All posts by AMR

Friday Music Day: July 29, 2011

For the cost of your e-mail, SPIN magazine* will let you download an MP3 compilation with track-by-track coverage of Nirvana's Nevermind, which was released 20 years ago. (Oddly, it seems older than that to me.)

*which I haven't really read since Charles Aaron stopped writing his "Singles" column a dozen-plus years ago**
**Yes, I missed the Klosterman years.

The results vary widely, but two are worth the inconvenience of having to unsubscribe after you get the first unwanted e-mail, and a two more are interesting:

1. Meat Puppets "Smells Like Teen Spirit". Almost sounds like it could be a well-recorded acoustic demo. Curt sounds a lot like Kurt, or actually, I'm first realizing how much Kurt was sounding like Curt. If ever a story came out that Kurt had Curt co-write his songs for him, I could now totally believe it. "With the lights out, we're less dangerous... I feel stupid, and contagious": Totally Puppets lyrics.

2. Titus Andronicus "Breed". I've tried listening to TA before, and I just haven't been able to get into them at all. But this sounds great, the vox are all treble and aren't aping Kurt, yet still get some of the intent across.

3. Charles Bradley & the Menahan Street Band "Stay Away". James-Brown-type funk with some Summer-of-love distorted guitar for color. Reminds me of Sharon Jones' Janet Jackson cover, which made it sound like Janet was actually covering a long-lost classic. Only this "Stay Away" is clearly the cover.

4. EMA "Endless Nameless". This is the noisy hidden track. EMA does alright, but I think she could have done better on one of the actual songs than some of the other jokers did. And this just makes me miss Dave Grohl's drum thump at the end of the original, over which Kurt's guitar squealing staggers. It's here, but it doesn't feel like it should go on forever.

Not all of the other tracks are necessarily worthless, and I haven't listened to them that carefully. Some are really bad though, even worse than Tricky's cover with incorrect lyrics of "Something in the Way". A better list of contributors could have helped, but I really don't know where SPIN is right now or which bands who would have done well.

OK, that's not true. Bobby Bare Jr.*, Ha Ha Tonka, and Will Oldham definitely could. And I'd love to see what these folk could do: Frank Ocean, The Weeknd, Low, Rocky Votolato, Grinderman, The F--- Buttons (only for Endless, Nameless for them though).

*He did a fantastic cover "Ocean Size" from Jane's Addiction for a complilation.

Anyways, those are my thoughts for today. What's randomly running to your ears?

Whither Chuck James?

I've made no secret of my desire for Chuck James [to join the Twins for the rest of the season]. But in reading about him a bit, I'm starting to wonder if the Twins think much less of him.

Background: he is a former good starting pitcher for the Braves who needed shoulder surgery in 2008. After a year rehabbing, he was with the Nationals org last year, with a 2.32 ERA, .939 WHIP, 7.0K/9, and 1.5 BB/9 (albeit mostly in AA). According to a great article from Sloane Martin,

He was able to get back to the baseball shape and the pitching form he was accustomed to and was thankful for the Nationals’ patience and opportunity. But he chose to sign with the Twins because of their bullpen situation and the fact that the Nationals had so much young talent.

Basically, the Twins offseason revamping of the bullpen, combined with its lack of depth and young prospects in the bullpen, James was confident he’d be able to land a spot on the Major League roster.

Instead, James was sent to Rochester after spring break broke, with Perkins, Mijares, and Dusty Hughes as lefty relievers. He wasn't even added to the 40-man roster until Nathan's DL trip and the overall poor performance of the bullpen basically forced the team's hand.
Continue reading Whither Chuck James?

Friday Music Day: July 8, 2011

Long awaited, my summer 2011 mix:

Perfect for little ears
1. Adele "Set Fire to the Rain"
2. WU LYF "Dirt"
3. Shakira f. El Cata "Rabiosa"
4. Tristen "Baby Drugs"
5. Battles "Ice Cream"
6. Katy B "Louder"
7. Hooray For Earth "No Love"
8. Ha Ha Tonka "1928"
9. Jonti "Firework Spraying Moon"
10. Fleet Foxes "Helplessness Blues"
11. Buraka Som Sistema "Hangover (BaBaBa) (Radio Edit)"
12. JKR70 presents Clay Hughes "Love I Gave You"
13. Dionne Bromfield f. Lil Twist "Foolin'"
14. EMA "Milkman"
15. LMFAO f. Lauren Bennet and Goon Rock "Party Rock Anthem (Radio Edit)"
16. Thurston Moore "Benediction"
17. Zammuto "YAY"
18. My Morning Jacket "Holdin On To Black Metal"
19. Chris Brown f. Benny Benassi "Beautiful People"
20. Beyoncé "End Of Time"

Dirty Addendum
1. The Weeknd "Wicked Games"
2. Beyoncé "Countdown"
3. Rihanna "Man Down"
4. Nicki Minaj f. Ester Dean "Super Bass"
5. Vybz Kartel "Go Go Wine"
6. Frank Ocean "Novacane"
7. Shabazz Palaces "Swerve... The reeping of all that is worthwhile (Noir not withstanding)"

See if you can tell which ones I've got dedicated to Chuck James in my heart.

Cuddyer’s Teammates

I've been following and enjoying Michael Cuddyer's weekly web column for FSNorth. I often get behind and catch up on a few weeks' worth at once. Today, I read the two most recent columns, including this one from June 29th: "Teammate bonds stand test of time". In it, he remarks:

If I had to guess, I would say I have had more than 100 teammates since I began my major league career, and I have played for only one team!

Well, that's the kind of info that I can muscle my way through a bunch of data to find! Just a few hours on b-r.com!

In honor of Cuddy's All-Star selection, I present the following list of all 172 players that have been Michael Cuddyer's active-roster teammate on the Twins for at least one day.

Continue reading Cuddyer’s Teammates

Name Games
Justin Morneau 1003
Torii Hunter 993
Joe Mauer 862
Nick Punto 747
Jacque Jones 727
Jason Kubel 706
Cristian Guzman 554
Luis Rivas 549
Corey Koskie 542
Doug Mientkiewicz 514
Lew Ford 494

AMR’s Graphs: 6/29/2011

I don't think I'll make a regular series out of these, but I wanted to see how hard it would be to show games behind second place. Might as well share.

It appeared for most of 2006 that the Tigers and ChiSox were both going to the playoffs, the race was just for HFA. No teams from the other two divisions made a decent run at the Wild Card, so I'm basically thinking as second place in the ALC as a proxy for the WC-leading team.

The chart of games above second place shows that once the Twins started making their run, the Tigers held them off for a long time, but the ChiSox did not.
AL Central 2006: Games Behind Second Place
Continue reading AMR’s Graphs: 6/29/2011

AMR’s Graphs: 6/25/2011

I was putting some things off during the Twins game yesterday and the game wasn't enticing any more, I played with Excel and baseball-reference's CSV data table option. As I did this all during the game, it does not reflect the results of the games of that day. So, although it looks like the Twins are a game out of last place, they are now in last place, again (by percentage points behind the Royals).

I like to "look" at data, so this is my looking at it. I think of this stuff like I'm taking the progression of the season -- distilled into statistics -- and converting it into a graph that then informs my narrative.

———————————————

The style of the first table may be memorable from the WGOM 1.X: games above (below) .500 in the division, showing the development of the race over the season. The ordering of the teams, however, is not familiar.
AL Central 2011: Games Above .500 through 6-25
Continue reading AMR’s Graphs: 6/25/2011