Chicago Expat

Are you kidding? It would be one thing to hold a big press conference and declare Sandusky a pederast, but I find it extremely hard to believe that there are no legal protections for those who bypass their institution's chain of command to report this kind of crime directly to the police. Paterno not only did nothing once it was clear the administration had decided to sweep the whole Sandusky thing under the rug, he appears to be saying Mike McQueary lied to the grand jury about what McQueary specifically told Paterno. Tell you what...when it's your turn to report on something like this you can usurp the chain of command and see what happens to you, OK? Oh and good luck with that law suit the accused will slap you with and the non-support from your boss, CPS and the police because YOU thought you didn't have to follow the legal procedure. I will unilaterally accept your wishes of good luck. Because if I ever see a child attacked or hear a first-hand account from a witness of a child being attacked like that, I will go to the police, not my "boss". I find it reprehensible that you would express an opinion that people who are victims of assault or witnesses to it should have something to fear by speaking to the police. So we're talking about the alleged eye witness now? That is a completly different thing than being a reporter of an allegation. I have seen children attacked in a physically damaging way and I have stepped in and stopped it myself. That is NOT the same thing as hearing an allegation then reporting it to one's superiors. Stay on topic, OK? I believe I was. If a grad assistant came to me and told me that he had witnessed a boy being attacked in the campus showers, my first call isn't to an athletic director, it's to the police. I drive that grad assistant over to the police station myself and have him tell investigators what he saw. I get the justice system involved before I concern myself with anything else. Period.

Are you kidding? It would be one thing to hold a big press conference and declare Sandusky a pederast, but I find it extremely hard to believe that there are no legal protections for those who bypass their institution's chain of command to report this kind of crime directly to the police. Paterno not only did nothing once it was clear the administration had decided to sweep the whole Sandusky thing under the rug, he appears to be saying Mike McQueary lied to the grand jury about what McQueary specifically told Paterno. Tell you what...when it's your turn to report on something like this you can usurp the chain of command and see what happens to you, OK? Oh and good luck with that law suit the accused will slap you with and the non-support from your boss, CPS and the police because YOU thought you didn't have to follow the legal procedure. I will unilaterally accept your wishes of good luck. Because if I ever see a child attacked or hear a first-hand account from a witness of a child being attacked like that, I will go to the police, not my "boss". I find it reprehensible that you would express an opinion that people who are victims of assault or witnesses to it should have something to fear by speaking to the police.

That's one I don't have. I'm gonna have to track one down, now. I know I shouldn't be, but I'm always amazed to discover what I don't own.

I was made particularly nauseous by Matt Millen's comments about Sandusky. Apparently Matt knows the guy, knows what he stands for, and wouldn't at all be surprised if all the charges amounted to nothing. That said, Matt continued, people do make mistakes... Mistakes. That's how Matt categorizes molesting and ruining the lives of children. To him, apparently it's just an understandable character flaw that occasionally comes to light. Shameful.

Storms/Nocturnes - "VIA" -Trio of Joe Locke (vibes), Geoffrey Keezer (piano), Tim Garland (sax). Beautiful moody jazz on the Origin label. Likely one of my top ten of the year.

Jim, please look into Kickstarter. My conversations with other musicians who have used it is very positive. Also, there is a group of us out there who are quite enthused about funding these types of projects. You should poke around the site and see the ingenuous offers that some musicians are using to tier the different funding levels, including some that include concert tickets to shows, allowing a funder to name a song on the album, names of other tier funders to appear in the album liner notes, personal concert for "gold member" funding. One musician I saw had a New-York-only funding tier of album download & album cd (autographed) & personal delivery of his own personal recipe banana bread. I'm not saying you have to cook for funders, just pointing out that your imagination is a valuable tool for crowd funding appeals. Good luck. Cheers.

Just disgusting. Not just the act, but also the imagery of a bunch of suits sitting around a campus office deciding the best way to "handle" it. How can a person hear this type of allegations from a first-hand report and not be compelled to shout it from the rooftops? The sheer hubris that some campus suits think they should substitute their authority for that of law enforcement's makes me sick to my gut.

LeDrew, thanks for hopping on board, especially for that bandcamp page. I think you may have been the one to turn me on to the bandcamp page a while back on a different forum. When my computer got its bookmarks cleaned out, I tried to remember all the spots I'd tagged to return, but that Destination: Out page was one I had forgotten about. Very glad to have been reintroduced to it. Putting that stuff up on bandcamp where we can stream it to decided before buying is just smart. I'm not a huge fan of the general sound many of those albums have, but I am always hopeful that if I give a certain musician/sound/album enough opportunities to meet my ear half way, that a connection will be made. I'm very excited to listen through the albums on that bandcamp page and try to find a couple to give a permanent home in my itunes library. Cheers.

I know it makes dial-hopping on road trips big and small a lot less fun than it used to be. It's pretty much to the "why bother" point now, although very occasionally you'll go through some samll town that still has their own music programming...you can tell it right away too, by the song selection itself and/or the sequencing. But those finds are few and far between these days. Pity. Dial-hopping while driving used to be fun. I hadn't really thought about that for some time. Back when I drove all kinds of road trips, I'd always skip the interstate, stick to hiways and backroads... the sheer joy of listening to local radio programming as I drove through some small town, that's something I'll always treasure. I've heard bluegrass bands I'll never be able to put name to, Sunday sermons that I never would've listened to at home and found quaint all the heated talk of sin and apocalypse, news reports on local municipal laws and fishing weather, and the occasional gem of blues or jazz. A tiny pastiche of life in towns I'd never live in. Not concisely relevant to the matter at hand, but damn your post sent me off on a nostalgic road trip. Cheers.

Why is there this continued mantra of "cutting costs"? Clear Channel themselves say it's not a cost-cutting measure. Their focus seems to be on the non-localization of radio programming. That is, IMO, a detriment to communities. The homogenization of the news industry as large national corporations eat up small localized news organizations has been to the detriment of those communities, as well as to the overall quality of news reporting. Having the news reported from just a small handful of "voices" on the national level has seen the quality of news go into the crapper overall. Radio programming doesn't rise to the level of importance as the news, but I can easily understand the worry and lamenting of those who don't like Clear Channel's move. And besides, if the company is so badly in debt, why should we trust that their actions firing people are any wiser than the ones they made to get into debt in the first place. Why would anybody extend to them the benefit of the doubt? Cheers.

Huge Anzic drop on emusic two weeks ago. Which means you can now get a bunch of Anat Cohen, Yuval Cohen, Third World Love, Avishai Cohen, etc etc etc. Some strong music on that label. Of course, they also have a Bandcamp page where you can stream the album in its entirety before deciding to purchase. In some cases, it's cheaper to buy it on Bandcamp, plus you get a choice of file formats there too. Some albums released last Tuesday that I really like... 1982 - "Pintura" ECM musicians make an album of chamber jazz folk music. A pretty album. Listen to track from album on Soundcloud. (Sorry, best image I could find) Chelo Segui - "From Now On" On his site, Chelo talks about composing an album of new tango with Argentinean rhythms. Cool album. Listen on his myspace page. The Four Bags - "Forth" Sort of like something you'd hear on the Clean Feed label, but odder and prettier. Maybe for fans of stuff on the Clean Feed label. Listen to the whole album on Bandcamp page.

If the Past is taking longer to grow on me than his last album, Plainville (which I absolutely love). If the Past seems to have more of an edge to it, which works to the album's advantage and disadvantage both at times. This came out a few months ago, but I'm just now getting around to listening to it in full: Jacob Karlzon 3 - "The Big Picture" -For fans of E.S.T. There have been some strong modern piano trio albums released this year, and this is no exception. Henry Franklin - "The Soul of the World" -Straight-ahead jazz goodness. I've really been enjoying this new release from the Paul Fox Collective... Paul Fox Collective - "Submerging & Emerging" Very much in the vein of Brian Blade's style of nu-jazz. Really bright piano, a warm sound, but much of the eerie melodies associated with this style. Here's his myspace, which has some music on it... http://www.myspace.com/foxpaulmusic Andy Sugg - The John Coltrane Project: Andy Sugg Plays Trane Sugg achieves a multifaceted sound here, sorta like Andy Sugg covering Alice Coltrane covering John Coltrane. It's really pretty damn cool. Whereas I often tire of "cover albums", I'm very glad I looked into this one. Not typical at all. And this one I haven't yet purchased, but I really like the sample tracks Jeff has on his site. Jeff Gauthier's Goatette - Open Source You can listen to some full tracks on Jeff's site... http://jeffgauthier.com/ It sounds great. I kind've liked his previous stuff, but Open Source is totally floating my boat right now. Just brilliant. I love hearing a musician develop into fantastic and grand sounds. Fans of the Clean Feed label sound should definitely give this a listen.

This has come up on the emusic forum. Apparently this is a label problem, because the same problem is being reported on downloads of the same album from itunes and amazon. As others here can probably attest, people who own the physical album don't encounter the sound issue. Don't know if there's any headway being made on refunds or fixing it. I recommend emailing emusic customer service and requesting a refund due to sound problems. They're usually pretty good about that. Cheers.

The problem is that the Bears two glaring weaknesses last season were on the O-line and the receiving corps, and basically did nothing substantive in the offseason to address those issues. It's nice they drafted Carimi, and I support that decision, but that's the kind of thing you do when you're rebuilding or want to bribe your all-pro quarterback into re-signing with a new contract, but a weak o-line needs to add some decent veterans to improve; the Bears got rid of their best vet... Kreutz. And then the receiving corp... well, adding Roy Williams as your #1 receiver is pretty damning indictment of the current Bears receivers. I don't mind the risk taking him, but the risk shouldn't be contingent on Roy being the best answer for last season's problems. Basically, the Bears have a bunch of decent slot receivers (small and quick), and now they've added an underachieving Williams as the solution to their size problem. That's a huge risk, which Cutler is paying the price for. Cutler is pretty much screwed. He has a receiving corp who can't consistently run solid routes and get open and help him out in a tight pinch, and he doesn't have an O-line which can buy him time to wait for his receivers to get open, and he works in an offensive system that doesn't allow him to audible. Cutler is basically powerless to change the plays at the line to counteract the defensive strategy aimed at taking advantage of the Bears weak O-line and receivers. Man, it would be a shame to waste the first legit QB we've had since, I dunno, Erik Kramer? Guh. Hurts just thinking on past Bears QBs.

Hm, down here in the south, we actually spell it with a 'y', but it's pronounced the same way. We usually sprinkle cheese over it, maybe a handful of salt. At some of our finer dining establishments, they'll sprinkle some white gravy over the brown, but you gotta order that special like.