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Maybe it's different in the USA, but over here they are often dismissed as the usual "cheapo student pad furniture" that won't last too long. However, it seems to me IKEA have improved the BILLY range over time. I have three older ones (shelf width 75 cm) from the 90s (discarded by my office partner and taken home by me in 2005 or so) and am using these mostly to hold car magazines stored in magazine holders (most shelves are crammed full), and the shelf boards indeed tend to flex to some degree. And I've had to add some reinforcements here and there to prevent the side walls from bowing out under the load and allowing one or the other shelf to drop. But the BILLY shelf units I've bought new myself (long ago too - 20+ years) still hold up very well, even though they are also loaded to the limits (some of them with car mags and books too, but most of them with LPs now) they stand up very well and don't budge to any singificant degree. In fact they seem almost as solid overall as some significantly more expensive shelving units I've bought specifically for my vinyls back in the 90s (and these are no longer made either, alas).  Checking those BILLYs over I noticed on those I bought myself that Ikea have added some extra screws (with the socket hex heads visible from the outside) to hold the center shelves (at half-height of the full shelf) firmly in place so the side walls cannot bow out. These, by the look at it, were missing on the older ones, so this may be ONE reason for the somewhat seedy reputation of the BILLY range. 

Yeah, they did a nice job repackaging some CBS/CTI titles, such as Blythe, Hubbard, Farrell, Turrentine, Laws into very efficient sets with good sound (their mastering tends to be excellent).  They also have a good package of John Surman's first three albums.

That's a good compilation.

I'm trying to be a little more open-minded to these bands I've never heard of. It seems this festival (the first one under Nate Smith) has a smidge more jazz to it than Christian McBride's last few festivals. When he had Common as the headliner a few years ago I knew I was out...  I'm hoping this is going to be get better. 

We have one day in Rome during our October cruise and we've booked a 10 hour city tour, so I doubt I'd have any time for music shopping.