Hot Ptah

There's worse rock dope. JA was always inconsistent, though--to my ears, anyway. I never liked their Woodstock performances much. I think that they are one of those bands that did better in the studio.

8 tracks were a major format in the U.S. for many years. I think that many people used them as their main format, instead of LPs or cassettes. I think that all major rock albums were released on 8 track. Many people had 8 track players in their cars . I remember articles about how 8 tracks sounded better than cassettes, from an audiophile standpoint, but the music would be interrupted in mid song while the tracks noisily changed. I still see many 8 track tapes for sale at used music stores.

I find in Kansas City that there seems to be a certain level of activity in used music stores which carry jazz, which stays pretty constant, even now. When one store closes, another comes popping out to take its place. There are never 20 used stores now as there were in the late 1980s, but there always seem to be at least five pretty good ones. There is much less opportunity to buy new jazz CDs at retail full price in Kansas City now. There is really no place that has a close to comprehensive jazz selection any more, and there used to be several.

I like Miles' 1980s albums. I have defended "You're Under Arrest" when people have been negative about it. I think that "Tutu", "Decoy", "Aura" and "Star People" are quite good. "Amandla" is the only one I find dull. It just isn't very interesting to me. I have given it many chances, have listened with attention and a hopeful spirit, and I still don't find it very interesting. There just isn't enough there to engage my heart and mind. But if someone else likes it, great.

I often read these Inner Sleeves. I noticed that after I would get an album mentioned in the Inner Sleeve, that it was not nearly as exciting as the author of the Inner Sleeve had portrayed it to be.

Well, the century is rather young, but...I am absolutely blown away by Charles Tyler's "Saga of the Outlaws". What a strong session! I never heard it before its recent CD reissue on some smaller label. The name will come to me. This is what jazz can be, should be, is meant to be. This is what made me fall in love with jazz originally. Oh yeah, now I remember. It's that Nessa Records label. Wonder how we could figure out how to order from that label?

There is a long discussion of this on the Steve Hoffman forum. The producer of the new Santana Woodstock CD wrote several posts in which he explained how "Evil Ways" was added to the Woodstock CD and why. Paraphrasing his several posts, "Evil Ways" was the only song performed by Santana at Woodstock which was not on the 2 CD Sony Legacy Edition of Santana I. That is because Carlos Santana's guitar was terribly out of tune on the rhythm guitar parts. He played his "Evil Ways" solo on only two strings to avoid the strings that were out of tune. For the new Woodstock CD, the producer and engineer erased the out of tune rhythm guitar parts and had Carlos record new, in-tune parts. Some percussion parts were unavoidably erased with the rhythm guitar parts, so they had the percussionists come back in and re-record their parts. This news brought on some negative posts from members of the forum, and there was some back and forth arguing with the producer. Finally, he said that they did the best that anyone could to bring "Evil Ways" to the public, and he hoped that people could enjoy it. The producer also noted that some of the songs on the original Woodstock LPs had not even been performed at Woodstock, such as Crosby Stills Nash and Young's "Sea of Madness", and Arlo Guthrie's "Coming In To Los Angeles".

I have always liked his playing on this album.

I will play "Soul Sauce" tonight--I love "Afro Blue" on that album.

Oh man, someone should jump all over this!

Or else get high as a mf and listen to the sounds in your head. :g :g Legally of course! What if the sounds in your head while high are an amalgamation of The Carpenters and Guy Lombardo? Then you will be happy in thrift stores. As the albums will sell for $1.00 or less, you can greatly expand the number of your purchases.

I love to shop for more CDs and vinyl as much as ever. I have the most fun browsing in physical brick and mortar stores. I have noticed that more and more, I say to myself, wow, this place has a surprisingly good selection--I have all of it, but it is a surprisingly good selection. But somehow I still manage to find a lot of stuff to buy. I try to buy everything at a deep discount now. I try not to buy several albums at a time, at full price, which I used to do regularly. With the economic downturn, I find that the used stores have a great deal more inventory than they had two years ago. It's become more and more fun to shop at them.

Here's another album related to trainspotting:

When I saw him live last fall, I found his playing to be far more interesting and full of tension and release, compared to when I had seen him live five years earlier, when he was more of a relaxed bopper, to my ears..

Is that the store with the poor, over-priced selection run by the creepy guy whose leering at you with bad intent? Yes, except there are no prices on anything (if you show any interest in something you have to negotiate with the creepy guy and he tries to cheat you)--and everything smells like it has been dipped in a vat of cigarettes and ashes for the last couple of decades. Places like that have led to the amazing success of Half Price Books, in my opinion. The average middle class American with books and records in their basement to sell, viewed used stores as creepy places until clean, bright, well lit, customer friendly Half Price Books came along.

In Kansas City you can buy vinyl at Vinyl Renaissance (although whatever they consider a "collector's item" is very expensive), Zebedee's, and Prospero's Books. Nearby Lawrence, Kansas has Love Garden, with the biggest selection of them all. We lost Music Exchange, with its 1 million vinyl inventory, although many of us bought too much of that inventory at very cheap prices last year (like less than ten cents an album at the end of the sale). Half Price Books has three locations and an interesting, ever changing vinyl selection. You can still buy vinyl in Kansas City at a brick and mortar. CDs, too.

Another country blues album which I would recommend, and which makes for accessible listening, is this Yazoo reissue:

That is unbelievable, Alexander. Another type of vintage ad which I find creepy is the physician endorsement of cigarette ad. There were many of them, for most (if not all) of the major brands. Here is just one example:

I bought this Willis Jackson-Von Freeman album at Zebedee's in Kansas City: