[New CTI reissues]

Has Art Farmer - Live In Tokyo ever been out on CD? I believe the vinyl was Japan-only.

It's one of the rare titles I need to achieve the coveted 'Jackie McLean completist award'. I know you're all rooting for me.

[For whom the bell tolls it tolls for the BNBB]

Remember the guy who had posted a rather - shall we say 'unorthodox' - review of Birth Of The Cool? it gave new meaning to the expression 'sharing bodily fluids'. It took 'em a few days to delete that one.

[Very well written...]

Short history of my dust-up with Wingy (this is my first post here, and the last one where I will ever discuss this troglodyte).

Someone asked for an opinion on Jackie Mac's Tippin' The Scales. Wingy stepped in, ranting and raving and being abusive. So he doesn't like the record. Big deal.

But then he came in and started saying that Butch Warren had a urinary incontinence problem and making fun of him for it. Now I've known Butch casually for a few years, and I know he is not mentally 'all there' (I've heard stories of electro-shock therapy in the sixties and what-not). For me, making fun of the mentally ill is beneath contempt. So I criticized him for it (using one of my favorite lines from the book The Glittering Prizes: 'When all else fails you in life, never try to rely on your charm'). Of course, at that point, I'd made an enemy of him. The rancid postings continued, so eventually I started a thread to the board monitor suggesting some policing of vituperative threads. No banning of wingy, just policing.

Of course, this earned some backlash from some who deluded themselves into thinking I wanted him banned. Birdistheword was the most hostile, and now he's out there on the board claiming things are much cleaner now. What a joke. Harold_Z, an otherwise super-nice guy, puzzled me by defending wingy based on his musical abilities. How is that relevant? Miles was a killer musician, but based on the many reports of his behavior, I would never have hung with him.

Anyway, later the stream of pathetic fart-jokes started. Calling them sixth-grade level is an insult to sixth-graders everywhere. I ignored them, since they were addressed to 'Bert', which is not my name.

The ultimate irony of all this is that I might have been a potential buyer of wingy's records. Now, forget it. It's like reverse-advertising for your product.