Radio Deluxe

We first heard John Pizzarelli several years ago on Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz, and we've been fans ever since. So I was surprised to learn about Pizzarelli's radio show, Radio Deluxe, when I read the interview in Jazz Times a couple months ago. Alas, no radio station in Chicago carries the show, but you can download episodes online.

Radio Deluxe is fantastic. Pizzarelli and his wife, Jessica Molaskey, host the two-hour show each week, and play whatever music they feel like playing. Huzzah! And the music they play is amazing. Plus there's a different theme every week. I love it!! I really have to wonder how they work out the licensing so they can post MP3s with all this great music. Hmm, maybe better not to ask too many questions.

So you can download the MP3 files from the web site, then import the files into iTunes, but what a pain. And the web site doesn't offer an RSS feed so you can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes and have it download and manage episodes automatically. Feh. So I wrote one myself.

While I didn't spend a whole lot of net time on it, it did take me these past couple months to make enough time to get it to work. I thought it would be a lot easier than it was. I expected to just write an XSL transformation and be done, but the page from the web site that claimed to be XHTML actually wasn't. Then I tried using Tidy to convert the source page to XHTML first, and that almost worked, but all the episode data ended up in a single CDATA section, inaccessible to XSL. I tried my hand at Groovy to transform the source page into an RSS feed, but I ran into issues with its XML capabilities. So I resorted to good old Java and DOM and some regular expressions, and that worked fine.

I tried to have iTunes read the RSS file from the hard drive, but it won't. Then I tried posting the file to Maria's web site, but her host doesn't allow RSS pages that refer to off-site content. That's a weird policy. I finally figured out that our ISP does allow some private web hosting, and that worked fine, after a call to tech support. Finally, iTunes was complaining that there weren't any playable episodes. Then I realized that, while the "enclosure" tag isn't required by the RSS 2.0 specification, it is required for iTunes to distinguish between audio content and other types of content (video, text, etc.). Once I added the "enclosure" tags, iTunes was happy, and so was I! Now I just run an Ant script to download the latest links from the Pizzarelli site, create the updated RSS page, and FTP it to our ISP. Yippee!

Heavy Rotation

Two groups have hit a resonant frequency in me and are in heavy rotation on the iPod this fall. The first is Four80East. Their 2007 release En Route is shameless ear candy, pure and simple. This is groovy, syrupy, down tempo/acid jazz for a new century, with plenty of beats, funky bass and Fender Rhodes. If you put Herb Alpert, Fourplay and St. Germain in a particle collider and smashed them all together at light speed, Four80East might come shooting out. Nothing here would have sounded out of place about ten years ago. There is meat on the bone, but very lean and in healthy portions. The goal here is the overall sound, and the production is top notch. “Been Too Long” and “Don’t Look Back” are especially groovy, and “Waterline” is sublime, with a three/two tension that I love. Only the vocals on “Closer” eclipse my schmalz tolerance and make the track unenjoyable for me.

The second group is Prefab Sprout. They represent all the best of late 80’s pop music – great melodies, lots of synthesizers, shimmery background vocals, crisp rhythm guitar, and a real live person playing drums. Prefab Sprout were certainly underappreciated in their time. I hadn’t heard of them at all until I stumbled across them by way of Ivy, who covered their song “Cruel” a couple years back. Playing Prefab Sprout’s Greatest Hits for the first time was like opening a time capsule. I was hooked on “Sound of Crying” and “All the World Loves Lovers” before I learned of Thomas Dolby’s involvement in the band. Then their appeal made even more sense – the arrangements and the gorgeous, permeating melancholy. Something about their sound is particularly appropriate for this time of year.

The Cold

I’m nearly two weeks into The Cold now. One thing that no one tells you about becoming a parent is that your children will bring home new and amazing forms of microscopic life. Martin had the cold first. Ella had it at nearly the same time but was most successful at fighting it off. In me it started as a cough and an inflamed throat, the kind that transforms my usually squeaky tenor into Barry White. I really enjoy sounding like Barry White, except that it means the worst is yet to come. I was occasionally feverish, but I never felt like a visit to the doctor would do any good. I was down all weekend before last, and stayed home from work until Wednesday of last week. On Wednesday, my boss heard my coughing and instructed me to return home, but I pressed on. Same on Thursday. Thursday night I relapsed and got no sleep at all. I stayed home Friday again, and rested all weekend, again. Needless to say, Maria is tired of The Cold. I am still coughing but it is tolerable.

One consolation is that I am nearly caught up with my reading. I read three magazines every month cover to cover: Wired, Scientific American, and Jazz Times. And I am perpetually behind in my reading. But this month I stand a chance of actually finishing the November editions before the end of November. I can’t remember the last time that happened.

Another benefit is that I have had a chance to learn about the Deutsche Bundesliga, the German soccer leagues. Thanks to Wikipedia, I now understand how teams move between the first and second leagues, and I finally understand the offsides rule in soccer. These things are important.