psu_13

I've noticed that you can often get a lot of the material that's in the Mosaic boxes at the various download or streaming places if you just want to listen to it and are not so concerned with the other trappings of a Mosaic boxed set. I tend to play everything through my computer anyway, so I only pick up "hard copy" of things that I can't find anywhere else and for which I really want the documentation and what not. Apropos of nothing: high quality downloads or streaming combined with LP packaging would be a neat thing.

At the Louvre in the evening. Downtown Pittsburgh in the morning.

IMHO the LOTR adaptation is generally stronger (Fellowship in particular, TTT and ROTK less so) in many ways than the novels. But mostly if you are interested in the main thread of the story, rather than all of the auxiliary background and digressions. This opinion is somewhat heretical in some circles.

Blue Train Giant Steps Impressions Crescent Edit: Also My Favorite Things, and the Monk stuff.

My dad listened to nothing but classical music. It didn't really connect with me, except subconsciously, as a child. But after college I gradually started to drift into more "serious" music. I did not really hook up to jazz until graduate school. I don't remember what started it, but I found a book about the "101 Best Jazz Albums" which was really a short jazz history. Discovered Ellington and then the Monk set at Mosaic and that was that. I'm not sure my interest in either area are that connected except to the extent that both Jazz and Classical allow you to explore more complicated forms and structures, and my intellectually snobbish engineer brain likes that. I never played an instrument seriously. A bit of piano, a little clarinet in school band. I didn't like to practice.

I first head Higdon when the Pittsburgh Symphony played a few of her pieces live. I think it was Cityscape that we heard. Made an impression.

iirc, those recordings were issued in the U.S. ten to fifteen years ago (wow) but are now mostly out of print. It would be nice if someone issued them again.

I really like the Eichhorn. CD Japan had a set of everything he did with that orchestra for a while. A bit spendy though, and notes are only in Japanese.

re: scratches and such I had a CD come to me from Mosaic (Artie Shaw, I think) that had a pinhole divot in it. iTunes would not rip the disk, so I took it out of the machine to have a look, and there was essentially a small hole in the surface. It wasn't that large, but it was deep enough to ruin any chance of error recovery. I've also had a few old CDs delaminate to the point where they would not play. Strangely, one of them was in my old Mosaic Art Blakey box. Luckily I already had a lossless backup of the set at the time. Unrelated digression: While I understand why CDs took over the LP at the time, in retrospect they seem like a horrible compromise format. They have a cleaner sound, but you can get that from downloads now. They are a more portable size, but not as good as a phone that holds all your music. And, as a physical object they have little to recommend them (tiny tiny booklets are the worst). They are also of questionable permanence if you just store them. It's too bad that back in the day we could not have jumped directly to downloads + LP.

The Complete Commodore Recordings, records 1 and 4. I've had these sets for a long time, but have not had my turntable set up for the last few years until recently. This stuff is great, mostly.

Not since the early late 80s/early 90s.

All old: Crash Test Dummies, first album. They Might Be Giants, Flood Talking Heads, Remain in Light Newer: Reigning Sound: Shattered

Disks 1 and 2. I've heard most of the masters in other reissues before. But the remastering on this set seems better in some cases, and of course there are the alternates.

I would bring 8 iPods and a solar charger.

The live show argument would be more compelling if every non-classical (and non-jazz) live show I ever went to, except for two or three, didn't sound like complete crap.

I like boxes with larger books. The tiny little CD books are the worst thing to happen to music sold at retail, since, well, maybe ever. OTOH, I'd love for Mosaic to start doing boxed sets as regular hard cover books for notes and with a USB stick or download code inside. Ripping 15CD sets is tedious. LP + download also has a lot of potential.

iTunes match, which is the Apple service for making music that you did not buy at the iTunes store available to you online, is not free. It doesn't cost all that much compared to owning a few $400 large iPods ... but it's not free.

Very exciting.

That's at least a second gen shuffle. The first gen were white and plastic. As an exercise for science I jammed a listenable ripped copy of The Ring into one back when they first game out.

You can buy the iPod touch ... which is similar to the phone but without the phone parts. Not quite as much storage either.

Google for "rhino mono monday"

The Rhino mono stuff is also on iTunes. Fantastic!

That piece was OK as far as it went, but the discussion of compressed formats was a bit painful. They talk about the "higher quality" iTunes Plus as if it's a new thing, when really it's been around since 2007. The part at the beginning when the host mixed up audio compression (of dynamic range) with data compression also made me nuts, but then I'm a grump. Anyway, in a few (maybe zero) years lossless will be just as "portable" as 128K MP3 used to be earlier, just because of the growth in bandwidth and storage capacity.

The Janowski Ring is only $30. http://www.amazon.com/Wagner-Ring-Nibelungen-Richard/dp/B009EJSV2C Might be worth it just for the books.

The Condon Mosaic set. Was always mad that I missed it.