In which we make another visit to the music queue

There’s a documentary about “Aja” on HBO-Max that I just watched, part of a series on “Classic Albums.” This is the only one I’ve seen. I became a big Steely Dan fan after they broke up (and before they got back together).  It was my assistant at Doubleday, Nels, who first got me involved with them. Nels was a big music fan and performer, maybe a decade younger than me. This was during the period when I was mostly listening to jazz, show tunes, and classical stuff. I asked him to recommend something recent in rock that I would like, and his recommendation was “Gaucho.” And thus began my love affair with the Dan, as Fagen refers to them in Eminent Hipsters, one of the few books on rock that I’ve read. (I think the memoirs by Brian Wilson, Bruce Springsteen, Keith Richards, and David Byrne are the lot of them, but I guess I should include "500 Songs," since I just signed up for Hickey’s Patreon.) The Aja documentary is well worth watching if you’re a Dan fan. They’re a band famous (too famous) for working in the studio, and the program shows the how and why of it on this album. Perhaps a little too inside baseball? But I have a feeling that if you, too, are a Dan fan, you’ll enjoy it. 

The March of the Audit: As a reminder whenever I hear of an artist I don’t know that sounds interesting, I throw them into my audit playlist on Spotify, and every day pretty much I listen to an album or so in the mornings in the order in which I attached them. If I like them, I put their next album at the end of the list. Sometimes I even grab a song for my main rock playlist. Other times I might find an album needs more than one listen before making any sort of determination, so I toss it back in the mix. This is the latest listening review.

• “Up, Up and Away” by the Fifth Dimension. If you’ve been following me you know I love good harmonies, and 5D does that. I never really listened to them beyond the hits, so this is an attempt to rectify that oversight. The songs here that aren’t hits are very Mamas-and-the-Papas-ish; they even cover “Go Where You Want to Go.” It’s all very pleasant, and they have good taste. If nothing else, I want to be sure to collect all their hits in one of my appropriate playlists, and I’m pretty certain there will be a surprise or two as well. (BTW, if you haven’t seen the movie “Summer of Soul,” what is wrong with you?)
• “Asleep at the Wheel” is their second untitled and/or eponymous album. I had a bunch of their stuff on CD, and saw them live for the first time last summer. Bob Wills is still the king. 
• Traffic, “John B Must Die” — I remember when Traffic's first album came out. One look at the picture on that album and you knew you had to have this record. When they announced their breakup, already sans Dave Mason, hearts were broken among everyone I knew. And then, after Blind Faith—who weren’t as good as you wanted them to be but they were all right—John Barleycorn turned up in local racks. It’s a bit different from earlier Traffic—I’m doing a complete replay of their work in the queue—but a super record. If you’re picking a Traffic album for your GOATs playlist, is this the one?
• “Procol Harum,” more untitling/eponymousing — Well, it all sounds like Procol Harum. I still remember the day, sometime in the 90s, when I finally realized that they were saying “that her face at first just ghostly.” I didn’t even have a good mondegreen for it. I used to just “wawawawa” along with it before chiming in with “turned a whiter shade of pale.” Makes sense after the fact. More PH to come. They were more diverse later on.
• Chad and Jeremy, “Before and After” — Pleasant folky 60s British stuff. Sweet. I took a girl to one of their concerts when I first started dating. 
• Sagittarius - “Present Tense” — I listened to them again, and this time felt I had grokked them well enough, pulling a song or two for the main playlist only to find that they were already there. Time to move on. The 60s are over. 
• The Goldebriars were Curt Boetcher’s first group. He worked with Sagittarius, the Association, and the Millennium, all cited in a "500 Songs" episode, which is why these all run together. This one is pretty uninteresting folk stuff. 
• The Association, “And Then…Along Comes” — When it’s their hits, they’re great. When it’s not their hits, it almost sounds like their hits, with that rising “ah, Ahh, AAHHH” background. All pleasant, with memorable hits.
• The Millennium — When I was listening to this I was thinking of Jared from college. He was a Grade A hippie, a gentle soul at worst, and this was the kind of music he liked that always had me running from his room screaming. No doubt he ultimately became a longshoreman. 
• Curt Boetcher, also untitled and eponymous. Finally, the man himself. I enjoyed this album, and I think there’s some potential in it. Some of the songs go to interesting places. I threw it back for another listen. 
• Love, “Four Sail” — As in Cole Porter, "Love for Sale?" Or their fourth album, and they’re selling themselves, and they wouldn’t know Cole Porter from a porterhouse steak? Whichever. Arthur Lee has that unique voice, and their songs, like ‘em or not, are always interesting. A couple of quite good ones here. 
• David Johansen, “In Style” — Having gone away in the 70s and 80s (and 90s and 00s and 10s and, progressively more obviously, the 20s), I thought I would catch up. After listening to this I guess I’ll have to go back to the NY Dolls. I heard nothing that struck me but I did hear enough to know that I needed to hear more. So I will. 
• The United States of America— I vaguely remember this album. That cover, and that name, gave off extremely strong “buy me” vibes that, unlike with Traffic, I somehow managed to resist. If I had bought it, I would have regretted it to this day. 

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• Geese, “Projector” — Probably I queued this up from a mention by Petrusich in The New Yorker. It demonstrates, beyond any doubt, that she and I do not hear the same music. I do not have the words—and in general I’ve got words up the wazoo—to describe how I disliked this album.
• Joe Ely, the last eponymous album in the list, renewed my faith in music after having almost lost it listening to Geese. Artists who can play instruments? A singer/songwriter with all kinds of interesting things up his sleeve? It was his obituary back in December that led me to him, and I happily look forward to following his entire career from the beginning. This one is pretty country-ish, but I understand he went more rock later on. I’m willing to find out.

In which we bounce off of Spotify's biggest hits

https://gizmodo.com/spotify-reveals-its-most-streamed-music-of-the-last-20-years-2000750160

My personal listenings, according to Spotify in my year-end wrap-up, didn’t seem like anything I had actually listened to, until I remembered that it included all the stuff in my audit queue, which isn’t necessarily stuff I like and could easily turn out to be something I wouldn’t cross the street for. That said, I would imagine their listing of the most streamed music of the last 20 years would be, well, indicative of true popularity. It should come as no surprise that only 2 of the top 20 artists appear in my main playlist, to wit, Ed Sheeran and Bruno Mars. (And not much of them, honestly, but I like the ones I like.) OTOH, I have listened a bit to virtually all of the top artists except a couple I’ve never heard of (and that there are a couple I’ve never heard of should also come as no surprise). My hit rate does not change with most-played songs or albums, and I have listened to none of their top podcasts. Shockingly, I’ve read two of their big audiobooks, and you guessed them: Tolkien and Martin. (I’ve also read—and enjoyed—Taylor Jenkins Reid, but that was for the Day Job so it doesn’t really count.)

Did you do any better being hip/hep/cool/wired/plugged-in or whatever than I did?

In which we dabble more in the music queue

Music (Audit division)"

• Dan Fogelberg, 'Souvenirs." Lots of folksy stuff in his second album. When I originally came to him, it was a bit later, and he was a bit solider. That stuff that first drew me to him should be somewhere in the queue for the future. This one is not unpleasant, though.
• "Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones, LTD" by the Monkees is, I think 4th album. And is the predictable collection of hits and forgettables. But then “Cuddly Toy” came on, and I was reminded of the line in the documentary “Who Is Harry Nilsson (And Why Is Everybody Talkin' About Him?)” where someone said, after the Monkees recorded this song of his, that his life would change. It did. I am a big Harryhead, as they say, having come to him late (he was already dead when I came across a greatest hits collection that started me collecting all of his albums) and having never left. "Nilsson Schmilsson," for instance, is in my GOATs playlist. And one of my favorite pieces of trivia is that both Cass Elliot and Keith Moon died in Nilsson’s London apartment (although I’m pretty sure he wasn’t there on either occasion). Anyhow, I recommend the movie. (And I enjoyed this album.)
• McGuinn and Hillman’s cleverly named album "McGuinn-Hillman." A couple of Byrds, and I can always listen to anything by any of them. 500 Songs’s Andrew Hickey goes into great detail on Hillman, including giving him credit for much of what Gram Parsons always gets sole credit for. I tend to believe Hickey’s interpretation of things, and am on the hunt for all the Hillman I can get going forward. (I was already tracking down McGuinn.) We’ll see how that goes. Anyhow, this is a very enjoyable album.
• "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts" by Eno and Byrne. Electronica. Moby liked it, per the quote on the album cover. I didn’t.
• "Working on Time" - Maarten Altena Ensemble. I don’t know why this modern music album was in my list. It quickly went the way of "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts."
• The Remains, self-titled first album. This album was released in the 90s, but there was no question of its 60s sound. At first I thought it was some 90s group pretending to be a 60s group—the 90s were the Ironic Era, remember—but it turns out they really were a struggling American 60s group. The production isn’t great, but you can hear some very interesting songwriting despite none of the tracks standing out. When I looked them up I learned their interesting story, which includes opening for the Beatles, and bouncing from record company to record company, and then as artists playing on others’ albums. (Speaking of which, reading Dave Mason’s obituary, I didn’t remember he had played with so many others on their records. RIP.) There isn’t that much more the of the recorded Remains to listen to, but I will definitely listen to whatever there is.
• Larry Williams was a fantastic R&B singer/songwriter. He’s the man behind “Boney Maroney” and “Dizzy, Miss Lizzy” for starters. "Here’s Larry Williams" was his first album. It’s fantastic, and it was hard to avoid the temptation to toss literally all of the songs into my main playlist.

In which the NYSFL has its moment

Right now you are probably asking yourself, I wonder how States went over the weekend? Well, I'm happy to fill you in.

For reasons that will elude me to the grave—in fact, I can see myself on my death bed turning to the love ones around me, gathered there to see me off in some semblance of style, and whispering with my last breath, “Why the fig jam do they do that?”—the 5th and last round of the debate prelims is a flip round, even though in the previous 4 rounds were not flip. And this is both in LD and PF. What is the point? What is it about the 5th round that suddenly the basic business we've been handling the first four rounds is suddenly unacceptable? What were they smoking back in the Eisenhower Administration or whenever when they came up with this wrinkle? By the way, they also do this at CatNats. Go figure. 

I bring this up because making this happens requires a switch in the software before round 5 is paired. The switch makes all the rounds, in PF and then in LD, flip-for-sides. This is not a problem when you are then going into elims, which are all traditionally flip-for-sides. But if, in 2025 you have flipped that switch and then never switched it back, round 1 in 2026 is, voila!, flip-for-sides.

Oops.

Fortunately this was only a minor setback, and we probably didn’t lose too much time, since the first round is always rife with confusion anyhow. Still, it was a pain. So it goes.

The good news is that Kaz was back with us, She and I make a good team, and we get things done. One of the most fun parts of the deal is when you actually have to play with something, like balancing judge usage and judge rating in a large double-flighted round. You could just press the button and devil take the hindmost, but good tabbing evens everything out for the sake of the most possible fairness across the board. And, of course, it has to be done quickly. This is where teamwork is essential, meaning a good team is essential. Kaz and I (or any combination of Kaz, Janet, Vaughan, myself, Frank O’Bono, Catholic Charlie) can do this well. I mean, we do it all the time, and we pride ourselves on it: best possible pairings. (The other thing we pride ourselves on is fixing our mistakes quickly; we’re not perfect, after all. But we can see mistakes that may not be obvious, and quickly fix them one way or another. That is also a good tabbing skill.) So, three cheers, us. 

After that first minor setback, we zipped right along, and by the end of Saturday we were right on schedule. Sunday, with three judges in every round, had a realistic enough schedule to give the debaters plenty of time in between rounds. It was tight once or twice, but only because the occasional schmegeggie took forever to fill out their ballot. On occasion we would send our enforcer, Amy from Upstate, to set them on the straight and narrow. (I only ever see Amy from Upstate at States; she would be useful everywhere! What tournament doesn’t need some serious enforcement?) 

On Saturday, Mr. Softee (or the legal equivalent) showed up when the sun was shining and the air was warm, and before long he had an endless line for the rest of the day. Catholic Charlie and Rick O’Bono flashed their tab FastPass credentials to get to the front of the line, but when Kaz and I went out, we weren’t under any pressure and were happy to just stand out in the sunshine. And, after all, there was a nice chocolate sundae to be had for the waiting. Sadly, Mr. S  (or the legal equivalent) came back on Sunday for a cold, rainy day relatively free of ice cream seekers. Oh, well. He broke the bank on one of the days. That was, hopefully, good enough. 

And then it was over, another States in the books, and we were all very satisfied with the weekend as a whole. We’ll see you all again next April, back at good old Bronx Science. 

Next up, CatNats!

In which we listen to a little music

The initial pairings are ready for States tomorrow morning, so I'm using the downtime before dinner to write this...

Music (audit division): 

• "Wings Deluxe" is a recent compilation, and apparently it’s the definitive one, if the critics are to be believed. I listened to it and by the end realized that Wings had some good songs, but if they hadn’t existed, I wouldn’t have invented them. At least Sir Paul still had his voice back then, compared to his latest recording where he sounds old and raspy because, well, he is old and raspy. More power to him; I’m pretty old and raspy myself. But then again, I haven’t recorded any albums lately.  
• "Lyle Lovett and his Large Band" has some of his best work. He’s on my constant total-oeuvre replay, and I’ve seen him numerous times. In other words, I’m a fan.
• "Another Night" by the Hollies. Yet again the group puts out a couple of really good songs amid a bunch of okay songs. More power to them, too. 
• Maria Muldaur's "Open Your Eyes" was released in 1979, and somehow I missed it. She’s in my Lyle category; I constantly work through all her stuff, and when I get to the end, I start again. And I’ve seen her numerous times. In other words, I’m a fan of her too.
• Next up, Spotify’s playlist of the Essential Gladys Knight. Andrew Hickey, in "The History of Rock in 500 Songs," explains how Knight was, early in her career, poised to be another Aretha. Or vice versa. I don’t remember the details, but his discussion moved me to do a thorough canvass of her work. There’s perfectly good music to be heard, but nothing blew me away. The woman certainly can sing, though…
• "With the Beatles," because they too are on my endless replay. I won’t bother to defend my fandom.
• Redbone, "Already Here." This group, with Chicano and Native American heritages, would have been a big hit with me if I had known them at the time (69-77). I’ve been enjoying going through all their work chronologically, and occasionally popping a tune over to my main playlist. Solid rock. 
• Sanseverino X Lise. That is, Sanseverino and Lise Cabaret (whoever she is). I’ve been a buff of this old-fashioned “gypsy” style jazz (apologies for the use of that word) ever since “The Triplets of Belleville,” which led to Django, which led to Stephane Grappelli, except it really started with Grappelli with his great post-Django albums of swing violin from the 70s. (Okay, I don’t know where it started, but I know I started listening to Grappelli myself in the eighties.) Anyhow, that’s where Sanseverino fits in, and I like most of his stuff, although occasionally he gets a little outre for my blood. This was a good one, with a reprise of his big hit, “À l'enterrement de ma grand-mère,” the bounciest dead grandmother song ever. 
• After that, I ran through another big collection of Fats Waller, because, well, I love Fats Waller. So sue me. 
• I rewatched the whole Beatles Anthology series on Disney+ when the new episode came along, and then I listened to Anthology 4. TBH, it can’t hold the proverbial candle to the first three sets, which had plenty of truly revelatory music on it. The problem is that A4 covers mostly the same stuff, and, well, the best was already taken. So there’s a couple of interesting tracks of just harmonizing, or the background music, but no real rethinking of songs that make you marvel at how they created what they created. 
• I saw him rocking away on some TV show, so I figured I’d try Kenny Chesney’s Greatest Hits. It’s pure country pop, and probably as good as country pop gets. The thing is, I’m not a fan of country pop, so I was disappointed. Bottom line: he’s not making music for me, but the zillions of people he is making music for are getting their money’s worth.

And that's it for now. Excelsior!

In which we look forward to States

And what about States this coming weekend, you ask.

Well, first of all, it looks pretty big. 140 or so LDers, 250 or so PFers, both across three divisions. That’s a bit bigger than last year, which while problematic when it comes to finding tournament spaces, is good news for debate in the region. Keep in mind that there is plenty of debate in addition to those who have States on their calendars, and overall I think we’re in good shape. If I’ve said it once I’ve said it a thousand times, debate is the best thing to happen to education since the invention of the pencil box, and the more of it, regardless of predictably differing views on its execution, the better. Of course, all those debaters puts a little pressure on the tab room, but once again Kaz will be onboard with me, so things should move smoothly. 

Most of what we do is straightforward according to Hoyle. Saturday prelims, Sunday elims. 5 double-flighted prelim rounds, 2 presets and 3 hi-los. Breaking roughly a third of each field, which is more than fair. Nothing unusual so far. In fact, the only unusual thing is that, if you have teams in semis, you are eliminated from that judging pool. (Judges are obligated for the whole tournament.) This rule goes back to the Pleistocene, and it’s not terribly problematic tabbing-wise, but it is on the books until the regional directors remember to remove it. More importantly, we do try to free up judges with no one in the late elims if they travel a long distance, from either the frozen Albanyish north or the remote verges of Long Island. If you have a long trip home, we’ll try to make it happen. It’s the locals who will get the final round nod.

To be honest, I can’t remember anything, well, memorable, from recent States. (Stateses?) It was nice when we were down at Hofstra, which was very good with its support of the league, but we lost that over the pandemic. Since then the Bronx has picked up the goodness reins, and I don’t know how we could do it without them. But the tournament itself tends to run fairly hitchless. We pair, we post, we chase down the usual judges who are allergic to Acknowledge buttons, we pair again… With 6 debate divisions, not to mention all the action with Congress and Speecho-Americans, it’s a busy weekend. But I know from my own experiences back in the day, a rewarding one for the students. They have made it to a selective culminating event. They rub elbows with their peers from across the state. They have a good experience and maybe even win a prize. And the tournament is generous to the students, allowing at-larges and not charging an arm and a leg, since all we have to do is cover the usual costs. What better way to end a debate season?  

In which we take a little trip

 Journeys: "I once spent a year in Philadelphia, I think it was on a Sunday." — W. C. Fields

Despite being a great fan of Mr. Fields, I disagree with him on the merits of what was essentially his home town. Then again, I think he just liked saying “Philadelphia,” much as he liked saying “cockaleekie soup” or “shades of Bacchus.” I’m disappointed that he never heard of Tuckahoe, but I can’t imagine that one getting past the movie censors of the day.

Anyhow, we just came back from a few years days in Philadelphia, and I must say that I find it a great city to visit. In fact, we’ve been doing so for nigh on to fifty years now. In the beginning it was for the history, and we explored all the crooks and nannies around the Independence Hall and the south side, before and after our daughter was born. Then there were the wilderness years of the Villiger and Penn tournaments, away from center of things, aside from staying in the middle of town for early Penn visits and taking the trolley up to the college. (Once we even stayed at what was, if I remember correctly, a half-hospital half-hotel place within walking distance of the school with a lot of wheelchairs by the elevator.) Lately it’s been for long weekends, this latest one driven by the need to visit the Universal exhibit at the Franklin Institute, and then whatever art we could find in the neighborhood. Given that the strip where we stayed has enough museums to sink a battleship, we had come to the right place. 

First of all, as W. C. would probably have been happy to inform you, everything major is closed on Wednesdays. Fortunately we have a penchant for digging up minor sites and found the Museum for Art in Wood which is, indeed, a museum of wood art objects. Definitely worth a visit, even if it wasn't Wednesday. 

The next day was devoted to the Philadelphia Museum of Art Philadelphia Art Museum (they recently changed the name because the old name was so confusing and the new name just nailed it, which is very Philadelphian of them). This is a spectacular collection worthy of a major city with some great gems. I made it from pre-Renaissance to post-Impressionism, regularly wondering sticky-fingeredly if they would miss some of the smaller pieces no one was paying attention to. In addition to stuff on the wall, there are a lot of recreated rooms, like the Gilded Age one below. I am a big fan of recreated rooms. That is one of my favorite areas of the Met. 

The next morning it was off to the Franklin Institute for their Universal exhibit. It was not bad, but it was all about how they do modern stuff (I get it, it’s a science museum) rather than any sort of historical retrospective, as the Disney exhibit a couple of years had been. I enjoyed it, though. 

And then, the Barnes. 

The Barnes is an interesting place. You can read all about it here if you’re interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnes_Foundation Today it is something of a standard museum, but with walls-full of paintings arranged higgledy-piggledy. 

The picture is of probably the biggest display room in the place. Most of the galleries are small, with dozens and dozens of paintings up and down the walls. But they have this great app that allows you to point at a picture and get the info on it. Better still, when you get home, there is an email in your inbox containing all the pix you took a shot of. 

The Barnes is a place where you go exploring. You could just walk around and look at everything and pick out the pictures you like and study them more closely. Or you can pick one artist and track that one. Or whatever. It’s a far cry from the usual chronological narratives of most museums, but it’s perfectly acceptable. For me, it was mostly tracking down the Cezannes. Between the Art Museum and the Barnes, there are apparently more Cezannes in Philadelphia than anywhere else in the world. Loving Cezanne more and more as time goes on is probably a cliche. I can stare at his work forever. There are probably plenty of other reasons to go to Philadelphia, but none better than Cezanne in both museums. On the other hand, if you can go through the Barnes and not come out wishing never to see another Renoir, your constitution is stronger than mine. Yes, the landscapes. No, the kewpie dolls. Barnes the man was a big collector of both Cezanne and Renoir. I mean, they do each have their unique color palettes that mark most of their work from across the room and down the hall and around the corner. But other than that? Beats me. There’s also a few nice M/a-o/nets hither and thither. You can learn a lot about art history from the Art Museum. You can learn a lot about what you like at the Barnes. And there you are.

One odd note. We had dinner one night at a restaurant called Maggiano’s. There are a few of these in various cities, and they’re very old-fashioned Italian, but pretty good. The one in Philadelphia has a back room for banquets. As we were sitting there over starters, a troop of teenagers marched out of that back room. Ten, twenty, thirty… I reminisced about large groups of debaters at travel tournaments, and still they poured out. Forty, fifty, sixty… By the time over a hundred clowns had exited the VW, we could no longer hazard a guess of who or why. And then the next thing you knew, another army of them came in from the outside and took over where the first army had decamped. As we were leaving we grabbed a couple of this endless stream of adolescence back and forth and learned that California has a habit of shipping it’s teenagers across the country at Springtime to get a view of how the other half lives. They had started in D.C. and would end up in NYC, lapping up all the historical sights along the way. And, apparently , filling up the back rooms of every restaurant they could find that could fit them. Who knew? 

All in all, a nice couple of days. And now it's back to the salt mines and getting ready for States this weekend. Onward!