This week was a tough one at my place of work. I had to be in at 06:00 every day. Every night, I thought I'd get started on Ambermoon, and every night, I was just too tired. I started the game last night and should have a new entry up by the end of the weekend. I don't see any reason why I can't keep a regular posting schedule after that.
I
tried to think of a good April Fool's joke for today and didn't even
get that together. The most obvious thing would be to announce the end
of the blog or something like that, but I'd either have to spoil it very fast or deal with an exodus of Patreon subscribers.
On the subject of Patreon, your April contributions will be going to support an endeavor that's important to me. It's not quite a "charity," but it's a worthy cause. The best news source for traditional jazz is The Syncopated Times, run by a man named Andy Senior out of Utica, New York. (It used to be called The American Rag.) It is a source of absolutely fantastic jazz news and journalism, and Irene and I read it religiously every month. In truth, she usually reads it aloud to me while I play video games. Damn, I have a cool wife.
Anyway, Andy's looking to ensure The Syncopated Times never dies by turning it into a non-profit organization, at the same time expanding its offerings. To this end, he has launched a GoFundMe campaign, looking to raise $60,000. I confess that there are elements of Andy's plan I don't fully understand, but I also fully trust him. He is very well-respected in the world of jazz and was the recipient of a 2022 Jazz Journalists' Association "Jazz Hero" award. I am confident that the modest amount he's seeking is what he needs, and I look forward to see what becomes of the new organization.
If you're already contributing to my Patreon, thank you, you're also contributing to this effort. Everyone else, I would consider it a personal favor if you could help Andy reach his goal.
If you're not much of a jazz fan, this is as good a time as any to start. Here's a listening list for the current month:
"Some Other Spring" (1939). Billie Holiday.
"I'll Remember April" (1941). Charlie Barnet, Bob Carroll.
"It's De-Lovely" (1956). Vince Guaraldi Trio.
"April in Paris" (1958), Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong.
"It Might As Well Be Spring" (1964). Stan Getz, João Gilberto, Astrud Gilberto.
I hope the worst is behind you and the rest of the semester is downhill from here.
ReplyDeleteOur second kid is due in a week, so I'm anticipating a different kind of exhaustion here. I've downloaded Betrayal at Krondor in preparation...
I played Final Fantasy X with my older daughter when my second one was born!
DeleteThe second is a big jump but at least you know what to do this time around. Good luck.
DeleteI played a lot of classic Doom, JRPGs, and 4X games (Master of Orion, Colonization, Master of Magic). Man was I tired, but it was a nice break from reality.
I've always been a hardcote FPS gamer (Quake, specifically), but since the birth of our first daughter 2 months ago, I've been itching for a good CRPG. With stats management and level building. It's strange. Not that I'd have the time, but one can fantasise...
DeleteWe're expecting our first (and, at our age, probably only) little spawn in August, so I've been spending time with some old favorites - Ultima IV, the first Wizardry, the original Diablo - while I still can.
Delete@100FOF: Good luck! I'm no spring chicken either, but our (still-young) #1 is a lot of fun. But enjoying the remnants of your free time is definitely the right approach :)
DeleteMy first kid way born 6 weeks ago. And I found that a turn based cRPG is something I can play while cuddle her until she sleeps. I enjoyed 150 hours of Solasta: Crown of the Magister during the last 2 months...
DeleteI played a LOT of Magic Arena and other mobile TCGs while rocking my little one to sleep.
DeleteI remember one of my coworkers having his first child in 2006, the same week that Oblivion came out. He bought the game and thought he'd have plenty of time to play it on paternity leave. Ten years later, he still hadn't gotten out of the imperial sewers.
DeleteI work in an academic environment (albeit in a support role, not faculty). The Staff and Faculty parking lot is barely half-full at 8:30 AM; I doubt that anyone other than caterers and security are on campus at 6 AM! Chet is obviously very dedicated.
ReplyDeleteThe 6 AM made me think this was an April Fool's joke at first
DeleteYeah, my department doesn't even schedule classes before 9:30.
DeleteIt was registration week. Students have to wake up at 06:00 to register, and when they run into problems, they call their advisors. We technically don't HAVE to be in the office that early, but my department chair is always there, so it kind of looks bad if the rest of us aren't, too.
DeleteAny other week of the semester, my first class isn't until 11:00. I do not get up early well.
I love jazz music too. My thing is discovering the origin of songs (especially a Gershwin or Cole Porter tune from a musical.)
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed the playlist. I'd like to see more of this or occasional related references thrown in to the usual posts.
ReplyDeleteI'll do it if I can do so organically.
DeleteListening to the playlist was nice. It probably says something about my (very limited) knowledge of jazz and my (bigger) interest in movies that hearing some parts reminded me of certain soundtracks.
ReplyDeleteI gate jazz but I love your blog so iam going to give it a chance, thank you :)
ReplyDeleteI assume you mean "hate." Honestly, jazz encompasses so many different forms that it's hard for me to imagine someone hating all of them, especially if that same person likes other forms of 20th century music. Are you certain it's not just certain sub-genres, or the timbre of certain instruments, that you hate?
DeleteI like some Jazz. From swing to free jazz, modal jazz, fusion etc. there's such a broad spectrum that it almost seems like they are all genres in their own right. Among my favourite Jazz pieces is Mingus' Pithecanthropus Erectus (have to google that every time), so I've been looking at hard bop pieces, but with mixed results.
ReplyDeleteMy tastes are more geared towards traditional New Orleans jazz and other early 20th-century forms, including gypsy jazz. I appreciate be-bop and post-bop forms on an intellectual level but they don't move me the way that trad does.
Delete"the modest amount he's seeking"
ReplyDeleteSay what?
(Just to be clear, our group has resurrected and published a beloved underground comic magazine for the past 15 years, operating in a similar range of niche, so I know a bit about costs and pricing in that field, and whatever Andy's planning, 60K sounds far from modest, ahem.)
From the gofundme link:
Delete“Money raised in this drive will cover necessary expenses during the process of becoming a 501c3 corporation, and allow the new organization to start with a large enough budget to sustain operations until further funding can be secured…. We intend to recruit a large and experienced board to pilot the new nonprofit and greatly extend our reach, especially into school and community music programs.”
There’s also mention of building development capacity (i.e. getting staff or consultants to identify and apply for grants). So that all goes well beyond just raising enough to cover production costs for the magazine for a year or two; as someone who’s worked at and managed a couple nonprofits over the past 20ish years, $60k does seem like a pretty modest amount to get something like this going.
(Whether “something like this” is a better idea for long-term sustainability than the just-cover-production-costs-for-a-couple-years approach is a reasonable question though, and since I don’t know this scene at all I really couldn’t guess one way or the other).
Let's be real here, he's asking for as much as he dared to without sounding presposterous, to be honest, and that's custom with the gofundme's.
DeleteNot wanting to distract from Chet's cause, but our magazine's scrambling to get the funding for each new issue together, and begging around just isn't our style.
If you're not able to self-sustain yourself, maybe that's when the lights go out? "Sorry for sounding bitter*
I mean I guess it all depends on what you mean by “self-sustaining”? Long-tail stuff on the web is really frequently funded via donations (glances at sidebar), and it seems like the idea here is to transition to a new business model with revenues diversified beyond just subscription dollars to include educational partnerships and grantseeking - which doesn’t seem crazy to me?
DeleteI dunno, maybe I have a slight bias - the internet community I’m most active in is focused on interactive fiction (text games), and like 7 or 8 years ago some of those folks stood up a nonprofit as a central institution for the community - and it’s been a huge success, helping bring together a bunch of different websites, events, and community spaces under one roof with broader buy-in, shared community norms, and more sustainable resources in terms of both volunteers and funding - and it’s almost exclusively paid for via donations (mostly coming in to support a prize pool for the IF world’s big annual game competition). Obviously that’s not a story or experience that’s universally applicable, but at the same time, traditional 20th Century nominal-subscription-plus-ads business models are failing left and right so trying to figure out something new - and trying to get a big chunk of one-time funding to create sufficient runway to do so - doesn’t strike me as a priori unreasonable or scammy in any way.
"Not wanting to distract from Chet's cause . . ." Thank heaven you avoided that.
Delete'Come, be my April Fool' - Patti Smith. (Not jazz, but you need a palate cleanser, right?)
ReplyDeleteSpring can really hang you up the most. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vd5VVELfWC8)
ReplyDeleteInstead of charity, a more generic way to describe things is "donation target." That way, things like this Jazz journalism organisation could be freely embraced. Have a great day everyone.
ReplyDeleteIrene has luck for lovin you, you are a great man. Stay strong , stay in LOVE, stay forever.
ReplyDeleteI've gotten back into Jazz recently and am catching up the modern artists I've missed out on (credit goes at least partially to Imperial Triumphant for that, but methinks that's a little too death metal for our esteemed host). At the risk of sounding unsurprising I've been really enjoying Robert Glasper, Christian Scott, Kamasi Washington, and Alabaster DePlume.
ReplyDeleteWikipedia says black metal which is a fine but notable difference, although Chet might not care too much ;).
DeleteGoogle calls them Blackened Death Metal, which imho is kind of a perfect description of the newer crop of bands that use frequent blast beats and incredibly guttural vocals, but that still feature very technical riffing and not-explicitly satanic or pagan lyrics.
DeleteI think there are more metal subgenres than actual metal bands.
DeleteIf you're into metal, you might like Peter Brotzmann's 'Machine Gun' album (which, I gather, is pretty divisive among jazz aficionados).
Delete@Buck it feels that way sometimes, but I'll be dammed if there aren't a ton of me too bands out there that mostly just ape another's style. I think the problem comes from whenever a band does something new there's a tendency in the fandom to give it a new subgenre.
Delete@100FloorsOfFrights I'm not very far into the session yet but this is practically musique-concrete. I can hear why it's divisive for sure.
I've had little luck enjoying jazz. Either it's too slow, there's not enough of a beat, or it sounds like a couple guys jamming together as opposed to having written a song. Maybe I'm just revealing myself to be a philistine!
ReplyDeleteIf I were to try to recommend songs I like to a jazz lover, I think I might go with:
Tash Sultana - Blackbird - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYZeF26fO68
Indila - Dernière Danse - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5KAc5CoCuk
Animals as Leaders - Physical Education - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jpOBd949O4
Nice to see Animals as Leaders on your list - I used to take guitar lessons from Tosin.
DeleteThat's sick dude. One of my good friends absolutely adores that band.
Delete@Tristan Gall I feel like more people Jazz inflected music more than they do actual Jazz. Nothing wrong with that.