Surveying the scene, the Half-Price way

[Larry Kart]

My local Half-Price book store periodically gets a number of indie label or self-produced jazz releases, most of them by players I've never heard of, and prices them at $2 each. If I'm in the mood, and I usually am, I look through what's arrived and buy a fair amount, hoping to find something that's really good (sometimes I do) but also thinking that this amounts to a random oblique cross section of what going on at ... well, not necessarily at the grass roots but at levels and places I might not normally visit or even be aware of. Further, it fairly often happens that some of what turns out to be not very good IMO also is fairly odd, as in, why would anyone think to do that? or are these guys just plain inept but in somewhat novel ways? To encounter and process such "messages" can be interesting. Today's batch has yielded one possible gem, an album, "Dreams," by Danish vocalist Sinne Eeg, and another "Unfiltered Universe" by Pakistani guitarist-composer Rez Abbasi, with Rudresh M. and Vijay Iyer  as sidemen and Dan Weiss on drums. Can't say I cared much for Abbasi as a player at first listen, but it's some of the best Rudresh I've heard. Everything else in the batch was boring and not even semi-redeemingly strange. You can return things at Half-Price, but at $2 an album that feels creepy to me. Instead, I just donate the rejects to a library sale.

[kh1958]

There's one HPB here in Dallas that has someone trading in batches of obscure jazz promos regularly. But they don't price them at $2.

I rather like Rez Abbasi myself, mostly based on seeing him live a few times.

[Peter Friedman]

Danish vocalist Sinne Eeg appeared at the  Vail ,Co. Jazz Party this past September . I found her singing quite good, but not outstanding.

The Vail Jazz Party tries to bring in some new and different players/vocalists each year, some from other countries.

[paul secor]

11 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

My local Half-Price book store periodically gets a number of indie label or self-produced jazz releases, most of them by players I've never heard of, and prices them at $2 each. If I'm in the mood, and I usually am, I look through what's arrived and buy a fair amount, hoping to find something that's really good (sometimes I do) but also thinking that this amounts to a random oblique cross section of what going on at ... well, not necessarily at the grass roots but at levels and places I might not normally visit or even be aware of. Further, it fairly often happens that some of what turns out to be not very good IMO also is fairly odd, as in, why would anyone think to do that? or are these guys just plain inept but in somewhat novel ways? To encounter and process such "messages" can be interesting. Today's batch has yielded one possible gem, an album, "Dreams," by Danish vocalist Sinne Eeg, and another "Unfiltered Universe" by Pakistani guitarist-composer Rez Abbasi, with Rudresh M. and Vijay Iyer  as sidemen and Dan Weiss on drums. Can't say I cared much for Abbasi as a player at first listen, but it's some of the best Rudresh I've heard. Everything else in the batch was boring and not even semi-redeemingly strange. You can return things at Half-Price, but at $2 an album that feels creepy to me. Instead, I just donate the rejects to a library sale.

It's good you do this sort of thing and make these sorts of discoveries, Larry. I wouldn't have the time, energy, and probably, the interest, to do what you do.

[JSngry]

I like to do the same thing with their classical LPs.

[Larry Kart]

18 minutes ago, JSngry said:

I like to do the same thing with their classical LPs.

Me, too, but it's much harder for me to find classical works at Half-Price that are new to me, while in the jazz realm performers (and therefore their "works") that are new to me are far more common. I'm not interested in, say, another Beethoven Violin Concerto recording unless the soloist is someone I find intriguing like Josef Suk (to mention one CD that I went for recently and was delighted by). For classical stuff that's new to me, looks interesting, and often enough is, I usually go to Berkshire Record Outlet. Do you know that on-line place? It's quite something. Huge stock of cutouts, good prices, and lots of labels you won't usually find otherwise. Shipping isn't Amazon swift, but everything does get there. One label  that Berkshire stocks a lot of and that I've come to find valuable is the German label MDG. Among other things, MDG CDs are in the top class in terms of sound.

[AllenLowe]

unfortunate name for Josef Suk. I do wonder what he would call himself if he married Philip Dick.

[Larry Kart]

It's pronounced "Sook," you dick.

[Larry Kart]

What's particularly sad in buying and sorting through a batch from Half-Price as I've described above is coming across an album by two veteran players whose names are new to me, and their album is endorsed in detail by a respected veteran musician whom I know and that includes another respected veteran whom I know in the rhythm section, but the co-leaders of the quartet (a trumpeter and a pianist -- I won't name them, no need to be mean about this) are IMO at once so faceless, devoid of any element of self-expression, and even borderline inept (the trumpet player) that I not only wouldn't cross the street to hear them play but also would move farther away as soon as possible in an attempt to erase all traces of their music from my brain. And yet there they are, playing gigs in New Jersey or wherever. They're content, I guess, as are the people who go out to hear them, but in some -- you should pardon the the term -- existential sense ... well, I'm not sure what I mean to say except that when I hear music like this that undeniably belongs somewhere under the umbrella of jazz (it sure doesn't belong anywhere else) but also is IMO so clueless, I either feel like slitting my wrists or committing murder. 

[Peter Friedman]

Come on Larry, tell how you really feel.

[JSngry]

30 minutes ago, Larry Kart said:

What's particularly sad in buying and sorting through a batch from Half-Price as I've described above is coming across an album by two veteran players whose names are new to me, and their album is endorsed in detail by a respected veteran musician whom I know and that includes another respected veteran whom I know in the rhythm section, but the co-leaders of the quartet (a trumpeter and a pianist -- I won't name them, no need to be mean about this) are IMO at once so faceless, devoid of any element of self-expression, and even borderline inept (the trumpet player) that I not only wouldn't cross the street to hear them play but also would move farther away as soon as possible in an attempt to erase all traces of their music from my brain. And yet there they are, playing gigs in New Jersey or wherever. They're content, I guess, as are the people who go out to hear them, but in some -- you should pardon the the term -- existential sense ... well, I'm not sure what I mean to say except that when I hear music like this that undeniably belongs somewhere under the umbrella of jazz (it sure doesn't belong anywhere else) but also is IMO so clueless, I either feel like slitting my wrists or committing murder. 

People do favors, sometimes for a fee, sometimes in kind, sometimes just because.

[Larry Kart]

4 minutes ago, JSngry said:

People do favors, sometimes for a fee, sometimes in kind, sometimes just because.

Yeah -- I remember, for example, that Stan Levey/Sonny Stitt story.

[JSngry]

2 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

Me, too, but it's much harder for me to find classical works at Half-Price that are new to me, while in the jazz realm performers (and therefore their "works") that are new to me are far more common. I'm not interested in, say, another Beethoven Violin Concerto recording unless the soloist is someone I find intriguing like Josef Suk (to mention one CD that I went for recently and was delighted by). For classical stuff that's new to me, looks interesting, and often enough is, I usually go to Berkshire Record Outlet. Do you know that on-line place? It's quite something. Huge stock of cutouts, good prices, and lots of labels you won't usually find otherwise. Shipping isn't Amazon swift, but everything does get there. One label  that Berkshire stocks a lot of and that I've come to find valuable is the German label MDG. Among other things, MDG CDs are in the top class in terms of sound.

I do know BRO, gotta be careful at that place, I only have so much money!

What I look for (and often enough find) in the HP Classical are 10" lps, OG independent labels of all kinds of shit,, vanity pressings, just the whole gamut of stuff that either has not made CD, or only made CD in limited quantity. It's classical, it's LP, nobody wants this shit, so it's cheap. Take your phone with you, and you can do the cost/benefit analysis pretty quickly.

Of course, your town is probably a lot different than ours.

[Larry Kart]

29 minutes ago, JSngry said:

I do know BRO, gotta be careful at that place, I only have so much money!

What I look for (and often enough find) in the HP Classical are 10" lps, OG independent labels of all kinds of shit,, vanity pressings, just the whole gamut of stuff that either has not made CD, or only made CD in limited quantity. It's classical, it's LP, nobody wants this shit, so it's cheap. Take your phone with you, and you can do the cost/benefit analysis pretty quickly.

Of course, your town is probably a lot different than ours.

No, I've never seen that kind of stuff at our Half-Price: if I did, I'd be buying it. They do have/get a lot of LPs but not anything unusual by and large.

[T.D.]

4 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

... One label  that Berkshire stocks a lot of and that I've come to find valuable is the German label MDG. Among other things, MDG CDs are in the top class in terms of sound.

Haven't shopped at Berkshire for a while, but I noticed that Daedalus Books & Music (remainder outlet; www.salebooks.com / salemusic.com ; site currently down) has been carrying lots of MDG titles for quite a while (at least a couple of years). I never pulled the trigger on any, though many discs seemed interesting.

[JSngry]

3 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

No, I've never seen that kind of stuff at our Half-Price: if I did, I'd be buying it. They do have/get a lot of LPs but not anything unusual by and large.

Certainly don't mean to imply that they're teeming with that kind of thing, but, you know, Dallas has not been without it's "arts aficionados", especially from, like, the 50s & 60s, and as we all do, they die and leave shit behind. So, it pays, often enough, to look.

They also seem tp get buttloads of OG DGs, which are not without appeal, but...can't buy it all. But 4+-5 bucks for what would be multiple times that on a fresh CD, plus that minty fresh and clean German vinyl...even with some audible wrinkling...sometimes...

One thing I see a lot of is opera box sets, some of them going back to the 5s0s. Those, I'd not mind having as objects, but realistically, when I go ahead and let that opera bug get its teeh fully into me, I think I'm going via DVD (and yeah, Berkshire can help me with that). If it's telling a story, I'd like to follow along on screen, with the music and the staging.

[Larry Kart]

1 hour ago, JSngry said:

Certainly don't mean to imply that they're teeming with that kind of thing, but, you know, Dallas has not been without it's "arts aficionados", especially from, like, the 50s & 60s, and as we all do, they die and leave shit behind. So, it pays, often enough, to look.

They also seem tp get buttloads of OG DGs, which are not without appeal, but...can't buy it all. But 4+-5 bucks for what would be multiple times that on a fresh CD, plus that minty fresh and clean German vinyl...even with some audible wrinkling...sometimes...

One thing I see a lot of is opera box sets, some of them going back to the 5s0s. Those, I'd not mind having as objects, but realistically, when I go ahead and let that opera bug get its teeh fully into me, I think I'm going via DVD (and yeah, Berkshire can help me with that). If it's telling a story, I'd like to follow along on screen, with the music and the staging.

Isn't the Half-Price Dallas store the "anchor" store for the whole chain? That may account for part of the abundance there.

[Joe]

http://keranews.org/post/half-price-books-co-founder-ken-gjemre-dies-81

[JSngry]

22 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

Isn't the Half-Price Dallas store the "anchor" store for the whole chain? That may account for part of the abundance there.

Back in the day, yeah. And the NW Highway store still is. But for the longest now, there's numerous locations across the Metroplex. Like, 15+ that I could drive to at any given moment in a little over an hour or less. When I was younger, I'd dedicate a day to making he rounds, and my kids and I would take "Half-Price Sundays", a different store each week. The deal was that If I found something, they could get something. Of course, when my daughter starred getting into Manga,, she'd usually get something whether I did or not.

[JSngry]

11 hours ago, Joe said:

http://keranews.org/post/half-price-books-co-founder-ken-gjemre-dies-81

Wow, RIP. I started hitting them ca. 1975 or so, when they were stil, relativelyl a "new concept". I'd see Gjmere in the store from time to time, and he appeared to be an archetypal "loveable cranky" type.

Joe, you're probably too young to recall this, Ken Hooker probably does. As time has passed, this has sort of faded from the HPB "narrative", but in the early days, Gjeere was a very aggressive 1st Amendment advocate. That was a driving force behind the original store, that if it was printed, no matter what it was, they would sell/re-sell it. And they meant it - they had a full section, and it was pretty full, dedicated to hardcore porn mags, Swedish Erotica type stuff, of both higher and lower grades. The section was clearly marked, but access was not regulated, because, you know, you have a right to look or not look, freedom as it was then understood.

Well, in a few years, as the chain began to expand, some kind of an "executive decision" was made. IIRC, at fist, the section got moved to a separate room, by admission only. And then, they dropped it altogether.

Gjemre stayed a vocal 1st Amendment long after that, but, just sayin, there was a time when you could walk out of the store with Jackie McLean and Vanessa Del Rio and get change back from your ten. these kids today, with everything free, they don't understand what value really means...

[Larry Kart]

1 hour ago, JSngry said:

Back in the day, yeah. And the NW Highway store still is. But for the longest now, there's numerous locations across the Metroplex. Like, 15+ that I could drive to at any given moment in a little over an hour or less. When I was younger, I'd dedicate a day to making he rounds, and my kids and I would take "Half-Price Sundays", a different store each week. The deal was that If I found something, they could get something. Of course, when my daughter starred getting into Manga,, she'd usually get something whether I did or not.

Only two HPB stores near me, one about a 35 minute drive, the other about 10 minutes. I hit that one several times a week. They know me by name there. 

[Chuck Nessa]

couple hundred miles for me.

[paul secor]

Nothing anywhere me. Looks like Half Price is a western - midwestern deal.

[Joe]

12 hours ago, JSngry said:

Wow, RIP. I started hitting them ca. 1975 or so, when they were stil, relativelyl a "new concept". I'd see Gjmere in the store from time to time, and he appeared to be an archetypal "loveable cranky" type.

Joe, you're probably too young to recall this, Ken Hooker probably does. As time has passed, this has sort of faded from the HPB "narrative", but in the early days, Gjeere was a very aggressive 1st Amendment advocate. That was a driving force behind the original store, that if it was printed, no matter what it was, they would sell/re-sell it. And they meant it - they had a full section, and it was pretty full, dedicated to hardcore porn mags, Swedish Erotica type stuff, of both higher and lower grades. The section was clearly marked, but access was not regulated, because, you know, you have a right to look or not look, freedom as it was then understood.

Well, in a few years, as the chain began to expand, some kind of an "executive decision" was made. IIRC, at fist, the section got moved to a separate room, by admission only. And then, they dropped it altogether.

Gjemre stayed a vocal 1st Amendment long after that, but, just sayin, there was a time when you could walk out of the store with Jackie McLean and Vanessa Del Rio and get change back from your ten. these kids today, with everything free, they don't understand what value really means...

I do remember. This was true even after they moved to NW Hwy (the old building that was decked out like a ship). My father did lots of business with Ken and Pat. Some of my earliest memories are of the old flagship store on McKinney Ave. (only their second location, IIRC) and flipping through boxes of comic books there.

HPB and Texas Bookman were "disruptors" long before Silicon Valley made that a thing.

[Dave Garrett]

On 1/31/2018 at 6:59 AM, Joe said:

http://keranews.org/post/half-price-books-co-founder-ken-gjemre-dies-81

No date on that article, but Ken Gjemre died in 2002.