My Grover Washington, Jr. collection February 1, 2012
Posted by Mike C. in Internet, Interviews, Jazz, Media, Music, News, Personal.1 comment so far
From Grover’s AllMusic bio page
I was first exposed to the late Grover Washington, Jr. in 1996, the year I began listening to what was then CD 101.9 (now FM News 101.9) here in New York. “Mister Magic” was the first song I heard. Then, there were “Take Five (Take Another Five)” and “Soulful Strut.” In the early 200s, Before I wised up and bought physical CDs or digital MP3s (through iTunes or Amazon), I downloaded two of those songs through a free file-sharing program.
When my aunt moved to South Florida in 2003, she gave me a Grover compilation album. I only listened to two songs on it: “Let It Flow (For Dr. J),” a tribute to Grover’s love of Julius Erving and the Philadelphia 76ers, and “East River Drive,” a tribute to the Manhattan parkway otherwise known as the FDR Drive.
A few years ago, with the help of my friend Matt Marron’s TWC Classics site, a tribute to The Weather Channel, I learned of many more Grover songs that were used in the Local Forecasts in the 1980s. They included “Winelight” and “Jet Stream.”
Finally, in December 2010, I took the big step and began my Grover Washington, Jr. collection of CDs. I bought:
- Winelight (1980)
- Come Morning (1981)
- The Best Is Yet To Come (1982)
- Inside Moves (1984)
- Time Out Of Mind (1989)
- Next Exit (1992)
- Soulful Strut (1996)
That was it until a few nights ago after reading an online interview with Bob James (h/t Fourplay website cross-post). Since I didn’t have Grover’s early albums in my collection yet, I didn’t think of this:
You were with CTI for a few years before your own project debuted. When did Creed Taylor interject and aid in the progression of things?
Well, I was working a lot with Creed at the time for CTI. But I was working primarily as an arranger and would play piano on other jazz artists’ records. After doing this for about two or three years, on a fairly stable basis, and being on the support staff for other artists like Grover Washington, finally Creed asked me if I wanted to do my own album. So of course I said yes. One ended up being my first [album] for CTI.
Bob appeared on Grover’s first five albums. Saturday night, I bought the last two of those five and a few after that:
- Mister Magic (1974)
- Feels So Good (1975) (Amazon MP3s)
- A Secret Place (1976) (Amazon MP3s)
- Reed Seed (1978)
- Paradise (1979)
- Strawberry Moon (1987)
Some of the early stuff is a little too fusion-y for me, but still great.
Grover Washington, Jr. died in December 1999 at the age of 56. His legacy lives on through his recordings, a generation of saxophonists inspired by him, and jazz fans like me.
LIU Post January 27, 2012
Posted by Mike C. in Commentary, Education, Internet, Personal.add a comment
The bus operator for Nassau County wasn’t the only thing to change on New Year’s Day. All campuses of Long Island University rebranded themselves, including C.W. Post. The C.W. was dropped and the university now goes by “LIU Post.”
The pre-rebrand press release has more:
…
On January 1, 2012, Long Island University—one of the largest and most comprehensive private universities in the nation—will rebrand itself as LIU. A bold and greatly simplified logo will be introduced. This effort represents a “double rebranding” for the University, because simultaneous with the launch, the names of LIU’s six campuses will receive shorter, more telegraphic designations, uniting them under the new LIU brand, making them more modern and memorable in a Facebook and Twitter world. For example: the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University will be referred to as LIU Post.
…
LIU Post is just another thing to get used to in 2012. Before long, it will roll off the tongue and the old habit of referring to “C.W. Post” will be broken.
2011 in review December 31, 2011
Posted by Mike C. in Commentary, Internet, Jazz, Media, Music, News, Personal, TV.add a comment
The following is a WordPress post for my blog, edited by me with editorials (like this one) in italics.
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 8,300 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 3 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
Click here to see the complete report (link removed).
Why did I remove the link? It drastically slowed down my browser (Firefox) and repeatedly crashed it. I’m finishing this post in Internet Explorer. Here’s the text I copied and pasted, saving in multiple drafts between crashes:
WordPress.com presents
The Mike Chimeri Blog
2011 in blogging
Happy New Year from WordPress.com!
To kick off the new year, we’d like to share with you data on your blog’s activity in 2011. You may start scrolling!
Crunchy numbers
The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 8,300 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 3 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
In 2011, there were 43 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 225 posts. There were 861 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 1gb. That’s about 2 pictures per day.
The busiest day of the year was August 21st with 236 views. The most popular post that day was Bolder & Fresher Tour at Westbury recap.
How did they find you?
The top referring sites in 2011 were:
Some visitors came searching, mostly for joyce cooling, empty stage, wwe headquarters, ken navarro, and steve scales.
What is people’s fascination with a picture of an empty Parsons Complex auditorium stage that I put in my 2008 Smooth Jazz for Scholars recap?
Where did they come from?
Most visitors came from The United States. Canada & Italy were not far behind.
Here are the stats I screencapped before Firefox crashed one time too many:
People also visited from other continents, but I can’t risk crashing my browser again to see their stats.
Who were they?
Your most commented on post in 2011 was Bolder & Fresher Tour at Westbury recap
These were your 5 most active commenters:
- 1 notitiae 1 comment Follow
- 2 smoothjazzdaily 1 comment Follow
- 3 Marc Gilman 1 comment
- 4 Grammie 1 comment
- 5 Bryon 1 comment
Perhaps you could follow their blog or send them a thank you note?
Thank you, even if you disagreed with me. And thank you, Johnny Dollar, for linking to the recap. It was the only one online. Not even Newsday wrote about the show.
Attractions in 2011
These are the posts that got the most views in 2011.
- 1 Bolder & Fresher Tour at Westbury recap 8 comments August 2011
- 2 SJFS recap 14 comments April 2008
- 3 John Tesh Tilles Center concert recap 9 comments July 2009
- 4 I want my FBN…and some other channels, too. 1 comment April 2008
- 5 RnR concert recap 3 comments June 2008
Some of your most popular posts were written before 2011. Your writing has staying power! Consider writing about those topics again.
I don’t know why that FBN post continues to get attention. Cablevision added it in November 2009.
As always, thank you very much for visiting. Happy 2012!
30,000 views! December 18, 2011
Posted by Mike C. in Internet, Personal.add a comment
Overnight, The Mike Chimeri Blog reached 30,000 views. It’s all because of you, the viewer. Thank you very much.
Snowtober in Wantagh October 30, 2011
Posted by Mike C. in Internet, News, Personal, Photography, Politics, TV, Weather.1 comment so far
What was billed as “Snowtober” was “Rain-and-snowtober” or “Wintry mix-tober” in Wantagh for much of yesterday and last night. Just to the north and west (within Nassau County), more wet snow fell. The precipitation changed to all wet snow after 11PM.
What fell at my house only stuck to the cars in the driveway and to parts of the grass. Any cold surface accumulated snow.
Since it was the first snow we had in seven months, I took out my camera and took a few pictures. The first three pics are from around noon:
The last two were taken at 11:30, nearly twelve hours later:
A bigger concern for me was the strong gusty winds. The National Weather Service issued a High Wind Warning for Nassau and Suffolk until 6:00 this morning. This was, after all, a Nor’easter. So between that and wet snow accumulating on tree limbs, I feared downed trees, limbs, and power lines. I simultaneously flashed back to the Nor’easter of March 2010 and Irene of nine weeks ago. But the worrying was for nothing. The winds died down early this morning and the power never went out. That’s not to say it didn’t go out elsewhere on Long Island, but it wasn’t on the scale of either storms I flashed back to. I wish I could say the same for people north and west of the Island.
11/3 UPDATE: Somehow, a link was made between this storm and climate change last night on NBC Nightly News:
BRIAN WILLIAMS, anchor: Everybody out East said the same thing about this freak snowstorm, “This kind of thing didn’t used to happen. This never happened before.” And while that is true, it may also be true that we’ll all have to start getting used to this kind of thing over the long haul.
I didn’t hear that. What I heard is what is noted later in Noel Sheppard’s NewsBusters post:
Yet October snows in the northeast though infrequent do occur. As AccuWeather reported Monday:
The last time that Central Park recorded measurable snow was on Oct. 21, 1952 when 0.5 of an inch fell. Prior to that, 0.8 of an inch fell on Oct. 30, 1925. [...]
A record snowfall of 6.0 inches was set at Bangor, Maine, on Sunday. This broke the old record of 5.0 inches set back in 1963.
The point being that it does snow in this region in October.
…
One can only imagine what kind of storms hit this region during the Little Ice Age of the 16th through 19th centuries. But since Williams and Thompson weren’t alive, and snowfall records began in 1869, weather events earlier than that seem unimportant.
This of course is common for climate alarmists, so we shouldn’t be the slightest bit surprised.
In their view, whatever is happening today couldn’t possibly have happened before records starting being kept, and therefore all weather events outside “the norm” are considered extreme and therefore proof of climate change.
You think those still without power in Connecticut, New Jersey, and other affected areas care about that? Of course not. They just want their power back.
12/30 UPDATE: This storm was the #2 tri-state area news story in WCBS 880′s countdown of the top 11 stories of 2011:
Nineteen inches of snow in October? Even WCBS 880′s cautious chief meteorologist Craig Allen couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
“There’s no way you can play this down based upon these weather maps. Almost everything is in agreement,” Allen reported.
And these flakes were falling on full foliage. All it took was a couple of inches of snow to start bringing branches down.
Hundred-year-old trees snapped like twigs. Mother Nature’s mischief night was the Halloween snowstorm of 2011.
Three million people lost electricity. …
You can read and listen to the rest here.
CJazzPlus with Mike Chimeri on WCWP October 22, 2011
Posted by Mike C. in Airchecks, Comedy, Internet, Jazz, Media, Music, News, Personal, Radio, TV.add a comment
UPDATE: Pictures from the WCWP 50th Anniversary Celebration
Early this morning at 1:00, CJazzPlus with Mike Chimeri aired on WCWP-FM. It’s part of the 50th anniversary of Homecoming Weekend which started last night at 7:00 and ends late tomorrow night.
I recorded my show a few weeks ago. And it’s a good thing I did because I’m coming off a cold and my voice isn’t quite at 100% yet. (I took my last of five antibiotics a half hour before writing this post.)
Below are the audio and video version of the aircheck recorded from the board a few weeks ago. The legal ID that played between hours of my show was recorded from the stream and added to the aircheck file. The video was recorded from my camcorder and mixed with the aircheck audio in Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum 10.0.
CJazzPlus with Mike Chimeri – 10/22/11 Aircheck
And this is the complete playlist with written notes (click to view larger):
The “separate page” was a scan of the liner notes for “Anything’s Possible” and “One for Shorty.” I originally credited everyone on those tracks, but had to edit them out for time.
This evening, I’ll be at the Top of the Commons at C.W. Post for the WCWP 50th Anniversary Celebration. I hope to have pictures for a later post.
10/23 UPDATE: Rather than upload pictures to the blog, I’ve made my Facebook album of pics from last night public. Click here to see them.
WCWP Homecoming Weekend Radio Show! October 1, 2011
Posted by Mike C. in Airchecks, Internet, Jazz, Media, Music, Personal, Radio.1 comment so far
I was back at WCWP (on the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University) yesterday afternoon to record a radio show – CJazzPlus with Mike Chimeri – that will air during the station’s 50th Anniversary Edition of Homecoming Weekend. You can hear it Saturday, October 22, from 1AM to 3AM Eastern; Friday, October 21, from 10PM to midnight Pacific. If you’re outside the signal range, head to the WCWP website and click on “88.1 WCWP” to hear the stream.
16 hours later, I’ll be at the 50th Anniversary Celebration dinner at the Top of the Commons. It should be an exciting event, as will the rest of the weekend. WCWP has been on the air for 50 years, and I’m glad to have contributed to one-fifth of that. Wednesday, October 5, marks the 10th anniversary of my first radio show – the maiden voyage (as I called it) of The Mike Chimeri Show.
Irene, Five Days in Freeport September 8, 2011
Posted by Mike C. in Comedy, DVD, Internet, Jazz, Media, Music, News, Personal, Photography, Radio, Technology, Travel, TV, Video, Video Games, Weather.3 comments
After 26 years of barely missing hurricanes, or at least direct hits, Long Island’s luck ran out last weekend.
On a Friday afternoon, September 27, 1985, Hurricane Gloria, a fast-moving Category 2, made landfall near Long Beach. 25 years and 11 months later, it was Irene’s turn. Though Hurricane Irene was barely a Category 1 when it made landfall on Coney Island last Sunday morning (immediately weakening to a tropical storm), it wasn’t moving as fast as Gloria and it came during high tide rather than low tide. The south shore of Long Island got pounded. Over 500,000 Long Island Power Authority (LIPA) customers, including myself, were without power at the height of the storm. Either giant limbs or uprooted trees fell on power lines or transformers caught fire. I lost power at 1:30 AM Sunday because of the latter. (Also, the sub-station in Plainedge that we were linked to was badly damaged.)
I prepared my bedroom for the worst by covering up some belongings, including CDs, and putting them on the floor:
I spent Saturday night and much of Sunday in the basement and on the main floor, only going to the top floor in the afternoon to take a [cold!] shower. While preparing my room on Saturday, I found a lucky rabbit’s foot. I kept it close by or in my shorts pocket.
I don’t know if the rabbit’s foot was the cause, but our house was spared. The only damage for us was smaller branches and twigs, and leaves falling around the house. I took these pictures Monday morning in the front and back yards under a partly-to-mostly sunny sky:
I put everything I had put on the floor back where they were before on Sunday night. This picture was also taken Monday morning:
More pics from Monday near my house:
I stayed home without power until Monday afternoon when a family friend in Freeport was nice enough to let me stay with them until power was restored at my house. Villages like Freeport that have their own utilities didn’t lose power for long. If only that were the case for LIPA customers. Some didn’t get it back until early this week. I got it back 3:30 PM Friday. The family friend was without FiOS (for reasons I won’t get into), so I was stuck with radio, wireless internet (on my laptop), and mobile web (on my cell phone). I also passed the time by going for walks, listening to music on my iPod, and playing video games. I hadn’t played Game Boy or Game Boy Advance games in ages until last week. I brought my camera on one of those walks and stopped by my late grandparents’ old house and Cow Meadow Park (swatting mosquitoes along the way):
Before getting to the old house and Cow Meadow, I saw a sad sight walking up the block where the friend lives. Curbs on both sides of the street had flood-damaged carpeting, couches, and appliances waiting to be picked up. I used to live in southwest Freeport. So, I know what it’s like to get flooding from the bay in the bottom floor of the house. I got that during the aforementioned Gloria, and Nor’easters in December 1992 and March 1993. Within months of those last two storms, I had moved to a part of Wantagh that’s a few miles inland.
Back at the friend’s house, she had the complete run of I Love Lucy on DVD. I got into that show years ago when it was on Nick at Nite. My love for it was rekindled. I watched the latter seasons while the friend had them on.
The ride home late Friday afternoon was great. I knew I’d be returning home to electricity and cable, albeit with an empty refrigerator. Before leaving, I thanked the family friend for putting up with me for five days. I returned the favor this Tuesday when I stayed at her house while she was at work to be present for a Cablevision technician to install their services–iO, Optimum Online, Optimum Voice–in place of Verizon’s–phone, FiOS internet, FiOS TV.
Three footnotes:
1. As I type this post, Hurricane Katia is about to turn northeast and move away from the U.S. East Coast. Good.
2. There were plenty of columns and blog posts in Irene’s aftermath that downplayed the storm and/or reprimanding the media for overhyping it. Many media did overhype it, but damage is damage. Downed trees are nothing compared to massive flo0ding, whether from storm surge or rivers overflowing from nonstop rain. Residents of New Jersey, Eastern New York State, and Vermont are among those that got the latter. And the remnants of Tropical Storm Lee in the last few days have only added to the flooding.
3. I stumbled upon a blog post that offers the Washington, D.C. area perspective. It’s written by freelance writer Kristine Meldrum Denholm: How I’ve dodged the demise of the east coast, part II: Goodnight, Irene. There was minimal damage in her neighborhood and she never lost power. Kristine is not alone. My neighbors two houses to the west of me never lost power, neither did my piano teacher in Freeport.
4. Yet another link: Fox News meteorologist Janice Dean summed up Irene at her blog last Monday.
9/27 UPDATE: It’s hard to believe that tomorrow will mark one month since Irene made landfall here. And as I noted at the top, Hurricane Gloria whizzed (compared to the slower Irene) through Long Island 26 years ago today. Since I wrote this post a few weeks ago, a few more Atlantic tropical cyclones have formed and none have directly impacted the U.S. (Knock on wood.) In checking the August archives at the website Johnny Dollar’s Place, I found an interview John Gibson did with Janice Dean on his Fox News Radio show. It took place on August 29, the day after landfall:
12/30 UPDATE: Irene was the #1 tri-state area news story in WCBS 880′s countdown of the top 11 stories of 2011:
… But Sunday morning, August 28, we knew the caution was called for.
Irene swept ashore in Brigantine, battered New Jersey, then crossed Coney Island at 9 a.m. on a path for New England.
Throughout its path, Irene caused widespread destruction, left millions without power and killed 56 people.
“We are now into day three of no electricity for hundreds of thousands of Long Islanders,” reported WCBS 880 Long Island Bureau Chief Mike Xirinachs. …
Even with all that Irene turned out not to have been a hurricane when it hit our area.
Okay, fine, it wasn’t a hurricane. It was Tropical Storm Irene. It might as well have been a category 1 hurricane because it moved slow enough to cause the same amount of damage.
You can read and listen to the rest here.
My thoughts on Super Bowl XLVI champion New York Giants February 19, 2012
Posted by Mike C. in Commentary, Football, Internet, Media, News, Personal, Radio, Sports, TV, Video.add a comment
(Starting with the Giants’ first win against the Cowboys, I link to highlights from Dial Global Sports‘ coverage of each win.)
Two weeks have passed since the New York Giants of the National Football League won Super Bowl XLVI at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. So, I thought I’d take this time to share my thoughts on their win and their season.
I became a Giants fan in the early ’90s, but didn’t make an effort to watch the games until the 1997 season. I was too young to appreciate the Giants’ Super Bowl championship seasons of ’86 and ’90 and only saw it through retrospective clips and documentaries. I thought 2000 would be the year I would see them win a Super Bowl, which was held in Tampa that year. My dad and I were in the area the week of Super Bowl XXXV. We saw some NFL and media personalities at the Innisbrook Resort, where my grandparents lived, and went to the NFL Experience outside of Raymond James Stadium two before the game. We watched the game back at Innisbrook, but it was very depressing. It left such a bad taste in my mouth I couldn’t watch highlights until after the 2007 season. Why? The Giants did the improbable, beating the undefeated New England Patriots to win Super Bowl XLII. I was finally old enough to see my Giants win a Super Bowl and appreciate it.
In the seasons after ’07, the Giants would get off to a hot start and then slack off in the second half. They symbolized that in one game, a collapse in a December 2010 game against the Eagles. It was devastating. They still could have made the playoffs by winning their last game of that season two weeks later, but the Packers had to lose. They didn’t, and Redskins fans made that known as they chanted for the Giants and visiting Giants’ fans: “Green Bay won! Green Bay won!” And the Pack went on to win Super Bowl XLV, but I was proud of them because they knocked out the Eagles in the Wild Card round.
The 2011 season started on a down note, a loss to the Redskins in the same venue where eight months earlier, the G-Men learned they had been eliminated from playoff contention. But then, three wins a row. After a loss to the Seahawks, they won three more. The first of those games, against the Bills, was a result I had to keep under wraps as the game was in progress. I was at the baptism (and post-baptism party) of a friend’s daughter and the brother-in-law was a Bills fan that DVR’d the game. The third of those games was a very satisfying win in New England against the Patriots. Unfortunately, past history repeated itself after that. The Giants lost four in a row to fall to 6-6. In the middle of that losing streak, I wrote the following status update on Facebook:
After the third loss in a row, a blowout loss to the Saints, I wrote:
Despite the losing streak, at 6-6, the Cowboys were not far behind at 7-5. The two teams played each other the following week at Cowboys Stadium. The Giants came from behind to win that game and led the NFC East on a tiebreaker. (Dial Global highlights.) But then they lost to the Redskins a second time, which led me to write this update:
The Giants’ next game, the second-to-last of the regular season, was a “road” game against the Jets at MetLife Stadium. The Giants usually beat the Jets in their regular season match-ups every four years, but I couldn’t see a Rex Ryan-coached Jets squad lose to the G-Men. So, thirteen hours before the game…
The opposite happened: the Giants trailed early, but stormed ahead and won 29-14. (Dial Global highlights.) The Eagles nearly shut out the Cowboys and won 20-7. The stage was set for a winner-take-all season finale between the Giants and the ‘Boys at MetLife Stadium. The result:
The Falcons blew out the Buccaneers in their last game of the regular season, so I expected the same against the Giants. Instead, it was a Giants win 24-2. An intentional grounding safety was the only Falcons score. (Dial Global highlights.)
There was no way the Giants could beat the 15-1 Packers at Lambeau Field, but they did 37-20. (Dial Global highlights.)
Then, history repeated itself again in the NFC Championship in these ways:
Joe Buck called this year’s NFC Championship for FOX TV. Before the game-winning kick by Tynes in overtime, Buck listed the snapper (Zak DeOssie), holder, and kicker. The kick was good. The Giants won 20-17 and were off to Super Bowl XLVI, a rematch with the Patriots. (Dial Global highlights.)
The next two weeks were tough because I feared a revenge-fueled blowout by the Pats, which came to me in a dream, sort of:
Four hours before Super Bowl XLVI:
I didn’t watch the game live until 9:30, when there were about four minutes left in regulation. (Dial Global highlights.) The Patriots led 17-15, but only for a few more minutes. Ahmad Bradshaw’s accidental touchdown put the Giants ahead 21-17. I breathed deeply and my extremities grew numb as I watched the Pats’ final drive. Then, at 9:53, seconds after Tom Brady’s incomplete Hail Mary pass, I swiveled my desk chair to the left and typed:
I was both relieved and excited. About $80 later, I was the proud owner (through online purchases) of the championship cap, locker room t-shirt, parade t-shirt, and DVD. There was also the matter the following day of getting the Monday newspapers, which I posed with in the guest bedroom:
Tuesday was the day of the Tickertape Parade along the Canyon of Heroes and the Victory Rally at MetLife Stadium:
The Super Bowl XLVI DVD doesn’t come out until March 6. I’ve watched the following to hold me over while I wait:
There you have it: the Giants’ 2011-12 championship season as I saw it. Thank you for reading. To paraphrase the team’s playoff catchphrase, I’m all out.