Archive for February 15th, 2009
Loverly
- filed under Music
Cassandra Wilson’s packed run last week at the acoustically perfect Blue Note in New York City was a good reminder of what makes her so special. She is a beguiling performer with a marvelous taste in material and a voice that can wrap itself around whatever song she is singing and make it her own.
On her most recent album, Loverly, Wilson treats St. James Infirmary as a near romp — live she slowed it down to a crawl, drawing out the song’s pathos. (A great website devoted to the song can be found here.) The Beatles’ Till There Was You was a pre-Valentine’s treat, Wilson embracing the melody and investing the lyrics with depth. Caravan was a journey to the MidEast, preceded by a magic carpet ride of a solo by guitarist Marvin Sewall. Her rendition of Dust My Broom, sung from a woman’s perspective, was enough to convince me that Wilson should record an entire album of blues standards.
She didn’t sing Love is Blindness, unfortunately, but I will leave you with it.
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Top Ten Things I Learned from Reading “The Yankee Years”
- filed under Misc.
Here is what I have learned from reading “The Yankee Years”, or “The World According to Joe Torre”:
1) Joe Torre is a great manager.
2) How you manage off the field is apparently more important than how you manage on it.
3) Steroid use in baseball was apparently rampant but not in a way that was apparent to Joe Torre.
4) Derek Jeter is a consummate professional.
5) ARod’s teammates despise him.
6) It’s difficult for some professional athletes — Randy Johnson, Carl Pavano, Kevin Brown — to play in New York.
7) The Yankees waste money on useless, overpriced, and unproductive players.
8) Redsox General Manager Theo Epstein runs a much better organization than Yankees General Manager Brian Cashman because he is able to effectively analyze data and apply it succesfully to personnel decisions.
9) Torre found Cashman untrustworthy and duplicitous. He relied to much on data and not enough on heart in analyzing personnel decisions.
10) Mike Mussina is much more chatty than I remember, especially when it comes to denigrating Mariano Rivera’s performance in the post-season.
Rivera in the post season: 4 World Series Rings, a lifetime 0.77 ERA, an 8-1 record with 34 saves.
Mussina in the post season: no rings, a lifetime 3.42 ERA with a 7-8 record.
11) The Yankees have been harmed by the luxury tax while other teams have benefited from it.
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