From the Nees and Vos blog:

First off–THE SHOW SOLD OUT! How awesome is that? At Gramercy Theatre! We hit at 8pm while the headliner, The Dirty Pearls, didn’t hit until 11pm. But that didn’t matter!

We got there for the sound check earlier that evening.  The front of house sound guy looked at our stage plot and asked me if I was joking.  I told him “Nah, we really have 18 people playing in the band,” with dead pan expression on my face no less. Thankfully, the staff was very accommodating and hooked us up with everything we needed.  Mics, equipment etc.  The guys from the band playing after us also helped us out by lending us a few pieces of their gear.  Thanks Brothers!

Read the rest over at neesandvos.com.

“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”

Via DF.

Matt Drance on Steve Jobs:

Ten years ago today, we still had not yet met the iPod. The last of Steve’s five decades on this Earth ended up being his most accomplished by far. Remember that whenever you think your best days are behind you. We can’t control when our lives begin, and we can’t really control when they end. All we have is what’s in between. Make it count.

Steve did.

Via Daring Fireball

A best friend of mine reflecting on Steve Jobs:

Steve Jobs had a huge impact on my life.  But not the way you think.  You see, tomorrow will be one year since I saw the video of the Stanford commencement address he gave in 2005.  Something he said had a profound impact on me:  ”If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today? And whenever the answer has been “no” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”

Remember that it isn’t enough to listen to your heart; have the courage to follow it.  If you don’t love what you do, what you do won’t be great.

Be great.

In the words of dear old Dad:

Steve Jobs is dead.

In his memory I am going to try, for twenty-four hours, to live without using any of the technology that came into our lives due to Steve Job’s life: no Mac, no iPhone, no iPod, no iPad, no computer web browsing and probably many other things. And no newspapers edited on WYSIWYG editors; no television or movies or music or books edited on work stations. Just for starters.

This will crystalize for me just how my life has been enriched by his vision. Twenty-fours hours will seem like an eternity.

For all of us Steve now belongs to that eternity .

Talk to you Friday morning… over & out.

Man do I wish he’d write more often.

Jason Osgood:

I imagine that Apple is constantly refining, experimenting, developing each of their products. What we ultimately see is just a snapshot of that product during its evolution.

I wonder how this philosophy would fair in music.  Releasing not an album recorded in a few weeks, but a new track every few months, in perpetuity.

That’s how most of the music I’ve recorded with Nees and Vos has come about.  We release singles when we feel they’re well enough put together for public consumption.  At some point we collect them together and release an album.  The whole idea of an entire album, with it’s own concept, is rather foreign to me.  At least it is for the moment.

Mark Cuban:

So be Patriotic. Go out there and get rich. Get so obnoxiously rich that when that tax bill comes , your first thought will be to choke on how big a check you have to write. Your 2nd thought will be “what a great problem to have”, and your 3rd should be a recognition that in paying your taxes you are helping to support millions of Americans that are not as fortunate as you.

Via Daring Fireball.

Simply put, this music is timeless.

From no treble:

Here’s a new take on Marvin Gaye’s hit “What’s Going On” the way we like it: with James Jamerson‘s bass line loud and clear in this isolated track.

The Manhattan School of Music Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra were just nominated for a Latin GRAMMY in the Latin Jazz category for TITO PUENTE MASTERWORKS LIVE!!! Congrats Bobby Sanabria and the rest of the band. I wrote and arranged a good chunk of the music!

This album will be the fourth nominated on which I have worked, performed, and/or written and arranged music.

As usual, John Gruber is right on.

This is what I think when I see Samsung shipping five or six different sized tablets. It’s not that Apple didn’t try a bunch of different form factors — it’s that they tried them internally, figured out which one was best, and only shipped that one.

This concept needs more believers in the music business.  Never is there an overnight success.  Never is there be discovered, become famous, get rich.  Certainly not overnight.  Success come from years of hard work and an abundance of patience.  When life looks like it’s rewarding a young person with success, the difference between them and most others is that they began working towards their goal very early–and then worked very hard, for a very long time.

A nice review of an album in the name of Tito Puente.  I wrote a few of these arrangements and many good friends performed on this live recording.

From Good Sound:

The band is outstanding at all times, and its soloists sound thoroughly professional, especially lead trumpet Paul Stodolka and vibes player Norman Edwards. The sound is big, bold, and brassy, which is just what this music needs.

From the N.Y. Times:

The suits will argue the banks, which assembled the mortgages and marketed them as securities to investors, failed to perform the due diligence required under securities law and missed evidence that borrowers’ incomes were inflated or falsified. When many borrowers were unable to pay their mortgages, the securities backed by the mortgages quickly lost value.

This has to be incredibly courageous or incredibly stupid.  It’s sure is nothing in between.  Oh, and by the way, he’s a college student spending the remainder of his summer vacation.

From The National:

In a daring, one might even say foolhardy, decision two weeks ago, Mr Jeon flew on a one-way ticket from Los Angeles to Cairo. He then travelled by train to Alexandria and by a series of buses to the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi. From there, he hitched a ride with rebels heading west towards the Libyan capital of Tripoli. After a 400km (248-mile) trek across the desolate North African landscape, he was now in the town of An Nawfaliyah, the toast of his comrades and a newly anointed road warrior.

From Nees and Vos:

My cab arrived from the airport at Andy’s apartment on the kind of humid summer morning that can only happen in New York.  Once I saw Andy I realized that he was in the throws of massive changes in his own life! My first thought was, “How are we going to do this? We are both clearly freaked out, and we need to find a way to make this work.”