crisp

The new titles are now on HMV at the preorder prices of £6 for single CDs and £9 for doubles. Search string here. BTW I just had some very good customer service from HMV. The new Vocalions went up yesterday at rrp, so I queried it (rather crossly as this has happened before). HMV replied today to say they were checking the release dates and immediately the prices were reduced.

Just finished a couple of Simon Brett Fethering mysteries: The Shooting in the Shop and Bones under the Bach Hut. The former disappointed, but the latter is one of his best and quite brave towards the end in some of the opinions he expresses. Now reading Big Money by P.G. Wodehouse, and it's a corker: rather anarchic and irreverent but very witty; not too much romance (so far). Wodehouse at his best really. Must read something literary soon...

The former. But aside from their music choices, there was all sorts of "easy listening" (hate the term by the way) woven into the fabric of popular culture, on films, TV, advertising, so it gets under your skin. Jazz entered my life by the same route. The Big Ben Banjo Band and Val Doonican was not their cup of tea, nor is it mine. But then music like that has little to do with Martin Denny, Jackie Gleason or funky KPM library music. It's about finding good music in unexpected places, not deliberately gravitating towards shit. Aspirational/confrontational probably isn't the right way to express what I mean. So I'm sorry for all the headaches. Entertainment versus art perhaps? Acceptance versus rebellion?

I don't think I understand what an aspirational pop music fan is or was in the seventies/eighties. No, I'm sure I don't. There was a comma in there. They were (i) aspirational as opposed to confrontational and (ii) liked light, fun pop music as opposed to heavy, worthy rock. Two separate things but a common combination in suburban families.

See my post yesterday in the Vocalion thread. Fortysomethings like me love this stuff. Because when we were growing up it, and music like it, was always in the background, it's more evocative of our childhoods than the "cool" rock and roll we were supposed to like. Plus, our parents were aspirational, pop music fans. We didn't want to rebel against them like the previous generation did (and had to) against theirs; we wanted to emulate them.

Closing on December 4.

See, I would think that is where grey money would be spent, on the Fifties and Sixties rock'n'roll and soul of their youth, not easy listening or light music, which surely teenagers would have scorned at the time. I'm only 43, and not yet grey, and I suspect it's actually my generation who are buying Vocalion schmaltz, even though it may have been old people who bought it at the time. I recently attended a concert by the KPM All-Stars, library music composers who wrote themes such as Grandstand. The latter brought the house down and pretty much everyone in the audience was my age. There's a repeat of a documentary, The Joy of Easy Listening, tomorrow night on BBC4 -- it's flawed (they should have made it in the Nineties during the easy revival when everyone mentioned was still alive), but if you can spare the time it's worth watching for an insight into its appeal among my generation.

Cheers. It's whatever floats your boat at the end of the day.

Where is the audience for this? There is tons of this sort of the stuff on the Vocalion site. We were told at the time that this was ephemeral music with no staying power; but it still seems to be popular. Hidden away across England there must be rooms like this where Manuel (Que?) remains supreme: Prepare to be shocked but I buy rather a lot of this stuff. I got into music as a child partly from being interested in the so-called Great American Songbook, which branches off into jazz, vocals and light orchestral music. Plus I was at the right age for the lounge/easy listening revival of the Nineties. I'm not sure why others buy this music, but it seems to be popular, and I'm glad. Radio 3 plays quite a bit of light music, there have been Proms devoted to it and bandleaders like John Wilson who recreate historic orchestrations have a huge following. All sorts of music was once disparaged as ephemeral -- even jazz -- but I can't think of any that doesn't now have a following of some sort -- and that's good. That's not my living room btw -- all that shagpile would be a Mecca for moths in London.

No idea. Amazon's own prices on Vocalions are often on that mad scale, or they don't stock them at all. Be careful you order through crazygreen8 and not Amazon! Even spookier, they also just released a new Manuel and his Music of the Mountains. It's too late to predict Team GB's results in the Olympics unfortunately. Any tips on this week's lottery numbers?

Vocalion charge £1.75 to post one CD, plus 25p extra for each CD on top of that. So I'd recommend waiting until the next sale and buying it as part of a batch. You could buy it from Vocalion via their crazygreen8 marketplace outlet on Amazon, but the price difference is just 49p (£4.25 including postage here).

BTW, lots of back-catalogue Vocalions are just £6 at hmv.com at the moment, free shipping within the UK. Including many of last year's batch of jazz issues, eg, Dankworth, Skidmore, Maupin, Cameron, Rich/Clare/Bellson. Loads of classical, library and British dance bands too. Full label search string by price order here.

The forthcoming Vocalions? Watch out for them appearing on hmv.com, which usually (though not always) has dirt-cheap preorder prices. Once the release date has passed they go up to RRP. But if you mean the Hawkins -- it's £2.99 at Vocalion -- how cheap do you want it?

It's not all. Heading on the home page now reads "soul and jazz" and includes these other releases: Harold McNair: Harold McNair & Flute and Nut The Joe Harriot Quintet: Movement & High Spirits Johnny Dankworth: What the Dickens! & Off Duty! Freddy Cole: One More Love Song & Right from the Heart A smaller haul than last time, but choice material just the same.

Now on the homepage: those three releases under the heading "soul". Is that it I wonder?

The first of those jazz releases promised for May has appeared: Max Middleton, Robert Ahwai, Dick Morrissey & Jim Mullen: Another Sleeper & Cape Wrath There are these (jazz-related?) soul releases too: Father's Children: Father's Children Chain Reaction: Indebted to You I expect the full list will be on the Vocalion homepage before long.

No worries. I hear what you're saying and completely agree -- compression is an horrendous development of recent years. However, these Tatum sets *are* significantly quieter than almost all of my other CDs. For such a classic series of sessions, it deserves better, but as I say, at least it's cheap.

Why not turn up the volume? They don't sound bad. You know, I hadn't thought of that. Seriously, I really have to crank it up to hear these. It shouldn't be necessary. The low price makes up for it though.

There are also two Art Tatum sets in the series. They are straight ports of the original individual album releases, repackaged in a box. A good way to fill in blanks in a collection, but some of these are badly in need of remastering IMO -- the Tatums are *very* quiet.

The Two Faces of January by Patricia Highsmith. I keep meaning to read more Highsmith and this one was in the flat, so here goes. It's another "sinister gooseberry" novel, ie, about a sexually ambivalent third party who latches on to a couple in peril for obscure reasons. About a third of the way through it's starting to feel like an account of a typical Greek holiday with a low-energy murder-manhunt attached. Well written, so I'll stick with it.

Green for Danger by Christianna Brand (best known today as the originator of Nurse Matilda/Nanny McPhee). I've seen the excellent Launder and Gilliat film so I know whodunnit and how, but it's still a great read, packed with fascinating little character insights and wartime atmosphere. Plus I'm quite enjoying seeing how she reveals/conceals the killer's identity and scatters red herrings about.

This topic (sort of) occurred to me yesterday when I was playing Here 'Tis. Baby Face Willette quotes Raymond Scott's In an 18th-century Drawing Room at one point -- another odd one that comes up surprisingly often, especially among organists. I've often wondered why.

That's weird. I would have thought it would be easy for a search function to be incorporated, and very useful. Dickens for one has a habit of reintroducing on page 654 a character he's briefly mentioned on page 28. Used to drive me nuts when writing undergraduate essays.

I read about this album last week, thought it sounded interesting and looked up Kovacs on YouTube (he seems to have made no impression here in the UK). I *want* to like him, but I'm nonplussed I'm afraid. He's certainly original, and I appreciate what he's aiming for, but the laughs aren't there for me. The deteriorated picture and sound quality of the clips don't help, but it's not just that. There's one clip of him doing a drunken cookery demonstration that just bombs with the audience, and with me -- it's no Guzzlers' Gin that's for sure. If I were describing his comedy to a fellow Brit, I'd say it's like an early Vic Reeves. Perhaps I should keep working at it. BTW I'm sceptical to read on his Wiki entry that Craig Ferguson was influenced by Kovaks -- growing up in the UK when would he have seen him?

I love later Peggy Lee (so wrong but in many ways so right), but Where Did They Go? has never grabbed me apart from I Don't Know How to Love Him and Losing My Mind. I've never noticed I Was Born In Love With You, but as it's a Bergmans lyric I'll give it a closer listen. I do however have a soft spot for her previous album, Make It With You, arranged by Benny Golson. Some pleasant soft-rock songs in there and it works as a whole piece. Sebesky always strikes me as a track-by-track man rather than an album man, like Quincy Jones, but Golson knows how to put an album together. As for CTI, that label seemed even less interested in singers than Blue Note did. Lee would probably have been submerged in a sea of instruments, but it would have been a nice sound I'm sure.