Dmitry

First I hear of this company, but I'm no beer aficionado. IPAs are like bitter medicine. I can't imagine some really liking the taste. I'll never knowingly drink one. An average IPA drinker to me looks like this - groomed shovel beard, cowboy shirt, jeans, festive socks, thick-rimmed glasses, college-educated white guy, into prog rock or similar, thinks he's macho.

Where's the elephant?

The days of $25 or even $50 Liberties are just about gone. The clean early Liberty pressings of the classic and desirable titles are in the $150+ territory now, and rising.

My only concert of his was in March of 2018, here at the Providence Performing Arts Center (PPAC). He was accompanied by his usual quartet, Gray Sargent, guitar, Tom Ranier, piano, Marshall Wood, bass and Harold Jones, drums. His daughter Antonia Benedetto opened with a few show tunes (I'll just say nothing about that). 91 year old Tony was tremendous. He did sing the same tune twice, an hour apart, I now forget which one, may have been Rags to Riches. Sold out the whole house, all 3000 seats.

@Peter A - tremendous explanation, and firmly to the point! Shame you haven't posted in years. You got knowledge. A few weeks ago I was offered a very clean early pressing of Bennie Green - Soul Stirrin', BLP 1599. Seller was asking $275, which is really OK these days. When I went to look at the record, here's what was there: both labels read BLUE NOTE RECORDS INC*47 WEST 63rd ST*NYC . Blue Note has (R), so we know the labels are not original, but a very early repress, ca.1959-1962. So far, nothing terrible. Heavy-duty laminated cover is also in VG+ condition, beautiful really, with just the corner and edge wear. The back lists titles to BLP 1574. BLUE NOTE RECORDS, 47 West 63rd St., New York 23 . Cover is obviously a 1958 original. Now let's go to the record. No deep groove, dead wax has no Plastylite EAR, but is stamped RVG and 9M. Obviously this is not a 1959-1962 repress, but a very early Liberty pressing, in VG+ (real VG+, not what passes for that these days), clean, maybe some faint scuffs and clean labels. We see this from time to time...Liberty-pressed vinyl (who knows where?), utilizing existing stock of BN labels and jackets. What we don't see often are early Liberty pressings with 47 West 63rd Street labels, and especially the original BLP 1500 series jackets. To press this particular record, Liberty used BN's 1958 stampers, so how different will it sound from the 1958 original, or even 1959-1962 repress?! After some kibitzing seller lowered the price to $200, but I passed on the record. $200 for a very clean early Liberty BLP 1500 series is not that unreasonable these days...they'll only get pricier as time goes.

A quick report. I did not go to any record stores, just couldn't wing it. All of your wonderful recommendations are here for our next trip. I will take Philly for a weekend arts and gastronomy trip over NYC every time. There is just so much more real essence to this city in comparison to New York these days. And that includes the people. Went to two of the recommended restaurants - Wm. Mulherin’s Sons. TtK, thank your brother for me, please! Very good and not overbearingly-complex designer pizza. The crust alone is worth ordering. Kids wolfed down the Spicy Jawn, we had the heirloom tomato pizza. Curiosity was peaked by one of the ingredients, nepitella. Turned out to be an herb with a taste of basil, oregano and a little fennel. Rather interesting. Have you ever heard of the nepitella? Advice - skip the burrata, the serving is just one blob of it, not worth the $19, order the char-grilled calamari instead, it wasn't the crusty, bread-crumbed frozen kind, but fresh, juicy and flavorful. We also had the crispy octopus, excellent, but again, a smallish serving, not worth the $22. Again, their pizza is wonderful, a meal in itself. 4th Street Deli. @Aggie87 THANK YOU!!! This is so great, the pastrami was dripping with fat, matzo ball soup good, pickles very good. The "regular" pastrami on rye is just under a pound, the zaftig is a couple of bucks more and over a pound of meat. To imagine that just about all major and even regional cities in the US had dozens of kosher delis 50 years ago, and now they are as so rare...especially the good ones. We went back again the next day!!! On one of the photos a young lady is about to have the regular-sized pastrami sandwich. The woman on the right, in pink, is obviously a tourist from somewhere in the Midwest... She is seated at the table with a plaque that President Obama once had a meal there. I don't know what he had, but I'm pretty sure it was not eggs! More to come!

https://apnews.com/article/tony-bennett-dies-c3b3a7e2360449fb936a38794c7c3266

That is exactly right. I thought it was hiding somewhere, but bupkis... Question: BLP 1553 wasn't released. Whose session was it supposed to be? It's sandwiched between the two volumes of "Jimmy Smith at the Organ" and the two volumes of Art Blakey's "Orgy in Rhythm" LPs.

Just found the website that lists all of the BLP 1500 series iand the 4xxx series in numerical order, with photos of front covers. Pretty nice to have this reference at hand. http://www.jazzlists.com/SJ_Label_Blue_Note_1500.htm The BN jazzdisco.org Discography doesn't contain album covers. https://www.jazzdisco.org/blue-note-records/

Watched Sidney Lumet's The Verdict again, this time with our children, who were both impressed and affected. I now have a less positive opinion of the script by David Mamet. I haven't read Barry Read's eponymous novel, but the script could've been a lot tighter, and is chock full of Mamet'isms (the monotone sentences with repeating punchlines, like, "But I wanted to be a nurse. Yes, I wanted to be a nurse! Who are these men to deny me?! Why are they?!". I give the film a B-. Newman, brilliant James Mason and Jack Warner pull it off. Johnny Mandel's score is tremendous! I also liked looking at the streetscapes of Boston and NY. It's amazing how literally everything has changed in just 40 years, from dress fashions to personalities.

Kohler, Eric. In the Groove: Vintage Record Graphics 1940-1960. Chronicle Books, 1999 ISBN 10: 0811821218 ISBN 13: 9780811821216 What an enjoyable book! Thanks for recommending it, @jazzcorner! In opposition to the two Blue Note books, this smaller format volume was written not by a jazz journalist, but by a graphic artist. Author provides concise biographical sketches of several noted album cover designers, like Steinweiss, Flora, Nitsche, Goldblatt and several others, along with the descriptions of their styles. Did you know that there is a font type known as the Steinweiss Scrawl?

I was hoping for catching a jazz gig, but there is surprisingly very little of value in town...unless I searched the wrong places.

The Syndicate lists over 100,000 titles in their Discogs store. That's pretty crazy. They are selling a number of Mosaic sets. I wonder which of the stores you wrote up isn't the most voluminous, but has the best selection of original pressings. My tastes are pretty much jazz, some classical, some "world music". For some reason I never got into buying rock records. The restaurant we like in Philly is called Amada. It's a traditional Spanish fare. We had the roast suckling pig, cochinillo asado there on two occasions. You have to reserve it several days in advance, and pay a $100 deposit, because they have to brine it for one or 2 days prior to roasting. The chef dismembers the piglet in front of you, on a special cart, while other restaurant patrons are watching from their tables in silent awe. I caution that it's big enough for parties of no fewer than four experienced diners and will easily fill 6 average people. Pig comes with three very large traditional Spanish peasant side-dishes: garbanzos and spinach, fingerling potatoes and delicious Spanish white beans with a touch of rosemary. Don't be tempted to have literally anything else, other than the wine, if you've ordered the pig. No tapas, nothing. It's a huge meal. Can you ask your brother which restaurant is a must-go Philadelphia institution that actually serves excellent and memorable food and isn't a tourist trap?

We will be spending next weekend in Philadelphia, watching the English Premier League matches. Which record stores do you recommend? I don't crate-dig any more, so if you could recommend well laid-out stores with neatly inventoried, clean records that would be very appreciated. I'll probably stop by the Princeton Record Exchange on the way...it's been 20 years.

Artie Shaw - ENIGMA

I just spoke to someone who hasn't taken a mask off in public until today. Conversation with me was the first one he's had mask-free in three years.

Just watched Tar. Blanchett is a preeminent actress of our time. The story is remarkable. I was very moved. The PC world of academia and institutionalized performing arts education system collides with the Artist; it's mediocrity vs. genius, with all the accompanying psychoses. Brilliant film.

I will agree, but only partially. I am not able to play music (a big disappointment for me, since I love it so), but I love the arts, and competent critics are remarkably important. The art form can't reliably critique itself, no matter how authoritatively Clement Greenberg postulates otherwise. One of the reasons I lost interest in jazz periodicals was lack of good revieres who weren't afraid of writing critical pieces. In digital era (you mean ease of access?), there is so much art of all kinds, vast majority of it being very poor, that the good art may get lost and not discovered until the contemporaries are long gone. Don't ask me for examples...:D

Question - does a music critic need to be able to play an instrument, and use the accepted terminology established by centuries of professionals and possible to be descriptive, or will you take their word for what it's worth, when sentences containing things like "sheets of sound", "post-impressionism", "fluid ambiguity", "the innocent vigor of androgyny", "strong", "languid", "apocalyptic" are changing hands? "it generates a surprisingly compact, uncommonly straightforward, and dare I say pop-friendly sense of identity and purpose"... does this Christgau look at himself in the mirror when he masturbates?

Are we to congratulate you, or comfort you? A minus is worse than a plus?

Ain't that the truth! That's why I clean my naked stylus after every play.

Finished it. I don't dislike the score. It's very film-noir'ish. Are you sure it's Thomas Newman? Titles had another composer, initials C.B., I think; Colum Bannister or something like that? It did look like an independent film in parts! SPOILER ALERT : Couple of things I didn't care for - nurse telling the old man to hit reset on the heart monitor (like he would know what to do?! that was realy lame), cop left the hospital room where the older son was held (murder suspect) and he was not handcuffed to the bed (standard procedure), which I thought would've been much cooler, writhing, cuffs sliding up and down the bed rail while daddy was holding a pillow over his face. Pillow was a murder weapon once, and accessory to murder twice. Plus the pillows were featured in several sex scenes and on the drug dealer's bed. Pretty good film overall, although I didn't care for the title. Thanks for the rec! Really liked Marisa Tomei!

We still have 30 mins till the ending. I didn’t pay attention to the score. Will report back. So far the most intriguing character is the androgynous drug dealer in a high-rise apartment.

Well, it's a good thing our 15 y.o. decided not to join us at the tv yesterday night. The first few minutes would've been rather uncomfortable for us as a family. We did have a lively debate as to Marisa Tomei's breasts. I thought they were youthful and perky, my wife was insistent that they were fixed. Naturally, we had to roll back those frames for closer scrutiny, but still reached no consensus. What do you think?

Justin, I'm obviously not violated...well, not by the Side Door anyway. I think they may have had a couple of slow seller acts for those two nights, and tried to fill the room by having this contest. I was probably the only one who responded. Still, it's somewhat less than professional of whoever was in charge of that. Teasing, I forgot to mention that we have been watching the dvds of all the seasons of Curb Your Enthusiasm in order, pretty much every night for the past couple of weeks. Our library system has so many dvds and it's very easy to order them right from their app. Never heard of that Lumet title...just ordered it from the library. His THE VERDICT is one of favorites, since I was a teenager.