#Speed Ratliff
Explore tagged Tumblr posts
Photo
Speed Ratliff as the Boom Operator for SAW (2004)
#a serve tbh#Speed Ratliff#SAW#movies#horror#cinema#films#behind the scenes#bts#boom operator#sound department#gear#equipment#sound#tech#electronics#u
13K notes
·
View notes
Text
https://discussingfilm.net/2024/11/01/boom-mic-speed-ratliff-saw-interview/
37 notes
·
View notes
Text
ok no one is gonna care about this but I decided to look at Speed Ratliff's imdb (the boom operator from Saw 2004 who was pictured wearing a crop top and denim shorts) just to see if he's still working and he is!! which is awesome. But then I also noticed that on top of doing the first Saw film he's also worked on Alien Code (2018) and Just Before I Go (2014), both films with Kyle Gallner and now that knowledge will be living in my head forever.
26 notes
·
View notes
Text
6 notes
·
View notes
Text
SPEED SPEAKS:
why was the saw boom mic guy serving cunt
44K notes
·
View notes
Text
What to listen for
Music writer and educator Ben Ratliff (Every Song Ever: Twenty Ways to Listen to Music Now, 2016) thinks there is a better way to think about music than genre, structure, and language. He suggests we listen for repetition, speed, quiet/silence/intimacy, virtuosity, sadness, audio space, density, improvisation, closeness, loudness, and other features – because they are features of our life of…
0 notes
Note
motherfucker saw speed ratliff ass and instantly followed back respect
erm guilty!😹
LMFAOO yeah😞😞 i saw that you followed me and I was like holy shit new saw mut?
1 note
·
View note
Text
Speed Ratliff on the set of Saw (2004)
73 notes
·
View notes
Text
I've eaten it before when not too strong
I've eaten it before when not too strong and not gotten sick, but I usually just dump it and take the receipt back to get my money returned.. The questions are fair: These residents of Broadway Place saw their lives changed on the merits of being in the right place at the right time.. He should not have Kalmring half of their shared assets.. Police at the time said charges would not be filed against the woman who allegedly stabbed Allgood, because it was in self defense. Don't be shy and feel free to say hello if you see her around! You may see her running outside (when it's above 30 degrees), drinking coffee somewhere, enjoying the sunshine when it's out, or trying something new to eat. University of Houston is the leading institution. Vets felt they were meeting with limited success because vets and farmers may be emphasising different framings of biosecurity. Where is the NZ voice in this? Is our water supply so infinite that ONE bottling plant can take 70 million litres every day? It is winter and we already have a water shortage. The way to build loyalty is to employ the data you collect in a coherent way. And Vielva, P. These plans outline what to do when someone with T1 has low blood glucose (hypo) or high blood glucose (hyper), when to test their blood glucose and how to support the child to do PE at school. (If you fulfilled the requirement to drink four cups of wine, best to drink a cup of water on the way to bed.) You're going to need it. Haywood's hiring by athletic director Steve Pederson was greeted unenthusiastically by fans, boosters, alumni and students who questioned why a school with annual Top 25 aspirations hired him away from mid major Miami (Ohio). I saw many Australians and other foreigners skiing and snowboarding. After obtaining his British citizenship, Johnson won a bronze medal with the Great Britain national team at the 2009 Division 1 World Championships. After returning to the car, she "suddenly turned back to us, [and] she had a gun." As she trained the gun on him, Richardson tied his hands behind his back and forced him out of the car. Mergansers, five per day with no more than two hooded merganser. In the present work, a thermodynamically based constitutive model is proposed to capture the rate sensitivity, the stress relaxation and the accelerated cyclic softening observed during cyclic deformation of a P91 steel at an elevated temperature (600C). Less than 100 notes of a single bill denomination should be strapped and marked with the unit count and dollar amount. And despite that unwieldy title (the pilot episode was called The Secret Life of 4 Year Olds, but for the series the age range was extended because children make huge leaps in understanding and awareness between four and six) the result is appointment television. There may be an element of coincidence in all this, but, I think, in a more profound sense, we have the coming together, or the beginning of the coming together, of a number of social and cultural processes. But Wade stopped short of admitting his side had turned a corner after declaring they weren't good enough to win the competition four weeks ago. Mutombo does make up for Ratliff's absence though. While we occasionally listen in on chat groups, coach outlet clearance or look at the posting in our discussion coach outlet online groups or on our bulletin boards, we take no responsibility and assume no liability for the content of those locations or for any mistakes, defamation, libel, slander, omissions, falsehoods, obscenity, pornography, or profanity you might encounter when you visit such places on our site. When I lived in the Midwest I found the people to be the most difficult to understand. I hope we get to see him again in a major fight soon, because he earned better than to lose a tough fight and that disappear while Oba Carr suddenly becomes popular.. And the sauce a little tangier than I remembered. Just pitch execution and trusting your gut and trusting your instincts and trusting your catcher and executing the pitch. "Every time we've done a beach clean and this is our seventh time we collect more rubbish," he said. The fibre from the leaf stalks of abac is both strong and fine, in fact just what you want for tea bags and other specialised paper products such as filter paper and banknotes.. Instead, he removed the body to a farm in Fremont County, where it was kept for a time in a black tote bag in a stack of hay while he went to Thanksgiving dinner, Slater testified.. Detweiler and Winston were recently fired as basketball coaches at Phoenixville Area High School.. 2, the iconic Donald Ross course in the Carolina Sandhills. You can find quizzes with quirky facts, science and nature, or entertainment. Family and friends held a vigil Saturday for a barber killed in a shooting in Hawthorne as the search continued for his attacker, who also shot and wounded another person. And time is of the essence, since tsunami waves travel at speeds of up to 800kmh, depending on the depth of the water.. The Knights dominated the first half, opening the scoring through Tyler Harrison in the sixth minute, adding a second from Nick Naden and only denied more by the agility of Olympic keeper Jarrod Hill. The Post has previously documented claims from six people in addition to the five arrested in Australia who alleged that while Pastukhov was an editor at Vice he offered them money to carry suitcases to Australia.
1 note
·
View note
Text
Legend of mana missable events
#Legend of mana missable events series
Savestates can be exported/imported among other users as long as they are properly. Within the emulator, the PSP can be overclocked to either 222Mhz (Sony's default), 266Mhz, or 333mhz. Sound problems may occur from some of the speed hacks that might be in use.
#Legend of mana missable events series
Novels in the series include: Seiken Densetsu Legend of Mana - Amata no Tsuchi, Amata no Hito (2000): Written. Princess of Mana (2007): Five-volume work by Satsuki Yoshino, set 300 years after Children and 310 years after Dawn. Seiken Densetsu Legend of Mana (2000) Drawn by Shiro Amano, based on the game of the same name. SoE SRAM Document - Tons of addresses for stats, equipment, alchemy and even the checksum routine explained by John David Ratliff. Bugfix patches - Fixes some of Secret of Evermore's bugs. SoE 2 Player Addition - A hack that implements a two-player system in Secret of Evermore, similar to that used in Secret of Mana. While Secret of Evermore didn't quite measure up to Secret of Mana, the lack of 2. New graphics, special moves, modified bosses, and new map areas are just some of the features in this Super Metroid ROM hack. This ROM hack for Super Metroid adds a lot of new content to the original base game, while keeping the original map largely intact. The player also has access to a growing arsenal of spells with various effects. The protagonist has a stamina gauge: the more stamina he has, the more powerful his strike is. Secret of Mana is an action RPG, featuring real-time hack-and-slash style combat, in which up to two computer-controlled companions can accompany you. Grow demand and interest in your products or services.Differentiate you from other similar businesses.Ironically, the lack of a quality heir has benefited the publisher in one capacity. Secret of Mana continues to be the last great Mana game released outside Japan. Where can i park my food truck in atlanta Classic video game modifications, fan translations, homebrew, utilities, and learning resources.
0 notes
Text
Ahmad Jamal
Ahmad Jamal (born Frederick Russell Jones, July 2, 1930) is an American jazz pianist, composer, bandleader, and educator. For five decades, he has been one of the most successful small-group leaders in jazz.
Biography
Early life
Jamal was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He began playing piano at the age of three, when his uncle Lawrence challenged him to duplicate what he was doing on the piano. Jamal began formal piano training at the age of seven with Mary Cardwell Dawson, whom he describes as greatly influencing him. His Pittsburgh roots have remained an important part of his identity ("Pittsburgh meant everything to me and it still does," he said in 2001) and it was there that he was immersed in the influence of jazz artists such as Earl Hines, Billy Strayhorn, Mary Lou Williams, and Erroll Garner. Jamal also studied with pianist James Miller and began playing piano professionally at the age of fourteen, at which point he was recognized as a "coming great" by the pianist Art Tatum. When asked about his practice habits by a New York Times critic, Jamal commented that, "I used to practice and practice with the door open, hoping someone would come by and discover me. I was never the practitioner in the sense of twelve hours a day, but I always thought about music. I think about music all the time."
Beginnings and conversion to Islam
Jamal began touring with George Hudson's Orchestra after graduating from George Westinghouse High School in 1948. He joined another touring group known as The Four Strings, which soon disbanded when the violinist, Joe Kennedy. Jr., left. He moved to Chicago in 1950 (where he legally changed his name to Ahmad Jamal), and played on and off with local musicians such as saxophonists Von Freeman and Claude McLin, as well as performing solo at the Palm Tavern, occasionally joined by drummer Ike Day.
Born to Baptist parents in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Jamal did not discover Islam until his early 20s. While touring in Detroit (where there was a sizable Muslim community in the 1940s and 1950s), Jamal became interested in Islam and Islamic culture. He converted to Islam and changed his name to Ahmad Jamal in 1950. In an interview with The New York Times a few years later, Jamal said his decision to change his name stemmed from a desire to "re-establish my original name." Shortly after his conversion to Islam, Jamal explained to The New York Times that he "says Muslim prayers five times a day and arises in time to say his first prayers at 5 am. He says them in Arabic in keeping with the Muslim tradition."
He made his first sides in 1951 for the Okeh label with The Three Strings (which would later also be called the Ahmad Jamal Trio, although Jamal himself prefers not to use the term "trio"): the other members were guitarist Ray Crawford and a bassist, at different times Eddie Calhoun (1950–52), Richard Davis (1953–54), and Israel Crosby (from 1954). The Three Strings arranged an extended engagement at Chicago's Blue Note, but leapt to fame after performing at the Embers in New York City where John Hammond saw the band play and signed them to Okeh Records. Hammond, a record producer who discovered the talents and enhanced the fame of musicians like Benny Goodman, Billie Holiday, and Count Basie, also helped Jamal's trio attract critical acclaim. Jamal subsequently recorded for Parrot (1953–55) and Epic (1955) using the piano-guitar-bass lineup.
At the Pershing: But Not For Me
The trio's sound changed significantly when Crawford was replaced with drummer Vernel Fournier in 1957, and the group worked as the "House Trio" at Chicago's Pershing Hotel. The trio released the live album, Live at the Pershing: But Not For Me, which stayed on the Ten Best-selling charts for 108 weeks. Jamal's well known song "Poinciana" was first released on this album.
Perhaps Jamal's most famous recording and undoubtedly the one that brought him vast popularity in the late 1950s and into the 1960s jazz age, At the Pershing was recorded at the Pershing Hotel in Chicago in 1958. Jamal played the set with bassist Israel Crosby and drummer Vernel Fournier. The set list expressed a diverse collection of tunes, including "The Surrey with the Fringe On Top" from the musical Oklahoma! and Jamal's arrangement of the jazz standard "Poinciana". Jazz musicians and listeners alike found inspiration in the At the Pershing recording, and Jamal's trio was recognized as an integral new building block in the history of jazz. Evident were his unusually minimalist style and his extended vamps, according to reviewer John Morthland. "If you're looking for an argument that pleasurable mainstream art can assume radical status at the same time, Jamal is your guide," said The New York Times contributor Ben Ratliff in a review of the album.
After the recording of the best-selling album But Not For Me, Jamal's music grew in popularity throughout the 1950s, and he attracted media coverage for his investment decisions pertaining to his "rising fortune". In 1959, he took a tour of North Africa to explore investment options in Africa. Jamal, who was twenty-nine at the time, said he had a curiosity about the homeland of his ancestors, highly influenced by his conversion to the Muslim faith. He also said his religion had brought him peace of mind about his race, which accounted for his "growth in the field of music that has proved very lucrative for me." Upon his return to the U.S. after a tour of North Africa, the financial success of Live at the Pershing: But Not For Me allowed Jamal to open a restaurant and club called The Alhambra in Chicago. In 1962, The Three Strings disbanded and Jamal moved to New York City, where, at the age of 32, he took a three-year hiatus from his musical career.
Return to music and The Awakening
In 1964, Jamal resumed touring and recording, this time with the bassist Jamil Nasser and recorded a new album, Extensions, in 1965. Jamal and Nasser continued to play and record together from 1964 to 1972. He also joined forces with Fournier (again, but only for about a year) and drummer Frank Gant (1966–76), among others. Until 1970, he played acoustic piano exclusively. The final album on which he played acoustic piano in the regular sequence was The Awakening. In the 1970s, he played electric piano as well. It was rumored that the Rhodes piano was a gift from someone in Switzerland. He continued to play throughout the 1970s and 1980s, mostly in trios with piano, bass and drums, but he occasionally expanded the group to include guitar. One of his most long-standing gigs was as the band for the New Year's Eve celebrations at Blues Alley in Washington, D.C., from 1979 through the 1990s.
Later career
In 1986, Jamal sued critic Leonard Feather for using his former name in a publication.
Clint Eastwood featured two recordings from Jamal's But Not For Me album — "Music, Music, Music" and "Poinciana" — in the 1995 movie The Bridges of Madison County.
Now in his eighties, Ahmad Jamal has continued to make numerous tours and recordings. His most recently released albums are Saturday Morning (2013), and the CD/DVD release Ahmad Jamal Featuring Yusef Lateef Live at L'Olympia (2014).
Jamal is the main mentor of jazz piano virtuosa Hiromi Uehara, known as Hiromi.
Style and influence
Trained in both traditional jazz ("American classical music", as he prefers to call it) and European classical style, Ahmad Jamal has been praised as one of the greatest jazz innovators over his exceptionally long career. Following bebop greats like Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, Jamal entered the world of jazz at a time when speed and virtuosic improvisation were central to the success of jazz musicians as artists. Jamal, however, took steps in the direction of a new movement, later coined "cool jazz" – an effort to move jazz in the direction of popular music. He emphasized space and time in his musical compositions and interpretations instead of focusing on the blinding speed of bebop.
Because of this style, Jamal was "often dismissed by jazz writers as no more than a cocktail pianist, a player so given to fluff that his work shouldn't be considered seriously in any artistic sense". Stanley Crouch, author of Considering Genius, offers a very different reaction to Jamal's music, claiming that, like the highly influential Thelonious Monk, Jamal was a true innovator of the jazz tradition and is second in importance in the development of jazz after 1945 only to Parker. His unique musical style stemmed from many individual characteristics, including his use of orchestral effects and his ability to control the beat of songs. These stylistic choices resulted in a unique and new sound for the piano trio: "Through the use of space and changes of rhythm and tempo", writes Crouch, "Jamal invented a group sound that had all the surprise and dynamic variation of an imaginatively ordered big band." Jamal explored the texture of riffs, timbres, and phrases rather than the quantity or speed of notes in any given improvisation. Speaking about Jamal, A. B. Spellman of the National Endowment of the Arts said: "Nobody except Thelonious Monk used space better, and nobody ever applied the artistic device of tension and release better." These (at the time) unconventional techniques that Jamal gleaned from both traditional classical and contemporary jazz musicians helped pave the way for later jazz greats like Bill Evans, Herbie Hancock, and McCoy Tyner.
Though Jamal is often overlooked by jazz critics and historians, he is frequently credited with having a great influence on Miles Davis. Davis is quoted as saying that he was impressed by Jamal's rhythmic sense and his "concept of space, his lightness of touch, his understatement". Jamal characterizes what he thought Davis admired about his music as: "my discipline as opposed to my space." Jamal and Davis became friends in the 1950s, and Davis continued to support Jamal as a fellow musician, often playing versions of Jamal's own songs ("Ahmad's Blues", "New Rhumba") until he died in 1991.
Jamal, speaking about his own work says, "I like doing ballads. They're hard to play. It takes years of living, really, to read them properly." From an early age, Jamal developed an appreciation for the lyrics of the songs he learned: "I once heard Ben Webster playing his heart out on a ballad. All of a sudden he stopped. I asked him, 'Why did you stop, Ben?' He said, 'I forgot the lyrics.'" Jamal attributes the variety in his musical taste to the fact that he grew up in several eras: the big band era, the bebop years, and the electronic age. He says his style evolved from drawing on the techniques and music produced in these three eras. In 1985, Jamal agreed to do an interview and recording session with his fellow jazz pianist, Marian McPartland on her NPR show Piano Jazz. Jamal, who said he rarely plays "But Not For Me" due to its popularity since his 1958 recording, played an improvised version of the tune – though only after noting that he has moved on to making ninety percent of his repertoire his own compositions. He said that when he grew in popularity from the Live at the Pershing album, he was severely criticized afterwards for not playing any of his own compositions.
In more recent years, Jamal has embraced the electronic influences affecting the genre of jazz. He has also occasionally expanded his usual small ensemble of three to include a tenor saxophone (George Coleman) and a violin. A jazz fan interviewed by Down Beat magazine about Jamal in 2010 described his development as "more aggressive and improvisational these days. The word I used to use is avant garde; that might not be right. Whatever you call it, the way he plays is the essence of what jazz is."
Saxophonist Ted Nash, a longtime member of the Lincoln Center Orchestra, had the opportunity to play with Jamal in 2008 for Jazz at Lincoln Center. Nash described his experience with Jamal's style in an interview with Down Beat magazine: "The way he comped wasn't the generic way that lots of pianists play with chords in the middle of the keyboard, just filling things up. He gave lots of single line responses. He'd come back and throw things out at you, directly from what you played. It was really interesting because it made you stop, and allowed him to respond, and then you felt like playing something else – that's something I don't feel with a lot of piano players. It's really quite engaging. I guess that's another reason people focus in on him. He makes them hone in [sic]."
Bands and personnel
Jamal typically plays with a bassist and drummer: his current trio is with bassist Reginald Veal and drummer Herlin Riley. He has also performed with percussionist Manolo Badrena. Jamal has recorded with the voices of the Howard A. Roberts Chorale on The Bright, the Blue and the Beautiful and Cry Young; with vibraphonist Gary Burton on In Concert; with brass, reeds, and strings celebrating his hometown of Pittsburgh; with The Assai Quartet; and with saxophonist George Coleman on the album The Essence.
Awards and honors
1959: Entertainment Award, Pittsburgh Junior Chamber of Commerce
1980: Distinguished Service Award, City of Washington D.C., Anacostia Neighborhood Museum, Smithsonian Institution
1981: Nomination, Best R&B Instrumental Performance ("You're Welcome", "Stop on By"), NARAS
1986: Mellon Jazz Festival Salutes Ahmad Jamal, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
1987: Honorary Membership, Philippines Jazz Foundation
1994: American Jazz Masters award, National Endowment for the Arts
2001: Arts & Culture Recognition Award, National Coalition of 100 Black Women
2001: Kelly-Strayhorn Gallery of Stars, for Achievements as Pianist and Composer, East Liberty Quarter Chamber of Commerce
2003: American Jazz Hall of Fame, New Jersey Jazz Society
2003: Gold Medallion, Steinway & Sons 150 Years Celebration (1853–2003)
2007: Living Jazz Legend, Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
2007: Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, French government
2011: Down Beat Hall of Fame, 76th Readers Poll
2015: Honorary Doctorate of Music, The New England Conservatory
Discography
As leader
1951: Ahmad's Blues (Okeh)
1955: Ahmad Jamal Plays (Parrot) – also released as Chamber Music of the New Jazz (Argo)
1955: The Ahmad Jamal Trio (Epic)
1956: Count 'Em 88 (Argo)
1958: At the Pershing: But Not for Me (Argo)
1958: At the Pershing, Vol. 2 (Argo)
1958: Ahmad Jamal Trio Volume IV (Argo)
1958: Portfolio of Ahmad Jamal (Argo)
1959: The Piano Scene of Ahmad Jamal (Epic)
1959: Jamal at the Penthouse (Argo)
1960: Happy Moods (Argo)
1960: Listen to the Ahmad Jamal Quintet (Argo)
1961: All of You (Argo)
1961: Ahmad Jamal's Alhambra (Argo)
1962: Ahmad Jamal at the Blackhawk (Argo)
1962: Macanudo (Argo)
1963: Poinciana (Argo)
1964: Naked City Theme (Argo)
1965: The Roar of the Greasepaint (Argo)
1965: Extensions (Argo)
1966: Rhapsody (Cadet)
1966: Heat Wave (Cadet)
1967: Cry Young (Cadet)
1968: The Bright, the Blue and the Beautiful (Cadet)
1968: Tranquility (ABC)
1968: Ahmad Jamal at the Top: Poinciana Revisited (Impulse!)
1970: The Awakening (Impulse!)
1971: Freeflight (Impulse!)
1972: Outertimeinnerspace (Impulse!)
1973: Ahmad Jamal '73 (20th Century)
1974: Jamalca (20th Century)
1974: Jamal Plays Jamal (20th Century)
1975: Genetic Walk (20th Century)
1976: Steppin' Out with a Dream (20th Century)
1976: Recorded Live at Oil Can Harry's (Catalyst)
1978: One (20th Century)
1980: Intervals (20th Century)
1980: Live at Bubba's (Who's Who in Jazz)
1980: Night Song (Motown)
1981: In Concert (Personal Choice Records)
1982: American Classical Music (Shubra)
1985: Digital Works (Atlantic)
1985: Live at the Montreal Jazz Festival 1985 (Atlantic)
1986: Rossiter Road (Atlantic)
1987: Crystal (Atlantic)
1989: Pittsburgh (Atlantic)
1992: Live in Paris 1992 (Birdology)
1992: Chicago Revisited (Telarc)
1994: I Remember Duke, Hoagy & Strayhorn (Telarc)
1994: Ahmad Jamal with The Assai Quartet (Roesch)
1994: Ahmad Jamal at Home (Roesch)
1995: The Essence Part One (Birdology)
1995: Big Byrd: The Essence Part 2 (Birdology)
1996: Live in Paris 1996 (Birdology)
1997: Nature: The Essence Part Three (Birdology)
2000: Picture Perfect
2001: Ahmad Jamal à l'Olympia
2003: In Search of Momentum
2005: After Fajr
2008: It's Magic
2008: Poinciana – One Night Only
2009: A Quiet Time
2012: Blue Moon (Jazzbook)
2013: Saturday Morning (Jazzbook)
2014: Ahmad Jamal featuring Yusef Lateef, Live at L'Olympia. 2012 — 2 CDs/1 DVD (Jazzbook/Bose/Jazz Village)
2017: Marseille (Jazz Village)
Compilations
1967: Standard Eyes (Cadet)
1972: Inspiration (Cadet)
1974: Re-evaluations: The Impulse! Years (Impulse!)
1980: The Best of Ahmad Jamal (20th Century)
1998: Ahmad Jamal 1956–66 Recordings
1998: Cross Country Tour 1958–1961 (GRP/Chess)
2005: The Legendary Okeh & Epic Recordings (1951–1955) (Columbia Legacy)
2007: Complete Live at the Pershing Lounge 1958 (Gambit)
2007: Complete Live at the Spotlite Club 1958 (Gambit)
As sideman
With Ray Brown
Some of My Best Friends Are...The Piano Players (Telarc, 1994)
With Shirley Horn
May the Music Never End (Verve, 2003)
Wikipedia
17 notes
·
View notes
Text
Apervita, Diameter Health partner to boost clinical data quality, interoperability – FierceHealthcare
Apervita, a growth-stage healthcare collaboration startup, and Diameter Health, a provider of software for health information exchanges (HIEs), announced a partnership earlier this week that will speed up data quality measurement for value-based care.
Apervita’s collaboration platform will now incorporate Diameter’s clinical data optimization software to normalize health system data and improve data interoperability. Diameter offers automated, scalable technology to enable real-time transactions, better analytics and improved care outcomes. The alliance between Apervita and Diameter Health will boost the quality of data used to determine the amount of reimbursement in value-based contracts between providers and payers, according to the companies.
Those quality measures get submitted to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).
“[Diameter] gets all of the information in an organized structured fashion so that then we can execute the quality measures to provide feedback to health plans and providers on how the providers are performing against the quality measures,” Rick Ratliff, chief commercial officer at Apervita, told Fierce Healthcare.
RELATED: Software startup Apervita rolls out advanced encryption for health plan, provider data
There has been a push over the last several years to switch from a fee-for-service model to one in which providers get paid based on the value of care. Physicians with high-quality data measurements above a certain threshold could get paid more, Ratliff said.
“If for some reason the cost was much higher and the quality was not what was expected, they might actually get penalized,” Ratliff said.
A quality measurement could include whether a patient’s blood pressure is under control, noted Eric Rosow, CEO and co-founder of Diameter Health.
For a person with diabetes, the criteria could include measurement of blood sugar levels and whether a patient received an eye or foot exam, Ratliff said. If among 1,000 diabetes patients, 500 got a foot exam, the measurement would be 50% for the exam category, he said.
“That diagnosis is captured inside of the electronic medical record. Then you have to know did each one of these steps that were necessary to properly care for a patient with diabetes actually happen,” Ratliff explained. “Each one of those is a quality measure.”
A key challenge in healthcare is to address healthcare data that comes from different sources and formats and is often not compatible.
“There are four million clinicians entering data differently into more than 100 certified EHRs, which store data differently even in instances of the same EHR brand,” Rosow told Fierce Healthcare. “That means the digital data formats and code systems coming out of EHRs vary greatly.”
RELATED: The pandemic boosted interest in new payment models. This startup developed tools to help manage those complex contracts
Diameter is focused on standardizing the various types of clinical data.
“Diameter has some advanced capabilities to be able to pull that data in from a wide variety of resources, and then get it into a standard format on the other side,” Rosow said.
Healthcare organizations are also aiming for clean clinical data, which means codes or units of measure could be missing.
“Clean, normalized data is complete and syntactically correct so that computers and humans can ‘process’ them without extraordinary effort or rework,” Rosow said.
Apervita streamlines reimbursement and provides insight on clinical and claims data using a clinical quality language (CQL) cloud platform. The insights help boost clinical workflows and provide the information needed to form value-based contracts.
“The better the quality of care provided, the better the provider’s and payer’s financial results,” Rosow said. “Such agreements are important because they drive the need for improved quality, accurate measurement and clean data.”
In addition to data-quality efforts, Apervita has recently taken critical steps to secure health data. Last year, Apervita introduced an advanced encryption feature to protect health plan and provider data from data breaches. The technology scrambles data as it travels across the internet and only shows the information to a sender and recipient.
The partnership between Apervita and Diameter will lead to more effective healthcare software overall, according to Rosow.
“Better data quality improves the effectiveness of all healthcare applications,” Rosow said.
source https://wealthch.com/apervita-diameter-health-partner-to-boost-clinical-data-quality-interoperability-fiercehealthcare/
0 notes
Text
STRENGTH TRAINING FOR WEIGHT LOSS: FEEL FABULOUS IN 2019 PART 2
Strength Training for Weight Loss
Strength Training for Weight Loss | Shawn Phillips Personal Trainer Feel Fabulous in 2019: Learn how strength training for weight loss can speed up your metabolism and help to sculpt your body. Click here to read the part 2.
Welcome back to The Science of Fat Loss Hints, Tricks, and Tips: Part 2 learn how to benefit from strength training for weight loss speeds up your metabolism and helps to sculpt your body. Being a holistic personal trainer and nutritionist in Los Angeles for the past 17 years has given me some interesting and key insights into healthy eating and exercise. We will start by discussing how muscle mass, weight lifting, strength training and exercise play an integral part of your fitness program.
Muscle Mass and Metabolism
You can boost your metabolism by gaining muscle. When you increase your muscle mass, you boost your resting metabolism. A pound of muscle can burn anywhere from 10 to 50 extra calories per day - the range depends on activity level. Muscle tissues use more than half the energy we burn at rest. What's the best way to gain muscle? Strength training with weights and interval training are hands down the two best ways to increase metabolism and muscle mass.
Women, don't worry, you will not get big! This idea is one of the biggest myths that I come across. According to an article in the International Sports Sciences Association, "Women have about 15-20% less concentration of testosterone in their body than men do. Without that extra testosterone, ladies can't biologically build the big muscles like men." It's science so stop worrying. If a woman does appear to be looking bulky while following a strength training program, it has more to do with poor diet than lifting weights. What ends up happening is that performing any exercise program, this will increase overall appetite. If you are already eating poorly, due to an increase in appetite because of the exercise program, you could end up gaining weight due to an increase in hunger. However, if you couple strength training and a sound nutritional program, weight loss or fat loss will follow in addition to an increase in muscle. The most important point is that there is a synergy between healthy eating, strength training, stress management and good quality sleep - all of these points are equally important.
Simply put, strength training and weight loss go hand in hand and women and men should weight train to tone up! This always needs to be coupled with a good nutrition program. To learn more about nutrition, please see my free grocery list.
Also, interval training or very short high-intensity cardio workouts are also productive and are fantastic for body sculpting and toning up. More on interval training later.
A study published in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition in April 1999 showed how powerful strength training for weight loss could be when compared to long bouts of cardio training. The study observed two sets of groups; both sets were obese. One group was put on a cardio exercise program (running, biking or jogging four times per week). The other group did strength training three times per week and no cardio. At the end of the study, the aerobic group lost 37 pounds and the strength training group lost 32 pounds. But here is the kicker, the cardio group lost 10 pounds of muscle, but the strength training group gained muscle. When they looked at each groups' metabolism or their Basil Metabolic Rate, the cardio group was burning 210 fewer calories per day (slower metabolism), and the strength training group was burning 63 more calories per day (faster metabolism).
It's not only about losing weight. When it comes to muscle weight versus fat weight, a pound of muscle and a pound of fat weigh the same, but muscle takes up less surface area. The focus should be on the ratio of fat to muscle that is lost during the duration of a fitness program. The cardio group lost 27 pounds of fat and 10 pounds of muscle. In general, this is not a good ratio. Here's another example, I have a male client that I've been working with for about a year. He lost around 4 inches off of his waist, but his body weight is the same; he's still approximately 190 pounds, which is an example of someone who has lost a tremendous amount of fat (up to 20 pounds) but yet gained muscle at the same time.
Approximately, one inch off your waist (a measurement around the belly button) is about 3 to 5 pounds of body fat. Most of my clients lose a combination of fat and gain muscle; usually about 1 to 2 pounds of fat per week and 1 to 2 pounds of muscle per month. Much of this depends on a variety of factors. Muscle is what gives your body the sexy and toned look you are aiming for because building muscle has to be a priority in any health program. You also want to make sure you're eating an adequate amount of protein. Eating more protein can boost your metabolism. Low protein diets can cause you to lose muscle.
I came across this study in the book "The Adrenal Reset" by Dr. Alan Christianson. "A group of 25 people was overfed 1,000 calories per day for eight weeks. They were divided into a vegetarian diet group getting 5% of their calories from protein, an average American diet group with 15% protein; and a high protein group with 25% from protein. Throughout the study, each group gained weight, but the typed of weight gained differed. The low-protein group lost 1.5 pounds of muscle, even though they gained fat. On the other hand, half of the weight gain in the high protein group was muscle."
Strength Training and Hormones
Strength training is the most effective method for fat loss and muscle gain compared to other forms of exercise such as yoga, Pilates, boxing, and many others. These different forms of exercise do have their unique benefits; strength training is still the gold standard for body sculpting and toning. Strength training utilizes compound movements such as squats, leg press, bench press, row, and lat pull downs. Larger muscles burn more calories and fat, so using compound movements can assist in achieving your fitness goals sooner.
According to National Center for Biological Information, "Anabolic hormones such as testosterone and the superfamily of growth hormones (GH) have been shown to be elevated during 15-30 minutes of post-resistance exercise providing an adequate stimulus is present."
People with Type 2 diabetes also benefit from strength training because when you increase lean muscle mass, you boost your base metabolic rate which causes you to burn calories at a faster rate, and according to Sherin Joseph, MPH, "Burning these calories help keep your blood sugar in check." When your body's fat-to-muscle ratio decreases, it reduces the amount of insulin you need in your body to help store energy in your fat cells. Also, strength training is the best way to reduce your A1c which is a measurement of insulin sensitivity. Whether your diabetic or simply wanting to look great naked, getting this test below 5 is ideal for fat loss and overall health.
A1C results and what the numbers mean
Diagnosis*A1C LevelNormalbelow 5.7 percentPrediabetes5.7 to 6.4 percentDiabetes6.5 percent or above
https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/diabetes/overview/tests-diagnosis/a1c-test
Strengthen Your Bones, Ligaments and Tendons
Strength training for weight loss also helps the body if a fall or injury occurs. According to Jacque Ratliff, an exercise physiologist with the American Council on Exercise, "If someone falls, the more strength in their muscles, bones, tendons, and ligaments, the less likely they are to be injured."
Compound Movements in Strength Training
The following are tips to help you on your bridge to body sculpting.
Squats - When you perform a squat, you are mainly working the whole body. An estimated 200 muscles are being activated during a squat movement, but the primary muscle group being used are the quadriceps. Other muscles involved include the hamstrings, glutes, and calves.
Leg Press - The primary muscle group is the quadriceps, and the secondary muscle groups are hamstrings and glutes.
Bench Press - This exercise has a few variations including flat, incline and decline but they all are considered compound movements and can be done with barbells or dumbbells. The primary muscle group being worked is the chest, and the secondary muscles include the shoulders and triceps.
Row - Performing a row can be done with a machine, barbells or dumbbells and primarily works the muscles of the back but also works the biceps and forearms.
Lat Pull Down - This exercise works the muscles of the back as the name implies, the latissimus dorsi, but it also works the biceps and forearms.
When doing compound exercises, you train multiple muscles at the same time. You get more bang for the buck doing compound movements. The ideal time for strength training should be around 35-45 minutes not including warm-up. For videos that go thru various exercises, see the video page: Exercises Videos
Strength Training for Weight Loss Routine: What to Expect
Once you’ve started a comprehensive strength training for weight loss program, usually you should start seeing results in about 3 to 4 weeks. Your clothes should be looser and your shape should be changing - waist getting smaller and muscles looking more toned. Also, make sure you couple this with a good nutrition program - I know I'm sounding repetitive on this point, but this is extremely important. Your nutrition program most focus on 1)healthy eating and 2) healthy eating to lose fat.
If you stop strength training, you will start to lose your gains in about 2 to 4 weeks - this is called atrophy. It is best to be consistent with your program; 7 to 10 days would be the maximum days you could miss before you may start losing your gains or simply becoming marginally deconditioned. The more time goes by without training, the more you lose.
I would recommend performing strength training two to four times per week and on the other days perform some type of cardio (aerobic, interval, or walking).
What is and is NOT Standard Strength Training
What is strength training:
Rest times between sets are about 1 to 3 minutes
Lifting heavier weight about 60 to 85% intensity
6 to 12 reps for each set
Total sets per workout can range from 12 to 20 sets
What is NOT strength training
Circuit Training: No rest times and doing back to back exercises
Taking a class, lifting 2.5 pound dumbbells and doing 40 to 50 repetitions
Strength Training and Body Proportions
Make sure that when choosing your strength training exercises, focus on the exercises listed above. Back and Leg muscles should be prioritized for the following reasons:
Focusing on back and legs is the easiest way to put on muscle, raising your metabolic rate.
Back and legs are the best way to shape your body; the most important measurements are the chest measurement, hip measurement and the waist measurement. To create the ideal physique, focus on getting the hip and the chest measurement to about the same circumference, while leaning out and making the waist that much smaller.
Working these muscles are great for sports.
Working out these muscles will make you look great in clothes!
Train according to how big a muscle is: the bigger the muscle, the more time you should spend on that muscle and focus on training big muscles at the beginning of a workout when you have the most energy. For example, you would work out back (big muscle), before chest (small muscle). Another example, workout legs (big muscle) before abs (smaller muscle).
Guys, don't train to look like a tree - big upper body and small legs and calves. The over emphasis on upper body, specifically chest and arms is problematic. Proportion is the key! Look at Greek and Roman statues or pictures of Steve Reeves in the 1950s, they had perfect proportions! This is what you should shoot for.
For more on weight training tips, weight training misconceptions and rest times in between sets, check out my article page here: health and fitness articles.
What is Interval Training
Interval training is a great way to speed up fat loss and boost and optimize hormone production. Interval training essentially is short bursts of high intensity cardio with subsequent breaks in between bursts. For example, after a 10 to 15 minute warm up, performing high intensity bursts on the elliptical. It would look something like this:
10 to 15 minute warm up - very important, this lubes up your joints and getting your nervous system ready for work!
30 second burst
1:30 (minute and a half) going slow and recovering
30 second burst
1:30 going slow and recovering
30 second burst
1:30 going slow and recovering
30 second burst
1:30 going slow and recovering
30 second burst
1:30 going slow and recovering
30 second burst
1:30 going slow and recovering
30 second burst
1:30 going slow and recovering
30 second burst
1:30 going slow and recovering
You can perform intervals on the treadmill, elliptical, rowing machine, step machine, bike, and/or sprinting at the park or beach.
It's ideal to switch up your interval training and use different machines - mixing it up keeps your body guessing, over time the body will efficiently adapt to using the same machine.
When you should NOT do intervals
When you are extremely out of shape - build up to intervals
If you are under a lot of work or life stress - do walking instead and focus on meditation and stretching - Holistic Training Approach
Have serious injuries - consult a doctor and a physical therapist
Have serious health conditions
Interval training is an advanced method for body sculpting and fat loss. If you can, find a personal trainer near you to advise you on a comprehensive fat loss program and given your health assessment possibly incorporate interval training.
Strength Training and Weight Loss: 5 Tips to Power-Up Your Workout
Stay Hydrated - Lack of water can impair your performance as well as hindering your workout. When you exercise you sweat and lose not just water but vital electrolytes. According to the guidelines from the American Council on Exercise, you should "Drink 17 to 20 ounces of water 2 to 3 hours before you start exercising. Drink 8 ounces of water 20 to 30 minutes before you start exercising or during your warm-up. Drink 7 to 10 ounces of water every 10 to 20 minutes during exercise. Drink 8 ounces of water no more than 30 minutes after you exercise." My recommendation is simply drink half your body weight in water in ounces. A thirsty body performs less well at the gym and has a tendency to have more food cravings - give your body what it needs, more water!
Increase Your Flexibility - Incorporating stretches into your routine before and after your workout will not only help prepare your muscles for the task at hand but it will also help prevent injuries along the way.
Have a Healthy Diet Plan - You can workout all you want, but if you don't implement a healthy nutritional program into your lifestyle, it will hinder your results. To help get you started on a healthy nutrition plan, click here.
Perform Compound Exercises - By incorporating multi-joint exercises like the ones mentioned above, you will not only build more muscle mass, you will also burn more body fat in the process.
Make Sure to Include Protein - Protein is essential for developing and maintaining muscle, and protein also helps you stay full longer than carbs. Your diet should consist of 25% to 30% protein.
Drink a cup of coffee, tea or take 200mg of a caffeine supplement - This is a great way to boost your workouts and increase the fat burning factor. However, if you're under a lot of work or life stress, this could really burn out your body's energy systems. Only use this tip if you are well rested and under moderate to low stress. Also, if you workout past 3PM, this tip could affect your sleep; make sure to pay attention to any issues with falling asleep or staying asleep.
Getting the body you want is no longer a dream, it is a reality. Get started with my 8-week makeover.
By knowing what to eat and what workouts to include can help make you look and feel fabulous. Supercharge your strength training routine to get the maximum body sculpting benefits. If you need any help with your program, feel free to contact us today! For the complete nutrition and body makeover, click here.
To learn more about holistic personal training, click here: Personal Trainer Los Angeles or Nutritionist Los Angeles
Weight Loss is the #1 Health Goal in America
Weight Loss is the #1 Health Goal in America. And, there is a strong correlation between belly fat or a large belly and degenerative disease. Whether you want to look great naked or simply just want to live longer, getting leaner and healthier has to be one of your priorities in life. If you interested in learning more about getting lean and healthy, please check out my 10 part series on the science of weight loss.
Part 1 – Metabolism and Weight Loss
Part 2 – Strength Training and Weight Loss
Part 3 – Gut Health and Weight Loss
Part 4 – Stress and Weight Loss
Part 5 – Insulin and Weight Loss
Part 6 - Testosterone and Weight Loss
Part 7 - Sleep and Weight Loss
Part 8 - Brain Health and Weight Loss
Part 9 - Sunlight and Weight Loss
Part 10 - Detox and Weight Loss
#strength training and weight loss#strength training#weight loss#fat loss#fitness trainer los angeles#health & fitness#holistic health#personal training#fitness#wellnes
0 notes
Text
The Draft Bag: Safeties Are A Big Deal; Tevin Coleman Probably Isn’t
In The News Cycle
Free Agency Additions
The only big add yesterday was L.J. Fort, and I don’t even know if that counts as a big add. I’m just happy that my co-host is happy. (For those who don’t listen to the Kist and Solak Show, Mike is a big L.J. Fort fan.)
Fort doesn’t much move the needle in a linebacker group headlined by a strong starter in Nigel Bradham, some fun young pieces, and some decent veterans. That’s probably good enough, but Philadelphia could decide to take a middle-round ‘backer to fight for the LB2 job.
What’s more interesting is the WR2 job: does that belong to Nelson Agholor or newly-acquired DeSean Jackson? For my money, it’ll be Jackson. We talk about him as the deep threat, but Jackson has always been a three-level threat: great separating underneath, excellent route-runner to win across the middle, and of course, a deep-ball champion.
Agholor simply doesn’t stack up to DJax’s ability deep, and in the short and intermediate areas, they’re in the same ballpark. Agholor may get fed targets, or show out in his contract year — but Jackson is the more trustworthy of the two players at this time. Hopefully the Eagles are willing to put aside the time they’ve invested in Agholor to see that.
Tevin Coleman Question
I got yelled at a lot for this tweet.
Now, I get yelled at for a lot of tweets — but this one was interesting. Because, objectively speaking, this was something we already knew. We knew the Eagles under Doug Pederson and Howie Roseman don’t value running backs. Remarking on that, when a talented FA running back in whom they had confirmed interest got a cheap deal from someone else, seems reasonable.
It’s okay that the Eagles didn’t give Coleman this deal. I would have liked to see it, as I think Coleman’s a snug fit and that’s good value — but I know the Eagles know they need a running back and still have plenty of room, through FA and the draft, to go get one. So c’est la vie.
But it was worthwhile wondering: what was unpalatable for the Eagles on this Coleman deal? Did they think he was unworthy of $5M per? Was their interest in Coleman overstated? Was Coleman really going to, before anything else, going to go to San Francisco with Shanahan — even though there’s more opportunity for touches, a better championship outlook, and another great coach in Pederson?
I’d bet on the Eagles not being as in on Coleman, for whatever reason — but if the Eagles aren’t going acquire even a complimentary piece in free agency, we should expect them to draft a running back right around where they did Pumphrey (132 overall) a few years ago. There’s still a free agent market, of course, but if they want to go committee and keep things cheap, it’ll be another Day 3 back. That’s just the M.O.
Seven Round Mock Draft
Time to juice up the ol’ Mock Draft Machine at The Draft Network and see what we can do for this team.
It’s funny: this is a draft I would have been totally cool with before most of the Eagles’ free agent moves. Nothing that they’ve done — re-signings, additions, or losses — have really locked in any position in Round 1 or Round 2. Still focusing on trenches early, looking for a developmental starter at safety, and middle-round skill position guys if there’s a good value.
As such, the Eagles’ most-frequent first-round selection remains: Christian Wilkins is a high-culture guy with a well-rounded skill-set, and he locks up the defensive tackle rotation — a point of weakness last season. Having a Fletcher Cox is awesome, and seeing him set career highs in a lot of key production points is sick — but Schwartz wants to bring that playing time down to keep him fresh. Wilkins serves that function.
Likewise, so does Chase Winovich do for fellow Michigan product Brandon Graham. I sung the praises of Winovich on the last Draft Bag, and he’s a repeat selection in the seven-rounder because I love him just so dang much. This time, I paired him with Kaleb McGary — yet another high-culture player with a future-oriented outlook. McGary tested strong at the Combine and with technical refinement, has a high ceiling for an NFL offensive tackle.
Speaking of Combine winners, Justice Hill has great agilities and speed numbers and projects nicely to Philadelphia’s inside zone and power runs — he doesn’t catch much, but the other backs do. Edwards wasn’t my dream player for developmental safety, as he’s more of a nickel hybrid player who’s a backup for Malcolm Jenkins, but SAF3 is still a need, and he’s an ideal Big Dime player.
Ben Burr-Kirven? Love his film. He’s what Nate Gerry would be if Nate Gerry was good. Travis Fulgham is a high-effort WR with special teams value in the mold of Mack Hollins, and Michael Dogbe has an angle on DT4 if he can translate some of his power into better pass-rushing reps. Good run defender, though!
Scouting Report
Let’s talk more about Mike Edwards, the stalwart of a talented Kentucky secondary. With 44 consecutive starts under his belt, Edwards has an impossible range of experience for a college prospect — especially a safety. Edwards has significant snaps at almost every alignment, and has found success basically everywhere.
Edwards’ best plays are those on which he can come downhill from a high alignment, playing as a “Rat” or “Hole” player. He has great eyes when reading through the route concept into the quarterback and nice closing burst to attack the catch point.
Edwards is a wonderfully high-motor player; loves him a little contact. In run defense, Edwards is an ideal box player and exactly who you want running the alley as the +1 defender.
Because he has man coverage ability and playmaking prowess as a short zone defender, Edwards’ best coverage deployment is near the line and in the box — but that’s true of a lot of safeties. Only because of his run defense can he survive in that area.
Despite all of his fun film, we have to acknowledge that Edwards is a low-caliber athlete, and that will get tricky in slot coverage. Edwards has some hip tightness and gets grabby when he’s over the slot, as he can be exposed in transition. He had some good reps and some bad reps across his film, but Senior Bowl one v. ones helped show exactly the extent of his ability in that regard.
While Edwards will never be the heir apparent for Rodney McLeod as a deep middle safety, but he does offer a good backup for the Malcolm Jenkins role and accordingly a great option for Big Nickel and Big Dime packages. In the Eagles’ weak safety room, Edwards has an angle at SAF3 early.
Mail Bag
McLaurin, Ratliff-Williams, Johnson, Hardman.
Only would touch one of those before Round 4, though. One guess who.
Gotta be safety.
Right now, where is Philadelphia missing a bonafide starter? Running back is one. Linebacker might be another, if you’re calling LB3 a starting position. Other than that...? All of their starters are currently rostered.
Are the Eagles going to draft a running back in Round 1? Heck no. Linebacker? Just as likely.
If we expand our definition of starter a little wider, deploy it a tad more liberally...SAF3 is kinda like a starting position. You want to have that player available to run in base packages against heavy 11 personnel teams.
Throw in the fact that the 2020 starter needs for Philadelphia likely include a deep free safety, and Bob’s your uncle: Round 1 safety, baby.
Deebo Samuel. Terry McLaurin. Emanuel Hall.
Really, really badly. It’s probably their biggest need.
I agree the quality of safeties falls off after Round 3 — I’d say even earlier. If you aren’t getting one of the Top-5 guys — Chauncey Gardner-Johnson, Nasir Adderley, Deionte Thompson, Taylor Rapp, Juan Thornhill — you’re in deep trouble.
The Eagles can fall out of the early rounds, sure — because they don’t need a starter right away. But at that point, you’re just delving into the depths of Day 3 and snagging the developmental guy you like best.
So if they view it as a real need, their biggest need, it’ll be one of those five, and it’ll cost one of 25, 53, and 57.
Heck yeah man! I think once the Eagles locked up EDGE with Brandon Graham, they really got this class where they want it. OT and DT are really good positions early, RB and WR in the middle rounds. S and LB isn’t good for anybody, but that’s okay — just have your targets and when they fall into range, start making calls to trade up.
Source: https://www.bleedinggreennation.com/2019/3/15/18266558/philadelphia-eagles-mike-edwards-nfl-draft-free-agency-tevin-coleman
0 notes
Text
Prog Rock Is the Whitest Music Ever
“We are the most uncool people in Miami.” So begins, promisingly enough, David Weigel’s The Show That Never Ends: The Rise and Fall of Prog Rock. Weigel, along with 3,000 fellow Yes-heads, Rush-oids, Tull freaks, and votaries of King Crimson—cultural underdogs all, twitching and grimacing with revenge-of-the-nerds excitement—is at the port of Miami, about to embark on a five-day progressive-rock-themed cruise: a floating orgy of some of the most despised music ever produced by long-haired white men.
W. W. Norton
Do you like prog rock, the extravagantly conceptual and wildly technical post-psychedelic subgenre that ruled the world for about 30 seconds in the early 1970s before being torn to pieces by the starving street dogs of punk rock? Do you like the proggers, with their terrible pampered proficiency, their priestly robes, and their air—once they get behind their instruments—of an inverted, almost abscessed Englishness? I don’t. At least, I think I don’t. I like Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” which is a kind of wonderful satirical compression of prog rock, a fast-forward operetta with goofy existentialist trappings and a heavy-metal blowout in the middle; I like the bit of Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells that became the theme music for The Exorcist. And there are contemporary bands I adore that have been grazed by prog: the moody, alchemical Tool, the obtuse and crushing Meshuggah. But for naked prog, the thing itself, I seem to lack the mettle. The trapped, eunuch ferocity of Geddy Lee’s voice, squealing inside the nonsense clockwork of Rush, disturbs me. And Yes’s Tales From Topographic Oceans is an experience to me unintelligible and close to unbearable, like being read aloud a lengthy passage of prose with no verbs in it.
Hated, dated, sonically superannuated … One could enjoy prog ironically, I suppose—listen to it with a drooping and decadent ear, getting off on the fabulous obsolescence, etc. But that’s not what Weigel is about. He loves prog, and his argument, his prog polemic, is that the glory of this music has been obscured from us by sneering decades of hipster rock criticism and prejudice against 20-minute songs:
Teams of highly trained visionaries paced themselves against their influences and their peers to write songs they were confident no one else would think of writing. They took the music far, far away from the basics, so that some later groups of jerks could take it “back to basics” and be praised for their genius. Every new artistic movement rebels against whatever came right before it. But the progressives’ rebellion was the weirdest and the best.
Put like that, it does sound rather tasty. Prog as a wild chamber of experimentation, a sci-fi trespass across the limits of popular music, driving clear of fashion and orbiting the Earth forever. Awesome. The problem comes, for me, when I actually listen to the stuff. Is it not a form of aesthetic dissipation to praise something for its ambition and its bold idiosyncrasy when that something is, objectively speaking, crap? I think it might be. Gentle Giant, in 1972, took a poem from Knots, a book by the great heretic psychiatrist R. D. Laing, and turned it into an intricate, multivoice chant: It hurts him to think that she is / hurting her by him being hurt to think / that she thinks he is hurt by making her / feel guilty at hurting him by her thinking / she wants him to want her. The idea is great on paper. But listen to the song, to its scurrying, fidgety instrumentation, its fussy avoidance of anything like a melody. It is not enjoyable. At all. Magma, the French prog band, invented not only its own L. Ron Hubbard–style cosmic origin story but its own language (Kobaïan, which reads like a sequence of Gothic expletives: Nebëhr gudahtt, Köhntarkösz). Again, very creative. But run, oh run, from the music.
The relative crudity of punk rock was simply a biological corrective—a healing, if you like.
If Weigel were David Foster Wallace, he would have written his entire book from inside that cruise ship, possibly never leaving his cabin, eavesdropping on snatches of music and chitchat and sending out his imagination in heavy spirals of paranoia and insight. But Weigel is a political reporter for The Washington Post, so he climbs off that wiggy, proggy boat and treads onto the dry land of chronology. “We’re a European group,” declared the lead singer of proto-proggers The Nice in 1969, “so we’re improvising on European structures … We’re not American Negros, so we can’t really improvise and feel the way they can.” Indeed. Thus did prog divorce itself from the blues, take flight into the neoclassical, and become the whitest music ever.
Procol Harum fiddled around with Bach’s Air on a G String and came up with “A Whiter Shade of Pale.” More vandalistically, the super-keyboardist Keith Emerson, of The Nice and then Emerson, Lake & Palmer, unleashed himself upon the works of Modest Mussorgsky (Pictures at an Exhibition), Alberto Ginastera (“Toccata”), and Aaron Copland (“Fanfare for the Common Man”). You’ve got to love Emerson. He would wrench, upend, and literally stab his instrument—rather in the manner in which Hunter S. Thompson used to shoot his typewriter—jamming down keys with daggers, the better to produce his trademark squelching stun-chords. Fiending for technology, vivid with turbulence, he went from the Hammond organ to the freshly developed Moog synthesizer. (The proper pronunciation of Moog, I recently discovered, is “Mogue,” like “vogue.” Perhaps prog should be pronounced “progue.”)
Money rained down upon the proggers. Bands went on tour with orchestras in tow; Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s Greg Lake stood onstage on his own private patch of Persian rug. But prog’s doom was built in. It had to die. As a breed, the proggers were hook-averse, earworm-allergic; they disdained the tune, which is the infinitely precious sound of the universe rhyming with one’s own brain. What’s more, they showed no reverence before the sacred mystery of repetition, before its power as what the music critic Ben Ratliff called “the expansion of an idea.” Instead, like mad professors, they threw everything in there: the ideas, the complexity, the guitars with two necks, the groove-bedeviling tempo shifts. To all this, the relative crudity of punk rock was simply a biological corrective—a healing, if you like. Also, economics intervened. In 1979, as Weigel explains, record sales declined 20 percent in Britain and 11 percent in the United States, and there was a corresponding crash in the inclination of labels to indulge their progged-out artistes. No more disappearing into the countryside for two years to make an album. Now you had to compete in the singles market.
Some startling adaptations did occur. King Crimson’s Robert Fripp achieved a furious pop relevance by, as he described it, “spraying burning guitar all over David Bowie’s album”—the album in question being 1980’s Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps). Yes hit big in 1983 with the genderless cocaine-frost of “Owner of a Lonely Heart.” And Genesis, having lost ultra-arty front man Peter Gabriel, turned out to have been incubating behind the drum kit an enormous pop star: the keening everyman Phil Collins.
These, though, were the exceptions. The labels wanted punk, or punky pop, or new wave—anything but prog. “None of those genres,” grumbled Greg Lake, retrospectively, “had any musical or cultural or intellectual foundation … They were invented by music magazines and record companies talking together.” Fake news! But the change was irreversible: The proggers were, at a stroke, outmoded. Which is how, to a remarkable degree, their music still sounds—noodling and time-bound, a failed mutation, an evolutionary red herring. (Bebop doesn’t sound like that. Speed metal doesn’t sound like that.)
I feel you out there, prog-lovers, burning at my glibness. And who knows? If the great texts of prog had inscribed themselves, like The Lord of the Rings, upon my frontal lobes when they were teenage and putty-soft, I might be writing a different column altogether. But they didn’t, and I’m not. The proggers got away with murder, artistically speaking. And then, like justice, came the Ramones.
This content was originally published here.
1 note
·
View note
Text
2nd STRAIGHT WORLD CUP STINT FOR FILIPINO BALLERS
by Bert A. Ramirez / March 3, 2019
The Philippines has made it to the FIBA Basketball World Cup 2019 to be held this coming August 31 to September 15 in China, and the way the country earned a second straight berth in the premier international basketball tournament in the world makes Filipinos proud not only for its heroic-like elements but also for the missionary, all-for-one spirit with which it was achieved.
The Philippines, after all, had to come from the brink of elimination that required not only winning Team Pilipinas’ last two games on the road but also one of two other contenders for the last slot, Jordan and Lebanon, losing its last assignment. This was after the Filipinos lost both their games in the fifth window of the FIBA Asia/Oceania World Cup qualifiers at home to bring down what was once an impressive record to 5-5 while Japan, which they swept earlier in the qualifiers, was winning consecutive games to take over third place from the Philippines in Group F.
Team Pilipinas lost to Kazakhstan 92-88 and to Iran 78-70 at the Mall of Asia Arena last November to make the country’s advance to this year’s China joust more feasible through the backdoor, which meant the Philippines could only make it by becoming the best fourth-placed team from its group and the other group, Group E. And this could only happen if it swept its last two games against Qatar and Kazakhstan, and either China or New Zealand beat Jordan, which then had a 5-5 mark like the Philippines, or, if that failed to happen, either New Zealand or South Korea defeated Lebanon, which had a 6-4 slate to that point in the other group.
Team Pilipinas did beat Qatar, all right, 86-48 on February 21 in Doha, with the comebacking Andray Blatche playing a key role in the victory as the naturalized import had 17 points, 15 rebounds, seven assists, two steals and two blocks. Resting with a 10-point lead at the half, the Filipinos broke the game wide open at the start of the second half with four straight triples from Paul Lee and Blatche to turn the contest into a 62-30 blowout after three quarters. Marcio Lassiter went 4-of-4 from beyond the arc for 14 points while Lee had 13 markers and Jayson Castro ended up with 11 and four assists in just 20 minutes as they also starred for the Filipinos.
While the Filipinos did their part, however, the other teams, notably China, obviously did not as the Chinese blatantly rested their stars and gave their game away to Jordan the following day in an 86-62 blowout even as New Zealand gallantly held off Lebanon 69-67 to put the three teams fighting for the last two slots at that point - the Philippines, Jordan and Lebanon - all even with 6-5 records even as Japan marched inexorably away with the No. 3 ranking in Group F with a 97-89 win over Iran, another tanking team that had qualified earlier and thus did not need even their last-game win over group topnotcher Australia.
It then became clear that for the Philippines to nail one of the two slots left, it had to beat Kazakhstan on February 24 in Astana, and either the Jordanians or the Lebanese had to lose their last game to avoid any complications. This the Filipinos did as Blatche, in decidedly his best game in a Philippine team uniform, erupted for 41 points, including five triples right in the first quarter that kept Team Pilipinas afloat, while collecting 13 rebounds, three assists, four steals and two blocks to power his team to a decisive 93-75 victory over the Kazakhs.
Just as Lassiter did against Qatar, Castro waxed hot for the Philippines this time as he also went 4-of-4 from deep while stepping up for Blatche when he picked up his fourth foul late in the third quarter to finish with 14 points, while June Mar Fajardo, still recovering from the flu that he contracted before the Qatar game, also played a crucial role with nine points and seven rebounds in 13 minutes of relief duty for Blatche. Lee and Lassiter each contributed eight points to the Filipinos’ winning cause.
“It was an emotional game for us. We knew what was at stake. It’s either win or go home. We competed right from the jump and had some speed bumps along the way but we stuck to it and we’re just happy that we came up with the win,” said Blatche, whose exclusion from the Philippine lineup in the fifth window generated some controversy back home.
“We’re just glad it’s over,” coach Yeng Guiao, who took over from erstwhile Gilas Pilipinas coach Chot Reyes in the fourth window after that controversial brawl with Australia in July, said. “We were feeling the pressure prior to this game. We really wanted to go to the World Cup. Dray (Blatche) carried us in the first half. He was on fire and I was kind of worried that the other guys would over-rely on him but in the second half the rest of the guys stepped up. We’re just happy we are going to the World Cup.”
The victory gave Team Pilipinas a 7-5 record, same as Jordan and China in the other group after Jordan outlasted New Zealand 86-80 to make it as the fourth qualifier from Group E as the Chinese, as host, got an automatic berth in the World Cup. The Filipinos, however, wouldn’t have made it as the best fourth-placer from the two groups had South Korea not defeated Lebanon 84-72 in a game that was played simultaneously with the Filipinos’ contest against the Kazakhs. This is because had the Lebanese beaten the Koreans - or the Koreans not taken this game seriously and lost - Lebanon would have had a similar 7-5 card as the Filipinos and would have made it over the latter via a superior quotient, the Lebanese winding up plus-87 despite the Korean loss and the Philippines being just plus-35 despite the two blowout wins in its last two games.
Part of the reason the Koreans took their game against Lebanon seriously despite its having no bearing to their standing is the fact that the Koreans are noted for their taking the game on its merits, just like the Japanese do as both nations’ culture similarly leans towards giving an honest effort in all of one’s undertakings. But stories also abounded that the historical ties that the Koreans’ naturalized import Ricardo Ratliffe had with the Filipinos after playing as an import for Purefoods-San Mig for two years in the PBA had something to do with it. Social media posts of pictures of Ratliffe, who anchored the Koreans’ come-from-behind victory over Lebanon with 25 points, 11 rebounds, four blocks and one assist, showing him with former teammates Lee and Mark Barroca proliferated and even gave rise to speculations that the two Philippine team backcourters, along with local basketball officials, asked Cardo to help the Philippines advance by taking the Lebanon game seriously notwithstanding its no-bearing character.
But whatever the veracity of the claims is, one thing that can’t be denied is the fact that the big difference in enabling the Philippines to fulfill its part of the bargain - sweep its last two matches and make it to the World Cup - was Blatche. Guiao himself, who had earlier decided to exclude - with the concurrence of Samahang Basketball ng Pilipinas officials - Blatche from the fifth window of the FIBA Asia/Oceania qualifiers, partly because Blatche was still serving the last of a three-game suspension meted by the FIBA for his part in that Australia brawl, admitted that the move was a “failed experiment.”
But Guiao was concerned more about the continuity that the team would have had Blatche come into the last game in the fifth window against Iran just after having played Kazakhstan with the former NBA player not having had any practice with the team for a long time (suspended players are prohibited from indulging in any basketball-related activity).
In the end, everything worked out and the mission of going back to the FIBA Basketball World Cup, which marked the country’s second straight after first making it back there in 2014 following a 36-year absence, was accomplished, and it’s due in no small measure to the sacrifices that every basketball stakeholder in the country willingly made, even overseas Filipinos working in Qatar who filled every available space at the Al-Gharafa Sports Club Multi-Purpose Hall in Doha to cheer their countrymen on. The PBA, the SBP as well as the individual players all played their role to the hilt, and Guiao himself tried to deflect the pressure from his players by assuming full accountability for whatever happened.
“The pressure to get to the World Cup was mounting after losing both of the home games,” Guiao said. “But I tried to shield the players from the pressure by telling them that in case we fail in our mission, I will take full responsibility. All I asked of them was to give their very best and they did.”
Guiao said he was impressed by the bond developed by his players as they dug in in a virtual you-and-me-against-the-world situation to earn their place among the world’s top 32 teams, which would be divided into eight groups of four teams each in a draw to be held on March 16 in Shenzen, China.
“In the most difficult times, the two things they held on to was the strong bond of brotherhood and the pride of playing for flag and country,” Guiao declared. “I didn’t know Andray (Blatche) personally before this window but all my doubts and apprehensions disappeared when I saw what kind of competitive spirit he had in him. I knew he was good but I was unsure of his commitment to this team because of things I’d heard about him previously. Now I know better.”
(Photo from FIBA.basketball)
0 notes