Hoppy T. Frog

The first year of the festival was the best: Wayne Shorter, the Rebirth Brass band, and Chuck Brown all for free on the Mall. The subsequent festivals have been pretty dull.

Why don't more orchestras try flexible subscription packages? I'm a 36 year old who has just ordered his second subscription season at the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. The reason? I can CHOOSE six concerts I want to see, at $25 a seat. My tastes are 20th century music and I can select the concerts that I really want to see. (Sure I love Beethoven, but I've got records, and I'd rather use my money to support Honneger's "Joan of Arc at the Stake") I'm shocked that not every orchestra does that. The National Symphony in Washington is doing some interesting stuff next season, but since I have to choose between two inflexible subscription packages, each with only a few of the things I want to see and the rest I couldn't give two shits about, guess what? I won't buy either damned subscription package at all!

IGGY AND THE STOOGES RAW POWER OVER AND OVER DEATH TRIP I heard a 40-minute endless loop of those drumbeats in a record store in Philly. The clerk told me he told his DJ friend that "he could listen to those beats all day", so his friend made him a tape. After 40 minutes, a snippet of Jimmy Page's slide guitar drops in. It was a trancelike experience, I tell you (I was in the store the whole time).

what does the record sound like? surely, he must be an innovator like Cecil or Ornette!

the things one does to get laid...

I MISS NATE

Heard Vijay Iyer cover "Dogon A.D." at a recent concert. I may have been the only person who recognized it!

yeah, but Bartok already does that to me anyway.

Netflix actually did that to me once. The disc had a scratch, and they kept sending me the same disc--because the scratch was exactly the same on each "copy".

Just got it in the mail today. Haven't even opened it. I just want to feel the heft and admire the high-quality packaging first!

Every Emerson Quartet recording I've heard sounded technically perfect but cold, hard and utterly impersonal to me. They made me run in the opposite direction. I prefer them in the flesh to some more diffident quartets I have heard. But I don't often go to hear quartets. I've edited my post to explain what I meant. I saw the Emersons in the Baird Auditorium in DC (actually a small venue) and their Bartok 6th made the piece make sense to me for the first time--I understood it "structurally".

I presume eBay/Paypal have some way to claw-back the money from the seller. (I can't imagine they would eat the cost of such bum transactions.) They don't. They are demanding that I eat the cost of shipping the set back to Malaysia with tracking number ($38.75) to get refund on the set. I called to complain and get an equitable solution, and got 40 minutes of being on hold followed by 10 minutes of clerk mentality, so I am going to open a claim through American Express and see how that goes. I had already had enough of being abused by ebay/paypal as a seller, and had not bought or sold anything for two years before this. I've now had it as a buyer also. Not worth the grief. I'll stick to the Organissimo community and Amazon. You bought it from Malaysia? Not to rub salt in the wound, but that should have been a red flag right there.

As a semi-local, I would most recommend Normal's for used vinyl shopping, Sound Garden for new releases on CD, and An Die Musik for classical (and a little jazz) CDs. Only if you have time, check out Own Guru on Lancaster just one door west from Broadway, and their "secret" location on Broadway for vinyl. Also, the True Vine in the Hampden neighborhood off West 36th St used to be pretty cool for avant-garde CDs and used vinyl, but it moved and downsized recently and isn't as good as it used to be.

Mods: Please move this thread to Mojo Magazine's forums. Thanks!

Wow, that's the same address as his ads in old Cadences.

Huh. I'd always thought that was Albert and Donald. Should've looked closer, I guess.

No need to go all the way to Baltimore, the BSO plays regular subscription concerts at Strathmore Music Center in North Bethesda, MD, just a short ride up Metro's Red line.

Police arrest Billy Crystal over inappropriate schtick.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks they are boring. I went to a very long double bill of Jason Moran doing the multimedia Monk thing "In My Mind" and TBP at George Washington U. And while most of the crowd cleared out after Moran's set, the audience who stayed for the Bad Plus were almost exclusively college-aged. I also saw TBP draw a really young crowd at the (free) Rosslyn Jazz Festival. They do have a following, but their appeal eludes me as well.

All right! I'm in town for a convention in early April! I was afraid I would miss out! (My last visit was Sept. '09).

Bill Frisell at An Die Musik, a little venue in Baltimore!

All Steely Dan is abhorrent.

To quote Clementine: BINGO!!!!

For years, I have been buying from e-commerce sites in the UK. I can't even remember a time when an airmail package took more than 8-10 days to arrive at my door from Blighty. I have a couple orders from Presto Classical, from whom I have purchased in the past and received the same speedy package delivery time, that have been taking nearly a month. I received shipping confirmations (alas no tracking number). I have contacted their customer service and they tell me that airmail packages from the UK are being held up for significant periods of time, due to the mail bomb scare of a few months back. They didn't say whether the hold up is in the UK or here in the US. The USPS website seems to indicate that there are new "temporary" procedures for screening, but do not make an announcement about what to expect regarding delays, etc. Do any of you smart guys have any insight on this?

I wonder how many units number 200 shifted...