Hot Ptah

You can write down any amount of monetary damages in a Petition or Complaint. That doesn't mean that you will get that amount at trial, or anything close to it. Some states have gone to requiring that the damages must be stated as "in excess of $10,000" so that people can't write down arbitrary high figures just for the shock value.

A very good point here--it was not easy to find, or buy, "Emergency" when it came out, or for some time after that. Whether prog and metal musicians had better access to albums than the general public, and made a point to seek out "Emergency", who knows? The general spotty availability of a lot of jazz recordings in the 1970s is probably difficult to identify with today. With no internet and no major reissue programs, it was very hit and miss to find and buy an album you had read about in a national magazine or in a book.

Sorry, one of the few times that I've linked from someone else's site. I hope that it's fixed above. It is, thanks.

I am not getting any images on my end. Could you give us the titles and artists for the albums?

I Never understood why. The rhythms on that are too static for my taste. I'm an Illusions and Blythe Spirit man myself. Illusions is another really good one. I knew I was forgetting one from his first burst of recording on Columbia.

I would start with Lenox Avenue Breakdown, In The Tradition and Blythe Spirit. Basic Blythe would be fairly far down on my list after that. However, it is a credible album, not a bad album or a commercialized album.

Once I had to ride for business with a client, who drove, from St. Louis to Purdue University in the middle of the night. As I entered the car, the CD case for George Strait's "Strait Country" greeted me. My client did not play any music the entire trip though.

Words I NEVER want to hear while record shopping: "Honey, I'm gonna wait in the car." That actually happened once. I had a credit slip from a used store, Exile Records at 75th and Metcalf in Overland Park, Kansas, and she waited in the car while I used it. That was the one time that the store had literally nothing that grabbed me. I could tell that too much time was passing, and started literally sweating and feeling warm and tense. Finally I decided that with the amount of time that had passed, I simply could not go out to the car with nothing, which was my preference. In desperation I grabbed a used LP of Ry Cooder's "Boomer's Story". She could not believe that I had taken "so very long" just to get that one!

I would get his "Waves" on Tomato Records before I would get "Streams". I don't play "Streams" that often--it's one of those albums I admire on occasion. With just the three musicians, it has a rather minimalist, hard edge to the sound, for me. It is no doubt an excellent album, and one that a Rivers fan would want to get at some point. With the problems in condition that you have mentioned, it might be just as well to wait.

Streetside Records in Kansas City used to have a frequent buyers card and a discount program for very frequent buyers. They had sales a few times a year when the store was open to only the very frequent buyers, by invitation only, and then everything in the store was marked down significantly for that group. I was at one of those sales, in the basement jazz room. It was filled with middle aged men, all with towering stacks of CDs which they were going to purchase. Happy, animated conversations filled the room. As the men talked about jazz, they ran around, adding to their stacks of CDs. Then a cell phone rang. A man listened to it for a short time, turned around, said "that was my wife. Fun time's over!" and trudged out of the room.

I saw Marcus Belgrave at the 1978 Ann Arbor Jazz Festival, fronting a wonderful big band, the II-V-I Orchestra, which featured a very young Kenny Garrett. Marcus' solos were memorable on that occasion. The six groups which played full sets at the festival on that closing Sunday: Marcus Belgrave and the II-V-I Orchestra, Chico Freeman, Hubert Laws, the Ellington Orchestra (playing a new piece written for them by Charles Mingus), Mose Allison, Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers.

Capers Corners, one of the greatest record stores of all time, alphabetized its artists by first name, just because the owner felt like it. This Kansas City area store was owned by Ben Asner, the older brother of actor Ed Asner. It had a phenomenal selection of jazz-I wish I had been able to afford everything I wanted to buy there, back when it was open. It was truly a special store.

Did the owner look like this? No. He was a middle aged African American man, quite pleasant to talk to.

After Gandolfini has three unsuccessful films in a row, he will develop a sudden interest in reviving the character.

In 1978 I visited a friend in Los Angeles. He had just moved there. We looked in the yellow pages and found an independent store that specialized in jazz albums. We drove there, quite a distance. We asked the owner if he had any Sun Ra albums. He said, "no, Sun Ra's only popular on the East Coast. No one likes him out here."

I agree with you that the last episode was loaded with hints about the future, which could either be things for fans to think and argue about until they are tired of it, or may be the basis of one or more lucrative films. For example, what is going on with Paulie? Has he turned on Tony, or is he thinking about it, or is he feeling indispensable to Tony with so many other top people dead or in the hospital--so that he thinks he can defy Tony openly? I took it that Meadow was telling Tony in their restaurant meal together that she was planning to become a Mafia defense attorney as her profession. It could have been more explicitly stated though. All kinds of possibilites present themselves for future films, with Tony trusting Meadow with his personal finances and more and more of the Mob family business as she becomes seasoned as an attorney. If this is all so, then the final episode is a tragedy, because I think that the viewers always thought that Meadow would do great things totally apart from the Mob, and that Tony and Carmella wanted her to do great things apart from the Mob. The fact that she seems to be getting sucked into the Mob business by her own choice is a powerful development, but left somewhat ambiguous. She didn't go off to medical school in California or something like that though, so maybe it is not all that ambiguous. The career path for A.J., first assistant to Little Carmine's film company, then management of a club financed by Tony--again, A.J. is getting sucked into the Mob. Any club financed by Tony will be a front for the Mob business, much like Ade's club was. The viewers had thought that A.J. too would escape Mob life. I have thought of the subtitle of the show, "The Rise and Fall of Tony Soprano". To me, there was no real fall, unless the last episode means that Meadow and A.J. are going to join Tony in the Mob. Otherwise everything that happened to Tony were things he really didn't care enough about to constitute a "fall". Where is the "fall"?

Maybe Chase was tired of everyone finding hidden meanings and ambiguities in everything on the show, and he wanted to say, this guy is really REALLY dead--no way will he get up and come after Tony again in the upcoming movie--don't even start your blogs about it.

What happens to soy fibers when they come into contact with mustard bottle moistened nether areas?

Another question I had. When Tony and Camella host Meadow, her boyfriend and their parents, it comes out that the boyfriend/attorney is working on a case involving someone involved with bid rigging and other crimes. It was implied that this was a project which was going to take him into territory adverse to Tony and his father. I didn't really catch the name of the criminal that the boyfriend was talking about. Was he discussing the alderman played by the actor who was in Animal House?

I wonder if I am right about what happened with the FBI agent, and how common it is in the real world. Although married, did the FBI agent sleep with the female Brooklyn FBI agent who would know about Phil's location, just so that he could tell Tony about it? Then when the FBI agent heard about Phil's murder, he said enthusiastically something like "we may win this one yet!" Did that mean that he identifies with Tony and Tony's mob family so much that he thinks of himself as a "We" with them? (Or did he mean that Tony was providing so much helpful information in the fight against terrorism that if Tony remained alive that America would win over the terrorists? That seems less likely to me). Do FBI agents, and law enforcement officers in general, sometimes start identifying with the criminals they are after, especially if it is a long term project?

The Otis Spann sides are incredible. I think that many members of this board would enjoy them. Spann's piano playing is just plain excellent piano playing. I have enjoyed the Hall/Johnson/DeParis/Dickenson set a lot. It doesn't get much better for bluesy piano than James P. Johnson, in my opinion. The Kenton/Holman/Russo set is outstanding, in my opinion. It features Holman and Russo as arrangers, and they are excellent, no matter what one thinks of Kenton. The T Bone Walker is a great blues collection. If you don't like the best of blues, you won't like it. I haven't heard the other boxes mentioned in your post.

In my experience, every business retreat is a descent into one of the circles of hell. Few human activities can be so painful and such an utter waste of time. I think that you should bring no music at all, and just play the radio, or no music at all. Isn't that what your co-workers would prefer? I agree with those who have said that it is presumptuous to contemplate that they will want to listen to any music that you might bring. All of my efforts along those lines in the past 30 years have been a disaster. To subject them to music they don't want to hear, presented with enthusiasm, just before they endure the excruciating retreat--how bad can it get for them?

Do tell about the shops in Ann Arbor! I have relatives who live there and I'm going to visit them in a couple weeks... Well, get here before the end of July, because the best indie shop will be closing at the end of that month. Schoolkids Records, which was forced 9 or 10 years ago to close their storefront shop and move into the basement of an outdoor clothing store (Bivouac), so you have to go through that store and down their stairs to get to it. But he is now forced to close completely, so he is selling off all stock at 5-20% off; lots of new (very little used titles) mainstream rock and jazz and even more harder to find stuff. And he recently expanded the vinyl section, so all of that is going too. That's on State St, in the Bivouac store. a Few doors down from that is Grand Wazoo, which sells used and new, rock and jazz, CDs and vinyl. And on Liberty is Encore, which has a huge selection of used everything. You can literally spend hours browsing through their stacks and shelves. A few blocks west on Liberty is Underground Sounds, which sells new and used CDs and vinyl also, but it's probably 90% rock (I saw a few Coltrane, Miles and Sun Ra vinyl there recently, but that's rare). There is also Overture Audio on Main St which sells audiophile equipment and vinyl reissues, but they are pretty expensive and a limited selection. Finally there is PJs on Packard, above the Subway shop, another used and new CD and vinyl shop that manages to squeeze a huge selection in a tiny space. They are a little higher-priced than the others but have a wide, varied selection that you probably can't find elsewhere in the area. The staff at all of these places are very knowledgeable about music; I've frequently had to cut off conversations with them to get back to the parking meter before it ran out. Sad about Schoolkids. Wazoo is still open? I used to shop there a lot in 1978--80. I bought many Sun Ra LPs there, among other things. The then-owner's brother used to have a used record store in Madison, Wisconsin, but gave it up decades ago. Does Wazoo still have the Sammy Davis, Jr. vinyl cover above the cash register, the Here's Looking At You album, where Davis has his hand cupped over his glass eye?

The depth of knowledge, and detailed knowledge, in the blues discussions on Blindman's Blues Forum is staggering to me. I thought that I generally knew my blues, but I quickly discovered that I was in deep water when I got into those blues discussions. I like the jazz discussions there because they are just starting. It is like being on a jazz board in 1999. Some of the blues lovers are genuinely curious about jazz and ask questions such as "Is Dexter Gordon any good?" Since the poster has just blown me away with incredible knowledge of Son House, far beyond what I thought any person could know, there is no way that a fair-minded person is going to dismiss the inquiry or mock it, as might happen on some of the jazz boards today.