Dave Garrett

Just placed an order. Thanks for the tip! Ditto. Well, I got the book today, and it is indeed very nice and clearly a labor of love, but the dustjacket was really beat up. I don't mean a little bit - it almost looks like it was removed, crumpled up and then straightened out as best as possible and put back on the book. The book itself is in better shape, but the base of the spine is banged up and there's a scrape across the front cover. In short, it looks like a used book. I expect better for $45. I'm going to email Cadence and see what they have to say. I'd be interested to know if your copy looks any better when you receive it from them.

Just placed an order. Thanks for the tip!

Not entirely uncommon with interlibrary loans, especially for rare and/or valuable books. Sometimes the lending library will also put restrictions on the loan, such as allowing the book to be sent to your local library but stipulating onsite viewing only there - no checkout. The online form I fill out on my local library's website to request an ILL has a field where you're supposed to indicate the maximum amount you're willing to pay to borrow the book, if the lending library charges a fee. I usually put $5.00, and I've only had to pay that once out of many requests. I don't mind paying $5.00 to borrow a book that would be prohibitively expensive to buy (or one I'm not yet sure that I want to buy), but as I mentioned previously, $20 is a different story. Thanks to everyone that responded.

Anyone have the Great Black Music: Ancient to the Future book about the AEC? As the link indicates, it's apparently no longer available via the AEC's website, at least temporarily. It was $50 when it was available, and the price caused me to hesitate a bit too long before it was either sold out or went out of print. I recently tried to borrow a copy via interlibrary loan, only to have my local library inform me that the library owning the copy they'd located wanted a $20 fee to lend it. I declined, figuring that if I were going to have to pay $20, I'd just as soon wait until I located another copy for sale. So, for those of you who've read the book, what's the verdict - essential, disposable, or somewhere in between?

Apparently Savvis (one of the larger US hosting providers) had a major network outage affecting a couple of its data centers, which knocked Lycos and Tripod offline. More details in this Computerworld article.

This was going around my wife's office here in Houston a couple of weeks ago, but fortunately she managed to avoid catching it. Not so fortunately, my mom wound up with a marginally milder version...on Christmas day. Needless to say, she wasn't up to eating much of a Christmas dinner. Must be a Texas thing, as I haven't heard much about it going on anywhere else yet.

I don't have it yet, but the 4-disc version is on its way to me - I didn't preorder and was waiting for a full tracklisting to become available to make a decision as to which one to get (tracklisting for both the 2- and 4-disc versions is here). So far, I haven't seen anything but rapturous reviews of either set (you may want to take a look at the zappa.com forums). Both sets contain the original vinyl stereo mix of the album, and everyone seems to agree that it's indisputably the best this title has ever sounded on CD. I think which one you get depends on how much you're into FO - serious fans will probably want the 4-disc one. Unfortunately, there are several tracks on the 2-disc one that are not on the 4-disc one, so if you're a completist, you'll want both; as much as I love FO, I'm only getting the 4-disc version unless I eventually run across a deal too good to turn down on the 2-disc one - I'm simply not going to pay $32 for a handful of unique tracks. One other thing to consider is that the 4-disc set is a limited edition, and I'm guessing there were a lot of other people who didn't preorder but were waiting until it was released and more details were available as to the actual contents to order a copy, so if you think you want one, I'd recommend not waiting too long.

Yeah? Then what the hell does it mean to a woman? Depends on which side of the plate she's swinging from.

My wife isn't a collector at all, and gets irritated with the amount of crap I have around the house - unfortunately, in addition to music, I have large book and video collections as well. I still have the vinyl I acquired in high school and college, but there ain't no way I'm going to be able to set up a vinyl rig again until I downsize something else. Before we were married, she used to work for a local nonprofit that put on classical concerts; they eventually branched out into jazz shows as well, a move which proved extremely popular. Thanks to her position there, I got to see (off the top of my head) Jaki Byard, Pharoah Sanders, Sonny Rollins, Wayne Shorter, Jacky Terrasson, Cyrus Chestnut, and Roy Hargrove, among others. But she's much more of a casual music fan than I am, and, as others have mentioned in regard to their spouses, she doesn't have a lot of tolerance for the more "out" stuff - let's just say that I don't often play Cecil Taylor when she's around.

You'll never find a TV that's been properly set up on display in a big box store. Almost without fail, they all will have the brightness and contrast jacked way, way up so they will stand out under the bright fluorescent lighting. It's almost impossible to tell under such conditions how a TV will really look once it's installed in your living room and the settings cranked down to something approaching reality. And if you're really intent on tweaking a set so it'll perform to its maximum ability, you'll want to have it professionally calibrated by an ISF-certified technician - these guys have special tools and intimate knowledge of TV service menus so that they can make setup changes that aren't accessible via the standard controls.

How many CDs do you have? 160GB isn't much space when it comes to storing uncompressed WAV files, and even if you use one of the lossless compression formats like FLAC, you're only going to gain probably a 30-40% reduction in file sizes. You don't even want to think about a lossy compression format like MP3, which you could conceivably cram a medium-sized CD collection onto a 160GB drive with, unless you're prepared to sacrifice a lot of sound quality. The bigger issue is this: hard drives have a finite lifespan, and it's typically only a few years. You'd need to have two copies of everything backed up onto separate drives to be reasonably safe against failure. CDs don't degrade or wear out if they're handled properly. Hard drives eventually fail even if they're properly cared for. Of course, it sounds like you've got a bigger issue on your hands - if my wife were to bring this up, my counterargument would be "but that's what the shelf space is for".

My parents are both in their 70s. A couple of years ago, their old Chrysler econobox had far outlived its usefulness, and it was time to buy a new car. With the exception of a Beetle in the mid-60s, they had never owned a non-American car. I, on the other hand, have been a loyal Honda owner for close to 20 years, and recommended to my dad that he test-drive an Accord. But they headed off to the Mercury dealer, hell-bent on getting a new Sable. Long story short, the salesman at the Mercury dealer pissed my dad off so bad that he swore he'd never again set foot in their dealership, and the next thing I knew, he was emailing me to let me know that a new Accord was sitting in their garage. The way he takes care of cars, it should easily last them for 15 years. But Hondas aren't always an easy switch for someone accustomed to softly-suspended American sedans - their suspension is tuned stiffer for better handling, more like Euro sedans.

Mouse Gestures - Firefox add-on

Both of those are now available at BMG, so they should be showing up at YourMusic soon. I just ordered them from BMG yesterday, along with several other new arrivals: Johnny Griffin - The Congregation Lee Morgan - The Cooker Ike Quebec - It Might As Well Be Spring

They actually did, before having an as-yet-unexplained last-minute change of heart (rumored to be a rights issue, but you'd think those kinds of things would be cleared up well in advance). Some copies actually made it to retailers' shelves; I was lucky enough to find one at Borders the week it was released. There was a plentiful secondary market on eBay for a while, as many people that also found copies cashed in on their luck, but those sources seem to have largely dried up. Newbury Comics is offering several, however, at not too much of a premium: BOOMERANG on eBay

The sandwich part may be new, but doggie ice cream's been around for a while. Frosty Paws

CD Universe has this on sale now for $45.49 - that's the second-best price I've seen on this so far. The best was Wherehouse.com, but that was using a coupon that expired over a week ago - I got it from them for just over $39 shipped. I was planning to use a 30% off Borders coupon before I ran across that deal, but I'd have probably paid full price for it if nothing better turned up - it's that good.

Crap! I forgot about the Bear Family Cole set when I was running through my mental list of box sets I'd been waiting for a good deal on. Probably just as well, given the number of unexpected expenses I've had to deal with lately. I did wind up getting this new Rhino set for $39 and change shipped:

LA COMMUNE is due out on DVD in the US on October 24.

EAT THE DOCUMENT isn't as compelling as DON'T LOOK BACK, IMO. I think its notoriety largely stems from its continuing unavailability, but it is certainly worth seeking out for the dedicated Dylan (or Pennebaker) fan. DVD-Rs aren't too hard to come by on eBay, and there was also a bootleg pressing of several hundred copies released in Germany several years ago - more details here.

The Sony Japan CD (SRCS 6843):

eBay listing Looks like it was on the Groove Merchant label.

This is what's known as "fullcoat mag" - 35mm film that has had magnetic oxide applied to it across the entire width of the film, as opposed to "mag-striped", where thin stripes of magnetic oxide are applied on the outside edges of film prints for a multichannel soundtrack. Mag-striped 35mm film was what was used for films boasting 4-track stereo in the 1950s; later on, 6-track 70mm film prints became commonplace for big-budget roadshow presentations. A good mag-striped multichannel audio track flat stomps all over any digital film sound system I've ever heard; unfortunately, the number of venues that can still run mag-striped film is fairly small, and new mag-striped prints are rarely struck now, as mag-striping has essentially been banned due to environmental concerns regarding the process used to apply it. Anyway, getting back onto the topic of fullcoat mag for audio recording, this site has the following brief comments:

As a shrink...you should see it in the "flying V" as well. yeah, but i was a guitar player way before i became a shrink. i even played a flying v for a short while. damn, they're heavy! I don't think my back could take a Les Paul or a Flying V. The original Flying Vs were made of korina, a very lightweight wood - you'd almost swear it was balsa wood, it's that light. I got to play one once in the late 70s at a music store I used to hang out at - IIRC, it was for sale for $4500, a lot of money back then. Judging from this site, however, they've appreciated a bit since then.

A couple of years ago was before I'd discovered Zweitausendeins, but I got one from them in March (albeit for $60 rather than $30).