neveronfriday

Well, was just notified that the box has been sent on its long and convoluted journey across a supposedly unified Europe. Should be here next week.

Shall do when it gets here. Will take a while though. Amazon.fr to Germany has never been very fast (but always reliable). Sometimes France seems further away than the States. And I only live a few miles away from the border between France and Germany.

Happy birthday!

P.S.: Hell, I just ordered it. At that price, the other 15 CDs are surely worth it.

Yo, Guy! Thanks for the heads up. I have that puke-green "The History of Piano Jazz" released in 2003 ... I'll investigate this weekend how much overlap there is. No matter what, that's a killer price for that number of CDs if they all indeed have the quality I've gotten accustomed to whenever I read "Francis & Schwarz". I'm still in denial re the probable death of the Trésors series. Loved it and hate to see it disappear. Volkher P.S.: I'm seriously considering heading to Paris in February of 2010 or, if impossible around that time, before June of 2010. Could you let me know here or via PM if you might be around (or know that you are spending longer periods away from Paris next year ... which I'm sure you're doing)? I'd love to meet up for one excellent bottle of French wine (my treat).

Guy, happy birthday and all the best! Volkher P.S.: The weather should be just as nice around your place as it is here at the moment.

Got the Brookmeyer in fine shape upon my return from a two-week Denmark trip and am one happy camper. Thanks a million! On Amazon I would have given this business transaction the highest rating. Buy what's left here with confidence.

[Just copied this over into a PDF for another forum where I keep close to 600 generic covers for people to use on their portable players. Cheap Deluxe Edition copies, I know, and not very good, but many people hate lugging whole albums around and these are made in about 1 minute each (600x600px). I use them myself, especially for pop/rock/etc. stuff of which I hardly ever have more than a few tunes per band on my player.]

I did copy this whole sentence incl. the link, so ...: linkydinky

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[MFSL UDCD 2-608]

Got mine through a very good friend in the States for exactly 10 Euro and 1 cent. What a steal. I actually feel bad for having paid so little for so much good music ...

1000.

Nope, not Memran (thank God). If you read around here once again, you'll see that we are talking about two different sets.

We were, as far as I recall, talking about two different sets. A "size-reduced" reissue of the original box set and one cheapo Membran set (which is probably different). If Sony did the same as Verve did with, f.ex., the Complete Lester Young (8 CDs in two fat jewelcases), it is possible to include a booklet or two reprinting the original box's contents, especially because there wasn't THAT much in there. If you reduce all of that to font size, 6, it's easily reprinted in one of those small booklets that can fit into one of those jumbo (whatever they are called ... they hold 4 CDs each and are "fatter" than the Mosaic ones) jewelcases. I've packed my Holiday box away and can't check the book right now, otherwise I'd quickly type up a ToC so we could compare. Isn't that info available around here somewhere anyway? No time to check. Edit: Oops. Didn't read about the cardboard sleeves above. Still, a size-reduced booklet could easily fit in there (think Trésors du Jazz series discussed elsewhere, which has positively fat booklets in each set)

Exactly. That's what they're good for. In Germany, most of those 10-CD boxes were sold for 5 Euro last year all throughout Germany by one of those remainder book shops. For 5 Euro you can't complain (at all!). I also bought a whole bunch knowing I'd simply give a larger number away. The two that survived were the Artie Shaw and the Piazzolla. Both were pretty decent-sounding sets with, as mentioned above, absolutely useless info. The rest (I bought sth like 15 boxes that day) I gave to our school library for those kids (and adults), who think an iPod sounds good out of the box (and stay with those funky ear plugs because they're white).

Amazon.ca has it even cheaper! $18.99 Canadian (plus taxes, shipping & handling, it totals CDN$27.50) Canadian dollar is about 92 cents US these days, or .63 euros. http://www.amazon.ca/Billie-Holliday-Holid...450&sr=1-29 I found it even cheaper: CDN$18.78 delivered! It's a Membran bootleg of the Columbia, of course... It's a Membran bootleg? Stay away from Membran. They've had very few half-way decent boxes (two, actually, that I've heard). I doubt these are 1:1 copies, especially because most of their "boxed sets" sound like crap.

Allen, this has to be my last post for today because I'm swamped with work, but I'd like to respond quickly. Yes ... and no. I have absolutely no mastering expertise, so I can only trust my ears (which might be considerably different from other people's ears). I'm also old enough to have reduced hearing capabilities. Still, I mentioned the Fitzgerald songbooks above. To be quite honest, years after having done so, I'm still seriously irritated (spell: pissed) about having gone with the complete Verve Fitzgerald/Armstrong collection (the blue harmonica thingy) after having sold the Dennis Drake ones I had. To my ears, there simply isn't any comparison. Drake's are tons better. I hear some of the same things when I compare the Davies remasters of some Holiday material (much like Hans) and the Sony remaster. It's not that extreme, I think, but it's clearly audible. It's really a personal preference only. Again, this discussion shouldn't deter anyone (!) from getting this important material. 99% of the customers will be more than happy with what they're getting at this incredible price (and, there's no alternative at all if you want to get the complete* material), but I would have liked something better. I've learned to be much more discerning when spending my money, and there's so much stuff out there to be had for anally retentive people like me that I have no problem living with my (minor?) obsession ... That's it, really. [edit] * almost complete ...

Hm. I should have responded to this one before the other one. I'm not saying these are bad at all, but they are on the bright side. I've had the chance to hear some other remasters of parts of this set and they're, for wont of a better word, more natural sounding. In my eyes (to my ears) it's a small quibble, because it's really the music that counts most of all, but I would have liked a project of such scope and such cultural importance to have had better mastering. YMMV.

Hm. What does this have to do with bright-sounding systems? No matter which system I've heard these on, they could have been better. Nothing wrong with getting yourself a system that alleviates some problems with bright-sounding remasters (I've done so myself, as much as I could afford to ... my system adds quite a bit of "warmth" and tones down brightness), but that doesn't change the remaster itself? In general, I think the remaster should be done properly. It shouldn't be the consumer trying to adapt to a mediocre or listless engineering job? Again, no problem with getting a system that you can "tweak" to adapt to various (especially more recent) remasters (and, considering the developments of recent years, one actually has to), but if you follow the principle of what "goes in" should "come out", you're breaking the chain, so to speak.

One more (yeah, I know, think first and then post, but ...) This is not an example of a really bad remaster. It's an example of one that is compressed and could and should have been so much better. Lately, I've been crying in my beer over all the Fitzgerald Songbooks remastered by Dennis Drake that I sold, only to get inferior reissues in return. Because I love some of that Fitzgerald output within that songbook series, I re-bought some old Drake remasters and played side-by-side with the new reissues, it is astonishing how much better the old ones were. I'm not going to use all those audiophile gobbledygook terms here, but if you do compare old and new side by side, there are literally light years between them sound-wise. And ... anyone can hear that, even my dad who always pricks up his ears when I show him the difference (and his hearing on his way to 80 years of age isn't exactly the best).

While I agree that the original box is a great collection of Billie Holiday's wonderful music, I don't like the mastering. I was disappointed by the sound quality; Billie's voice and some of the instruments at times sound harsh and piercing to my ears. Judging by other issues of some of this Sony-owned material, such as the excellent Teddy Wilson CDs with Holiday on the Scottish Hep label, which were mastered by the late John R.T. Davies, I think the Sony mastering could have been better. I have to agree with Hans on this one. I have the box set and love it, and I was initially in favor of the remastering, but when I delved more seriously into the subject of bungled remasters, I had to reevaluate my position on this one. This is not to say that a) most people will be more than happy with this set, especially at this price and b) it really depends on your stance altogether. I have also learned to live with somewhat inferior remasters simply because I was too stupid to sell my original CDs way back when believing I was getting sth better in exchange (that was also at a time at which my stereo system was rather mediocre, meaning that I didn't notice a difference) and because I simply don't have the cash to pay for all the old CDs again (which are getting hard to find in many cases). My suggestion: At this price, you can't go wrong at all, especially because an improved remaster is not exactly on the horizon. If at all, we'll probably get some compressed digital files as an alternative in the future. So, buy it if you don't have it already! [edit] P.S.: I have the original box set, not this special budget version.

Cliff, I'll take the Brookmeyer off your hands. I'll be sending you a PM. neveronfriday

I immediately focused on the lower left-hand image. I remember my dad bringing a single earbud like that home from some transcontinental flight to Asia for me. Actually, he had amassed several of them for himself. I had this portable radio cassette recorder (Grundig) which I was totally in love with and that earphone allowed me to listen to late-night radio broadcasts (I loved listening to radio plays after 23:00 in the evening) without my parents noticing (at least that's what I thought back then). Memories. P.S.: It's nice to see that the Beatles thread took off here as well, although we're still 73451 posts behind the sh.tv site. I've spent a lot of time listening to the Mono box and I'm very happy with it. For me it was money very well spent.

Just checked the aforementioned Kjeld Lauritzen's gigging schedule. Turns out he's active at La Fontaine with Bob Rockwell. That's certainly a guy to see if he's playing when you're around. http://www.kultunaut.dk/perl/arrlist?ArrGe...Kjeld+Lauritsen (only in Danish for now)