Pat Metheny on Kenny G

I'm not a musician. At best, I know what I like and what I don't like. I have found that the best of any genre is worth listening to, whether it is jazz, rock, country, classical, Chinese opera, Northeast Thai khaen, Tuvan throat singing, whatever. I discovered the existence of Kenny G at a pirate audio tape stand in Thailand about 20 years ago. I asked if he had any jazz saxophone and he offered me Kenny G. I said I never heard of him. He said he was very popular.

When I finally played it, I realized this was my punishment for buying pirate tapes. This is not jazz, was my thought, it's barely elevator music. Look, I'm not putting down people who like Kenny G. They probably have a much more developed understanding of things I know nothing about. Kenny G is easy listening jazz and maybe he's caused fans to listen to more serious jazz.

But he just isn't for me. It would be like doing a crossword puzzle aimed at a ten year old. It isn't challenging to the point of being boring. But I couldn't have told you why.

The other day Kenny G came up in a conversation, and Peter asked if I'd seen Pat Metheny's take on Kenny G. I hadn't and so today I finally googled it. Let me also say that the moment I first heard Pat Metheny in the old Visual Art Center of Alaska, I knew I had to get the tape - it was As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls. Metheny is a genius. (Below courtesy of quesapa:



Or this longer excerpt from sitiofandotcom on YouTube)







I don't completely understand all the musical terms, but the way Metheny explains it, there are actual technical and competency issues that make Kenny G a lesser musician than a lot of well known - but less popular - saxophonists.

I first heard him a number of years ago playing as a sideman with Jeff Lorber when they opened a concert for my band. My impression was that he was someone who had spent a fair amount of time listening to the more pop oriented sax players of that time, like Grover Washington or David Sanborn, but was not really an advanced player, even in that style. He had major rhythmic problems and his harmonic and melodic vocabulary was extremely limited, mostly to pentatonic based and blues-lick derived patterns, and he basically exhibited only a rudimentary understanding of how to function as a professional soloist in an ensemble - Lorber was basically playing him off the bandstand in terms of actual music.

Metheny also explains why G appeals to audiences.

But he did show a knack for connecting to the basest impulses of the large crowd by deploying his two or three most effective licks (holding long notes and playing fast runs - never mind that there were lots of harmonic clams in them) at the key moments to elicit a powerful crowd reaction (over and over again). The other main thing I noticed was that he also, as he does to this day, played horribly out of tune - consistently sharp.

He also says that he doesn't begrudge Kenny G his success, though it is difficult seeing much more talented saxophonists barely making it while G reaps in the profits. For Metheny, it was G's taping over an old Louis Armstrong song that pushed him to publicly rant about this.

Why am I putting this up here? It fits nicely into the theme of this blog - how we know what we know. Sometimes people can have a sense of something - in this case that Kenny G just didn't cut it in comparison to other well known (and even lesser known) jazz saxophonists - but we don't have enough technical knowledge to explain why. It's nice to get your gut feeling supported and explained by an expert.

But there are plenty of times when my gut is wrong. And a major problem in the US today is that a lot of people rely way too much on their feelings, take the word of celebrities (as opposed to experts) who tell them they're right, and conclude that global climate change is not an issue and that President Obama is a socialist who wants to indoctrinate their children. So I'm posting this here, knowing at least one knowledgeable musician is likely to read this and if Pat Metheny is a false prophet here, Phil will let me know.

Sunday Walk in the Woods - Campbell Airstrip

We went to Campbell Airstrip yesterday for a walk because it's close and it's flat. This is my favorite cross country ski trail. You can see what it looks like in winter.

Lots of people and their friends were out today.

No sooner were the horses almost out of sight
and the bikers came by.

While today it was in the high 60s F (@20C) there have been
some cool nights and some plants are already hinting at fall

Can anyone tell what these are?

Rose hips have lots of vitamin C. And I love picking them and eating them along the way. It's an acquired taste, but this time of year when they are soft and almost sweet they are great. So how much vitamin C do you think they have per 100/mg? The chart below from naturalhub.com shows the amount of vitamin C/100 g of some other fruits. (The column that shows green kiwi has 98 mg/100 g.)

Kiwifruit, green	Actinidia deliciosa	98	74	exceptional
Kiwifruit, yellow	Actinidia chinensis	120 to 180	108 to 162	exceptional
Lemon juice	Citrus limon	46	3*	-
Lime juice	Citrus aurantifolia	29	1*	-

Orange	Citrus sinensis	53	70	excellent
Papaya	Carica papaya	62	47*	excellent
**Pawpaw/Asimina	Asimina triloba	14	28(estim)	good†
Passionfruit, purple	Passiflora edulis	30	5	-
Peach	Prunus persica	7	6	-

The answer is at the bottom of the post.

Most of the devil's club was still green.
This one is a little ahead of things.

Some of the dogwood (no, not the tree) is still green.

Finding a good patch of dogwood to photograph

allowed me to see this seven legged spider.

And some dogwood is already red.

While I stop to take pictures, J goes on ahead. Why was I not
surprised to see her waiting for me in a sunny spot?

A great young boleta.

Even a fly fisher in the creek as we went over the bridge.

And this is Blake from Glenallen.
He works for the BLM there, but is going to UAA,
so he was doing their survey of people using BLM land.

Here's the rosehip vitamin C answer. Compare the third column numbers here with those in the table above. For Alaskans, they are out in the woods waiting to be picked and eaten now, or stored away for winter.

Rosehip	Rosa pomifera cv.'Karpatia'	1,500	45(estim.)	excellent	[5]
Rosehip	Rosa sp. cv.'Pi Ro 3'	1,150	34(estim.)	very good	[5]
Rosehip	Rosa sp. cv.'Vitaminnyj-VNIVI'	2,000 to 2,500	60 to 75(estim.)	excellent

5. These are three different types of roses. Full citation at naturalhub.com.

Wahoo Kenny, I've got your speedometer

I figured you weren't likely to come back looking for it, and if you did, you weren't likely to find it. So I took it in hopes Google might help. Not really. Maybe I should try Yahoo. Anyway, I've got it. Go into my profile and email me.

More Fun Guests

A friend of a friend and her sister arrived last night. This is their first trip to Alaska and they planned something a little different from most first trips. They're headed off to the ferry to Valdez from Whittier today. Then to McCarthy in Wrangle-St. Elias National Park where they will spend most of the time before driving back to Anchorage. Since the road to McCarthy is notorious for causing flat tires, they couldn't rent a car from a 'normal' car rental place and had found High Country which was the first stop from the airport.




The huge full moon had just come up as we rode the rest of the way home in two cars.







I woke up 'early' to find that J had gotten up even earlier and made a nice breakfast for our guests. I told them I needed this picture in case they didn't show up on time and I had to show the police their picture. Fortunately, their sense of humor was as warped as mine. Or maybe they were just being polite guests.


Well, the moon seemed that big. Would you believe. . .

Zaki's Short-Tailed Albatross Picture

Dennis Zaki of the Alaska Report was out on a halibut fishing boat this last week out of Kodiak taking lots of pictures and videos, including this picture of a young short-tailed Albatross. My Guide to the Birds of Alaska by Robert H. Armstrong says:

Immature: Chocolate brown body and wings, conspicuous pink bill and feet. Intermediate plumages between brown juveniles and full adults can be confusing; however these subadults retain a blackish hoodlike area on the top of their head and develop white on their upperwings rather early.

Habitat. Mostly offshore marine waters. On Endangered Species List.

They were 125 miles out of Kodiak when he got this shot. Not an easy bird to see. Thanks Dennis.

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Should I even look? OK, after I wrote that I went and looked. Here's the part that makes me a poor choice. Aside from the fact that I have no idea what a reasonable asking price is.

"You'll receive MUCH MORE Paid Reviews Offers if you choose YES." Of course, because there are a lot of people who don't want readers to know that they are being hustled by the blogger. Well, I promise that won't happen here.

Senungetuk Exhibit and Adding to Alaskan Blog List

We went to Modern Dwellers for the opening of Catherine and Joe Senungetuks show. My camera battery was dead, so these are from the cards that were given out. But the show was water colors, some collage, and ink. Birds. Actually, there were some bigger pieces too that were, Catherine help me, oil?

I think they're magical, but go see for yourself. This chocolate shop - Modern Dweller - is in the new strip mall on the NW corner of Old Seward and 36th.

Peter Dunlap-Shohl was there too. I'd gotten a bit of video of him talking about his animated film at the Anchorage International Film Festival last December. (He shows up about minute 7 on the video.) He has a blog about Parkinsons which is quite good. And a second blog of political cartoons. (Peter was a cartoonist with the ADN for 25 years.) I've linked both in amongst the Alaska blogs.

I also added Henkimaa and OMFGAlaska, both of which I find to be thoughtful blogs that look at their topics in depth and with knowledge. The Alaska Blog box only shows the ten blogs with the most recent posts. So the blogs on there will change as some get replaced by more recent posts. [Update, September 6: I forgot. I also added Alaskan Librarian.]

Update: September 5, 2009 - Since my camera battery was dead, I took some pictures with Joe's camera and he sent some today. Here are a couple:

When Did You Go to Your Last Community Council Meeting?

It's been a while for us, but J suggested that we go tonight and I was reminded of this relatively unique feature of the Anchorage Charter. All, or almost all, neighborhoods, as I understand it, are part of a community council. This is where neighborhood issues are addressed. Zoning changes, liquor licenses, new street lights, etc. need to be passed by the community council before coming into law. It doesn't mean the council has to approve, but their input needs to be part of the proposal. (I'm winging this from memory so assume this is a general accounting.)

In many cases, relatively few people go to CC meetings. Trouble in the area brings our more people. When the community council opposes something an assembly member wants, the assembly people have been known to downplay their significance by saying just a few people go to the meetings so they don't represent the neighborhood. But given the low turnouts for Assembly races, the same thing could be said for assembly members.

One of our assembly members - Elvi Gray (standing in the picture above right) - was there and talked about efforts to have public hearings before making his proposed budget cuts. She also talked about TBOP (Take Back Our Parks) a group set up by someone in our neighboring community council to address problems caused by homeless camps in park areas. It was making me realize how out of touch I've been just reading the ADN. There is also going to be a traffic light finally put in at McInnis and 36th. Something I'm not excited about. It appears that the light cycle for people on McInnis will be longer than they generally have to wait now and traffic on 36th will have one more light to deal with.



Our state legislators both had staff members at the meeting. Noah Henson was there from Rep. Berta Gardner's office and Max was there from Sen. Ellis' office. They also talked about homeless issues. I learned there is a camp somewhere around Post and Reeve called Veterans Ridge and some people have lived there for years. Some sort of task force made up of people from the police and various other departments is looking at the possibility of an urban state campground sort of place where people could legally pay for their space that would be monitored for illegal behavior. The Clitheroe Treatment Center has been reopened at Pt. Woronzov. I think Max said that they've calculated that $4 million was spent for the top 100 inebriates in the city - with all the repeat offenses, etc. That averages $40,000 each. The methadone program is so full the only people who can get in are pregnant women. Do you think there are women who get pregnant so they can get treatment for their heroin addiction?

Our CC chair Sheli Dodson reported on her trip to NUSA - Neighborhood USA - an organization of neighborhood organizations like community councils. She clearly was excited about all she learned in Spokane - four people went from Anchorage - and brought back lots of brochures and ideas. Anchorage's attendance is important because the conference will be in Anchorage in 2011. A committee is forming to do all the planning and get community sponsors to help out.

You can see a map of Anchorage Community Councils and if you're not already on your local Community Council's mailing list you can get that done at their main page.

It's late and I've been reading up on things to do before installing Snow Leopard on my Macbook. I'm following advice which means I've been getting rid of unnecessary files and backing up the disk. It's taking way more time than I probably need to take, but I know having a bootable back up is a good idea anyway. So, don't count the typos in this. One of the coolest features in Snow Leopard - at least as described to me - is the ability to draw Chinese characters with your finger on the trackpad. It would be nice if they had Thai, but there are a lot more people who write Chinese, so they get it first. Plus Thai uses an alphabet, not characters, which are much more complicated on a keyboard.

More Book Stuff: Fugitive Pieces by Ann Michaels

Being in a book club forces me to actually finish a book once in a while. Generally I have half a dozen lying around that I'm part way through. So Monday I was at my second book club meeting to discuss Fugitive Pieces by Ann Michaels.

I hate to give book plots - a key pleasure of a book is discovering a new world without preconceptions. There should be different book reviews for before you read the book for after. The first should tell you enough for you to decide whether you want to read it or not. Ideally, you find a friend or reviewer whose taste is exactly like yours or who knows you so well that you can trust her recommendation. The second would explore what the book was about and how it was written.

This book is less about plot than about how it is told. While it tends to move from the past to the present, it doesn't do it linearly. Jakob is trying to maintain some memory of his murdered-by-the-Nazis-before-his-seven-year-old-eyes family, creating an identity, trying to understand the world. The past is always coming back into the present. His unlikely Greek archeologist rescuer teaches him what he knows - which is a lot. Over and over Jakob learns about memory, maintaining records, clues to the past, whether it is in geography, archeology, poetry, languages, music, weather. And the reader, like Jakob, gets masses of information in no obvious order that constantly builds into - if you are patient and diligent - the story of Jakob. There is a lot of poetic language (Michaels' earlier work is poetry), lots of details, startling images, and pithy statements about life.

I wanted, often, to stop and ponder the meaning of the words. But the urgency of a deadline pushed me along, thinking I might walk this path again and spend more time looking at the remarkable sights along the way. Here's a sampling below. I didn't start writing down notes til I was half way through when I realized I needed to keep some notes.


To be proved true, violence need only occur once. But good is proved true by repetition. (162)

In the afternoons I search Michaela for fugitive scents. Basil on her fingers, garlic transferred from fingers to a stray hair; sweat from her forehead to her forearm. Following a path of tarragon as if carried by long division from one column to another, I trace her day, coconut oil on her shoulders, high grass sticking to her sea-damp feet. (191)

There's no absence, if there remains even the memory of absence. Memory dies unless it's given a use. Or as Athos might have said, If one no longer has land but has the memory of land, then one can make a map. (193)

I know that the more one loves a man's words, the more one can assume he's put everything into his words that he couldn't put into his life. (206-7)

What is the true value of knowledge? That it makes our ignorance more precise. (210)

And while some are motivated by love (those who choose), most are motivated by fear (those who choose by not choosing.) (211)

The spirit is most evident at the point of extreme bodily humiliation. (214)

...history only goes into remission while it continues to grow in you until you're silted up and can't move. And you disappear into a piece of music, a chest of drawers, perhaps a hospital record or two, and you slip away, forsaken even by those who claimed to love you most. (243)

It's not a person's depth you must discover, but their ascent. Find their path from depth to ascent. (250)

A house, more than a diary, is the intimate glimpse. A house is life interrupted. (265)

Sometimes Michaels pushes the imagery a bit too far and I don't think she succeeded as a male narrator.

Google Search Hits and Misses July and August 2009

I started doing these search posts some time ago because I occasionally people used interesting search terms. Then I started paying attention to how well people were directed by Google. So last time round I created the little target images and after all that work I figure I'll keep using them.

From my small sample, it seems that the worst 'hits' are those where google finds all the right words, but they are in different posts, so in fact the searcher really doesn't get to something she was looking for. When you are searching you can tell this if the terms you are looking for are separated by . . . It seems to mean they're on the same blog, but in different posts. There are some examples below. Usually people want the words together. But if Google is going to keep doing this, the least they could do is retrieve all the posts they found words from.

It is nice to know that some people find exactly what they were looking for - some information that I've gathered together, particularly if no one else has it. What's really, really frustrating is when I have exactly what they are looking for, but Google sends them to something else. So here's a sampling of the last two months.

Bulls-eye

Thai word for elephant - Bingo. No, that's not the Thai word for elephant, but it's in the post this person got to about the Thai elephant conservation center. Both in English letters and Thai.


can you leave the senate to become a governor - This went to a post about Senator Murkowski running for the Governorship of Alaska.

what are mimes saying - Since they generally aren't saying anything (audible) this is an interesting question from someone from New Zealand. And, remarkably, he got to a post about mime Bill Bowers who did a performance piece where he talked about being a mime. So this looks like a pretty good fit.


lol in thai - another one right in the center of the target. It got to my post entitled, "lol in Thai." I'm sure there are a few people wondering what lol means in English. (Laughing Out Loud.) The Thai version is much better.

puffins murres in sealife center alaska - This one got to a post with pictures from the sealife center which has a picture of a puffin, of a murre, and even one with both a puffin and a murre.

how much does a director at conocophilips get paid - This query came from a Board of Trade and Industry server in London and got to a chart of top Conoco Philips salaries.

these were one of the most common sights in thailand buffalo replace by tracter - This person probably got exactly what he was looking for. A post about how Thai water buffalo had been replaced by tractors, with pictures of water buffaloes 40 years ago.

Close

meteor shower tonight what time singapore - Well, I had a post on meteor shower tonight and I had other posts that mentioned Singapore. But nothing that combined them. Also had people looking for the same thing in Malaysia.

obama amputates the invisible hand - hmmmm. My post didn't blame Obama, it was just Who cut off that invisible hand? I think my post didn't say what they wanted to hear. Good.

who left u.s. senate to become governor? I had the NPR’s political junkie show on Talk of the Nation in the background and they have a trivia question each week. That week’s question was about Kay Baily Hutchinson quitting the US Senate to run for governor of Texas against the sitting Republican governor. The question was "who was the last US Senator to quit to run for governor against an incumbent of the same party?" Well, my post on Frank Murkowski leaving the Senate to run for Governor didn’t quite answer that question for them. But when I looked to see where the query came from, it was from National Public Radio in Washington DC.

holier-than-thou types - Sometimes I find out that something happened or someone, somewhere said something because I get a rash of searches for the same term. On August 31 I got about ten from various parts of the country for this term, including one from the Naval Command Control & Ocean Surveillance Center in Virginia Beach. I'm not sure why they were all looking for this - I checked the Google search and found nothing that I could connect with this - so I'm not sure if they got exactly what they were looking for, but they did get to a post called Some Context on Holier Than Thou Types.


A Real Stretch

famous people born during solar eclipse - (from New Delhi) I don't think the post on famous people born in 1908 mentioned anyone born during a solar eclipse.


italy visitor center - This was an image search. I get a fair number of people searching images, but I don't usually get to see what search term they used. But I do get to see what picture they got. This person got to Singapore archive pages that has a zillion pictures from Singapore including one post with a picture of the Singapore Visitors Center. This was at least six or seven pages into the search so I guess when the person didn't find what he was looking for on Italy he was willing to look at Singapore. It is a cool picture.

dehydrated spice pills - as it turns out the post on dehydrated beer also contains the words "spice" and "pill."

beer out of cottonwood buds - got to my buds, which included a picture of cottonwood buds, but no beer.

bad feng shui 6 years gap in family ox and sheep - What was this one about? It came from the Philippines. What Do I Know? was #1 out of 868 google hits - my post on the difference between oxen and cows (this is the year of the ox) had every search term except '6' and 'family.'

Supreme Court adjustable microphone - This got to a post on a Karen hill tribe celebration to open a fire break in Northern Thailand. This post highlights the many things they made with bamboo, including an adjustable microphone stand. And then they got the word 'court' from a totally different post about the L.A. County Courthouse. This came up number 4 out of almost 3,000 hits. Note those three dots . . . that separate the different posts.

What Do I know?: Fire Break Ceremony Chiang Dao 3 - Bamboo
It's a fully adjustable microphone stand. There's a smaller piece of bamboo ... Lakers Celebration Traffic on Way to Court · Downtown LA and the County ...
www.whatdoino-steve.blogspot.com/.../fire-break-ceremony-chiang-dao-3-bamboo.html - Cached - Similar -

things for german people to do in idaho - Why not? This was from someone in Denver, who, maybe had German guests coming. The post this got to probably saved him a lot of trouble, it's the one that said that Idaho doesn't exist. It did mention Germany in the post and had stuff on philosophy too.



You Missed This One Google


Hindus in Anchorage - This got to a post called Anchorage as an Abusive Family which has the word Hindus in it. But there is also a post about the Hindu temple in Anchorage which would seem much more on point. This is the kind I mentioned above that are so frustrating.

how to grow tamarind seeds and photo - Another example of getting the searcher to the wrong post. They got to a post on tamarind trees with pictures, but I had a more recent one titled "Growing Tamarind Seeds" with a photo. I'm not sure I gave a lot of advice on how to grow tamarind seeds, but I can tell you from sad experience that once they're up, it helps to keep watering. I've got two now that I'm hoping will come back. I’ve added an update and link to the newer post. But too late for this visitor.

Facts about 1500 - This got to the post about my 1500th sitemeter hit. I'm sure that wasn't what the searcher was looking for. But it did stir me to do a new 'contest' to reward the 123,456th visitor.

black&wait sex - Probably not Google's fault. The searcher needs to spell better. My guess is they were looking for 'black and white.' Here's where a human is better than a machine. Here's the Google blurb the person found:

What Do I know?: Robert Lapage's The Blue Dragon in Berkeley
12 Jun 2009 ... We didn't have the stage simply go black and wait as actors moved ... Hunger - and three other movies · Sex in the Sun - Shameless Blog ...

These are totally different posts, so there was no black&wait sex anywhere in my blog.


repetitive beat ordinance - Not sure what they were looking for, but they got to a post that really had nothing to do with it, except it had the word ordinance. Here's what they found on Google.

What Do I know?: Anti-Sanctuary Ordinance Buried Indefinitely
As for my husband's anti-crime ordinance, what don't you understand? ... Personal insults, rambling tirades,repetitive comments will be blocked. ...
www.whatdoino-steve.blogspot.com/.../anti-sanctuary-ordinance-buried.html - Cached - Similar -


xray tech murders doctor east los angeles,ca - This was a Yahoo search, not Google. They got this blurb:

yahoo search What Do I know?
Ed Feo Partner, Milbank Tweed Hadley & McCloy, LLP, Los Angeles CA ... The xray tech said he couldn't interpret for me, but it was pretty clear the ...
whatdoino-steve.blogspot.com/?widgetType=BlogArchive&widgetId=BlogA... - 219k - Cached

The words "Los Angeles," and "xray tech" are on my blog, but not together on the pages they linked to.


what does the number 85 mean in a person's life - They got to a post about a sign at the Moose's Tooth. Searching the page there was no 85 at all. A few of the other words showed up in the right column of the blog, but not in the post. This looks like an absolute and total miss. I looked at the Google Search this person got and couldn’t even find What Do I Know? in the search results. So maybe it was a one time mistake on their part.




Does Google Have a Sense of Humor?


Not this time around. They even accused What Do I Know? of being a spam blog and threatened to shut it down. Is it because there's a recent post that talks about spam? Or as one commenter suggested, someone marked this blog as spam?