has to be considered science fiction, but it also has magical and fantastical components. A great read.
In the fall of 1968, I met Delbert Lionel Hilgartner III. He was a sophomore at MIT, I was just starting. Pi Lambda Phi frat.
Del was cool: 6'1", cowboy boots. He had spent his senior year in Davis, CA. The 3 years before that, he had lived in Tangiers, Morocco. His dad was stationed there for VOA (CIA?).
In prolly late 1970, he started the band "Blue Eyed Boy, Mr. Death". (Yeats?). He played keys (Hammond B3 w Lesley), blues harp, tambourine, and sang lead, harmony, & backup. I played mostly lead guitar, a little pedal steel, and sang harmony, lead, & backup. Randolph Axel Nelson (Randy at 1st, later Axel) played mostly rhythm guitar, + bass, bongos, & sang harmony & backup. Barry I. Levine played bass & sax & sang harmony and backup. John Broderick (J. the D.) drummed. Barry was in Del's year at MIT, Randy had been in mine but dropped out. J. the D. was a Boston townie, he'd graduated college & taught grade school I think.
We weren't bad - John sent around some recordings early last year (linked to in this post, which also talks about BEBMD & the other 2 bands I played in in Boston.). We gigged pretty steady, frats, sororities, some high schools, clubs, spring of 1971. Del graduated w a Humanities degree & moved to the Village to teach film at Cooper's Union. That ended BEBMD.
Del turned me on to North African music - I haven't collected much of that.
He also turned me on to Fats Waller. The king of stride piano in the late 1920's & 1930's. Great tunes, great lyrics, very upbeat. My wife described some of the songs as "playful", I agree.
In the late 1960's, I bought 3 RCA Victor Vintage Fats Waller vinyl LPs:
Valentine Stomp 1935
Fractious Fingering 1936
Smashing Thirds 1937
These albums also have some Fats solo piano pieces, mostly recorded in 1929.
I also bought "Classic Jazz Piano Styles" which had 4 tracks by Fats, 4 by Jelly Roll Morton, 4 by Earl Hines?, & 4 by ?.
A few months ago I started working up the Fats songs off of the 3 albums. I took a picture of the 3 albums' track lists. I highlighted my current status, what fun! iPad drawing tool intuitive!
Note, "i got rhythm" I don't do Fats' version, I do Ella Fitzgerald's. Fats also does "tea for two", I do the 1950's movie version. "ain't misbehaving" I did with Steve (Fuzzy) Konopka in "Steve & Chris".
Next up for recording (yellow highlight), "how ya baby?" in C. In process, I just worked up the chords for "how can i?" in D (red highlight) this morning. The song has a a red flag on it in OnSong - not ready to go. Easier chords than the prior 1.
And also in the pic, 9 blue highlighted possibles! I've been working the right column of 1937 songs, I think I'll switch to the left column of 1935 songs for a while. Next up, "thief in the night".
I have 14 total songs in OnSong under Fats: the 11 recorded, the 2 in process, and "if you're a viper", which is not 1 of my favs of his. If I record it it will be after the 9 possibles.
Odd that I didn't seem to like the 1936 album??? The other highlighted tunes have been on the hit parade in my head for 5 decades, I don't think any of the 1936 tunes made the cut.
For the last few of the greens I have worked up, I have added my chart to Ultimate Guitar. I've also added lyrics to AZLyrics. Yay for me, I'm performing a public service, capturing these great songs for posterity!
I R contributing to The Commons, FTW!
[Updated 2021-03-11]
Added "how ya baby?" by fats waller in C.
[Updated 2021-03-15]
Added "how can i?" by fats waller in D.
[Updated 2021-10-05]
Added "i've got a feeling i'm falling" by fats waller, billy rose, gene austin, annette hanshaw in D. I could not find a video of Fats singing this song, only of him performing it as a piano solo. I worked this version up from the Gene Austin 1929 recording.
[Updated 2021-10-07]
Probably Fats' best known collaborating lyricist was Andy Razaf (born Andriamanantena Paul Razafinkarefo). Is that not a great name? Say it, 7 syllables, 1 syllable, 6 syllables, it totally rolls off of your tongue. The Wikipedia article says that he was a nephew of Madgascar royalty - a dynasty of almost 400 years, they must have had a some decent genes ;-P
[Updated 2021-11-24]
Added "honeysuckle rose" by fats waller, louis armstrong, andy razaf in F.
[Updated 2024-10-08]
Published a review/summary of "Fats Waller", by Maurice Waller, 1977.
[Updated 2024-10-17]
Added "lost love" by fats waller, andy razaf in F.
[Updated 2024-10-31]
Published a review/summary of the Fats Waller bio "Ain't Misbehavin'" by Ed Kirkeby, 1966. Kirkeby was Fats' manager from 1938-1943. The bio by Fats' son Maurice is better.
[Updated 2026-09-10]
Added "squeeze me", by fats waller, clarence williams, andy razaf in G.
An early Music In note, when I was looking for the video for "you got me under your thumb", I came across the Cleo Brown version - it had a very tasty intro. Cleo was known as the "female Fats Waller". She was 3 years younger, born 1907 (or 1909) vs 1904 for Fats. Her skimpy Wikipedia article says in 1935 she took over for Fats as pianist for the WABC orchestra in NYC.
It seems like most of her stuff is on this 27-track album, "Here Comes Cleo". Only $9.49 Amazon download, quel bargain! I've really enjoyed it. Favs: "you got me under your thumb", "my gal mezzanine", "when hollywood goes black and tan", "who's that knockin' at my heart?".
I found her the last week of African-American History Month & thought, "How appproiate & fortuitous!". Touted on Twitter, crickets :-(
I finished reading a book a couple nights ago, I figured I had enough (4) to blog. I was surprised to see that the last time I blogged on books read was Dec 5. So only 4 books in just over 2 months? Where does the time go?
Well, lately, I sleep til 8-9am, out walking/biking by 10-11. Generally 2ish is the earliest that I am finished with the morning walk/bike ride, chores, showering, and lunching. I was up to practicing guitar & singing 3-4 hours a day. Some reading. I've started doing crossword puzzles again. If I'm cooking, I generally start 6-6:30. After supper, more reading, then lately 2-3 hours of TV/movies. starting 10ish. Finished bingeing "Lucifer" - surprisingly fun, although at times as trite as you would expect of a multi-year series. Then binged the end of "Vikings". Next up "The Expanse".
I've decided I'm only going to binge things. I still have 1/2 a season of "Peter Gunn" to watch and harvest jazz standards from. But Amazon has decided to start charging me $0.99/episode, which seems like too much for 1/2 hour episodes. Oh well, only like 15 to go, when I'm done working up the 60-70 songs currently in the queue and need more I'll cough up the dough.
I had an abfab couple of weeks Jan 16-29: my youngest daughter visited me here in Naples, FL with her husband and 3 sons aged 6, 3, and 1 YO. They were going to stay a week, I told them early on they could stay as long as they wanted, so they stayed an extra week. Her husband worked remote Mon-Fri, and the 6 YO did remote classwork Mon-Fri. They went to the beach 4x, the IslandWalk pool 3x, Vineyards Community Park splash park 2x, a nice walk in a rookery (alligators!), and on their last day the very nice little Naples zoo (more alligators! - and dozens of Lego animals?!?!?).
It was great getting to cook 9 days in a row. Normally I cook 2 nights in a row, 4 servings a night (or sometimes only 2 of protein), so I then eat (alternating) leftovers for the next 6 days. Their last night in Naples we ordered out for pizza; the 2 nights before that my son-in-law acquited himself most excellently in the kitchen, making fish tacos the 1st night and chicken kabobs with homemade tzatziki sauce the 2nd night.
My daughter (and her sons) worked a 300 piece jigsaw puzzle, and she started a 1000 piecer, and left it for me. So I've been spending some time on that too.
Well, not like it really matters. I am in my 9th year of being gloriously and happily retired, FTW!
1st book read: "Fleet Elements", by Walter Jon Williams, 2020, 454 pages, 123k words. The 2nd book in the 2nd trilogy in the Praxis meta-series, which also includes 2-3 short stories. Williams' writing is like an old friend to me. Good space battles, I guess. More plot regarding our star-crossed lovers. Slightly annoying cliff-hanger ending.
2nd book read: "Machine", by Elizabeth Bear, 2020, 495 pages. The 2nd book in her new "White Space" series. I was really psyched by the 1st book in this series, which seemed to have appointed itself the successor to Iain Banks' Culture series. So I was excited to get this 1. I don't think it is as good as the 1st, but still a page-turner. Characters include humans, aliens, and AIs, what's not to like?
3rd book read: "Perfidia", by James Ellroy, 2014, 705 pages, 204k words. This is the 1st book of "The Second L.A. Quartet" by Ellroy. I read several of his books decades ago, and have watched "L.A. Confidential" a few times. I think I got the 2nd book of the new quartet ("This Storm") on sale at Bookbub, and bought this 1 when I realized this fact. Ellroy considers himself the king of True Crime, there's plenty of that. The book starts the day before Pearl Harbor, after which things get pretty crazy in L.A. Most of the characters are cops or informants. Everyone stops sleeping, instead working all the time, doing drugs, and having sex with movie stars. I really wondered about that. Are Bette Davis and Joan Crawford in the public domain? Don't they have descendants or estates who might take exception to their being protrayed as lascivious individuals? Somewhat off-putting to me. I think I'm kind of over this genre, I think it will be a while before I read the 2nd one.
4th book read: "Some of the Best of Tor.com: 2020 Edition", various authors, 2020, 789 pages, 214k words. Tor publishes new stories online, a few a month, and at the end of the year creates a compilation of the best 30 or so stories and publishes them as a free eBook - yay! Generally a pretty good collection, and this year is no exception. This year's collection seems to skew heavily towards fantasy and horror, with very little science fiction. The collection was not as totally dominated by LGBTQA stories as I expected.
I totally forgot to clear the magazine stack in January, so I need to get that and February next.
Currently 108 songs in my OnSong "Standards" book. Another 55 or so still in the list to be added. Still 2/3 of the final season of "Peter Gunn" to harvest. Wow, season 3/3, they got rid of "Mother's" and Edie Hart, Pete's girlfriend, has her own club "Edie's".
In late November I was running low on standards, so I added #BluesTuesday and posted a bluesy song to this channel on Tuesdays to pad things out.
From December 20 to Jan 2, I posted 14 holiday songs. Something that impressed me when I 1st met Ricky Howard, David Johnson, and some of the other professional musicians I get to play with in Naples FL was that when the holidays rolled around, they all had holiday songs. So I decided I'd be professional and add some too. No hymns. For #BluesTuesday, I did "Blue Christmas" and "Please Come Home For Christmas". For #SomethingNewerSaturday, I did "Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree" and "Jingle Bell Rock". These songs have both been covered by enough people to be considered standards, but I decided that any song with "rock" in the name was not a standard.
The 1st holiday song I worked up was "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas". The 3rd verse starts:
Through the years we all will be together,
If the Fates allow.
Well, Fates allowed pretty much 0 this year. No family whatsoever for the holidays. My wife was unable to get off work & come to Florida for the 1st time in 11 years. I took me several tries before I could make it through that 3rd verse without tearing up.
As usual, this is way too many songs to work with. For a 3 hour gig, the most of these I could imagine using is 60. If I use the looper more and put some solos in, that goes down to 40-50. So I'm going to start creating some set lists of the ones I think would work best. But, I'll keep adding songs in case of requests, and also because I always get tired of playing the same stuff.
Here's some of my favs so far.
I have to put this one as #1, because my wife was home when I was working it up, and whenever I sang "Go on and kiss her, go on and kiss her", she would come in and lay a big ol' kiss on me. I'm thinking "Finally! That's how music is supposed to work!".
These 2 songs were off of Julie London's 1955 debut album. "Julie Is Her Name", with Barney Kessel on guitar & an upright bass player. That is a great album, I think I've gifted it to 3-4 people. These were the hardest songs I did, as I tried to get all of Barney's licks.
Barney did a similar album with Sarah Vaughan, "Sarah + 2" in 1962. I worked up Barney's licks on this next song from that album, but wound up mostly doing the arrangement by my teacher, the most excellent jazz guitarist Ricky Howard. What a pretty song!
A few weeks ago I realized I needed to start doing more of the Fats Waller songs that I have loved for 50 years. In college, the 2nd band I played in "Blue Eyed Boy Mr. Death" was led by Delbert Lionel Hilgartner III ("Del") who sang most of the leads and played organ (Hammond B3 with a Lesley) and tambourine. He turned me on to Fats. I bought these 3 albums then.
I've started to seriously harvest these tunes, targetting 1/week. I have posted 5 Fats tunes so far, 2 more in process. Here's the Fats playlist. Here's 1 of his many happy, upbeat songs. My wife described them as playful, I agree.
Here's video #100. Nice, this is a fav!
On the other channel, this was the most popular song. I tweeted thanks to David Crosby for writing it, maybe that gave it a boost - all the way up to 40 views (LOL)!
Note, the intonation problems seem to come and go. If I pay more attention to it I do better. So that means I need to make sure I have the guitar parts down cold so I have the bandwidth to pay attention to the vocal intonation.
Note, 1 of the 4 was not available on Kobo, so I bought "The Complete Series" on Amazon.
This was a fun read. My son said it reminded him of Herbert, i.e. evolution, I didn't get that much. It is a tale that escalates nicely, from involving just Earth to a full galactic civilization. I was not particularly pleased that the civilization was strongly heirarchical - 19 levels, with humans on level 3. Going up the levels is mostly about increased processing speed. The cast of characters is varied and strong.
Next up, "Fire & Blood", by George R. R. Martin, 2020, 971 pages, 264k words. Set 300 years before Game of Thrones, this book covers the Targaryen conquest of Westeros with dragons and the 1st 100-200 years of their rule. Guess what? Succession problems. Civil war. Dragons fighting dragons. Having read and watched all of Game of Thrones, I guess I had to read this. But, I found it annoying everytime he refered to "the smallfolk" - commoners, as opposed to feudal lords. I want to read novels that don't glorify feudalism. Feudalism is too much of a strange attractor for how to organize human civilization as is.
This wasn't particularly "Game of Thrones"-y - no really unexpected (mass) murders, etc. More of a history book feel. My son referred to it as "The Silmarillion for GOT". It's not nearly that bad.
It looks like there's going to be 1 more of these.
Finally, "Dead Lies Dreaming", Charles Stross, 2020, 409 pages, 111k words. Set in the current universe and chronology of the earlier Laundry Files novels, this 1 features a completely different cast of characters. Charlie is definitely keeping himself current - all the characters were some flavor of LGBTQA... some of them I was never sure which. Maybe that's the point. The story centers around a quest through time to retrieve a mystical book of great power. The plotting was good I guess. I'm back to thinking that Charlie is burned out on this series - this is book #10. I'll keep reading them, but I wish he'd go back to writing about bright shiny futures with things like cornucopia machines.
Still 80 unread books on my iPad - oops. #SongOfTheDay is eating into my reading time, like everything else. Well, maybe we'll have a vaccine soon & I can get out and play music in public & quit obsessively working up new songs.
Last "music in" post was in June, when I was home in Lexington, KY for 10 days. Then I went back to Naples, FL until September 10.
My music collection, currently 21,509 tracks, lives on my PC in Lexington, administered by iTunes. New music stays in the _unrated smart playlist, which is my default home listening, until I have heard it enough to rate it. This can only happen in Lexington. So my prolonged stay in Naples this year has messed that up.
Plus, I think I am encountering Yet Another Case of "hey, we have a new business model, we're no longer particularly supporting how things used to work." Apple, Amazon, etc, all want you use their subscription streaming music services - something which I have no interest in doing. Amazon used to send me weekly emails of music suggestions. No more. Not even when an artist whose stuff I have purchased from them releases new material. No, they want me to buy a subscription to Prime Music or whatever.
But, I've really enjoyed curating my own music collection. I don't think I'm quite ready to give that up yet. It sure is annoying that this is what they are trying to make me do.
Also, I purchased a 2TB USB drive for $60. I formatted it 1/4 for my MacBook to use TimeMachine backups, the rest accessible by PC or max (exFAT). I have moved all the music there. Tomorrow, going to try to see if the metadata from my PC can be copied to the MacBook, after which I would set it to reference the music from the USB drive, to where both systems could work off the USB drive. Not hopeful at all that this might work. They so much all are gradually letting interoperability lapse and focusing on playing solely in their own sandboxes. Assholes ...
The only one helping out is Bandcamp. They put out an email every Friday with 5 new albums for my perusal. I have gotten some good music from them - they're like the main source of new stuff at this point - but, maybe 30% of the time, the music is below what I would consider professionally produced. Not that big a deal I guess, they still have good stuff.
Which reminds me, I am really cutting back on birding. My eyesight is not as good, and I really have trouble learning birdsongs. I have theorized that our brains have only so much plastic audio-processing neurons, and mine have been taken over by music-processing - so there is no hardware left for processing birdsongs. I could do a poll on Twitter, "Are you both a musician and a birder able to recognize lots of birdsongs?" - but my last Twitter poll got 2 votes. I'm not sure exactly why I'm such a non-entity on social media. I think I'm really smart, interesting, and insightful. But, I guess, OK boomer. 69 YO pretty old for social media. Despite the pressing need for it, I try to make sure and not mansplain - I'm sure the yunguns aren't up for that.
Well, let's try to process some of this music. The oldest stuff is from June, I don't remember much of it at this point ...
EOB, "Earth", 2020, 9 tracks. EOB is Ed O'Brien, a member of Radiohead. This is his 1st solo album. Several of the tracks kind of sound like Radiohead, the rest don't. A good effort, 4 stars. Here's "Banksters".
Fiona Apple, "Fetch The Bolt Cutters", 2020, 13 tracks. Ms. Apple is genuine. Ms. Apple is writing from her heart. Ms. Apple has 0 fucks to give. You gotta respect that. 4 stars. Ha ha, I love this lyric: "Kick me under the table all you want. I won't shut up. I won't shut up". Right on, Fiona!
Superorder, "Excellent Systems", 2020, 12 tracks. This is a duo featuring a keyboard/synthesizer player and my nephew, most excellent drummer out of Portland, ME, Max Heinz, on drums & percussion. Very listenable, but not quite hooky enough, so 3 stars.
School of Language, "I Could Have Loved U Better", 2020, 5 tracks. I continue to like this band's work. These tracks have more of an 80's disco/techno feel. 4 stars. Ah, here's a nice track. Nice rich chords. "Call U Up".
RJD2, "The Fun Ones", 2020, 14 tracks. My daughter Erica introduced me via CD to RJD2 in 2002, his "Deadringer" album. Wow, I only gave that 2 stars - just upgraded to 3. Also changed from "Rap/Hip Hop" to "Electronica/Dance". Nice listenable stuff, plus, you can dance to it! 3 stars.
Joey Guilones, "The World I Know", 2020, 2 tracks. Definitely Bandcamp. Nice neo-motown, 4 stars. Here's "Left With A Broken Heart".
Coco Montoya, "Coming In Hot", 2019, 11 tracks. Someone (Greg Stone?) told me, you have to work up "Good Man Gone". So I got the album & worked that song up. Overall, the album is not bad, a blues album with not everything 1 4 5. 3 stars. I did work up "Good Man Gone", I think it will be a fun song to perform. I like this line: "If your phone don't ring, then you know it's me." LOL!
Coco did journeyman's work, playing with Albert Collins, and then John Mayhall's Bluesbreakers for 10 years starting in the early 1980's.
Moodyman, "TAKEN AWAY | KDJ-49", 2020, 10 tracks, Bandcamp. Very tasty, more Brit neo-Motown or whatever. 4 stars. Here's "Do Wrong", seriously channeling some Al Greene.
NIIKA, "Close But Not Too Close", 2020, 9 tracks, Bandcamp. Very nice alternative tracks from Oz. Close, but 4 stars. Here's the last track, "For The Key".
Norah Jones, "Begin Again", 2019, 7 tracks. This is what I mean. I have all of Ms. Jones' music, but she releases a new album last year and nobody tells me! Grrr! 4 stars. Here's the 1st track, "Just A Little Bit".
Norah Jones, "Pick Me Up Off The Floor", 2020, 12 tracks. Purchased at the same time as the previous album. Grrr. This album has tracks "I'm Alive", "To Live", and "This Life" consecutively. A theme maybe? Life? 4 stars. Here's "This Life".
Andrew Bird, 2020, "Panthology Songs I", 6 tracks; "Panthology Songs II", 6 tracks; "Panthology Songs III", 6 tracks. Our 1st pandemic music! Yay? Groan? I think this is mostly rereleases of older material, something to do while hunkered down. Bird has (obviously) chosen some of his best stuff, and that is some seriously good stuff. So I will give them all 4 stars, but not include a video. I guess the precedent is, I don't post a video for rereleased material.
St. Paul & The Broken Bones, "Live From Wichita", 2020, 16 tracks. 8 piece white R&B band out of Birmingham AL. 2 horns. Live performance. Not a bad band - I'd enjoy playing in it - but I got tired of it. Maybe needed fewer tracks. 3 stars.
Rough Trade Publishing/Bank Robber Music, "Talk - Action = Zero: A Compilation Benefitting Black Lives Matter", 2020, 100 tracks! 100 tracks! So this was put together as a fund raiser for BLM. I always pay a minimum of $1/track, so I paid Bandcamp $100 for this album. Well worth it, a great compilation of styles and tunes. Weird, only about 60 would import into iTunes?!?!? I'm presuming problems with unpopular characters in the song names. That's OK, I can listen to the whole thing in the Bandcamp app on my phone, and the app will bluetooth into my car, FTW!. This is a very good compilation, nothing obviously bad or obnoxious. But, due to the size, 3 stars. I got an email, their target was $30,000 to support BLM, they made their goal, FTW!
Maybe a month later they came out with Volume 2, another 60 tracks. I presume I gave them another $60. This one did even worse with iTunes, it only liked 9 tracks.
Julie London, "Julie Is Her Name", 1955, 13 tracks. What a great album! I found it thanks to Edie performing "Easy Street" on Peter Gunn. This was Ms. London's 1st album - she put out about 4/year for the next 10 years after this. Backed solely by Barney Kessel on guitar and Roy Leatherwood on upright bass. Both Ricky Howard my guitar teacher and internationally renowned guitarist the inimitable Ben Lacy said that they are big fans of Barney. 4 stars, 5 for "Cry Me A River", which is really fun to perform. Here's that track and "Easy Street".
Oh, and, bonus! Here's me doing those 2 songs. "Cry Me A River" I transposed from G down to E to sing it. A few of the chord voicings changed, I think for the better, FTW! "Easy Street" I could sing in her key.
Sarah Vaughan, "Sarah Plus Two", 1962, 11 tracks. Ricky Howard told me about this album. Following Julie London's lead in 1955, this album features Sarah backed solely by Barney Kessel on guitar and Joe Comfort on upright bass. Great stuff, 4 stars. Here's 2 tracks I worked up off of this album: "Just In Time", and "When Sunny Gets Blue". I posted both to Ultimate Guitar.
Becca Mancari, "The Greatest Part", 2020, 12 tracks. Very strong alternative chick pop, I really liked this stuff. 4 stars. Here's "Lonely Boy".
Tracey Thorn, "Record", 2018, 9 tracks. Again, I have everything Tracey Thorn has done solo, and all of Everything But The Girl, and I find out she has new material 2 years later? You suck, music distributors. Sadly, no standout tracks for me, as much as I love Ms. Thorn's voice. Plus track "Sisters" featured Corinne Bailey Rae! But, sadly, 3 stars.
The Beths, "Jump Rope Gazers", 2020, 10 tracks. Very nice alternative music from New Zealand. Some a bit energetic, but, I'm not completely old yet! They seem to be getting some press/attention. 4 stars. Here's the title track.
Paul Kantner and Jefferson Starship, "Blows Against The Empire", 1970, 10 tracks. I think the transitional album between Jefferson Airplane and Jefferson Starship? When they still were preaching a revolution? My guitar teacher Ricky Howard told me I needed to get it??? 4 stars, I guess. Here's "A Child Is Coming".
Madeline Kenney, "Sucker's Lunch", 2020, 10 tracks. My 2nd album of Ms. Kenney. Very good music. 4 stars. Here's "Double Hearted".
Jorge Elbrecht, "Presentable Corpse..", 2020, 2 tracks. My nephew the most excellent drummer loves this guy. I like these tracks better than his most recent stuff before this that I have. Much more approachable. 4 stars. Here's track 2/2, "Ancient Grief".
Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, "Reunions", 2020, 10 tracks. I think Isbell has become the bard of Americana. Case in point, "Dreamsicle". 4 stars.
Half Moon Run, "Look Me in the Eyes", 2020, 8 tracks. Nice power folk, guitar rock, whatever. Very listenable. 4 stars. Here's "Grow Into Love".
Frank Zappa, "Shut Up And Play Your Guitar", 1981, 20 tracks. Originally a 3 disk albums. Great chance to listen to the underappreciated fabulous guitarist Frank Zappa. Looking forward to the authorized documenentary coming out any day now. But, I'm a lyrics kind of guy. 3 stars.
Lianne La Havas, eponymous, 2020, 12 tracks. Again, I have this artist's previous work, she puts out a new album, I am forced to stumble upon it. Just like the previous artist, her guitar and voice work so well together. She has an interesting approach to guitar, playing much more on the lower strings than most people. Out of London, of course. 4 stars. Here's "Bittersweet", and also, her excellent cover of "Weird Fishes" by Radiohead.
Easy Love, "Wander Feeler", 2020, 12 tracks. Chill alternative with laid-back female singers. Maybe a little too chill. Plus, I can't find any videos. 3 stars.
B Fachada, "Regabofe d'Abertura", 2020, 16 tracks, Bandcamp. Well, I wasn't too impressed by Fado music, so when this contemporary Portuguese group came up on Bandcamp and sounded interesting, I went for it. Glad I did, interesting, edgy, energetic music. 4 stars. Here's "Canção de Rejeição".
Market, "Inner Smile", 2020, 1 track, Bandcamp. Another group from Australia (Melbourne). A nice track, 4 stars.
katie dey, "mydata", 2020, 12 tracks, Bandcamp. Nice alternative music, not particularly guitar oriented, different. 4 stars. Another ozzy (Australian, Melbourne). Here's "word". I'm a sucker for strings like this. Also, kudos to dey for eschewing the use of upper case.
Kate Bollinger, "A word becomes a sound", 2020, 5 tracks, Bandcamp. More chill alternative, dreamy guitar. I liked her EP from last year. 4 stars. Here's the title track.
Johnny Mathis, "Open Fire, Two Guitars", 1959, 12 tracks. Recommended by my guitar teacher Ricky Howard. A bit to schmaltzy for my taste. 3 stars.
Rick Howard, "Trio - 4 Songs", 2013, 4 tracks. My guitar teacher. He is such a great jazz guitarist. 4 stars, but no video.
katie dey, "solipsisters", 2019, 10 tracks. Apparently I liked dey's latest effort enough to backfill this earlier release. Interesting stuff, really eclectic vocals. 4 stars again. Here's "stuck". Holy crap, what an odd video! Plus, a handy technique for trimming long hair?!?!?
Billie Holiday, "Lady in Satin", 1958, 16 tracks. I think this was recommended by Walter Tunis, the Lexington Herald-Leader's music critic for the last 40 years. I thought this was her last album - she died July 17, 1959, age 44 - but apparently this one was fairly successful, so she recorded another, "Last Recording" in 1959. I am very sorry that this is my introduction to her work. Her voice is mostly gone, weak, wavery - I know, I've got my nerve, I posted links to me singing above, not so great - but I'm 69 YO. I need to find something from earlier in her career that will let me appreciate her talent. 3 stars.
OK! Done. Patting myself on the back, _unrated is down from > 500 to 84. FTW! I did yeoman's work yesterday and today: 4-5 hours maybe? 41 albums/EPs processed! It's good to be retired! Now to work on the mac/windows interoperabilty issue - oops! Wish me luck!
