Christian McBride: Christian McBride's New Jawn (2017 [2018], Mack Avenue): Bassist, pretty much the top mainstream guy ever since his major label debut in 1995, last heard fronting a big band that did him no credit. Here he goes for the other extreme, with a talented pianoless quartet: Josh Evans (trumpet), Marcus Strickland (sax), and Nasheet Waits (drums). Everyone kicks in two songs, with the closer from Wayne Shorter. B+(**)

Donny McCaslin: Blow. (2018, Motéma): Tenor saxophonist, has few peers in terms of chops, but I've rarely taken to his albums -- 2006's Recommended Tools is an exception, and he can tear the roof off other artists' albums, as he did with Art Hirahara's Sunward Bound earlier this year. His most famous side-credit was on David Bowie's Blackstar, and he seems to be intent here on producing a sequel, studded with various Bowie-isms, rendered by a bunch of guest vocalists (Mark Kozelek is the one I recognized). B+(*)

Makaya McCraven: Universal Beings (2017-18 [2018], International Anthem): Drummer, pieced this album together from four sessions (each given an LP side) recorded by different groups in New York, Chicago, London, and Los Angeles -- the rhythm a unifying thread, whether with the softer New York instruments (harp, vibes, cello, bass) or the horns that pop up elsewhere. A-

Joakim Milder/Fredrik Ljungkvist/Mathias Landraeus/Filip Augustson/Fredrik Rundkvist: The Music of Anders Garstedt (2016 [2018], Moserobie): Two tenor saxes (latter also credited with soprano and clarinet), plus piano-bass-drums. The composer was Swedish, played trumpet, died in 2000 at age 31, didn't leave any records under his own name, not many side credits either (one each with Fredrik Norén and Christian Falk). The musicians claim ties to him, and bring his music brilliantly to life. A [cd]

Rhett Miller: The Messenger (2018, ATO): Singer-songwriter, mostly with the Old 97's, but has seven solo albums since 2002. Nothing very pop, but soft-edged and tuneful, songs that could grow on you but won't knock you over. B+(**)

Mr. Fingers: Cerebral Hemispheres (2018, Alleviated): Chicago DJ Larry Heard, started in the 1980s (guess that makes him house), had a group in 1988 called Fingers, Inc., released three albums as Mr. Fingers 1988-94, returns to the alias here with a rather chill downtempo album, brightened by bits of Zachary McElwain tenor sax. B+(**)

Kyle Nasser: Persistent Fancy (2018, Ropeadope): Tenor saxophonist (also soprano), from Massachusetts, second album, sextet with Roman Filiu on alto sax, plus both guitar and piano as well as bass and drums. Postbop leaning toward groove, or vice versa. B [cd]

Jorge Nila: Tenor Time (Tribute to the Tenor Masters) (2018 [2019], Ninjazz): Tenor saxophonist, offers this "tribute to the tenor masters" -- pieces by Dexter Gordon, Hank Mobley, Wayne Shorter, Joe Henderson, Sonny Stitt, Harold Vick, Tadd Dameron, and, well, Stevie Wonder. Ably backed by guitar (Dave Stryker), organ (Mitch Towne), and drums (Dana Murray). B+(***) [cd]

John O'Gallagher Trio: Live in Brooklyn (2015 [2016], Whirlwind): Alto saxophonist, with Johannes Weidenmueller (bass) and Mark Ferber (drums), coming off two excellent albums (The Anton Webern Project and The Honeycomb). Strong performance here. B+(***)

Old Man Saxon: The Pursuit (2018, Pusher, EP): Los Angeles rapper, first song has a metalic thrash like Death Grips, second dials it back to beats, then works within that range. Single is called "Stop Shooting." Five tracks, 18:55. B+(*)

Evan Parker/Eddie Prévost: Tools of Imagination (2017 [2018], Fundacja Sluchaj): Tenor sax and drums duo, although the latter's percussion includes metallic drones as well as thumps. One long piece (58:24), much of it rather tentative, although they do have moments -- some that put you on edge. B+(*)

William Parker: Flower in a Stained-Glass Window/The Blinking of the Ear (2018, Centering/AUM Fidelity, 2CD): Two albums packed together, continuing the bassist's recent interest in singers. The first features Leena Conquest, mostly declaiming slogan-worthy political screeds, things I mostly agree with but are mixed blessings as music. The band -- five piece including Steve Swell on trombone, plus two extra alto saxes on three pieces -- is quite interesting on its own. Second is another quintet -- Swell again, Daniel Carter, Eri Yamamoto on piano -- is if anything more potent, but I find mezzo soprano AnnMarie Sandy harder to listen to. B+(**)

Chris Pasin: Ornettiquette (2018, Piano Arts): Trumpet player, third album, playing five Ornette Coleman tunes, one from Ayler, two originals. Karl Berger is especially notable on vibes and piano, along with Michael Bisio (bass), Harvey Sorgen (drums), with Adam Siegel (alto sax) and Ingrid Sertso (vocals) on a couple tunes. B+(**) [cd]

Hanna Paulsberg Concept & Magnus Broo: Daughter of the Sun (2018, Odin): Norwegian tenor saxophonist, fourth album with this group, adds a trumpet this time. Seems unhelpful at first but eventually finds his stride. B+(**)

Ken Peplowski Big Band: Sunrise (2017 [2018], Arbors): Conventional big band (both piano and guitar), leader and whole section credited with saxophone/clarinet/flute, mostly familiar names at the label, swing-to-bop standards, Mark Lopeman and Billy May the main arrangers.

Ivo Perelman/Mat Maneri/Mark Feldman/Jason Kao Hwang: Strings 1 (2018, Leo): Avant tenor saxophonist, from Brazil, releases records in bunches. Maneri plays viola, the others violin -- instruments I almost automatically associate with dreaded classical music, although this trio breaks that mold in distinctive ways. B+(***)

Ivo Perelman/Mat Maneri/Hank Roberts/Ned Rothenberg: Strings 2 (2018, Leo): Tenor sax and viola on all tracks, Roberts (cello) on 7 (of 9), so the strings aren't so overwhelming here. Also, Rothenberg plays bass clarinet on 4 tracks, in a reminder of Perelman's summer batch of bass clarinet duos. B+(**)

Lucas Pino's No Net Nonet: That's a Computer (2018, Outside In Music): Tenor saxophonist, also plays bass clarinet, group has two brass, three saxophones, guitar, piano (Glenn Zaleski) trio. Opens with nicely layered, interesting postbop, but I start to lose interest when the voice (Camilla Meza) joins in. Then I get confused when they go Latin for the closer (not bad). B+(*)

Pistol Annies: Interstate Gospel (2018, RCA Nashville): Country supergroup, although only Miranda Lambert was well known before their 2011 debut. Group went on hiatus after their 2013 album, with Ashley Monroe and Angaleena Presley as well as Lambert releasing pretty good solo albums. Still, this is a group effort, with nearly all songs jointly credited. A-

Charlie Porter: Charlie Porter (2018, Porter House): Trumpet player, from Portland, first album (as far as I can tell), eleven pieces (originals plus an Ellington), using various groups from solo to sextet "and back again" with a total of 21 musicians -- perhaps there's a syndrome for trying to do too much on a debut. Sounds pretty respectable, just not that interesting. B+(*)

Quoan [Brian Walsh/Daniel Rosenboom/Sam Minaie/Mark Ferber]: Fine Dining (2017 [2018], Orenda): Quartet, with two avant horns from Los Angeles -- (clarinet, bass clarinet, contrabass clarinet) vs. (trumpet, piccolo trumpet, flugelhorn) -- fired up by bassist and drummer from New York. B+(**)

Nikita Rafaelov: Spirit of Gaia (2016-17 [2018], Gotta Let It Out): Pianist, born in Russia, based in Finland, first album, on a Danish label, solo but multilayered, aiming at a dense minimalism. B+(**) [cd]

Ernesto Rodrigues/Guilherme Rodrigues/Bruno Parrinha/Luís Lopes/Vasco Trillo: Lithos (2017 [2018], Creative Sources): Portuguese group -- viola, cello, bass clarinet, electric guitar, percussion -- looks a bit like avant-chamber but feels closer to ambient industrial. B+(**) [cd]

Rich Rosenthal/Jack DeSalvo/Tom Cabrera: Connoisseurs of Chaos (2018, Woodshedd): First of four volumes released this year -- don't have recording dates -- all with drummer Tom Cabrera, his name always listed last so my rules file then under other artists. Rosenthal plays guitar. DeSalvo switches from the guitar he plays in other volumes to cello and bass ukulele here. B+(**) [bc]

Renee Rosnes: Beloved of the Sky (2017 [2018], Smoke Sessions): Pianist, from Saskatchewan, 18 albums since 1989, wrote 7/9 tracks here. Group features Chris Potter (sax and flute), with Steve Nelson (vibes), Peter Washington (bass), and Lenny White (drums). [6/9 tracks] B+(**)

Rudy Royston: Flatbed Buggy (2018, Greenleaf Music): Drummer, third album, quintet with a soft front line -- John Ellis (bass clarinet/saxophones), Gary Versace (accordion), Hank Roberts (cello) -- and bass. Takes a bit to find its center. B+(**)

Jerome Sabbagh/Greg Tuohey: No Filter (2017 [2018], Sunnyside): Quartet actually, leaders, who attended Berklee together in the early 1990s, play tenor sax and guitar, backed with bass and drums. Sax seems typical of Sabbagh's soft-edged postbop, but guitar doesn't add much. B

Dave Sewelson: Music for a Free World (2017 [2018], FMR): Baritone saxophonist (also sopranino), first album with his name up front but he's been around a while: I think I first noticed him in Microscopic Septet (or maybe its Fast 'N' Bulbous spin-off), but he's also been in William Parker's orchestras and is on a couple albums with Peter Kuhn. Freewheeling two-horn quartet here, with Steve Swell (trombone) facing off, Parker on bass, and Marvin Smith on drums. A little ragged, but freedom's like that. A- [cd]

Julian Siegel Quartet: Vista (2018, Whirlwind): British tenor saxophonist (also soprano sax/bass clarinet), first album 1997, only a few widely scattered since, this one with Liam Noble (piano), Oli Hayhurst (bass), and Gene Calderazzo (drums). Solid mainstream effort. B+(**)

Paul Simon: In the Blue Light (2018, Legacy): New recordings of ten songs from previous albums, four from 2000's You're the One, one each from six other albums spanning 1973-2011. A songwriter I never liked except when he picked an outstanding rhythm and baited his hooks liberally. He does none of that here, but doesn't make himself obnoxious either. B

Esperanza Spalding: 12 Little Spells (2018, Concord): Started as a promising mainstream jazz bassist, then started to sing and crossed over into a form of r&b that doesn't really succeed at either. B-

Vince Staples: FM! (2018, Def Jam, EP): Off the mean streets ("Don't Get Chipped") and into the warm sun ("Feels Like Summer"), runs through 11 tracks in 22:16 -- one skit, two very short interludes, but still nothing runs over 3:08. B+(**)

Marcus Strickland Twi-Life: People of the Sun (2018, Blue Note): Tenor saxophonist, first appeared as a mainstream player with tremendous chops, but Blue Note's tempted him to cross over to their "new groove" hip-hop fusion model -- possibly the worst idea a major label has embraced since soul-fusion destroyed Blue Note back in the early 1970s. This is sharper than 2016's Nihil Novi, but mostly on the strength of the leader's towering lines. Beyond that, I have little idea, but note that the label's hype doesn't offer any credits info, perhaps because none is merited. B

Yuhan Su: City Animals (2018, Sunnyside): Vibraphonist, born in Taiwan, based in New York, second album, fanciful cover shows penguins flying over Battery Park. With Matt Holman (trumpet), Alex LoRe (alto sax), bass and drums. B+(**)

Subtone: Moose Blues (2018, Laika): German group (I think): Magnus Schrieft (trumpet/flugelhorn), Malte Dürrschnabel (tenor sax/clarinet/flute), Florian Hoefner (piano), Matthias Pichler (bass), Peter Gall (drums) -- Hoefner, the one I'm familiar with, wrote four songs, Schrieft four, Gall three. Bright and cheery post-bop. B+(*) [cd]

Jay Thomas With the Oliver Groenewald Newnet: I Always Knew (2018, Origin): Plays alto/tenor sax, but trumpet is his lead credit here. Arranger Groenewald also plays trumpet, as does Brad Allison, credited as "lead trumpet." Ten-piece group, nicely layered, favors those trumpets. B+(*) [cd]

Trio Heinz Herbert: Yes (2018, Intakt): Swiss fusion (jazztronica) group -- Dominic Landolt (guitar/effects), Ramon Landolt (synthesier/sampler/piano), Mario Hänni (drums/effects) -- novel sounds, nothing slick, some intense. B+(***) [cd]

Harriet Tubman: The Terror End of Beauty (2018, Sunnyside): Guitar-bass-drums trio -- Brandon Ross, Melvin Gibbs, JT Lewis -- fifth album since 1998. Dense, heavy riffs, seems a bit monochromatic without the guest trumpet that lifted their last two albums (especially Araminta, with Wadada Leo Smith). B+(*)

The David Ullmann Group: Sometime (2018, Little Sky): Guitarist, has a couple previous records, core group includes organ, drums, and extra percussion, but most songs pick up horns, also some keyboards, guitar-like instruments (tres, sitar, mandolin), and vibes. Fusion with a full kitchen sink. B [cd]

Piet Verbist: Suite Réunion (2018, Origin): Bassist, from Belgium, third album plus one by Mamutrio and a couple of side credits. Postbop quartet, no idea what "Suite" means here but the group is stocked with early collaborators, notably Bart Borremans (tenor sax) and Bram Weijters (piano), plus drums (split in two). B+(***)

Harry Vetro: Northern Ranger (2018, T.Sound): Canadian drummer, leads a sextet on six (of 12) tracks, which drops down to piano or guitar trio, solo piano or guitar, and string quartet. Still flows nicely, with scattered riches. B+(**) [cd]

David Virelles: Igbó Alákorin (The Singer's Groove) Vol I & II (2017 [2018], Pi): Pianist, born in Cuba, moved to New York in 2009, studying with Henry Threadgill. Combines two volumes on a single CD: the 35:19 "David Virelles Introduces Qrquesta Luz de Oriente" and the 23:17 "Danzones de Romeu at Café La Diana." The latter are duos with güiro player Rafael Abalos, offering an engaging code to the main action, which is the medium-sized orchestra with lead singers Alejandro Almenares and Emilio Despaigne Robert. I often find myself enjoying Latin jazz groups yet wondering what if anything makes one special. No doubts here, not that I can really explain it. A- [cd]

Cuong Vu 4Tet: Change in the Air (2017 [2018], Rare Noise): Trumpet player, from Vietnam, left for Seattle at 6 (1975), has a dozen albums since 1997. Quartet with Bill Frisell (guitar), Luke Bergman (bass), and Ted Poor (drums), one piece from Bergman, three each for the others. B+(**) [bc]

David S. Ware Trio: The Balance (Vision Festival XV+) (2009-10 [2018], AUM Fidelity): Tenor saxophonist, Ayler school, his long-running Quartet exemplified free jazz in the 1990s, died in 2012 after kidney problems. Fourth posthumous release, combining a Vision Festival performance with out-takes from Onecept, both with William Parker (bass) and Warren Smith (drums). B+(***)

Becky Warren: Undesirable (2018, self-released): Nashville singer-songwriter, second album after 2016's excellent War Surplus. This lacks that album's overarching concept, but extends its sensibility. Rocks harder, too. Occasionally reminds me of Lucinda Williams. A-

Trevor Watts & RGG: RAFA: Live in Klub Zak Jazz Jantar 2018 (2018, Fundacja Sluchaj): Cover seems to list RGG -- Polish piano trio of Lukasz Ojdana, Maciej Garbowski, and Krzysztof Gradziuk -- first, but the alto avant-saxophonist is the guest and the star at this Gdansk festival. Didn't recall the "probably greatest Polish piano trio," but their Live @ Alchemia with Evan Parker (2017) was even better. B+(***)

Way North: Fearless and Kind (2018, self-released): Toronto group: Rebecca Hennessy (trumpet), Petr Cancura (tenor sax), Michael Herring (bass), Richie Barshay (drums). Postbop with some edge and freedom. B+(**)

Kenny Werner: The Space (2016 [2018], Pirouet): Pianist, first album came out in 1978 (The Piano Music of Bix Beiderbecke/Duke Ellington/George Gershwin/James P. Johnson), several dozen since then. This one is solo, quiet, thoughtful, a mix of originals and unobvious covers. B+(*) [cd]

Jeff Williams: Lifelike (2017 [2018], Whirlwind): Drummer, originally from Ohio, discography stretches back to 1975 but only a handful of albums under his own name. This was recorded live in London with trumpeter Gonçalo Marquez "featured guest" -- also John O'Gallagher (alto sax), Josh Arcoleo (tenor sax), Kit Downes (piano), and Sam Lasserson (bass). The trumpeter (elsewhere known as Marques) makes an impression, the saxes even more so. B+(***)

Recent Reissues, Compilations, Vault Discoveries

Dexter Gordon Quartet: Espace Cardin 1977 (1977 [2018], Elemental Music): Previously unreleased live set, from Espace Pierre Cardin in Paris, with Al Haig (piano), Pierre Michelot (bass), and Kenny Clarke (drums). A typical set, the songs averaging 10+ minutes, in fine form throughout, maybe a hair better than the Tokyo 1975 release earlier this year (although I'm bothered by the discrepancies between the LP and digital releases). [LP has 4 songs, Napster has 5/6]. B+(***)

Charlie Haden & Brad Mehldau: Long Ago and Far Away (2007 [2018], Impulse): Recorded at a festival in Mannheim, Germany, just bass and piano. Not revelatory, but lovely nonethless -- you don't often hear sensitize comping behind tear-jerking bass solos every day, but Haden often brought such emotion to bear. A-

Jimi Hendrix: Both Sides of the Sky (1968-70 [2018], Legacy): A compilation of "posthumously released 'archival recordings'" post-Electric Ladyland, a reorganization that has now run to three CDs -- after Valleys of Neptune (2010) and People, Hell and Angels (2013). I haven't heard those two, and I'm not enough of a fan to be able to identify how any of them maps onto previous waves of posthumous releases. (Wasn't First Days of the New Rising Sun, in 1997, supposed to be the official fourth Hendrix album? I've heard lots of late Hendrix, but somehow missed that one). Mixed bag here, with "Georgia Blues" outstanding, "Mannish Boy" fine -- found the latter on Blues (1994), the former on Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues: Jimi Hendrix (2003). Some terrific guitar scattered amongst lots of filler. B+(**)

Fred Hersch: Fred Hersch Trio '97 @ The Village Vanguard (1997 [2018], Palmetto): Previously unreleased tape, with Drew Gress and Tom Rainey, predates four other Village Vanguard records I've heard, and probably the best of the bunch. Came at a time when he was releasing a series of songbook albums. Two originals, one from the bassist, five standards -- got the mix just right. A- [cd]

Keith Jarrett: La Fenice (2006 [2018], ECM, 2CD): Umpteenth solo piano album, from a concert at Teatro La Fenice in Venice, Italy, parts of the title piece extending well into the second disc, ending with "My Wild Irish Rose," "Stella by Starlight," and "Blossom", running 97:39. Crowd is enthusiastic. B+(*)

Jazz at the Philharmonic [Oscar Peterson/Illinois Jacquet/Herb Ellis]: Blues in Chicago 1955 (1955 [2018], Verve): Not a group per sé, just an ad hoc collection of stars who Norman Granz brought together for jam session shows all over the world. Just three names on the cover, and Jacquet only appears on 3 (of 4) tracks, same as unlisted stars Flip Phillips, Lester Young, Dizzy Gillespie, and Roy Eldridge. The rhythm section -- Peterson, Ellis, Ray Brown, and Buddy Rich -- are on all four. Starts with 20:00 of "The Blues" -- same title as on JATP's 1944 First Concert starring Jacquet -- backed with a 13:06 "Ballad Medley" giving each horn player a solo. Rounded out with two shorter pieces, "The Modern Set" (Gillespie and Young) and "The Swing Set" (Eldridge, Phillips, and Jacquet). A-

The Gene Krupa Quartet: Live 1966 (1966 [2018], Dot Time Legends): Drummer (1909-73), rose to fame with Benny Goodman, led his own big band and small combos, the most famous with Anita O'Day and Roy Eldridge. He mostly recorded for Norman Granz 1953-62, and trailed off after that, with nothing after 1965. Recorded at the Indiana Jazz Festival in Evansville, a small swing combo with Eddie Shu (sax), Dill Jones (piano), and Benny Moten (bass, not to be confused with pre-Basie pianist Bennie Moten). Unremarkable, except that some of the drum parts couldn't be anyone else. B+(*)

Thelonious Monk: Mønk (1963 [2018], Gearbox): Quartet set, recorded live in Copenhagen with Charlie Rouse (tenor sax), John Ore (double bass), and Frankie Dunlop (drums). Limited edition vinyl, collector-priced, good sound on classic tunes, nothing you haven't heard before, but superb. A-

Frank Morgan/George Cables: Montreal Memories (1989 [2018], High Note): Alto sax/piano duets, previously unreleased live tape. Morgan had made an impression as a be-bopper early on, but landed in jail in 1955 and didn't get out until 1985, when he started out on an impressive comeback, recording regularly up to his death in 2007. Boppish program here, with "Now's the Time," "A Night in Tunisia," and "Confirmation" in the first half, separated by "All the Things You Are" and "'Round Midnight." Cables, who had done similar work with Morgan's old San Quentin bandmate Art Pepper, is perfect here. B+(***)

Outlaws & Armadillos: Country's Roaring '70s (1971-79 [2018], Legacy, 2CD): Discogs only lists a 12-track LP, but I slogged through the entire 35-track stream, collated from more than just Sony's back catalogue (mostly Columbia and RCA), the emphasis on covering all the bases in Texas (Jerry Jeff Walker and Terry Allen bring up the armadillos), including some blues as well as a lot of Lubbock. B+(**)

Art Pepper: Unreleased Art Pepper Vol. 10: Toronto (1977 [2018], Widow's Taste, 3CD): Much discussion here of this being Pepper's first-ever band tour, which seems strange given that he toured relentlessly in his last years, up to his death at 56 in 1982. He had spent the better part of 1954-65 in jail, and didn't record much in the following decade, until the superb Living Legend in 1975, starting one of the most extraordinarily productive runs in history. The best place to start is his big (16-CD) box of Complete Galaxy Recordings: dive in anywhere and be amazed. Another choice is his pivotal 1977 Village Vanguard Sessions, originally released in four volumes then boxed up complete for 9-CD. Then there are the live bootlegs from the period, which Laurie Pepper has collated into ten volumes: nearly every disc has its share of breathtaking stretches, and this one is no exception. This is touted as a tune-up for the Village Vanguard stand, but the rhythm section here (Bernie Senensky, Gene Perla or Dave Piltch, Terry Clarke) was to be replaced by much more familiar names (George Cables, George Mraz, Elvin Jones). Still, Pepper adjusts by blowing even harder. Third disc is padded out with a 30-minute interview, which I may not play again but was never for a moment tempted to eject. Among other things, he talks about falling in love with Miles Davis' Live-Evil, and wishing to play with that rhythm section. Too bad that never happened -- would have been especially poignant given that one of his first great albums was a chance meeting with Davis' famous 1957 rhythm section. A- [cd]

Art Pepper: The Art Pepper Quartet (1956 [2017], Omnivore): Recorded a couple months before his famed Meets the Rhythm Section (with Red Garland, Paul Chambers, and Philly Joe Jones from Miles Davis' first great hard bop quintet), this rhythm section epitomized West Coast cool: Russ Freeman (piano), Ben Tucker (bass), and Gary Frommer (drums). Filling the CD out with alternate takes (including a false start) brings this to an odd end, but the original record is superb -- as was pretty much everything Pepper did during this brief period between jail terms. A-

Art Pepper: Blues for the Fisherman: Unreleased Art Pepper Vol VI (1980 [2011], Widow's Taste, 4CD): Live at Ronnie Scott's in London, recorded over two nights, with what was probably Pepper's most regular quartet lineup: Milcho Leviev (piano), Tony Dumas (bass), and Carl Burnett (drums). At the time, the publicist (or label) balked at sending out full sets, so all I received was a useless sampler. Looks like the digital is released in four parts, but it would be a hopeless task to choose between them. Only repeats are "Ophelia" and "Make a List." Even though he talks about being nervous the first night, all four discs are terrific -- better than the earlier Toronto, enough so that I can imagine eventually bumping the grade. And while that's mostly Pepper, the band has grown (especially Leviev). A-

Woody Shaw/Louis Hayes: The Tour: Volume One (1976 [2016], High Note): Recorded at Liederhalle Mozartsaal in Stuttgart, Germany, a crack hard bop quintet with the leaders on trumpet and drums, plus Junior Cook on tenor sax, Ronnie Matthews on piano, and Stafford James on bass. Hot stuff, Shaw is in especially good form. A-

Woody Shaw/Louis Hayes: The Tour: Volume Two (1976-77 [2017], High Note): Six cuts from the same tour, collected from five more shows, mostly in Germany (one in Austria), mostly with the same band (René McLean replaces Junior Cook for the 1977 Munich track). As on Volume One, the trumpeter is in imposing form. B+(***)

Joe Strummer: 001 (1981-2002 [2018], Ignition, 2CD): Singer-songwriter (with Mick Jones) in the Clash, which released two insanely great albums in 1977 and 1979, two merely great ones in 1978 and 1980 (the latter sprawling over 3LP), and a swansong in 1982 which only disappointed in context. After that, Mick Jones left for Big Audio Dynamite -- I loved their first album, but Christgau panned it, and I quickly lost interest in later albums -- while Strummer released a final album under the Clash brand (Cut the Crap), and occasionally popped up with something or other, including a band called the Mescaleros shortly before he died in 2002 (age 50). None of that seemed to work, although I thought his half of the soundtrack to the 1988 film Permanent Record showed that he could still do something terrific. It turns out that he left thousands of tapes when he died, and 16 years later we're finally getting a glimpse of what he had been working on. Slightly more than half of this came out on various albums and soundtracks, but not much here that really stands out -- just little bits that invariably remind you of better work on older albums (like the still marvelous "Trash City," from Permanent Record). [Napster omits 6/32 tracks. More extravagant product offerings add some extra material.] B+(**)

Ben Webster: Valentine's Day 1964 Live! (1964 [2018], Dot Time): Recorded at the Half Note in New York, with Dave Frishberg (piano), Richard Davis (bass), and Grady Tate (drums). Sound is a bit iffy, and early on the pieces run faster than you'd expect, a roughness that pays dividends in places. B+(***)

Old Music

Mandy Barnett: The Original Nashville Cast Recordings of "Always . . . Patsy Cline": Live at the Ryman Auditorium (1995, Decca): Cline's picture on the cover, with no mention of Barnett, who established her own name with an eponymous album in 1996 and a still better one in 1999, but most sources file this under Barnett. She was the singer, with her perfect renditions of Cline's hits. In between you hear uncredited narrative from a Houston fan Cline befriended, Louise Seger. Author Ted Swindley has restaged the show regularly, showcasing many Patsy Cline impersonators, but Barnett set the standard. B+(*)

Mandy Barnett: Sweet Dreams (2011, Opry Music): Not sure why she didn't follow up her 1996-99 albums, but aside from a Christmas album distributed by Cracker Barrel, this was her first in 12 years, a return to Patsy Cline's songbook, suggesting that's how she made her living. My guess is that this was recorded as a fungible souvenir of her live act. Near perfect, so much so it can't avoid charges of redundancy. B+(**)

Jimi Hendrix: First Rays of the New Rising Sun (1968-70 [1997], MCA): With the Hendrix Estate taking charge of what had been a messy scattershot of posthumous releases, this appeared as an imagined fourth album along with remasters of the three he released during his brief life. Nothing actually new here, as the tracks had been previously released on The Cry of Love (1971), Rainbow Bridge (1971), and War Heroes (1972). (Nor was this an original idea, as 1995's Voodoo Soup started with the same idea, but added extra dubs so the Estate quashed it.) Could have been tightened up a bit for a proper release, but pretty unique. A-

Allan Holdsworth: I.O.U. (1982 [1985], Enigma): British fusion guitarist (1946-2017), I knew his name, noted his recent death, had him filed under rock, listing three albums highly rated by AMG, none heard by me. I probably would have left it at that, but he's finished second in Downbeat's Readers Poll the last two years (losing first to Wynton Marsalis, then to Ray Charles, and not by much). Lots of their picks are dubious: e.g., this year Snarky Puppy won Jazz Group, and Trombone Shorty topped the list of trombonists, but those are picks I know better than, whereas I knew next to nothing of Holdsworth. This seemed to be the place to start (second, album, but "the first solo album over which he had full artistic control"). Guitar not bad but not up to the brag of his 12-CD box set (The Man Who Changed Guitar Forever). Vocals by Paul Williams explain why this was taken (and ignored) as rock. B

Allan Holdsworth With I.O.U.: Metal Fatigue (1985, Enigma): Alan Pasqua joins on keyboards, a respected jazz pianist mostly wasted here. Vocals on only three (of six) tracks, the three shortest, with Paul Korda replacing Paul Williams on the last (and best). Nothing here makes me think "guitar genius." B-

Allan Holdsworth: Atavachron (1986, Enigma): Plays SynthAxe (a fretted, guitar-like MIDI controller) as well as guitar, using bass (Jimmy Johnson) and alternating between two keyboardists (Alan Pasqua on three tracks) and three drummers (Gary Husband on four, Tony Williams on one). Vocals down to one (Rowanne Mark). C+

Allan Holdsworth: Sand (1987, Relativity): No vocals, more sound effects (John England's credit), Alan Pasqua on keyboards, a split decision on bass and drums. His most fusion-sounding album to date, though I can't say that means he's getting better. B-

Allan Holdsworth: Secrets (1989, Intima): Vocals return: one track each from Rowanne Mark and Craig Copeland, plus some spoken word -- nothing out of the ordinary. C+

Allan Holdsworth: Wardenclyffe Tower (1992, Restless): Still Jimmy Johnson on bass, but various keybs and drums, including three tracks with Gordon Beck, a fine jazz pianist who worked with Holdsworth early on (and before that discovered John McLaughlin). B-

Allan Holdsworth: The Sixteen Men of Tain (2000, Gnarly Geezer): Skipping ahead a few albums, nothing much has changed: well, drop the keyboards, add a trumpet, but still, nothing much. B-

Allan Holdsworth/Alan Pasqua/Jimmy Haslip/Chad Wackerman: Blues for Tony (2007 [2009], Moonjune, 2CD): Presumably Tony Williams, the young drummer in the 1965-70 Miles Davis Quintet who went on to run a pathbreaking fusion group in the 1970s. Holdsworth appeared on the 1975-76 New Tony Williams Lifetime albums, and Williams played on a couple of the guitarist's efforts, along with Pasqua. Yellowjackets bassist Haslip adds some muscle at bass, and Wackerman establishes himself early with a big drum solo. B+(*)

Joakim Milder: Ways (1990-92 [1993], Dragon): Swedish tenor/soprano saxophonist, 20+ albums since 1988, seven in my database as Penguin Guide picks but none I've heard (although I A-listed 2014's Spark of Life, filed under Marcin Wasilewski). Thought I'd look him up after I got a new record, but only found this one item: eleven pieces by various lineups mostly with piano and strings (drums on less than half). Probably not the place to start, although note that the one cut with conventional tenor sax-piano-bass-drums, "Buurgogne," really stands out. B+(*)

Red Mitchell/Joakim Milder/Roger Kellaway: Live in Stockholm (1991 [1993], Dragon): Bass-tenor sax-piano, recorded at Jazzclub Fasching a year before the bassist died. "Sophisticated Lady" drags a bit, but good solos in "Life's a Take." B+(**)

Frank Morgan: City Nights: Live at the Jazz Standard (2003 [2004], High Note): Alto sax quartet, with George Cables (piano), Curtis Lundy (bass), and Billy Hart (drums), doing a classic bop set, starting with a "Georgia on My Mind" (gorgeous) and "Cherokee" (rip roaring), ending with a couple of Coltrane tunes. A-

Frank Morgan: Raising the Standard: Live at the Jazz Standard Vol. 2 (2003 [2005], High Note): Same group, recorded over three days so some sorting has been done, pushing the fast ones out on City Lights, with enough left over for a Vol. 3 in 2007. They slow it down here, starting with "Polka Dots and Moonbeams," ending with "Bessie's Blues," highlighted with two Ellingtons. A-

Louis Prima/Keely Smith With Sam Butera and the Witnesses: The Wildest Shoe at Tahoe (1957, Capitol): Smith is by far the more presentable singer, but Prima gets top billing and his Italian "Zooma Zooma" shit is the most distinctive. Still not as wild as 1958's Live From Las Vegas. B+(**)

Woody Shaw: Live Volume One (1977 [2000], High Note): The trumpeter's recordings are mostly divided between Muse and Columbia, so not too surprising that a bunch of live tapes wound up in the hands of Muse co-founder Joe Fields. This is the first of four volumes, year listed but no specific dates, with Carter Jefferson (tenor/soprano sax), Larry Willis (piano), Stafford James (bass), and Victor Lewis (drums). B+(***)

Woody Shaw: Live Volume Two (1977 [2001], High Note): Again not seeing many details, same group as above except that Steve Turre (trombone) replaces Carter Jefferson (tenor/soprano sax) on 3 of 4 long tracks. B+(**)

Woody Shaw: Live Volume Three (1977 [2002], High Note): Live from the Keystone Korner in San Francisco, two quartet tracks with Stafford James (bass), Victor Lewis (drums), and either Larry Willis or Mulgrew Miller (piano), plus three tracks adding Steve Turre (trombone). B+(*)

Woody Shaw: Live Volume Four (1981 [2005], High Note): Again from Keystone Korner, a few years later with no sax but trombonist Steve Turre nearly stealing the show. B+(***)

Notes

Everything streamed from Napster (ex Rhapsody), except as noted in brackets following the grade:

• [cd] based on physical cd
• [cdr] based on an advance or promo cd or cdr
• [bc] available at bandcamp.com

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Saturday, November 26, 2016

Music: current count 30692 [30635] rated (+57), 271 [293] unrated (-22).

Cooked Thanksgiving dinner for my nephew, his girlfriend, and a few scattered friends who didn't have other engagements. Figured I'd pick off a few French recipes I had missed on my birthday. I figured the roast bird could simply be a chicken, especially since I hadn't done any chicken on birthday. I repeated the potatoes (gratin dauphinois) and chopped chicken liver (but none of the other spreads). For new dishes, I had carrots (cooked with ginger and cardamom), green beans (with pancetta), tian (zucchini and tomato slices roasted on top of onion), and a salad (frisee aux lardons -- I had a nice-sized chunk of slab bacon left over, and mixed a little liver into the vinaigrette). For dessert, I made three pies: sweet potato, chocolate pecan, and key lime. Probably should have offered ice cream, but just whipped some cream. (In fact, had so much cream left over, I probably should have made ice cream.) Had a couple bake-it-yourself baguettes. Figured I needed them for the liver and croutons for the frisee, but turned out that butter on bread was popular. Had I realized that, I could have mixed up an herbed/spiced butter spread.

Thanksgiving probably cost me two days of listening, but I started the week strong, and finished it stronger. Still, that should have yielded something like 40 records. However, when I ran the numbers, the increase was less than the list, so I made a pass through the unrated albums list and a dozen more I had missed. And by the time I straightened that out, I had rated some more. In the end it seemed easier to get current than to respect yesterday's cutoff.

I've started collecting EOY lists. Thus far there's not a lot to go on: some long lists from UK record stores, UK pubs like Mojo and Uncut, a couple of metal-oriented lists, and Paste -- closer to what I expect from major US lists, although still pretty shy of hip-hop. I've retained some data from mid-year lists, which helps balance out the early skews. At the moment, the top five are Janelle Monáe, Courtney Barnett, Rolling Blackouts CF, Kamasi Washington, and Cardi B. Without the mid-year boost, Barnett would be leading Monáe, and Cardi B wouldn't be in the top 100.

I'm also tabulating Jazz Critics Poll ballots. Can't share any of that with you yet, but I have about 20 ballots counted at this point. That info is pushing me to check out lots of albums, although my priority this and next week will be to catch up with my own CD queue.

Meanwhile, I've done a preliminary sort on my own Best of 2018 lists, split for Jazz and Non-Jazz I'll keep adding to these well into the future.

Also, expect a Streamnotes by the end of the month. I guess that's like Friday. I have a pretty decent-sized draft file already.

New records rated this week:

• Ambrose Akinmusire: Origami Harvest (2018, Blue Note): [r]: B+(*)
• Big Bold Back Bone: Emerge (2015 [2018], Wide Ear): [cd]: B+(*)
• Francesco Cafiso: We Play for Tips (2017 [2018], EFLAT/Incipit): [r]: B+(**)
• The Chills: Snow Bound (2018, Fire): [r]: B+(**)
• Eric Church: Desperate Man (2018, EMI Nashville): [r]: A-
• Roxy Coss: The Future Is Female (2018, Posi-Tone): [r]: B
• Mário Costa: Oxy Patina (2017 [2018], Clean Feed): [r]: B+(**)
• Kaja Draksler/Petter Eldh/Christian Lillinger: Punkt. Vrt. Plastik (2016 [2018], Intakt): [cd]: A-
• Open Mike Eagle: What Happens When I Try to Relax (2018, Auto Reverse, EP): [r]: B+(***)
• The Gil Evans Orchestra: Hidden Treasures Monday Nights: Volume One (2016-17 [2018], Bopper Spock Suns Music): [cd]: B+(*)
• Marianne Faithfull: Negative Capability (2018, BMG): [r]: B+(***)
• Alan Ferber Big Band: Jigsaw (2016 [2017], Sunnyside): [r]: B+(**)
• Birgitta Flick Quartet: Color Studies (2018, Double Moon): [r]: B+(**)
• Gabriela Friedli Trio: Areas (2015 [2018], Leo): [r]: B+(**)
• David Friesen: My Faith, My Life (2017-18 [2018], Origin, 2CD): [cd]: B+(***)
• Claus Højensgård/Emanuele Mariscalco/Nelide Bendello: Høbama (2017 [2018], Gotta Let It Out): [cd]: B+(*)
• Rocco John Iacovone/Jack DeSalvo/Mark Hagan/Phil Sirois/Tom Cabrera: Connoisseurs of Chaos IV (2018, Woodshedd): [bc]: B+(***)
• Jentsch Group No Net: Topics in American History (2016 [2018], Blue Schist): [cd]: B+(**)
• Ingrid Laubrock: Contemporary Chaos Practices: Two Works for Orchestra With Soloists (2017 [2018], Intakt): [cd]: B+(***)
• Robbie Lee & Mary Halvorson: Seed Triangular (2018, New Amsterdam): [r]: B+(**)
• Ravyn Lenae: Crush (2018, Atlantic, EP): [r]: B+(*)
• LFU: Lisbon Freedom Unit: Praise of Our Folly (2015 [2018], Clean Feed): [cd]: A-
• Carol Liebowitz/Birgitta Flick: Malita-Malika (2017 [2018], Leo): [cd]: B+(***)
• Maisha: There Is a Place (2018, Brownswood): [r]: B+(*)
• Christian McBride: Christian McBride's New Jawn (2017 [2018], Mack Avenue): [r]: B+(**)
• Jorge Nila: Tenor Time (Tribute to the Tenor Masters) (2018 [2019], Ninjazz): [cd]: B+(***)
• Evan Parker/Eddie Prevost: Tools of Imagination (2017 [2018], Fundacja Sluchaj): [bc]: B+(*)
• William Parker: Flower in a Stained-Glass Window/The Blinking of the Ear (2018, Centering/AUM Fidelity, 2CD): [r]: B+(**)
• Hanna Paulsberg Concept & Magnus Broo: Daughter of the Sun (2018, Odin): [r]: B+(**)
• The Ken Peplowski Big Band: Sunrise (2017 [2018], Arbors): [r]: B
• Ivo Perelman/Mat Maneri/Mark Feldman/Jason Hwang: Strings 1 (2018, Leo): [cd]: B+(***)
• Ivo Perelman/Mat Maneri/Hank Roberts/Ned Rothenberg: Strings 2 (2018, Leo): [cd]: B+(**)
• Rich Rosenthal/Jack DeSalvo/Tom Cabrera: Connoisseurs of Chaos (2018, Woodshedd): [bc]: B+(**)
• Dave Sewelson: Music for a Free World (2017 [2018], FMR): [cd]: A-
• Julian Siegel Quartet: Vista (2018, Whirlwind): [r]: B+(***)
• Jay Thomas With the Oliver Groenewald Newnet: I Always Knew (2018, Origin): [cd]: B+(*)
• Harriet Tubman: The Terror End of Beauty (2018, Sunnyside): [r]: B+(*)
• The David Ullman Group: Sometime (2018, Little Sky): [cd]: B
• Piet Verbist: Suite Réunion (2018, Origin): [cd]: B+(***)
• David Virelles: Igbó Alákorin (The Singer's Groove) Vol I & II (2017 [2018], Pi): [cd]: A-
• Trevor Watts & RGG: RAFA (2018, Fundacja Sluchaj): [bc]: B+(***)

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries rated this week:

• Fred Hersch: Fred Hersch Trio '97 @ The Village Vanguard (1997 [2018], Palmetto): [cd]: A-
• Jazz at the Philharmonic [Oscar Peterson/Illinois Jacquet/Herb Ellis]: Blues in Chicago 1955 (Verve): [r]: A-
• The Gene Krupa Quartet: Live 1966 (1966 [2018], Dot Time Legends): [r]: B+(*)
• Thelonioous Monk: Mønk (1963 [2018], Gearbox): [r]: A-

Old music rated this week:

• Louis Prima/Keely Smith With Sam Butera and the Witnesses: The Wildest Shoe at Tahoe (1957, Capitol): [r]: B+(**)

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Kaja Draksler/Petter Eldh/Christian Lillinger: Punkt. Vrt. Plastik (Intakt)
• Jentsch Group No Net: Topics in American History (Blue Schist): November 30
• Ingrid Laubrock: Contemporary Chaos Practices: Two Works for Orchestra With Soloists (Intakt)
• Roberto Magris: World Gardens (JMood): December 1
• Dave Sewelson: Music for a Free World (FMR)
• Trio Heinz Herbert: Yes (Intakt)
• Voicehandler: Light From Another Light (Humbler)

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Sunday, November 25, 2018

Seems like it's been a slow news week, probably because the holiday both cut into the political world's capacity for misdeeds and my (and others') attention span. I'm also preoccupied with music poll matters. Still, figured I should at least briefly go through the motions, if only to keep the record reasonably intact.

Some scattered links this week:

• Matthew Yglesias: House Democrats don't need a leader, they need someone to represent them on TV: I see two basic knocks on Pelosi as Speaker: one is the sense of failure with the 2010 and subsequent losses; another is that in many parts of the country Republicans have been able to use her (so-called radical agenda) to scare voters. (This was painfully clear in my own district, which voted solidly Republican, despite an exceptional Democratic candidate.) As far as I can tell, Pelosi is moderate-left by national standards, but her district in San Francisco could easily support someone further left. I suspect that most Democrats would prefer for her to step aside and let someone else (younger and more charismatic) take over, but as it is the only challengers are coming from the right -- not because the caucus wants to move right but because some winners in close districts pledged to vote against her. Yglesias finds a third knock against her: that she's not very effective on TV either representing her party or parrying against Trump. He suggests designating someone else to take the publicity role, limiting her to in-house strategizing (which she's arguably good at). I'm reminded here that in Britain they have an interesting system where the opposition party designates a "shadow cabinet" -- one member for each cabinet position, so there's always a recognized point person for whatever issues crop up. A big advantage there is that it would open up more prominent roles for more people. Might even be . . . more democratic. Other Yglesias pieces:

  • There's nothing "America First" about Trump's Saudi policy: Worth including not just the links but the linked-to titles in this quote:

    President Donald Trump must be giving thanks this morning for press coverage of his extraordinarily inappropriate statement on the murder of dissident and journalist Jamal Khashoggi [ Zack Beauchamp: Trump's Khashoggi statement is a green light for murder].

    Trump has secretive sources of income and murky financial ties to Saudi interests [ America deserves to know how much money Trump is getting from the Saudi government], and keeps touting entirely bogus statistics about the jobs impact of arms sales to Saudi Arabia [ Trump says selling weapons to Saudi Arabia will create a lot of jobs. That's not true.]. Nevertheless, much of the coverage of his statement simply takes at face value his assertions that his handling of this issue is driven by American interests -- rather than by his own self-interest or the interests of his donors in the defense contracting industry.

    Yglesias argues that "America has a strong interest in curtailing murder." I agree that America should have such an interest, but can't think of many examples of pre-Trump US governments doing anything like that. The US continued to support Pinochet when his agents gunned down a Chilean dissenter in the streets of Washington -- probably the most similar incident, but far from unique. The US has long and lavishly supported Israel's targeted assassination programs -- the model for America's even more extensive "drone warfare" program. More generally, the US supported "death squads" in Latin America and elsewhere, as well as providing intelligence, training, and weapons to "security forces" -- Indonesia's slaughter of 500,000 "communists" is one of the more striking examples. Then there are arms sales in support of aggressive wars, such as the one Saudi Arabia is waging in Yemen. Or you can point to the US refusal to support the International Criminal Court. You can argue that Trump is even worse than past US presidents in this regard -- both for his tasteless embrace of flagrant killers like Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte and for his slavish devotion to "allies" like Saudi Arabia and Israel -- but he's mostly just following past practices (even if he seems to be enjoying them too much).

    The more interesting question is why has the murder of Khashoggi different? I don't have time to trot my theories out there, but even if anti-Islam bigotry is part of the equation, the basic realization that governments shouldn't go around killing their dissidents is one more people should embrace more consistently.

  • The time Nancy Pelosi saved Social Security: Credits Pelosi with blocking the privatization scheme GW Bush claimed as his mandate after winning the 2004 election. I never thought the scheme had a chance, because I knew they could never afford to bridge the gap between pay-as-you-go and funded schemes (even a far-from-adequately funded one). But sure, give Pelosi credit for her blanket rejection of all Republican schemes. A big problem that Democrats had all through the Reagan-Bush-Bush years has been their callow willingness to accept (and legitimize) conservative talking points, so it's good to point to examples where they didn't, and saved themselves. Also on Pelosi: Ella Nilsen: Why House progressives have Nancy Pelosi's back.

  • The 2016 election really was dominated by a controversy over emails. Does a good job of summing up the view that media and ultimately voter perception of the 2016 election was decisively dominated by the "email scandal" -- the Gallup Daily Tracking word cloud shows this graphically, but there are many other telling details. Why is a question that remains unanswered. Is it really just as simple as the endless repetition -- by the partisan right-wing media, echoed by mainstream media that covered propaganda as news -- or was there such underlying dislike and distrust of Clinton that let such a trivial mistake (at worst) signify some kind of deeply disturbing character flaw? And if so, why didn't Trump's own obvious character flaws disqualify him? One thing well established by polling is that both candidates were viewed negatively by most people, yet when forced to choose, a decisive number of Americans opted to rid themselves of Clinton to tip the election to the equally (or more, but not more deeply) disliked Trump.

  • The Beto O'Rourke 2020 buzz, explained: "hey, losing a high-profile Senate race was good enough for Abraham Lincoln.".

• Arthur C Brooks: How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart: Head of American Enterprise Institute, pushing a Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) book, Them: Why We Hate Each Other, blaming America's numerous woes on cultural factors. I think that may have some superficial validity, but only after taking a hard look at inequality, powerlessness, and perpetual war.

• Matthew Choi: Trump hits back at Chief Justice Roberts, escalating an extraordinary exchange: Roberts is no hero for a judicial system and sense of justice that transcends party and respects all people, but he reminds us that many conservatives (and, by the way, most liberals) at least go through the motions of wanting to be seen in that light. Trump clearly sees no point in looking beyond political tags -- in part, no doubt, because his grasp of actual issues is so shallow, but but mostly because he's convinced that naked, blatant partisanship gives him an out from any charges of malfeasance (just blame "fake news" and your fans will rally behind you). Trump took the same tack in attacking Admiral Bill McRaven after McRaven had the temerity to note that Trump's ravings about the "fake news" media constitute a threat to American democracy. Trump's first thought was that he could dismiss McRaven by calling him a "Hillary supporter." Clearly, he relishes another presidential campaign against Clinton -- probably figuring she's the only Democrat he can still whip.

• Aaron Gell: The Unbearable Rightness of Seth Abramson: On a blogger who has deeply investigated the whole Trump-Russia thing, publishing the book: Proof of Collusion: How Trump Betrayed America.

• William D Hartung: America's Post-9/11 Wars Have Cost $5.9 Trillion: "Not to mention 240,000 civilian deaths and 21 million displaced. And yet a congressional commission is urging yet more money for a bloated Pentagon." Also: Murtaza Hussain: It's Time for America to Reckon With the Staggering Death Toll of the Post-9/11 Wars, which puts the death toll twice as high ("at least 480,000 people").

• Rebecca Jennings: The death of small businesses in big cities, explained: Interview with Jeremiah Moss.

• Jen Kirby: Theresa May and the EU have a Brexit deal. What's next?

• Andrew Kragie: Trump's New Kavanaugh for the US Court of Appeals: Meet Neomi Rao.

• Mark Landler: In Extraordinary Statement, Trump Stands With Saudis Despite Khashoggi Killing. Also: Karoun Demirjian: More Republicans challenge Trump on defense of Saudi crown prince.

• Dara Lind: Trump's reportedly cutting a deal to force asylum seekers to wait in Mexico.

• Bill McKibben: How Extreme Weather Is Shrinking the Planet. Also: Robinson Meyer: A Grave Climate Warning, Buried on Black Friday; and David Sirota: Big Oil v the planet is the fight of our lives. Democrats must choose a side.

• Anna North: How Trump helped inspire a wave of strict new abortion laws.

• Daniel Politi: US Agents Fire Tear Gas at Migrants Approaching the Border From Mexico.

• Robert Reich: Break up Facebook (and while we're at it, Google, Apple and Amazon): The sheer size of these four companies, each built to dominate major niches on the internet, certainly suggests some sort of antitrust remedy. (I'm less concerned here with physical products -- still most of what Apple produces, but tightly interwoven with their network products, even more so for Google, Amazon, and we might as well include Microsoft in this list.) On the other hand, given how important network effects are to each of these businesses, they're more than a little like natural monopolies, which occur in markets that are never able to support healthy competition. The difference is that utilities and such are most efficient with common infrastructure shared by all customers, the winning vendor for services like Facebook (and Amazon) is inevitably the first one with the widest network. The problem with such monopolies is less the usual problem of restricting competition than abuse of power. Moreover, where product monopolies tend to abuse power by extorting high prices and/or delivering poor service, services like Facebook and Google make their profits by exploiting their user base (by capturing and reselling private information). It may not have been obvious before Facebook that there was a public interest in social media, and indeed one might never have developed had customers directly had to bear the full development costs, but by now it's pretty clear that: a) people want social media; b) that the market will be captured by a single vendor; and c) that the profit motive will lead that vendor to take advantage of and harm users. There is an obvious solution to problems like this, and it isn't antitrust (not that there aren't cases here for antitrust and/or other forms of regulation). The solution is to build publicly funded non-profit utilities to provide web services that are not subject to profit-seeking exploitation.

• Dylan Scott: Bernie Sanders's new plan to bring down drug prices, briefly explained: Better than nothing, I suppose, but this still assumes the necessity of patents to incentivize profit-seeking companies to develop new drugs. The main thing it does is to provide some limits on how much drug companies can extort from customers and their insurers, and even then depends on generics based on patent licensing to introduce a bit of competition. A more immediately effective scheme would allow importation of drugs from a much wider range of countries, ideally including ones not beholden to US patent laws. (A compromise might be to allow a fixed import tax to be claimed by the patent holder.) Better still would be to eliminate patents altogether, and do research and development through publicly-funded "open source" institutions around the world.

• Dylan Scott: The Mississippi Senate runoff, Dems' last chance for one more 2018 upset, explained: "Mike Espy could become the first black senator from Mississippi since Reconstruction." We, and for that matter, the long-suffering people of Mississippi, should be so lucky. Cindy Hyde-Smith tweet: "Did you know extremists like Cory Booker are campaigning for Mike Espy here in MS?" Isn't Booker the guy with all the big bank money behind him? Who's the real extremist here?

• Somini Sengupta: The World Needs to Quit Coal. Why Is It So Hard?

• Emily Stewart: Ivanka Trump's personal email excuse shows she only wants to seem competent some of the time: "She violated the rule by using a personal email but wants you to believe she didn't know better."

• Kaitlyn Tiffany: Wouldn't it be better if self-checkout just died? A personal pet peeve. I, for one, pretty much never use the systems, for lots of reasons, which start with I don't like machines lecturing me. But then I guess I've never been good with authority figures, let alone fascism.

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Tuesday, November 20, 2018

Music: current count 30635 [30591] rated (+44), 293 [300] unrated (-7).

Finished Weekend Roundup at a decent (for me) hour Sunday evening, figuring I'd knock this out on time too. However, the end-of-the-year crunch hit me hard over the weekend, so I have quite a bit of material to cover here. I'll try to be brief (and will probably postpone whatever I can).

First thing is that Francis Davis will be running his annual Jazz Critics Poll again this year, with NPR picking up the tab (such as it is) and bragging rights. I've been hosting the ballots and providing complete results since 2009, and will do that again. But the difference this year is that I'll be doing the ongoing tabulation, so I need to get set up early this year (like right now) instead of waiting for Francis to dump everything in my lap a day or two after the voting deadline (December 9). Francis always urges early submission of ballots, and I have three waiting in my mailbox at the moment. Sometime over the next couple days I'll set up my framework and start counting ballots. Good news for me is that it will spread the work out, but ultimately that will add up to quite a bit more work. It certainly ruins any hopes I had of driving off to see family in Arkansas and Oklahoma.

At this point I have very little idea of the contenders -- not even much sense of my own list. But at least I've cobbled together two very tentative lists: as has been my custom, one for Jazz and one for Non-Jazz. First thing I must say is that I was very surprised to see that both lists have the exact same number of new A-list records: 46. Usually what happens is that when I first put these lists together (Nov. 16 in 2017, Nov. 19 this year) I get about a 60-40 split in favor of jazz (ratio, but I usually have about 100 A-list records at this point, so close to literally). Then as I get a chance to look at non-jazz EOY lists, I catch up on the non-jazz side so the split usually winds up close to 50-50 (in 2014: 69-76; in 2015: 81-83; in 2016: 75-67 -- a slight trend line toward more jazz, which seemed to finally tilt in 2017: 84-61). So while I was expecting that trend to hold, I was also thinking the split might be even more extreme this year, as (my impression at least) I've actually been streaming more jazz than non-jazz this year. So coming up 46-46 is a big surprise to me.

Actually, my perception isn't that far off base. Jazz has a 13-4 A-list edge in Reissues/Historic, which I mention because it's hard to factor those records out of the following grade break-downs (obtained by subtracting Music Tracking: Jazz from All:

So, basically, I'm listening to twice as many jazz as non-jazz records, but I'm a lot pickier about the non-jazz I play. I figure that the jazz percentage (currently 68%) will drop a bit before the year is over, more like last year's 62%. I should also note that the total number of rated records is down this year, from 1185 in 2017 to 760 now (assuming 10 weeks left, a pace that would reach 940 albums).

The jazz grade curve above looks pretty reasonable to me, although compared to past years it looks like A- is down and B+(***) up. I'm on a pace to hit 57 A-list jazz records this year, vs. 81-75-84 over the last three years: the A-list share of all rated records is 6.0% this year, vs. 7.0% last year (or three). I can't explain that. Maybe I'm less patient, or crankier.

As for non-jazz, my most reliable scout this year remains Robert Christgau (although I suspect that statistical analysis might show he's been less reliable this year than before). It's now pretty easy to check up on his grades for 2018 releases. Adding in last week's picks (Homeboy Sandman & Edan, Open Mike Eagle), he has 60 A/A- records among 2018 releases (excluding a dozen-plus belated grades for 2017 releases). I've heard 58 of those (playing Open Mike Eagle now; can't find Chicago Farmer), and my grades break as follows: A: 1, A-: 24, B+(***): 16, B+(**): 8, B+(*): 7, B: 2. That's pretty good correlation: more than half (52.1%) of my non-jazz A-list were rated A/A- by Christgau. (Christgau has two jazz albums on his list: John Hassell [my A-] and MAST [my ***].)

I did an update of the CG database last week -- my first since mid-January. I hadn't been able to work on it for several months, thanks to a major server meltdown, which forced me to rebuild my local copy of the website based on the public copy. That shouldn't have been too hard, but my new machine was running later software revisions, and the public server was also out of sync with my old server. I had more than a hundred files that I needed to revise, and actually still don't have all of that work done. I've been getting by with partial updates, but hadn't been able to change the database until I resolved a character set incompatibility. I made a breakthrough on that a week ago, and it took me until Thursday to catch up and prepare a database update.

I also settled down and wrote up a script to provide a RSS 2.0 feed. If you use a RSS feed reader (most browsers have one built in), you can add this feed to the list you're monitoring, and get notices when new files (or major edits) appear on the website. The current one has titles, links, and dates, but doesn't have article descriptions yet. I'll add those as we go forward. I don't have much experience with RSS, so there are details that I'm unsure of. For instance, should we add links to external websites, given that most of Christgau's new writings appear elsewhere (e.g., Noisey), exclusively for an initial period. (While the embargo is in effect, the RSS will link you to a stub article which includes a link to the current article, so the inconvenience is an extra click.)

I'll promise here to get the rest of the programming changes done by the end of the year. Beyond that, I'm planning on doing a fairly major website redesign next year. The current website was launched in 2001, and we've been hearing complaints about its "antique" design at least since 2004. Most never bothered us, but we keep getting bit by software changes, especially by the now nearly universal adoption of UTF-8. We need to adopt UTF-8, and bring the older pages up to HTML5. We need to add a viewport declaration to work better with phones (and I need to learn what else "phone-first design" entails). We don't use cookies, and there is virtually no javascript to the site -- good things, I've always thought, but I'm starting to wonder. I'm not particularly keen on moving all the articles to the database, but the directory organization has morphed into a sprawling, nonsensical mess -- such that I have little idea where to put many new files. It may be a good idea to come up with a different browsing scheme. There are also maintenance issues, especially as we've seen that the current webmaster can be pretty lax about his duties.

Back in 2001 when I built the site, I had figured that I'd have to rebuild it around 2004-05. In fact, there are dozens of pages scattered around the site with ideas for development -- few that have actually been revisited since 2005. At some point in the next few weeks I'm going to set up a mail exchange and invite interested (and hopefully expert) people to act as a consulting forum on this and similar projects. (My own "ocston" website dates back to 1999, surviving an effort back in 2002 at a major rewrite, so I can be even more lax on my own work.) Maybe we can also provide a sounding board for others who want to work on similar or related projects. (E.g., Chuck Eddy one suggested reviving "Pazz N Jop Product Report," so I wrote a very preliminary spec here, then never did anything about it.) I was thinking I'd announce the forum this week, but didn't get that done. Soon, I promise.

I also hoped to get the RSS feed code backported to my site. (Back when I was using Serendipity for my blog, I had people who publicized my links from its RSS feed -- I know this because I've seen broken links from a year ago.) Also I plan on adding a Q&A feature similar to Christgau's Xgau Sez (a new batch of which came out today). I solved one technical issue last week, and hoped to announce that today, but "real soon now" is the best I can do.

Another thing I didn't get set up this week is the 2018 EOY Aggregate file. Actually all I need to do there is to clean up and repurpose this file, which I had set up for mid-year lists (based on last year's EOY Aggregate framework). I think what I will do there is to turn all of the mid-year list mentions into 1-point miscellaneous references (so that Janelle Monae drops from 52 to 22 points), then replace those as actual lists appear. EOY lists usually start appearing around Thanksgiving. In fact, here is the top 75 from Mojo.

As for this week's music, before I got swamped I was variously intrigued and outraged by Downbeat's Readers Poll. I made an effort to track down the top-ranked albums I hadn't heard of. I also spent the better part of a day trying to check out the late guitarist Allan Holdsworth, who came in second (for the second straight year) in reader Hall of Fame voting. (He lost to Wynton Marsalis last year, and to Ray Charles this year.) I knew the name, and had several of his records listed (but not heard) in my database, filed under rock. After sampling eight (of not much more than a dozen) albums, I have to say I have no idea what fans hear in his guitar. I suppose I could have dug deeper -- he did early work with pianist Gordon Beck, whose Experiments With Pops was a star-making turn for John McLaughlin, and he appeared on two 1975-76 Tony Williams albums I don't know -- but I was pretty sure his 12-CD box set (The Man Who Changed Guitar Forever) was de trop, especially since most of it was also redundant.

Midweek I mostly played Christgau picks. I think I get the appeal of Rich Krueger, but something about his sound turns me off (I called his previous album, Life Ain't That Long, the one Christgau prefers, "Springsteenian.") I wound up reviewing Lithics based on an "abridged version" on Napster and Bandcamp. I usually don't bother with partials (6/12 cuts), but figured that was the only chance I'd get. When I do, I usually hedge, but this seemed like the sort of thing they could keep doing for hours (recommended if you not only like Wire but need more). A couple B+(***) records tempted me for extra plays in case they got better. The one that came closest was by Carol Liebowitz. Several albums this week were recommended by Alfred Soto in an "we're almost there" pre-EOY list. Eric Church's Desperate Man is the only one I'd call a find, but that was after the cutoff (so next week).

One bit of good news at Napster is that the HighNote/Savant back catalogue is now available. I checked out a new archival Frank Morgan release, then found a couple of old ones I had missed. I previously pegged A Night in the Life: Live at the Jazz Standard Vol. 3 at B+(***), so it's not a big surprise that Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 edge it. The other gem in Morgan's catalog is Twogether, a duo with John Hicks, released in 2010 after both died.

New records rated this week:

• Ethan Ardelli: The Island of Form (2018, self-released): [cd]: B+(***)
• Mandy Barnett: Strange Conversation (2018, Dame Productions/Thirty Tigers): [r]: A-
• Pat Bianchi: In the Moment (2018, Savant): [r]: B
• Magnus Broo Trio: Rules (2017 [2018], Moserobie): [cd]: B+(**)
• Bobby Broom & the Organi-sation: Soul Fingers (2018, MRi): [cd]: B
• Rosanne Cash: She Remembers Everything (2018, Blue Note): [r]: B+(***)
• Annie Chen Octet: Secret Treetop (2018, Shanghai Audio & Video): [cd]: B
• Randy Halberstadt: Open Heart (2018, Origin): [cd]: B+(*)
• Clay Harper: Bleak Beauty (2018, self-released): [r]: B+(*)
• Christopher Hollyday: Telepathy (2018, Jazzbeat Productions): [cd]: B+(***)
• Homeboy Sandman & Edan: Humble Pi (2018, Stones Throw, EP): [r]: B+(**)
• Adam Hopkins: Crickets (2018, Out of Your Head): [cd]: B+(**)
• Jason Kao Hwang Burning Bridge: Blood (2018, True Sound): [cd]: A-
• Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra With Wynton Marsalis: Una Noche Con Rubén Blades (2014 [2018], Blue Engine): [cd]: B+(**)
• Rich Krueger: NOWThen (2018, Rockin'K Music): [r]: B+(***)
• Lawful Citizen: Internal Combustion (2018, self-released): [cd]: B+(*)
• Carol Liebowitz/Birgitta Flick: Malita-Malika (2017 [2018], Leo): [cd]: B+(***)
• Lithics: Mating Surfaces (2018, Kill Rock Stars): [bc]: B+(***)
• Roc Marciano: RR2: The Bitter Dose (2018, Marci): [r]: B+(***)
• Rhett Miller: The Messenger (2018, ATO): [r]: B+(**)
• Mr. Fingers: Cerebral Hemispheres (2018, Aleviated): [r]: B+(**)
• Old Man Saxon: The Pursuit (2018, Pusher, EP): [r]: B+(*)
• Chris Pasin: Ornettiquette (2018, Planet Arts): [cd]: B+(**)
• Lucas Pino's No Net Nonet: That's a Computer (2018, Outside In Music): [cd]: B+(*)
• Paul Simon: In the Blue Light (2018, Legacy): [r]: B
• Vince Staples: FM! (2018, Def Jam, EP): [r]: B+(**)
• David S. Ware Trio: The Balance (Vision Festival XV+) (2009-10 [2018], AUM Fidelity): [r]: B+(***)
• Way North: Fearless and Kind (2018, self-released): [cd]: B+(**)
• Kenny Werner: The Space (2016 [2018], Pirouet): [cd]: B+(*)

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries rated this week:

• Frank Morgan/George Cables: Montreal Memories (1989 [2018], High Note): [r]: B+(***)
• Outlaws & Armadillos: Country's Roaring '70s (1971-79 [2018], Legacy, 2CD): [r]: B+(**)
• Joe Strummer: 001 (1981-2002, Ignition, 2CD): [r]: B+(**)
• Ben Webster: Valentine's Day 1964 Live! (1964 [2018], Dot Time): [r]: B+(***)

Old music rated this week:

• Mandy Barnett: The Original Nashville Cast Recordings of "Always . . . Patsy Cline": Live at the Ryman Auditorium (1995, Decca): [r]: B+(*)
• Allan Holdsworth: I.O.U. (1982 [1985], Enigma): [r]: B
• Allan Holdsworth With I.O.U.: Metal Fatigue (1985, Enigma): [r]: B-
• Allan Holdsworth: Atavachron (1986, Enigma): [r]: C+
• Allan Holdsworth: Sand (1987, Relativity): [r]: B-
• Allan Holdsworth: Secrets (1989, Intima): [r]: C+
• Allan Holdsworth: Wardenclyffe Tower (1992, Restless): [r]: B-
• Allan Holdsworth: The Sixteen Men of Tain (2000, Gnarly Geezer): [r]: B-
• Allan Holdsworth/Alan Pasqua/Jimmy Haslip/Chad Wackerman: Blues for Tony (2007 [2009], Moonjune, 2CD): [r]: B+(*)
• Frank Morgan: City Nights: Live at the Jazz Standard (2003 [2004], High Note): [r]: A-
• Frank Morgan: Raising the Standard: Live at the Jazz Standard Vol. 2 (2003 [2005], High Note): [r]: A-

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Carla Campopiano Trio: Chicago/Buenos Aires Connections (self-released): December 7
• Dustin Carlson: Air Ceremony (Out of Your Head)
• Fred Hersch: Fred Hersch Trio '97 @ The Village Vanguard (Palmetto): December 7
• Simone Kopmajer: Spotlight on Jazz (Lucy Mojo)
• Ivo Perelman/Mat Maneri/Mark Feldman/Jason Hwang: Strings 1 (Leo)
• Ivo Perelman/Mat Maneri/Hank Roberts/Ned Rothenberg: Strings 2 (Leo)
• Yoko Yamaoka: Diary 2005-2015: Yuko Yamaoka Plays the Music of Satoko Fujii (Libra, 2CD)

Daiy Log

Miscellaneous Album Notes:

• Outlaws & Armadillos: Country's Roaring '70s (1971-79 [2018], Legacy, 2CD): B+(**)

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Sunday, November 18, 2018

No intro this week. A few updates but really not much on the elections, let alone political futures for 2020. I barely managed to work in notice of Israel's latest round of punitive bombings in Gaza. I'm sure there's much more to it, but most of the links I did notice have to do with cease fire negotiations (not going well, I gather) as opposed to why it happened when. (I will note that this isn't the first time Israel launched a wave of terror right after an American election.) I think there was also a story about how last week was the first time the US defended Israel's occupation of the Golan Heights, seized by Israel in the 1967 war. Another thing I wanted to write about was the NY Times piece claiming that North Korea has "snookered" Trump and is still developing missiles. I gather this has been debunked in various places -- my wife is on top of this and other stories I haven't had time for -- but I didn't land on a link that made sense of it all. Also, I have no real opinions on possible leadership contests for the Democrats in the new Congress. I've been pretty critical of both Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer in the past, and no doubt will again in the future. (Whenever I think of Schumer I'm reminded of a story about how he greeted our friend Liz Fink on the street with his customary "how am I doing?" -- to which she answered, "you're evil, man.") Still, politics is a dirty business, and no one can afford to get too bent out of shape over it. Whoever wins, we'll support them when we can, and oppose them when we must. That much never changes.

Some scattered links this week:

• Matthew Yglesias pieces this week:

  • HQ2 is a perfect opportunity to massively upgrade the DC area's commuter rail.

  • What the Amazon tax breaks really mean.

  • New Pew poll: the public prefers congressional Democrats to Trump on most issues: Oddly enough, the two questions Trump leads are "Jobs and econ growth" (44-33) and "Trade policy" (40-38), with "Taxes" near even (38-39). Strongest Democratic advantages: "The environment" (55-19), "Ethics in government" (48-22), "Medicare" (51-26), "Health care" (51-28), and "Social Security" (48-26).

  • Trump's latest interview shows a president who's in way over his head: "but what else is new?"

    In some ways, the friendliest Donald Trump interviews are the most revealing. Given the opportunity to ramble and free-associate without any pushback whatsoever, you can see what channels his mind naturally follows.

    His latest interview with the Daily Caller shows a president who's fundamentally out to sea. The sycophantic interviewers can't get Trump to answer a policy question of any kind, no matter how much of a softball they lob at him. The only subjects he is actually interested in talking about are his deranged belief in his incredible popularity and how that popularity is not reflected in actual vote totals because he's the victim of a vast voter fraud conspiracy.

    Actually a fairly long piece with a lot of excerpts backing up the summary.

  • Trump's incompetence and authoritarianism are both scary: Takes exception to a David Brooks tweet about Trump ("It's the incompetence, not the authoritarianism we should be worried about"), nothing that "autocrats are often incompetent." Indeed, you could argue that authoritarianism is Trump's crutch against his own incompetence, much like how people who cannot speak in the listener's language think that more volume will do the trick. Brooks' tweet refers to Jonathan V Last: The Vaporware Presidency, which sums Trump's approach as: "Step 1: Propose something ridiculous. Step 2: Cause chaos but don't deliver it. Lather, rinse, repeat." Yglesias offers the example of promoting Thomas Homan to replace Kirstjen Nielsen (Secretary of Homeland Security):

    This is both stupid and authoritarian at the same time and for the same reason.

    Trump's primary interest is in putting people in place who will aggressively support Trump rather than people who know what they are doing. Consequently, he'd rather have a DHS head who suggests arresting local politicians for disagreeing with Trump than a DHS head who advises Trump to avoid doing illegal stuff.

    This is simultaneously a recipe for vaporware and for autocracy. Homan, at the end of the day, probably won't actually go around arresting liberal mayors -- it's just something that sounded good to say. But when you fill your Cabinet with people who make these kinds of suggestions and make it clear that's what you want to hear from your top lieutenants, sooner or later, someone goes and does it.

    Even more inevitable is that those who don't follow through with their stupid/authoritarian sound bites will be taunted for failure, giving rise to ever more shameless opportunists.

  • What the 2018 results tell us about 2020: "Realistically, not much." Actually, the main difference between presidential elections and "mid-terms" (a term I've always hated) is turnout: about 60% vs. 40%. The big change in 2018 was that turnout jumped to almost 50%. While Republicans have been very effective at getting their base out to vote, that bump (relative to past "mid-terms") skewed Democratic. In fact, at this point both parties have come to believe that their fates will mostly be decided by voter turnout (hence the R's efforts at voter suppression). The election also revealed two regional trends. The Southwest from Texas to California has shifted toward the Democrats, flipping Senate seats in Arizona and Nevada. You can chalk that up to demography, further polarized by Trump's anti-immigrant policies. Also, Trump's gains in the belt from Pennsylvania to Wisconsin and Iowa have mostly evaporated. There's no reason to think that either of those shifts will reverse in 2020. I can think of a half-dozen more points to add in moving from 2018 to 2020, but should hold them back for a longer essay. My point is that a lot happened in 2018 that bodes well for Democrats looking forward, and there's very little on the other side of the ledger. Of course, Democrats could blow it by nominating another candidate with massive credibility issues.

    For another piece on shifting political grounds, see: Stanley B Greenberg: Trump Is Beginning to Lose His Grip.

  • Jim Acosta vs. the Trump White House, explained:

    This particular weird incident with Acosta and the staffer might be no more remembered than a dozen other bizarre moments from that press conference. (Trump openly mocked losing House Republican candidates, misstated the tipping point states in the Electoral College, threatened politically motivated investigations of House Democrats, blamed "Obama's regime" for Russian annexation of Crimea, claimed to be unable to understand foreign journalists' accents, wildly mischaracterized both DACA and the Affordable Care Act, and said some stuff about China that was so incoherent, it's hard to even call it lying.)

    Also note this:

    But more broadly, to cast the press as the real "opposition party" in America -- as Trump has -- offers some meaningful tactical advantages. Trump, in an unusual way, won the 2016 presidential election without being popular. Not only did he win fewer votes than Hillary Clinton on Election Day, but his favorability rating was lower than that of the losing candidates from the 2012, 2008, 2004, and 2000 presidential elections.

    The nonpartisan press can (and does) report facts that are unflattering to Trump. But a lack of unflattering facts or a failure by the public to appreciate their existence has never been the foundation of Trump's political success. And the press isn't going to do the work of an actual opposition party, which is to formulate a political alternative that an adequate number of people find to be sufficiently inspiring to go out and vote for.

    That's the job of the Democratic Party, an institution that's had considerable trouble attracting press attention to its own message and ideas ever since Trump exploded on the scene. And keeping the media focused on a self-referential feud between Trump and the media is a way to maintain his preferred approach of trying to suck up all the oxygen in the room.

    Meanwhile, what matters to Trump isn't any actual crushing of the media but simply driving the narrative in his core followers' heads that the media is at war with him. With that pretense in place, critical coverage and unflattering facts can be dismissed even as Trump selectively courts the press to inject his own preferred ideas into the mainstream.

    PS: Aaron Rupar: Trump-appointed judge orders White House to temporarily restore Acosta's credentials. "Even Fox News released a statement siding with CNN."

  • Republicans just lost a Senate seat in Arizona because Trump is an egomaniac.

  • Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez slams Amazon's imminent arrival in Queens. For a further critique, see: Alexia Fernández Campbell: The US economy doesn't need more Amazon jobs. It needs higher wages.

  • One chart that shows racism has everything and nothing to do with Republican election wins: The chart shows a fairly strong correlation between denial of racism and voting Republican. It's long been hard to get an accurate survey of racism in America because much of what amounts to racial prejudice is subconscious (or rarely conscious), and very few people admit to being racists, even those who often act and/or talk the part.

• Michelle Alexander: The Newest Jim Crow: "Recent criminal justice reforms contain the seeds of a frightening system of 'e-carceration.'"

• Zack Beauchamp: What's going on with Brexit, explained in under 500 words: Or, in under 30 words: Prime Minister Theresa May negotiated a "soft Brexit" deal that would retain UK access to Europe's common market and an "open border" in Ireland. Nobody likes it. Also see: John Cassidy: The Brexit Fantasy Goes Down in Tears; and Jane Mayer: New Evidence Emerges of Steve Bannon and Cambridge Analytica's Role in Brexit.

• Tom Engelhardt: The Donald and the Fake News Media.

• Kathy Gannon: After 17 years, many Afghans blame US for unending war.

• Jeff Goodell: The President's Coal Warrior: All about EPA head (and former coal industry lobbyist) Andrew Wheeler, and his "highly effective campaign to sacrifice public health in favor of the fossil-fuel industry."

• Glenn Greenwald: As the Obama DOJ Concluded, Prosecution of Julian Assange for Publishing Documents Poses Grave Threats to Press Freedom.

• Michael Grunwald: How Everything Became the Culture War: I guess this is an important subject, but this could be treated better. One problem is the meticulously balanced centrism:

  At a time when Blue and Red America have split into two warring tribes inhabiting two separate realities, and "debate" has been redefined to evoke split-screen cable-news screamfests, this ferocious politicization of everything might seem obvious and unavoidable. . . . Democrats and Republicans are increasingly self-segregated and mutually disdainful, each camp deploying the furious language of victimhood to justify its fear and loathing of the gullible deplorables in the other.

  This is followed by a list of caricatures, evenly sorted between two camps, except that a strange asymmetry sets in: the terminology, not to mention the ominous overtones, comes almost exclusively from the right. For instance, there is nothing remotely like a Church of Global Warming Leftists. It's not that leftists cannot play culture war games, but the right uses them as proxies for policies never get aired out (like the promise to "repeal and replace" ACA with something "better and cheaper"). The reason culture war has increasingly swamped political discourse is that conservatives have little chance of convincing most Americans of the merits of their program, so they try to manipulate what they hope is a viable target base with appeals to their identity, and big lies and massive shots of fear and loathing. It's gotten much worse in the last couple years, but isn't that just Trump? I don't know whether he tries to turn everything into culture war because he has some shrewd insight into mass psychology or because he has no grasp of policy whatsoever -- he certainly never manages to say anything intelligible on whatever he's up to.

  I think it's safe to say Obama was never like that, even as he was subjected to repeated attempts to impugn his patriotism, his religion, his honesty, his dignity. It's true that not every Republican took that tack, but many did (not least Trump himself). I just ran across a meme in my Facebook feed today that is possibly the most offensive one I've seen: "The Obamas continue to linger, like the stench of human waste that fouls the air and assaults the nostrils." The comments just build on this.

• Umair Irfan: Why the wildfire in Northern California was so severe: "Heat, wind, and drought -- and long-term climate trends -- conspired to create the deadly Camp Fire." Also: Brian Resnick: Northern California now has the worst air quality in the world, thanks to wildfire smoke; and Gabriel Thompson: As Toxic Smoke Blankets California, Who Has the Ability to Escape? Subhed ("while the wealthy can flee toward cleaner air, the poorest have no choice but to stay put") isn't exactly true on any count, not that the wealthy don't have more options. But the wealthy also need to note that they're the ones who own most of the property threatened by climate-driven disaster. Beachfront houses aren't owned by poor people, nor are most of the houses destroyed in California towns like Paradise and Malibu. Moreover, that "bad air" map covers a lot of wealthy towns, and air is about the only thing rich and poor still share alike. Maybe some ultra-rich folk hopped in their jets and went elsewhere, but most middling property owners are as stuck as everyone else.

• Paul Krugman: Why Was Trump's Tax Cut a Fizzle? No surprises here. Just a review of the things Republicans say to get special favors for their donors, and how quickly they are forgotten.

  Last week's blue wave means that Donald Trump will go into the 2020 election with only one major legislative achievement: a big tax cut for corporations and the wealthy. Still, that tax cut was supposed to accomplish big things. Republicans thought it would give them a big electoral boost, and they predicted dramatic economic gains. What they got instead, however, was a big fizzle.

  The political payoff, of course, never arrived. And the economic results have been disappointing. True, we've had two quarters of fairly fast economic growth, but such growth spurts are fairly common -- there was a substantially bigger spurt in 2014, and hardly anyone noticed. And this growth was driven largely by consumer spending and, surprise, government spending, which wasn't what the tax cutters promised.

  Meanwhile, there's no sign of the vast investment boom the law's backers promised. Corporations have used the tax cut's proceeds largely to buy back their own stock rather than to add jobs and expand capacity.

  Also by Krugman: The Tax Cut and the Balance of Payments (Wonkish). Also: Jim Tankersley/Matt Phillips: Trump's Tax Cut Was Supposed to Change Corporate Behavior. Here's What Happened.

• Caroline Orr: US joins Russia, North Korea in refusing to sign cybersecurity pact: This may not be the right deal -- one major plank is to protect "intellectual property" which often is meant to force an arbitrary division of the world into owners and renters -- but some sort of effort like this should be negotiated, and it needs to include Russia and the US, simply because those (along with China and Israel) are the nations with the worst track record of waging cyberwar. Take away the idea of cyberwar, and you could even start to crack down on everyday nuisance hacking, which would make all of our lives easier.

• Sarah Smarsh: A Blue Wave in Kansas? Don't Be So Surprised: The only state which has elected three female governors, all Democrats (also a female three-term Senator, Republican Nancy Kassebaum).

• Michael Robbins: Looking Busy: The Rise of Pointless Work: A review of David Graeber's latest book, Bullshit Jobs: A Theory.

• Matt Taibbi: Trump's Defense Spending Is Out of Control, and Poised to Get Worse:

• Sabrina Tavernise: These Americans Are Done With Politics: "The Exhausted Majority needs a break."

  A deep new study of the American electorate, "Hidden Tribes," concludes that two out of three Americans are far more practical than that narrative suggests. Most do not see their lives through a political lens, and when they have political views the views are far less rigid than those of the highly politically engaged, ideologically orthodox tribes.

  The study, an effort to understand the forces that drive political polarization, surveyed a representative group of 8,000 Americans. The nonpartisan organization that did it, More in Common, paints a picture of a society that is far more disengaged -- and despairing over divisions -- than it is divided. At its heart is a vast and often overlooked political middle that feels forgotten in the vitriol, as if the country has gone on without it. It calls that group the Exhausted Majority, a group that represented two-thirds of the survey.

  "It feels very lonely out here," said Jamie McDaniel, a 36-year-old home health care worker in Topeka, Kan., one of several people in the study who was interviewed for this article. "Everybody is so right or left, and you're just kind of standing there in the middle saying, "What happened?'"

• Rachel Withers: CIA reportedly concludes that Jamal Khashoggi was killed on the Saudi crown prince's orders. Also: Alex Ward: Trump doesn't want to punish Saudi Arabia over Khashoggi. His new sanctions prove it. I don't doubt Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's culpability here, even with the CIA attesting to it, but I also don't think the US should be unilaterally sanctioning Saudi Arabia or its citizens, except perhaps through an international process, perhaps based on the World Court or the International Criminal Court. On the other hand, the US does need to rethink its relationship to Saudi Arabia. The US should cut off all arms sales and support as long as Saudi Arabia is engaged in its war of aggression against Yemen. The US should also stop catering to Saudi hostility against Iran and seek to negotiate deals that would allow Iran to enjoy normal, mutually beneficial relationships with the US and its various neighbors. But the idea that the US should act as judge and jury in deciding to punish other states and people is arrogant and unfair, a force of injustice and destabilization which ultimately does more harm than good.

  Speaking of Saudi Arabia and the mischief MBS is up to: David Hearst: Bin Salman 'tried to persuade Netanyahu to go to war in Gaza' say sources. Note that Israel in fact launched a series of attacks on Gaza starting on November 11; also see Alex Ward: Israel and Gaza just saw their worst violence in years. It could get worse.

• Rachel Withers: Weekend midterms update: Democrats concede Florida and Georgia but complete their Orange County sweep: "Plus, where the rest of the outstanding races stand." For an earlier rundown, see: All the House seats Democrats have flipped in the 2018 elections. Withers also wrote: Trump skipped Arlington Cemetery on Veterans Day because he was "extremely busy"; and Trump attacks retired Navy SEAL Admiral Bill McRaven, suggests he should have gotten bin Laden sooner.

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Tuesday, November 13, 2018

Music: current count 30591 [30559] rated (+32), 300 [292] unrated (+8).

Once again, a long, slow slog through Weekend Roundup links pushed Music Week into Tuesday. I wrote a brief summary/introduction Monday evening, and was prepared to post then, but figured I'd roll this post into the same update. Then I found myself spending a few hours Tuesday afternoon adding links -- generally trying to limit myself to items posted by Sunday, but wound up adding a few new ones in the end.

For instance, since I already had a long list of Matthew Yglesias links, I added one called The 2018 electorate was older, whiter, and better educated than in 2016 that I ultimately decided was misleading: those are shifts that occur in every midterm election from the previous presidential election, because many fewer people vote in midterms. On the other hand, you get the exact opposite effect if you compare 2018 to 2014, 2010, etc. And that happened precisely because many more people voted in 2018 than in 2014, 2010, . . . in fact, you have to go back to 1966 to find a midterm election with higher voter participation (see Camila Domonoske: A Boatload of Ballots: Midterm Voter Turnout Hit 50-Year High). This year's turnout was 47.5%, down from 60.1% in 2016, but way up from 36.7% in 2014.

Still, I had to stop somewhere, so I left four Tuesday Yglesias links for next week: the most important is Democrats' blue wave was much larger than early takes suggested. Also especially interesting is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez slams Amazon's imminent arrival in Queens. I'm not sure that the left much less Democrats in general have developed a coherent response to the repeated scamming of states and cities by big corporations like Amazon -- and the list goes on forever, ranging from the $4 billion Foxconn con in Wisconsin to the dozens of local outrages we fend with every year here in Wichita -- but this one has the makings of serious public exposure.

As for music, it's been a fairly typical week. Solid rate count, would have been higher except for a new 3-CD Art Pepper archive set, followed by an older (and even better) 4-CD set that I had only heard a sampler from at the time. Late last week I got Downbeat's December issue with their 83rd Annual Readers Poll results, so I started out by checking out leading albums I hadn't heard. I think I had only heard 5 of the top 10 new albums -- also (less surprising) 5 of the top 10 historical albums -- so I had some work to do there. Most of those were on last week's list (Chick Corea/Steve Gadd, Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra/Wynton Marsalis, Joey Alexander, Kurt Elling, and further down Esperanza Spalding), although the only missing historical album I found was Jimi Hendrix's Both Sides of the Sky, which led me to the old one below.

First Rays of the New Rising Sun was the only non-jazz album on this week's list until Sunday, when ventured into a batch of country albums in Robert Christgau's Expert Witness. I don't think the Pistol Annies album is as good as he says, but figure it's good enough, as are the others (Becky Warren, Mandy Barnett, and Robbie Fulks/Linda Gail Lewis -- the latter was an A- here some weeks ago).

I haven't done an update of the Christgau Consumer Guide database since late January: initially because it's takes enough work I tend to put it off, but then I suffered a one-two punch as first my local server than my public server crashed. When I pulled the data back from archive, I ran into a character set incompatibility that made it impractical to update the database (i.e., there was no point changing anything until the underlying problem was fixed). I floundered with it for a while, then put it off, working on other things instead. Finally I took another shot at it last week, and got to the root of the problem (a hidden flag in the server-side export utility that I hadn't run into before). Once I got a clean copy of the database, I started adding in more recent reviews. I'm up through September now, and will catch up in a couple days (maybe tonight).

I should be able to just update the database without reconciling the entire website. Since the server crash, I've been doing limited incremental updates every week (instead of waiting months, as was my previous custom). There are tradeoffs: I could wind up forgetting something, but I'm in the middle of a bunch of programming changes because a lot of functions have been dropped from PHP 7 (which is what I'm running locally, vs. PHP 5 on the public server). Until I get all of those things fixed (hundreds of changes) I don't dare do a full synch up. In the past I've always done database and website file updates at the same time, but they are independent enough I should be able to do each as needed. I guess we'll see.

New records rated this week:

• Richie Cole: Cannonball (2018, RCP): [cd]: B+(**)
• Andrew Cyrille: Lebroba (2017 [2018], ECM): [r]: B+(***)
• Josephine Davies: Satori (2016 [2017], Whirlwind): [r]: A-
• Josephine Davies' Satori: In the Corners of Clouds (2018, Whirlwind): [bc]: A-
• John Escreet: Learn to Live (2018, Blue Room): [r]: B+(*)
• David Hazeltine: The Time Is Now (2018, Smoke Sessions): [r]: B+(*)
• Fredrik Kronkvist: Kronicles (2017 [2018], Connective): [r]: B+(**)
• Chris Lightcap: Superette (2018, The Royal Potato Family): [bc]: B+(*)
• Donny McCaslin: Blow. (2018, Motéma): [r]: B+(*)
• Makaya McCraven: Universal Beings (2017-18 [2018], International Anthem): [r]: A-
• John O'Gallagher Trio: Live in Brooklyn (2015 ]2016], Whirlwind): [r]: B+(***)
• Pistol Annies: Interstate Gospel (2018, RCA Nashville): [r]: A-
• Nikita Rafaelov: Spirit of Gaia (2016-17 [2018], Gotta Let It Out): [cd]: B+(**)
• Rudy Royston: Flatbed Buggy (2018, Greenleaf Music): [r]: B+(**)
• Jerome Sabbagh/Greg Tuohey: No Filter (2017 [2018], Sunnyside): [r]: B
• Yuhan Su: City Animals (2018, Sunnyside): [r]: B+(**)
• Subtone: Moose Blues (2018, Laika): [r]: B+(*)
• Harry Vetro: Northern Ranger (2018, T.Sound): [cd]: B+(**)
• Cuong Vu 4Tet: Change in the Air (2017 [2018], RareNoise): [bc]: B+(**)
• Becky Warren: Undesirable (2018, self-released): [r]: A-
• Jeff Williams: Lifelike (2017 [2018[, Whirlwind): [r]: B+(***)

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries rated this week:

• Charlie Haden & Brad Mehldau: Long Ago and Far Away (2007 [2018], Impulse): [r]: A-
• Keith Jarrett: La Fenice (2006 [2018], ECM, 2CD): [r]: B+(*)
• Art Pepper: The Art Pepper Quartet (1956 [2017], Omnivore): [r]: A-
• Art Pepper: Unreleased Art Pepper Vol. 10: Toronto (1977 [2018], Widow's Taste, 3CD): [cd]: A-

Old music rated this week:

• Jimi Hendrix: First Rays of the New Rising Sun (1968-70 [1997], MCA): [r]: A-
• Joakim Milder: Ways (1990-92 [1993], Dragon): [r]: B+(*)
• Red Mitchell/Joakim Milder/Roger Kellaway: Live in Stockholm (1991 [1993], Dragon): [r]: B+(**)
• Art Pepper: Blues for the Fisherman: Unreleased Art Pepper Vol VI (1980 [2011], Widow's Taste, 4CD): [r]: A-

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• The 14 Jazz Orchestra: The Future Ain't What It Used to Be (Dabon Music): January 1
• Anguish: Anguish (RareNoise): November 30
• Eraldo Bernocchi: Like a Fire That Consumes All Before It (RareNoise): advance, November 30
• Magnus Broo Trio: Rules (Moserobie)
• The Gil Evans Orchestra: Hidden Treasures Monday Nights: Volume One (Bopper Spock Suns Music): December 7
• Adam Forkelid: Reminiscence (Moserobie)
• David Friesen: My Faith, My Life (Origin, 2CD): November 16
• Thomas Marriott: Romance Language (Origin): November 16
• Joakim Milder/Fredrik Ljungkvist/Mathias Landraeus/Filip Augustson/Fredrik Rundkvist: The Music of Anders Garstedt (Moserobie)
• Jay Thomas With the Oliver Groenewald Newnet: I Always Knew (Origin): November 16
• Piet Verbist: Suite Réunion (Origin): November 16
• Aida Bird Wolfe: Birdie (self-released): November 15

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Tuesday, November 13, 2018

When I went to bed around 5AM after Tuesday's elections, the Democrats had won the House and beat Kris Kobach here in Kansas, but it seemed like a lot of close elections had broke bad. I heard Wednesday that a couple elections had flipped: Ned Lamont picked up the CT governorship, and more importantly, Scott Walker lost in Wisconsin. Tester pulled out his Senate seat in Montana. Nevada had looked promising on Tuesday, and firmed up, while Arizona got close, and even started to lean toward Democrat Krysten Sinema. Florida tightened up.

Still, could (should) have been better. Compared to 2014 and 2018, the Democrats did much better on several counts: they ran better candidates and contested more seats; and they did a better job of getting out their vote. Trump didn't get a popular opinion honeymoon after he took office. He was deeply offensive to most Democrats from the start, and everything he did prodded them to resist more fervently. That's what motivated people to run, to campaign, to organize, and ultimately to vote, and often to win -- although even some of the losses, like Beto O'Rourke in Texas, or Stacey Abrams in Georgia, were close enough they seemed like progress.

On the other hand, Trump and the Republicans haven't lost much ground. They've done a lot of things that in themselves are very unpopular -- the big corporate tax cut, for instance, and they dodged blame for ACA repeal only by failing to pass it -- but their base has held firm, they still have a lot of money, a strong captive media, and a very effective ground game. Of course, it helped that the economy hasn't capsized yet, that their reckless foreign policy hasn't led to major wars, that their corporate deregulation hasn't produced major disasters yet, and that only a few of their corrupt minions have been convicted or indicted. On the other hand, their global warming denialism is beginning to wear thin with major hurricanes and an unprecedentedly horrific fire season. Branch Rickey used to say that luck is the residue of design. Trump's political designs are so faulty that it's unlikely his luck will hold.

On the other hand, he did something in 2018 that Obama had failed to do in 2014 and 2010, which is that he campaigned relentlessly for his party in the months and weeks leading up to the election -- indeed, he never really stopped campaigning after 2016. He hasn't been all that effective, mostly because he isn't really very popular, but he did keep his base enthused, and (unlike in 2006, when everyone was sick and tired of Bush and Cheney) he got his base out to vote. It's going to take a lot of hard work to get enough people to realize how harmful Republicans are to most people's interests. And expect a lot of noise and distraction from Fox and friends along the way: the "caravan" story was as good an example of truly fake news as you can imagine. Hard to say whether how much it helped Republicans, but it sucked a lot of air from broadcast news during the last few weeks.

Democracy took a step forward last Tuesday. A small one. Hopefully the first of many.

Quick election results recap:

• US Senate: Republicans gained two seats, for a 51-46 edge, with 3 undecided: Mississippi (runoff, R favored), Florida (R +13k), Arizona (D +33k [since I wrote this called for the Democrat]), so it will probably wind up 53-47 (counting Sanders and King with the Democrats). Only one-third of the Senate's seats are up for election each two years, and this year the Democrats were much more vulnerable (after exceptionally strong showings in 2006 and 2012). To put the net losses of 2-4 seats in perspective, Democrats won (counting AZ but not FL/MS) 24 seats to the Republicans' 10. Democrats won 57.4% of the Senate vote, vs. 41.0% for Republicans. This split was inflated because both of California's "top two" primary winners are Democrats. All four (counting FL) Republican pickups were in states Trump won -- 3 by 10+ points, 2 against Democrats who won in 2012 after Republicans nominated especially controversial "Tea Party" candidates. On the other hand, Democrats won 7 Senate seats (counting AZ) in states carried by Trump, plus defeated a Republican incumbent in a state Trump lost (NV).

• US House of Representatives: Democrats gained 32 seats, with 10 still undecided, for a current 227-198 advantage. Democrats received 51.4% of the popular vote, vs. 46.7% for Republicans, for a margin of 4.7%.

• Governors: Democrats gained 7, giving them 23; Republicans lost 6 (assuming FL and GA go Republican; the difference is that Republicans picked up previously independent Alaska). Popular vote favored Democrats 49.4-48.2%, as state races were less polarized than Congressional ones (e.g., Republicans won easily in MA, MD, and VT). Democrats gained: ME, MI, WI, IL, KS, NM, and NV. Republicans gained AK.

• 538: What Went Down in the 2018 Midterms: Live blog until they got tired and signed off.

• 538: The 2018 Midterms, in 4 Charts.

Some scattered links this week:

• Matthew Yglesias: Trump voters stood by Trump in the midterms -- but there just aren't enough of them: Trump was elected president in 2016 with just 46% of the vote. Republicans got about the same 46% of the vote in the 2018 congressional elections, so a cursory analysis suggests that they held their own, while everyone else (including independent voters for Jill Stein and Gary Johnson) joined the Democrats. Probably not that simple: Republicans did better than 46% in 2016 congressional races, so they lost that edge this year. In particular, they lost ground in the Rust Belt and in the Latino Belt from Texas through Arizona and Nevada to California, while they hung on more effectively in a swath from Florida up to Idaho. Other Yglesias pieces:

  • The 2018 electorate was older, whiter, and better educated than in 2016: "Democrats hit some of their GOTV targets but missed others." OK, but isn't the relevant comparison 2014 to 2018? Turnout was up for a midterm (2018 and 2014), but down from the presidential election (2016). From 2016 to 2018, 18-39 turnout was -7,but from 2014 to 2018, it was +4. White was +2 vs. 2016, but -3 vs. 2014.

  • Matthew Whitaker's appointment is the latest Trump Tax the GOP is paying: "A nominee whose only qualification is his unfitness."

    Matthew Whitaker is, by any standard, a wildly unsuitable choice to serve as Attorney General of the United States.

    He's a small time crook who finished fourth in the Iowa GOP Senate primary back in 2014. He apparently got his job as Chief of Staff in the Justice Department because Trump liked his TV hits, experience that would at best qualify him to one the DOJ's chief spokesperson not to be chief of staff and certainly not to run the Justice Department. Meanwhile, Kellyanne Conway's husband, a prominent Washington attorney, says Whitaker's appointment is illegal.

    The point, however, is that in a normal administration the question of legality would simply never arise here. The Justice Department is full of competent, professional, Senate-confirmed officials who would be more suitable than Whitaker on both substance and procedural grounds. It's commonplace in liberal circles to see Whitaker as an inappropriate selection in light of his previous comments about Robert Mueller's investigation, but the truth is the Mueller issue is his only conceivable qualification for the job. Trump's problem with the senior staff at the Justice Department is he has no way of knowing whether or not they share with Jeff Sessions and Ron Rosenstein a reluctance to fatally compromise the rule of law in pursuit of Trump's personal self-interest.

  • House Democrats must resist Trump's infrastructure trap.

  • House Democrats must resist Trump's infrastructure trap.

  • The tragedy of Amazon's HQ2 selections, explained: After announcing they'd like to auction off the location of a second headquarters site, they've evidently settled on two winners: one in Virginia's DC suburbs, the other in Long Island City, Queens, New York. Lots of problems.

  • Matt Whitaker suggested the attorney general might keep Robert Mueller's conclusions secret forever.

  • Debbie Stabenow reelected to the Senate.

  • Ned Lamont elected governor of Connecticut.

  • Trump's bizarre post-election press conference, explained.

    But shocking as it was in its way, it confirmed what we know about Trump. He is shameless, relentlessly dishonest, poorly informed about policy, disrespectful of the norms and principles of constitutional government, and fundamentally dangerous. He also continues to benefit from a benign economic situation and from a lack of crises abroad that make a serious impact on the typical American. For all of our sakes, we'd better hope that holds up because he does not appear to have the capacity to respond in a remotely appropriate way to any kind of adversity. . . .

    The price of this sort of conduct has already been high. An island destroyed, a wave of Trump-inspired bombings, a needless destabilization of relations with key allies, and a growing diminution of the standards of conduct that we accept for public officials. But for most Americans, day-to-day life has proceeded apace and that's put a floor under Trump's approval ratings that's been good enough to keep the whole Republican Party afloat given gerrymandering and a skewed Senate map. Losing the House would be a wake-up call for a normal president, but there is no waking up Trump -- only the hope that nothing goes too badly wrong while he lasts in office.

  • Tammy Baldwin reelected to US Senate: a progressive champion wins in Wisconsin.

  • Sherrod Brown reelected to US Senate: old-time labor liberalism triumphs over Ohio's rightward drift.

  • Why Stacey Abrams isn't conceding yet.

  • 4 winners and 2 losers from the 2018 midterm elections: Winners: "the favored quarter backlash"; Donald Trump; "the blue wall"; gerrymandering. Losers: Taylor Swift; "the live models." The explanation on Trump:

    And while losing the House is the death knell for the Republican Party's legislative agenda, Trump himself has rarely seemed to care that much about the GOP legislative agenda. Indeed, the death of the GOP legislative agenda could even be good news for Trump politically since much of that agenda was toxically unpopular. An expanded majority in the Senate, meanwhile, will let Trump do things he actually cares about, like replace Cabinet members and other executive branch officials who've displeased him, while continuing to keep the judicial confirmation conveyor belt that's so important to his base moving.

  • The lesson of the midterms: resistance works.

• Radley Balko: Jeff Sessions, the doughty bigot:

  Jeff Sessions's final act as attorney general was perfectly on-brand. On the way out of office, he signed an order making it more difficult for the Justice Department to investigate and implement reform at police departments with patterns of abuse, questionable shootings, racism, and other constitutional violations. Sessions once called such investigations -- like those that turned up jaw-dropping abuses in places such as Ferguson, Mo., Baltimore and Chicago -- "one of the most dangerous, and rarely discussed, exercises of raw power." He has had only cursory criticism of the horrific abuses actually described in those reports (which he later conceded he sometimes didn't bother to read), which disproportionately affect blacks and Latinos. For Sessions, it is the federal government's investigation of such abuses that amounts to not just an unjustified "exercise of raw power," but a "most dangerous" one.

• Bob Bauer: An Open-and-Shut Violation of Campaign-Finance Law.

• Jonathan Blitzer: Jeff Sessions Is Out, but His Dark Vision for Immigration Policy Lives On.

• James Carroll: Entering the Second Nuclear Age?: With his withdrawal from the INF treaty with Russia, and with big plans to renovate and rebuild America's nuclear arsenal, "Donald Trump welcomes the age of "usable" nuclear weapons." Also at TomDispatch:

  • Michael Klare: On the Road to World War III?.

  • William Hartung: The pentagon's Plan to Dominate the Economy:

    Industrial policy should not be a dirty word. The problem is: the Pentagon shouldn't be in charge of it. The goal of an effective industrial policy should be to create well-paying jobs, especially in sectors that meet pressing national needs like rebuilding America's crumbling infrastructure and developing alternative energy technologies that can help address the urgent dangers posed by climate change.

  • Tom Engelhardt: Autocrats, Incorporation: Thoughts on Election Day 2018.

  • Arnold Isaacs: Misremembering Vietnam: Alt title: "Making America's Wars Great Again: The Pentagon Whitewashes a Troubling Past."

    The cliché that our armed forces are the best and mightiest in the world -- even if the U.S. military hasn't won any of its significant wars in the last 50 years -- resonates in President Trump's promise to make America great again. Many Americans, clearly including him, associate that slogan with military power. And we don't just want to be greater again in the future; we also want to have been greater in the past than we really were. To that end, we regularly forget some facts and invent others that will make our history more comfortable to remember.

  • Rory Fanning: Will the War Stories Ever End? Author of a book of his own war stories, Worth Fighting For: An Army Ranger's Journey Out of the Military and Across America (2014, Haymarket Books).

• Maureen Dowd: Who's the Real American Psycho? A look back at Dick Cheney, occasioned by the screening of a new movie called Vice. As for the "psycho" question, such things take time and perspective. If you got sick eight years ago and got sick again now, you won't be able to make meaningful comparisons until (and if) you survive and recover. Between Trump ("a frothing maniac with a meat cleaver") and Cheney ("a professional assassin") the latter may still in theory be the more menacing, but the threat right now is so immediate and so open-ended that it's the one you have to deal with right now. Dowd, by the way, also recently wrote this clever piece on Saudi Arabia: Step Away From the Orb:

  Our Faustian deal was this: As long as the Saudis kept our oil prices low, bought our fighter jets, housed our fleets and drones and gave us cover in the region, they could keep their country proudly medieval.

  It was accepted wisdom that it was futile to press the Saudis on the feudal, the degradation of women and human rights atrocities, because it would just make them dig in their heels. Even Hillary Clinton, as secretary of state, never made an impassioned Beijing-style speech about women in Saudi Arabia being obliterated under a black tarp.

• Atul Gawande: Why Doctors Hate Their Computers: Fairly long piece on computerized medical records, which should be great to have but are a lot of work to maintain, and the slacker and sloppier you get about that, the less great they are. First point I take from this is that there is a lot of real work to be done to make the health care system work better beyond the obvious advantages of single-payer insurance -- something that tends to be forgotten in that argument. Gawande identifies several problems with the software, ranging from its impact on focus and communication to the increasing brittleness of sprawing code systems. One thing worth exploring is how open source might help, but you also have to look at how to finance development and support. Another dimension is the increasing use of AI. I believe that the only way to build trust in complex software is through open source, but what's needed can't be developed as a free hacker hobby.

• Masha Gessen: After the White House Banned Jim Acosta, Should Other Journalists Boycott Its Press Briefings? Also: Margaret Sullivan: Words and walkouts aren't enough> CNN should sue Trump over revoking Acosta's press pass.

• Adam Hochschild: A Hundred Years After the Armistice: Due to the world's fascination with round numbers, I'm reminded that our Nov. 11 Veterans Day originally started as Armistice Day, marking the end of what was then called the Great War but was soon eclipsed, now better known as World War I. A date that should remind all how precious peace is has since become a celebration of American militarism, as we thank the hapless soldiers and gloss over the politicians who put them in harm's way. One could write reams about that war, and indeed its centennary has brought dozens of new books out. Hochschild wrote one I read back in 2011: To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918, which focused on anti-war resisters in Britain (like Bertrand Russell -- as close to a hero as I ever had). The tag line on this piece is: "If you think the First World War began senselessly, consider how it ended." He recounts several stories of how allied generals (especially Americans, notably including white commanders of negro troops) continued to launch offensives after the armistice was agreed to up to the moment (11AM) it was to take effect, resulting in thousands of avoidable casualties. He also notes, in less depth, the insistence of French general Foch on making the armistice as punitive as possible, leaving a "toxic legacy" that lead to a second world war. Many more books have been written about the post-armistice Versailles Treaty, like Arno Mayer's massive Politics and Diplomacy of Peacemaking, but the best title to date is David Fromkin's A Peace to End All Peace. The excessively punitive Versailles Treaty is now widely acknowledge as a cause of WWII. (Arno Mayer has referred to the two World Wars as 30 Years War of the Twentieth Century.) More important in my mind is that Versailles failed to repudiate imperialism. In fact, Britain, France, Italy, and Japan extended their empires through war, especially whetting the appetites of the latter, while leaving Germany and others convinced that they needed to enlarge themselves to compete with the rich nations. By the way, Josh Marshall recommends The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End. Another interesting piece on the war: Patrick Chovanec: World War I Relived Day by Day.

• Fred Kaplan: Could House Democrats Cancel the Pentagon's Blank Check? Perhaps, but it would take uncommon discipline, given that more than a few Democrats are deficit hawks and/or Pentagon Keynesians. Given narrow margins (and the absence of anything like the "Hastert Rule" for Democrats), Republicans could try to forge opportunistic alliances with either group. One thing for sure is that House Democrats won't be able to raise taxes, so there's very little they can do about deficits. On the other hand, spending bills originate in the House, so with a little discipline they can keep important programs funded and cut useless and even damaging ones. But, as I said, that's not something they've ever been much good at.

  Kaplan also wrote: Trump Retreats From the West: "The president's performance in Paris was a stunning abdication of global leadership." That sounds like good news to me -- not to deny that Trump did it pretty ugly. Maybe Trump was peeved at this: Macron denounces nationalism as a 'betrayal of patriotism' in rebuke to Trump at WWI remembrance. Then, Trump skipped a US cemetery visit abroad. The French army trolled him for avoiding the rain. But the fact is, Trump's "America First" fetish doesn't leave him much to offer the rest of the world -- where, as in everyday life, generosity is appreciated and peevishness scorned. On the other hand, for many years now US administrations have done little that actually helps either people abroad or at home that we'd all be better off if the US (especially its military) would back away. For more on Trump's Paris trip, see Jen Kirby: The controversies of Trump's Paris trip, explained.

• Paul Krugman: What the Hell Happened to Brazil? (Wonkish): "How did an up-and-coming economy suffer such a severe slump?"

• Robert Kuttner: The Crash That Failed: Review of the latest big book on the 2008 financial collapse, the "great recession" that followed, and various government efforts to clean up the mess: Adam Tooze's Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World. Interesting sidelight of an illustration: William Powhida: Griftopia, based on Matt Taibbi's book.

• Dara Lind: The asylum ban -- Trump's boldest immigration power grab yet -- explained.

• Mark Mazzetti/Ronen Bergman/David D Kirkpatrick: Saudis Close to Crown Prince Discussed Killing Other Enemies a Year Before Khashoggi's Death.

• Bill McKibben: A Very Grim Forecast: On Global Warming of 1.5°C: An IPCC Special Report.

• Yascha Mounk: Is More Democracy Always Better Democracy? Noted for future reference, no agreement implied. Author of a recent centrist manifesto: The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger & How to Save It. Reviews Frances McCall Rosenbluth: Responsible Parties: Saving Democracy From Itself (2018) -- arguing: "the most important ingredient of a functioning democracy . . . is strong political parties that can keep their rank-and-file members in check" -- and looks back to Marty Cohen/David Karol/Hans Noel/John Zaller: The Party Decides: Presidential Nominations Before and After Reform (2008). Mounk's prime example of "too much democracy" was the 1972 nomination and loss of George McGovern, although for a token example Republican he cites Mark Sanford's primary loss to a Trump zealot (who last week lost Sanford's SC district). The main problem with Mounk's thesis is that organizations which lack effective democratic oversight almost inevitably wind up putting their leaders' elite interests ahead of their voters. At least with McGovern's Democratic Party reforms, the party was able to nominate a presidential candidate who reflected the majority view among rank-and-file Democrats to quit the Vietnam War. That sounds more to me like an example of democracy working -- especially more than 2016, when the party elites prevailed in picking a candidate who was even more unpopular. (Sure, Hillary Clinton polled better than McGovern, but consider her opponent.) As for the Republicans, you can fault their rank-and-file for favoring someone as odious as Donald Trump, but at least the limited democracy Republicans practice saved them from the party elites nominating Jeb Bush.

• Rachel Withers: Trump responds to worst fires in California's history by threatening to withhold federal aid. Also on the fires: Robinson Meyer: The Worst Is Yet to Come for California's Wildfires; also Umair Irfan: California's wildfires are hardly "natural" -- humans made them worse at every step.

• Benjamin Wittes: It's Probably Too Late to Stop Mueller: The morning after the election, Trump fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions and installed Matthew Whitaker as acting AG, making it easier for Trump to terminate Robert Mueller's prosecution of Trump-Russia issues. Wittes takes stock:

  Eighteen months ago, I said, President Donald Trump had an opportunity to disrupt the Russia investigation: He had fired the FBI director and had rocked the Justice Department back on its heels. But Trump had dithered. He had broadcast his intentions too many times. And in the meantime, Mueller had moved decisively, securing important indictments and convictions, and making whatever preparations were necessary for hostile fire. And now Democrats were poised to take the House of Representatives. The window of opportunity was gone.

  In the 48 hours since Trump fired Jeff Sessions and installed Matthew Whitaker as acting attorney general, I have had occasion to wonder whether I was being overly optimistic a week ago. Whitaker is the kind of bad dream from which career Justice Department officials wake up at night in cold sweats. He's openly political. The president is confident in his loyalty and that he won't recuse himself from the investigation -- notwithstanding his public statements about it and his having chaired the campaign of one of the grand-jury witnesses. There are legal questions about his installation at the department's helm. And he's known as the White House's eyes and ears at Justice.

  By the way: Jerome Corsi says Mueller will soon indict him for perjury.

Finally, some more election-related links:

• Alleen Brown: Pipeline Opponents Make Gains in Midterms as Federal Judge Halts Keystone XL Pipeline.

• John Cassidy: Weekend Reading: From the Midterms to Matthew Whitaker and Stormy Daniels; he also wrote: Make No Mistake, the Midterm Elections Were a Democratic Victory and a Rebuke of Trump..

• Rachel M Cohen: Progressives Win on Medicaid Expansion, Public Education, and Voting Rights Through Ballot Initiatives.

• David Dayen: Democrats Who Voted to Deregulate Wall Street Got Wiped Out in a Setback for Bank Lobbyists.

• Andrew Gelman: Why the 2018 Midterms May Have Been Bluer Than You Think.

• David A Graham: Why Trump Is the Favorite in 2020.

• Shaun King: Why It's a Big Deal That Four Black Candidates Won Their State Attorney General Races: In Illinois, Minnesota, Nevada, and New York.

• Paul Krugman: Real America Versus Senate America: "Some of us are more equal than others, and they like Trump."

• Aaron Mak: A Black Security Guard Caught a Shooting Suspect. Police Arrived -- and Killed the Guard.

• Jane Mayer: Is Kris Kobach's Defeat in Kansas a Model for How to Beat Trumpism? Not really. First point is that Kobach was a really awful candidate, to the point that he was a public embarrassment, and quite a few Republicans realized that he would continue to hurt the party as long as he held office. (The list of Republicans who endorsed Kelly ran over 100.) Second point is that Kelly campaigned almost exclusively against the Brownback legacy in the state, whereas Kobach hung his campaign almost exclusively on Trump's coattails. Personally, I thought Kelly missed an opportunity there as Kobach is objectively worse than Brownback ever was, but she clearly didn't want to campaign against Trump in Kansas, and in the end she didn't have to. The downside of not lumping all of the Republicans together is that she had almost no coattails: the Democrats picked up one House seat, but they won no other state offices (despite having a strong Secretary of State candidate running for Kobach's old office). The state house is still solid Republican, and Kelly won't be able to legislate anything that the R's don't go for (she'll even have trouble sustaining vetoes). Not that we aren't happy with her win (and his loss, but he'll still be around, winding up with a Trump Admin job somewhere, and then go on do bad movement law work, even after he gets debarred.) Democrats can't depend on R's nominating candidates as inept and obscene as Kobach (although Trump is in that league). And Democrats have a lot of work to do to become a majority party here.

• Cas Mudde: Don't be fooled. The midterms were not a bad night for Trump. Key line: "Trump's biggest victory, however, was within the Republican party. . . . Trump has shaped the Republican party in his image instead."

• Alex Pareene: Political power never lasts. Democrats need to use theirs while they have it.

• Steve Phillips: Do the Math. Moderate Democrats Will Not Win in 2020. Author of a book, Brown Is the New White: How the Demographic Revolution Has Created a New American Majority -- somewhat premature, as shown by his focus on candidates who came close but (evidently) lost: Andrew Gillum, Stacey Abrams, Beto O'Rourke.

• Andrew Romano: Want to Beat Trump in 2020? Look at Sherrod Brown's Big Win in Ohio.

• Jennifer Rubin: What Democrats' big win in Arizona means. Rubin also wrote: Trump is cracking. I do take exception to Rubin's complaint about Trump's "great North Korea diplomacy . . . (He was snookered.)" I don't have time to track down the many things wrong with the NY Times piece that claims North Korea has reneged on their promises to Trump, but the real problem there is that Trump's has allowed people like John Bolton to set requirements and expectations meant to sabotage any sort of resolution.

• Amy Davidson Sorkin: The Post-Midterms Dangers of Donald Trump. She also wrote: Donald Trump's Final, Bitter Rallies.

• Jon Schwarz: Democrats Should Remember Al Gore Won Florida in 2000 -- but Lost the Presidency With a Preemptive Surrender.

• Nate Silver: The 2018 Map Looked a Lot Like 2012 . . . and That Got Me Thinking About 2020.

• Kay Steiger, et al.: The Arizona, Florida, and Georgia election recounts, explained: Two Senate races: in Arizona, the Democrat is ahead by 21,000 votes (according to this article, but the NY Times is now reporting a Democratic lead of almost 33,000); in Florida, the Republican by 13,000. Two Governors races: in Florida, the Republican leads by 34,000, and in Georgia the Republican by 63,000, but a runoff election could be mandated if the recount drops the Republican to under 50%.

• Matt Taibbi: Forget 'Conventional Wisdom': There Are No More Moderates: I share his reluctance to cater to self-appointed centrists who insist that Democrats have to show their moderation by adopting positions that can only be described as "Republican-lite," but the fact is that even the "democratic wing of the Democratic Party" are pretty damn moderate in their wildest dreams (universal health care, free public education, world peace, civil rights, voting rights, labor unions, basically things that most of the economically advanced world take for granted). Also by Taibbi: Bernie Sanders Opens Up About New Democrats in Congress, Taking on Trumpism, and Far Too Many House Seats Have Been Uncontested for Too Long.

• Ruy Teixeira: The midterms gave Democrats clear marching orders for 2020.

• Matthew Zeitlin: Trump Has Something New to Blame for a Sluggish Stock Market: "Presidential Harassment": There's always an explanation that doesn't involve reality.

• Li Zhou: Kyrsten Sinema is the first Democrat to win an Arizona Senate seat in 30 years.

Ask a question, or send a comment.

prev -- next