David Ayers

You need to remember to update Norton. And for sure you need a firewall.

If you are viewing mail in the preview pane in Outlook it is a bad idea indeed. Really, you want to delete spam on the server which can be accomplished using mailwasher.exe (go to www.mailwasher.net).

Good question. RVGs have tended to bring back original album contents (which the previous versions of these two albums had abandonded). The very first RVGs imitated the JRVGs in adding no (or few) extra tracks. That policy has since slipped, indeed it has gone the other way. The old logic was that the US market required the extra tracks while the Japanese market preferred pure originals. That now seems to be not the case.

Payment is enduring too. Have you ever estimated the total cost to you of your recorded music collection?

Hans did say he would only occasionally be posting for a while, as he is concentrating on other stuff.

By contrast, this post sucks, but at least that means that the next post is likely to be really a LOT better. WOO-HOO!!

I got one of these by accident. Not a Blue Note (I have stopped buying those full stop) but a Virgin classical release. I thought that EMI Classical weren't using this technology, but this one (Handel sonatas by William Christie) seems just to have slipped through. I have played it in the main stereo and it plays fine though with low volume but very noticeable 'coughs' which may be on the tape (its not live though, I don't mean that...). But I just put it in the PC and got.. nothing. The CD wouldn't play and the alleged player that is supposed to download and play the mp3 track didn't arrive. Just nothing, apart from whirring and clattering from the CD drive. I looked at the disk in the drive and saw the player, and got it to download. Here's the thing, it sounds like a crock. It crackles and will not play smoothly, sticks every minute or two, for example if I make a demand on the processor like by typing quickly, a bit like listening to a sound sample over a dial-up connection. Then a long pause and more crackles between tracks. It is an absolute disgrace.

Well you could be right Dan - but I think you'll agree my explanation is more colorful!

...of course the gates may be sealed, overgrown by the wilderness, all but lost... but for those who know the secret entrances... the, er, dark back passages, etc. You can move back and forward by changing the number in the url.

I wonder why the BNBB never re-opened. I suspect it is because they think that we are all out here waiting like a government-in-exile ready to go rushing back in and set up shop again in all our mobley-street-sign-stealing glory. The gates of the BNBB will remain closed forever, like those of some fabled underground mythical city...

Congratulations!

We used to be told that Conns were a single print run deal. I don't know if that was or is true. It is evident that some were remaindered becasue cut-outs exist, though they are rare.

People haven't been taking this seriously. Why not just admit you'd go for the pizza with extra EXTRA cheese and have done with all this pretentious tomfoolery??? [insert kissy smiley here - when we GET a kissy smiley of course...]

Either an album of Tiny Tim covers or an update of ELP's Pictures at an Exhibition.

Where I work - a University English Department - everybody is totally clued up to Davis and Coltrane and their like. My brother and his offspring love Maynard Ferguson's Big Bop Nouveau, and even my mum asked me to tape Ike Quebec's Soul Samba for her (er... which I didn't do of course, that being illegal an' all...). My niece wants me to take her to Ronnie Scott's and my youngest nephew plays baritone sax in the school band (as well as clarinet alto guitar bass and piano). The last jazz acts we had on the campus were Trevor Watts and Stacey Kent (not together). And the best acts in the world appear just up the road in London. So I suppose I don't have the sense of swimming against the mainstream which some of you guys have.

Oh and when it comes to breaking 78s... there is a 78 shop well known in Edinburgh that opens for about a day and a half per week (or did when I used to live there). The stock floweth over and is in huge piles on the floor. And in fact all over the floor. So you have to be careful where you put your feet. Because if you don't. You might suddenly hear. A loud. And unmistakable. SNAP. Amplified by the smallness of the room. And as the owner politely pretends not to notice, you look down at your feet to see what you broke (FYI It was the Ying Tong Song by the Goons). After that you pick up anything, pay for it, and scurry home.

Slightly OT, but I had a double CD which I could not open at all. I had to break the case open with my hands and in doing so damaged the insert but saved the CDs. When I looked I saw that the front part of the case lacked one of the small knobs which hinges the front cover. Without the hinge the front of the case would have just fallen off. So somebody had used GLUE along the bottom edge of the cover. That glue would not give and I had to splinter the whole case to get in. Now this was a new CD and shrinkwrapped. That is my nuttiest music packaging experience. On LP sleeves, the first time I glued an LP sleeve where the glue had dried out I didn't understand the physics of glue too well, and I put the record in its inner sleeve straight back in there. The glue fogged the vinyl and created an audible defect. If I think of any more boring stories I'll post them. Actually the really dumb thing to do is to lend people records. That makes for way more trouble than you can ever inflict on yourself. Oh yeah and I once cleaned an LP with washing up liquid. I was young...

Already going out of print eh? It's a sign of my age that this stuff is vanishing before I even got around to studying the list...

I only have a few minutes here, so I'll be brief. I understood your argument and acknowledged it. I would like you to explain why you think that Jazz was "designed" to be background music, because my understanding of what Jazz was "designed" for is just the opposite. When someone says that Jazz is "background music", what they mean is "music that is not worth paying attention to". I mean that jazz was designed to be played in places where people would dance and drink and talk. So it has to have an element in it that people don't have to listen to analytically. I suggested that people who reject the idea of jazz as background music only have to consult their own experience of listening to jazz in this way to have some idea how people who are nonchalant about it might think. Consider anything which does not interest you - wine, bridge construction, website construction etc etc - each of these things is of immense complexity, but does not have to be accessed in terms of the highest analytical level. Jazz is just one of the things in life it is possible to be interested in. But its not compulsory. Ever boogied? And if you have, were you really really listening to every note?

Well, I got a rather general reply: "We use various re-mastering engineers including people like John R T davies, Ted Kendall etc. Most of our releases have material taken from original collections, 78s etc although sometimes we have to take from secondary sources. It's always different." So there we go.

David, I used to do 4 hours a day of analytical listening to Jazz, (i.e. concentrating on the music and nothing else) and this is what I learned: straight ahead has about a billion things going on in at the same time. Polyrhythms, counterpoint, improvised substitutions - not to mention implied polyrhythms, counterpoint and harmony - spontaneous interaction between any of the members of the rhythm section, spontaneous interaction between the rhythm section and lead instruments, minute tempo fluctuations (playing behind the beat, playing energetically), incredibly precise articulation (swinging, grooving, dynamic accentuation of the melody) and on top of all of that, I knew I wasn't hearing everything that happened and most of it is improvised. You can use Jazz as background music, sure, you can use any kind of music as background, but I gaurantee you that if you spend time concentrating on it, Jazz music will reveal subtleties and complexities that you will not find in any other kind of music. This is why calling Jazz "background music" shows a lack of understanding of what Jazz even is. I think my (admitedly implicit) argument was that AS WELL as being a music you can listen to, jazz ALSO functions as background music, not least because it was always DESIGNED to do so. The movement of currents in a river is of immense complexity, but a person can still just sit back and enjoy the flow while they munch on a sammich and knock back the Jim Beam.

Happy Birthday!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 21 today?? [heck, I just looked - the front page even shows your actual AGE! Does the board software have absolutely NO discretion?....]

Ornette said 'let's play the music not the background' (i.e. cycles of chords). We can take this as a reminder that jazz has always functioned as background music for dancing and drinking. To judge by how many CDs you guys seem to get through(! ) I have the suspicion that many people here would have no difficulty listening to jazz CDs while doing something else. Well, if you are doing something else, it becomes background music, something that in large part it was designed to be. So you can't complain when other people call it background music! (where's the kissy smiley - damn we need more smileys on this board...)

Happy Birthday! But what are you doing reading this? Hit that birthday bottle of Jim Beam, then stagger out into the desert to shoot up a few rattlers. Or whatever it is you Texans do for amusement.

Hi John. Thanks for the update.