Daily Log

Got up once during the night, but went back to sleep, and got a full 8 hours for the first time in ages. Read some, and came down after 11:30. Music Week went to Substack last night. As usual, it was much better received than my non-music posts. Laura wanted to watch another of the Danish Dept. Q movies, which kept me from working on the Music Week blog intro. I'll do that today, then update the website. Email still a major problem. I sometimes get redundant copies of deleted emails. I'm not sure what that tells me. My guess is that local deletes didn't get communicated to the Yahoo server, so they can be downloaded again. Still, if retrieval is still happening on rare occasions, I'd expect to see some mail from later than 8/31, but I'm seeing none of that.

I have a pretty good idea what to do regarding Yahoo. I need to disable, but not delete, the current Thunderbird account that uses POP3. That should leave its existing inbox, etc., as an archive, although it is recommended to move what I want to save locally to Local Folders. Then, I need to set up a new Thunderbird account for the same address that will use IMAP. To do that, I'll need to get a new device password at Yahoo. That will create a new directory structure under Thunderbird, which will then reflect what's on the server. There's supposed to be an option under Thunderbird to always download emails, so I should find that and enable it. That will give me POP-like behavior, but my Inbox, etc. will also be mirrored on the server. Alternatively, I could just take extra pains to keep my Inbox from growing by saving files more quickly into Local Folders (possibly creating a purgatory, so I move things of possible future reference there, then every few months review them, delete some, and move the rest into other directories.

Still, this is only because I figure I want to preserve my old cox.net email address. As much as I hate them, I have a lot of stuff attached to that address, so losing it completely would be a hardship. Moving forward, I should set up an address on my server for most of my email. I have a couple already, but need to pick one. Also need to register a domain name for the Francis Davis site. I put off dealing with the medical questions until Monday. Maybe I'll get that new phone next week.

Email (203 in inbox, looks like 9 from today, but I've deleted a few already.

• Substack: Music Week (9:1): +2 likes; stats: 6 likes, 0 comments, 0 restacks, 0 subs, 130 email views, 47 other views. 1 new subscriber.
• Brad Luen: 77 favorite albums of the Seventies, pt. 1: Ever fallen in love with a decade you shouldna fallen in love with? I should checklist this, check out what I've missed (like, off the top of my head: 77, 76?, 74, 72, 70?, 69?, 68?, 67, 65?, 63, 61, 59?, 58?, 56?, 53?, 52?: many Brazilian/African titles, some jazz, ? probably split into three groups, for heard, unheard, and partly heard through compilations [like Piazzolla and Franco]), maybe write about it. Only goes to 50, so more parts to come. A couple of my top-ten albums there already (although an actual top ten is going to be very competitive).
• Brad Luen: Part 2 has dropped, 50-26.
• Chuck Eddy: Oops That Wasn't Supposed to Happen
• Roberto Magris, reply to my ack on receiving his 5 CDs. I'll keep the compliment: "We need more people like you in our jazz world. Bravo!"

Daily Log

Woke up after 9 again. Came down after 10, my reading triggering thoughts of rekindling the political book. The introduction is more personal. The pre-Trump section goes back to WWII, and possibly starts with the delusion that war is winnable. The three Trump sections reduce to one: I had been thinking of chronicling the campaigns, since that was what interested Trump, but we need to focus more on the administrations. I'm starting to refer to Biden as Trump 1.5. I'm increasingly viewing Trump less as an actor who is transforming history than as the all-too-visible excressence of more fundamental processes. His unique ability is to accelerate those forces while gathering political support from their victims. My idea was to follow the Trump sections with chapters of dystopia and utopia. I thought of adding a new chapter on "Trump as a Revolutionary Experience," then I realized that would work for the dystopia chapter. We don't need to extrapolate a lot to get there. That leaves the utopia chapter, but maybe I postpone that for Utopian Essays & Practical Proposals, and just conclude with a chapter on how Trump's revolution breaks down. While its failure is virtually certain, the likely outcome isn't utopia: it's yet another muddle, because that's what we are.

Still, main work today is kicking out Music Week. I may also work on the 2025 albums post, possibly for tomorrow. Major task is to fix the Yahoo Mail problem. One possible solution is to switch my mailer from POP to IMAP. This requires disabling the old account, creation of a new account, manual migration of any old account files to new, and deletion of the old account. While that sounds straightforward, I still have over 8000 inbox emails, plus lots of sent, and a few drafts. (Trash presumably can just be emptied.) This could involve transferring files back to the IMAP server, although storage there is limited, and it's Yahoo's. This is going to be a lot of work, and I still have questions, like do I have to remove (as opposed to disable) the old account (i.e., its local directory structure)? "No" would be helpful.

My other approach is to get a new email address, and start to move my correspondents over to it. While I could use a third party service, the easiest approach would be to create a new account on my server. In the past, doing so encountered reputation problems, so most of the email I sent got spam-trapped. That should be less likely given the filtering at Shock Hosting, but is still a fear. While email is mostly a nuisance right now, the jazz poll will be impossible without reliable delivery.

I sent out email to jpadmin on poll status on Wednesday. No feedback so far. One thing I promised to do is to register a Francis Davis domain name. I've decided to look for a .org name, and register it using Porkbun. Not a huge priority today, but something I should be able to do soon. I also have an issue with Hillside Medical, and I still have the car and phone things to deal with. Weight is up again, so that too is depressing.

Email (web inbox: 245, keeps switching to "Primary" whatever that means? I'm increasingly just deleting anything that doesn't look necessary, including nearly all music PR):

• Substack: Published Music Week (9:1): shareable assets: 4 likes.
• Amazon: I ordered two books, scheduled to arrive Sunday. Notice doesn't name them, but they are: Joan C Williams: Outclassed: How the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back, and Joseph Henrich: The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter. Amazon gave me some aggravation on the order, requiring me to login again.
• Roberto Magris wanted confirmation I received the CDs he sent.
• Got a note back from Bart Grahl, who at 78 describes himself as "better than ok so far," but his partner Carol seems to have some problems.

Music Week

Expanded blog post, September archive (in progress).

Tweet: Music Week: 53 albums, 7 A-list

Music: Current count 46539 [46502] rated (+37), 23 [19] unrated +4).

Advance Music Week appeared September 4 on Substack as Music Week (9:1). It is also archived here. My cutoff was done before the Substack post, but the introduction is revised/rewritten.

New records reviewed this week:

• Agriculture: The Spiritual Sound (2025, The Flenser): [sp]: B
• Willow Avalon: Pink Pocket Pistol (2026, Assemble Sound/Atlantic): [sp]: B+(**)
• Erykah Badu & the Alchemist: Before the World Blows (2026, Control Freaq/Young): [sp]: B+(*)
• Kimmi Bitter: Bittersweet (2026, self-released): [sp]: B+(***)
• Christer Bothén/Oren Ambarchi/Johan Berthling/Andreas Werliin: Serpentine (2023 [2026], Black Truffle): [sp]: B+(**)
• Geof Bradfield/Myra Melford/Ben Goldberg/Dana Hall: Open or Close (2025 [2026], Calligram): [cd]: A−
• Greg Chako: Hard Bop for the Record (2026, Mint400): [cd]: B
• Rasheed Chappell: No Era for Margins (2026, Perfect Time): [sp]: B+(**)
• Corook: How Do I Relate to You (2026, Atlantic, EP): [sp]: B+(**)
• Zaccai Curtis: Sonoluminescence Vol. 1 (2026, Truth Revolution Recording Collective): [sp]: B+(***)
• Czarface/Frankie Pulitzer: Czarface Meets Frankie Pulitzer (2026, Silver Age): [sp]: A−
• Echo Party: Who Does Not Seek the Sky? (2025 [2026], Mahakala Music): [bc]: B+(***)
• Fatboi Sharif & Elucid: Invasion Body Camera (2026, Fused Arrow, EP): [sp]: B+(*)
• Fatboi Sharif & Child Actor: Crayola Circles (2026, Backwoodz Studioz): [sp]: B
• Fatboi Sharif & Roper Williams: Goth Girl on the Enterprise (2025, POW/Fused Arrow, EP): [bc]: B
• FLO: Therapy at the Club (2026, EMI): [sp]: B+(***)
• Sullivan Fortner: Leave That in There (2026, Artwork): [sp]: B+(**)
• Satoko Fujii Orchestra Berlin: Second Attempt (2026, Libra): [cd]: B+(***)
• Eric Harland: Vipassana II (2026, Ropeadope): [sp]: B+(*)
• Stefon Harris + Blackout: Legacy Dances (2024 [2026], Motéma): [sp]: B
• Inpatient: Asylum (2026, Sick Boi/EighthHD): [sp]: B+(***)
• L'Rain: Fata Morgana (2026, Mexican Summer): [sp]: B
• Frank London/Loisada Fife & Drum Corps: Touzle Your Kurchy (2026, Adhyâropa): [sp]: B+(**)
• Mama's Broke: Reunion (2026, Free Dirt): [sp]: B+(*)
• Ami Molinelli: Raízes Do Choro E Samba (2026, Amimo): [cd]: B+(***)
• Orquesta Akokán: América! (2026, Daptone): [sp]: B+(*)
• Nino Paid: Somewhere Over the Rainbow (2026, Signal/Columbia): [sp]: B+(**)
• Sarah Pillow: Wanderer (2026, Buckyball): [cd]: B+(***) [10-05]
• Punkt.Vrt.Plastik: Kompress (2026, Intakt): [sp]: B+(**)
• Quagmire & Christer Bothén: Rörane (2026, Relative Pitch): [sp]: B+(**)
• Andrew Sa: American Rough (2026, Bloodshot): [sp]: B+(*)
• Sweet Pill: There's Still a Glow (2026, Hopeless): [sp]: B+(*)
• Ayumi Tanaka/Thomas Morgan/Thomas Strønen: Windflower (2025 [2026], ECM): [sp]: B+(**)
• Saul Williams: Leap Life (2026, Big Dada): [sp]: B+(**)

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

• The Cramps: Gravest Gravy (1977 [2026], Vengeance): [sp]: B+(**)
• Junglist! Old Skool Ragga, D&B, Jungle 1993-95 (1993-95 [2026], Soul Jazz): [sp]: A−

Old music:

• The Rough Guide to Bachata (1993-2005 [2009], World Music Network): [sp]: B+(***)
• Rumble in the Jungle (1991-95 [2007], Soul Jazz): [sp]: B+(***)

Grade (or other) changes:

• Barcelona Art Orchestra & Miguel Zenón: Expressions: Concerto for Alto Saxophone and Orchestra (2025 [2026] Miel Music): [cd]: [was: B+(*)]: B+(**)

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Satoko Fujii Orchestra Nagoya: Kore Kara (Libra) [10-02]
• Rich Halley: A Distant Land (Pine Eagle) [09-11]
• Herb Geller/Roberto Magris: Come Lately: Archival Recordings 2009 (JMood) [09-01]
• Roberto Magris: Live in Hollywood: Archival Recordings 2006 (JMood) [09-01]
• Roberto Magris Europlane Quintet: Broken Barriers: Archival Recordings 2008 (JMood) [09-01]
• Roberto Magris/Wind Summit: A Kansas City Jazz Session: Archival Recordings 2014 (JMood) [09-01]
• Roberto Magris Trio: Live in Mexico City (JMood) [09-01]
• Polyfillas: An Assortment of Punk Originals (Dangerous) [09-04]

Daily Log

Writing this at 9:40 AM. I've been awake for about an hour, most of which I spent reading, mostly about Tudor England, the Stuart efforts to restore absolutism, and the war with Parliament. Next up is the Glorious Revolution, which is the pivotal event in Why Nations Fail. After my initial depression, I did get some work done yesterday: I updated the Christgau website database, which now contains all albums reviewed through August 2026. It took me the better part of Tuesday to catch up with the last four columns I hadn't gotten to. The update process is fairly straightforward, but I wind up requiring a lot of specific options to mysql/mysqldump to compensate for the sad fact that we're still using the latin1 character set, instead of utf-8. The main goal of redesigning the website is to fix this, a process that due to my inertia has dragged out for decades.

I then moved on to updating the Jazz Critics Poll index page. I'm putting all of the years into a table, and including winner album pics and links into the various essays as well as standings. Yesterday I worked my way back from 2023 to 2010, so I have four more years to go. The state of available files is increasingly broken, especially for the Rhapsody years. I hope to get this done today. Then to update the website, register a Francis Davis domain name, and write it all up for jpadmin. I thought about running Music Week, but right now I'm leaning toward Friday. This week's haul is pretty lame so far, and not likely to get much better, but at least that will pick up the 09-04 releases.

Email (fuck email, nothing there anyway):

Substack: August stats: 155 subscribers (+13), 1202 post reads (+371).

Daily Log

Woke up about 7:30. Came back to bed, but decided to read a bit: up to the Roman Empire in Why Nations Fail. Tried going back to sleep, but couldn't. Trouble breathing through the mask. Lots of uncomfortable thoughts. Finally got up around 9, and came down. I'm feeling very depressed. Email is weighing heavy, even though I have a fairly decent understanding of the problem and solutions. Worked instead on the jigsaw. After some silence, I finally put on Tatum & Webster. Before that it was just "Too Much Monkey Business" in my head.

Email (not working, who knows?):

• Substack: More Intro Ideas: stats: 2 likes, 0 comments, 0 restacks, 0 subs, 128 email views, 9 other. +1 subscriber.
• I wrote to jpadmin Yahoo spam-trapped my message.

I started cleaning up the email archive. Started with about 12800 messages in inbox. Down to 8100 now: most deleted, but some moved to various categories, including new ones for family, friends, house, and medical.

Firefox was running very slow, so I killed and restarted it. When it came back up, I lost all access to Yahoo Mail. Page says: "Your mail is temporarily unavailable. Learn more": when I click on "Learn more" I'm given a captcha to prove that I'm human; when I complete it, it checks the human box, then offers me nothing else. Their bot blamed my browser, which I didn't like, but just to be sure, I brought up Firefox on the other machine, then logged in to Yahoo Mail, and my mail appeared. Then when I returned to my main machine, I brought up a new window, and the mail appeared, so logging in on the other machine seems to have cleared whatever was causing the problem.

Daily Log

Well, September now. We've had temperatures over 100F for a week now, and the forecast is for another week, so the callendar change isn't going to be felt immediately. And since we're past school and retired, those seasonal shifts aren't likely to have much impact either. But the march of time is hitting my psyche hard, as was probably evident in yesterday's Substack post. Now, what to do next?

Well, we take the dog to the vet for a 1:50 appointment. New vet, closer, so shouldn't be much of a deal. I did some grocery shopping yesterday, and picked up food at Tiger Rice Kitchen. Laura may still want to go shopping (or she may have ordered from Whole Foods). Not much else planned, but I should update the Christgau database, and the jazz poll index page. Woke up this morning thinking about what I recall from the founding of Contex. It's becoming sketchier in my mind. That's probably true of all of the memoir stuff. The sense of impending doom is growing.

Email is still broken, so nothing since 11:57 AM yesterday. Using Yahoo's webmail app, I'm deleting a lot of stuff without reading it (especially music promo).

• Substack: More Intro Ideas, shareable assets, 2 likes. Loose Tabs (8:2): +1 like. +1 subscriber.

The Yahoo problem has really been bothering me today, so I asked Google for some advice, and got quite a lot of it. Some highlights:

1. Yahoo's POP service is falling down all over the place. Evidently they want people to switch to IMAP. So the most straightforward fix is to reconfigure Thunderbird to use IMAP. Thunderbird can be set to always download from IMAP, thus reproducing the functionality of POP. I still need to investigate whether it's possible to simply change the server settings on the existing connection (thereby keeping my inbox, sent, etc.). It seems like that should work, but before I do so, I should do some housecleaning, as I currently have 12256 messages in Inbox, plus more elsewhere.

2. It thinks setting up a primary email address on my server would be a good idea.

3. It offered several commercial plans for consideration.

Aug 2026