Alexander

I'm in. I'll send an e-mail soon, but sign me up. I'll do both discs, please. B)

If your s.o. is giving you hell about something as relatively benign as music, it's definitely a sign that something else is wrong. My wife sometimes complains about the amount of money I spend on music (which is a legitimate complaint, and I do try to keep my spending under control. I'm just weak sometimes...), but she never complains about the music itself. She likes most of what I play, and what she doesn't like either she tunes out or I don't play when she's around.

Pops and Bix, with Jack Teagarden and Earl Hines. Hey, a fella can dream, can't he?

I guess I'm lucky. My wife listens to MOST of the things I play without complaint (I say most, because I tend to be selective about what I play in her company. I leave "noisy" fusion and avant garde till I'm alone. Every so often, however, I will end up playing something that she actively dislikes, and then I hear about it). She says that she learned how to tune most things out when her parents dragged her to church as a kid. She has a small handful of CDs of her own (she really isn't into music at all) which she very seldom plays. The worst thing she's gotten recently is the Clay Aiken CD! Thankfully, she's only into the first track ("Invincible") so it's over before too long.

There's obviously a far more sensible way to go about something like this. Having the bathroom doors locked during classes and giving students a key (with a giant wood block or something to keep the key from getting ripped off) to take to the bathroom with them would be far more sensible (bathrooms near the cafeteria and library would be left unlocked, for obvious reasons).

I picked up a copy of "Portait of Sheila" today, and it is wonderful! She's got such a fetching voice! I know she recorded infrequently. Can anybody recommend anything else that's in print by this gifted vocalist?

I got all three on Tuesday and am enjoying them thoroughly. Great stuff!!!

Just right click on the image and then select "properties" for the web address of that particular pic.

I've never bought a Diana Krall album, but I'm planning on getting this one because of the Costello material (and for the cover of E.C.'s "Almost Blue").

I'm getting my master's in secondary ed right now. I'll start student teaching next spring. I don't know if you would want to hear from me or not...

I saw it on Grammy night and I couldn't believe that after the whole Janet-Justin-Boob thing that they thought something like this (the Native American dance routine) would be okay...

President's Day...Sounds like a great title for a collection of Lester and Billie recordings!

One of Spalding Gray's monologues ("Booze, Cars, and College Girls") mentions his buying and loving car race records as a kid. I thought it was a little weird when I heard that, but I guess they sold to gearheads and kids who were too young to drive. It's kind of funny to think of it in this age of Nascar, but weren't most of the celebrity race car drivers of the 50s and 60s Italians? And wasn't Italy (home of Ferrari) the car racing Mecca of that period?

I remember this stuff being around when I was a kid. I thought it was VILE. Frankly, I'm surprised that it's still around. I don't recall having seen it in a grocery store in several years. I suppose the existence of "buttermilk pancakes" attests to its continued use, but I never really thought about it before. Anyway, yes I remember it. Yes, I remember old people liking it. I kind of wonder if it's a holdover from the Depression. Perhaps it was cheaper than regular milk? Or perhaps it's a holdover from a period when people did more baking at home. You know, people would drink it so it wouldn't go to waste, and eventually got to like it? People come to like weird things. My grandfather's parents were Polish immigrants who were dirt poor when they came to this country (and, naturally, had six kids). There wasn't much money for food, so my grandfather would be given stale bread dipped in hot water to eat for a snack. Even when he was grown-up and had money, he still regarded stale bread in hot water as a treat! He would make it for himself in the middle of the night and eat it in the kitchen after he got home from a gig (he was a violinist).

By the way, Jim, I love your avatar. I always thought that one day Michael Jackson's surgery will spontaniously reverse, leaving him looking just like Pigmeat Markham!

I do, however, plan on marking any recording without Howard McGhee on it "NoHM." Jeez, I'd better get started...

"Relaxin'" was the first one I ever got, and it's still my favorite (although all of the others tie for a close second). "If I Were A Bell" is one of my favorite Miles recordings.

My curiosity wouldn't let me be, and I wound up getting the new album yesterday. I've listened to it a couple of times, and I think it's very good. Norah makes good use of electric keyboards on some of the tracks (giving the album a different texture from "Come Away With Me"), and the tempos are more varied than on her first album. The songs are all quite good, her vocals are bewitching (as they were before), and the duet with Dolly Parton is great. On the whole, I think I like "Feels Like Home" better than "Come Away with Me!" However, I agree with the above statement. I'll be surprised if "Feels Like Home" does half as well as "Come Away With Me." I was pleasantly suprised, though, as I wasn't expecting too much...

I don't like synths. I don't like the way rock musicians use the tenor or soprano sax (waaaay too sweet for my tastes). Years ago, when I first got into jazz, I hated the sound of a harmon mute in a trumpet, but I got into it and now I love it! For a while, I didn't much care for the use of cup mutes and plunger mutes, but again I've come to appreciate them. Love the flute, clarinet, and oboe. Love electric piano. Love violin. LOVE vocalese. There's very little, actually, that will make me turn something down/off.

I saw that too.

1) Date of recording - May 10 &11, 1999 2) Producer - Michael Cuscuna and Greg Osby 3) Recording engineer - Rudy Van Gelder 4) Name and location of recording studio - Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ 5) Photographer responsible for the front cover - Bill Douthart

I picked this one up a couple of weeks ago. Very nice. Mehldau can be a little cerebral at times, but here he's in marvellous form. I hadn't heard Frahm before, and I was certainly impressed. Great interplay between the two musicians. Two thumbs way up from me.

I also find that when I cut back on my CD-buying that I really enjoy being able to really LISTEN to my collection (which numbers in the thousands) rather than constantly adding to it and having to prioritize the new stuff over the old stuff (which often starts to suffocate me...at which point I find that I need to ignore unheard new material and just listen to what I FEEL like listening to at the moment. This isn't supposed to be WORK after all). But then the monkey jumps on my back again, and I find myself relishing the rush of listening to new material... Sigh. Is there a 12 step program for CD-addicts?