The Magnificent Goldberg

Well Amazon UK just e-mailed to say Funk in France is on the way to me now, Oil Can Harry's will follow when available. Wonder why it's different to the US Amazon? MG

Bloody 'ell!!! All I'm getting from Amazon UK are e-mails saying sorry we don't know when this is going to be available. Where are you getting your CD's from, Monkboughtlunch? MG

Thank you. I got a free LP from some shop that didn't know what else to do with it of Ethiopian Jewish Liturgical Music. It was the most awful-sounding music I'd never heard, so I gave it to someone at work. (I DID tell him what I thought of it, but he still accepted it.) And I've kept well away from Ethiopian music since. But OK, I did know an Ethiopian student in the sixties who really dug Lonnie Smith and David Newman, so I evidently did that country's entire music output an injustice. Oh well, can't win 'em all. Does that guy have any albums of his own or is he a star of various artists compilations? OK, well I can't get #5 either, but that's pretty nice. I'll be interested in knowing who this is. Thanks MG

NOT South African! Oh wow, then I don't know. Almost certainly not from Africa unless there are good jazz musicians in Botswana, Zimbabwe or Zambia, all of which I greatly doubt. So if it's modern and European or American, I'm on foreign territory. I'll have a go at #5. Thanks. MG

Thanks to Bill, I've had a listen to #4. It's South African, not from the patch I know best, West Africa, but I think it's Winston 'Mankunku' Ngozi. I think I've said once or twice on the board that, if you come across anything of his, don't toy with your scruples, buy it. MG

I never heard of him before, outside his work for Prestige in the early seventies. Some of that stuff was half reasonable, though entirely because of soloists like Houston Person. I'm surprised he had even a little reputation. MG

I've got a cloud of dread about that, too. Seeing Chuck's photos of his office made me realise what a BIG mistake I'd made (that he didn't) putting my CD shelves in AFTER the carpet was laid up to the wall, and getting them screwed into the wall. MG

I DO like that response! MG

Nice session. All the Gator Muse albums are excellent. Unless there's some new stuff, though, I've got it all. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I didn't think Gator is really your stuff, Chuck. Were you more interested in Rudy and the production process? MG

Lord, HORRENDOUS!!!! KEEP WELL. MG

Moving a big collection IS tough. Are you taking your shelves too, or having new ones made? Happy move though, Chuck. MG

Both are very different; from each other and from anything else he's done. No way to tell before you hear 'em. And it took me a good while to get 'Musart' after I'd bought it. I mean over a decade. MG

Yes, I've got the LP of that, too. A nice-ish cut or two but a bit on the weak side overall. MG

Oh. But it's got to be a CD? MG

Oh, is that the complete George Braith 1963-67? I have the feeling that label does that kind of thing. MG

The songs really stick in the mind. The one I always loved most was 'Lobachevsky'. REALLY sarcastic. And VERY clever. MG

Glad you like it. Is it now on CD? MG

When I was 16, early in 1960, I saw the 10" LP of 'Songs by Tom Lehrer' in Imhofs in Bond Street; was intrigued by the cover: (That's the UK edition) I bought it and loved it. I learned all the songs, sang them to my friends (a form of torture not widely appreciated) and started them and me buying comedy albums. My best mate, Rose, bought the 45 of 'Poisoning pigeons in the park'/'The masochism tango'. Sue got the first Bob Newhart album. Others got Peter Sellers' first two albums. I bought Shelley Berman and George Formby albums. A couple of years passed and I hit the dole, so Tom Lehrer and the other comedy albums I had parted company. But those Lehrer songs stayed with me. I'd sing them occasionally at work (I called this 'teambuilding'.) And in 1996, our chief economist loaned me a twofer CD of 'An evening wasted' and 'Tom Lehrer revisited'. And finally, in 2001, I bought the Rhino box My daughter loved it. Comedy recordings aren't things I get out and listen to frequently or even reasonably often. I think I've listened to this box fewer than half a dozen times. I ripped it to my hard drive ten days ago and I've listened to it all, except the live albums. Really, that first album seems to me, even now, to be one of the best comedy albums of all time. The quality of the writing is superb in the second album, 'More of Tom Lehrer' - fabulously horrendous images such as 'sliding down the razor blade of life' don't grow on trees you know. But that album seems to be too much the sort of thing a comedian has to do to produce something new and more amusing. 'Songs by Tom Lehrer', while frequently somewhat childish in its humour, is so much a completely integrated view of the world from where Lehrer sat that the album becomes a work in itself which is much greater than the sum of its parts. But Lehrer's stuff sticks even more than Slim Gaillard's. Comedic napalm. So Happy Birthday Mr Teacher. MG

When I was about ten, passing a bookshop, I stopped my mother and asked if I could have this. Coo, it's a bit big, ain't it? Well, it was a Penguin edition of 'A history of Europe' by H A L Fisher. Written in 1936, it blew my mind! I'd never realised what you got at school was the merest fraction of what there was. I read it time and again, them moved on to the history of France and so on. I'm sure I wouldn't have passed my history exams without the perspective it gave me. Eventually it got trashed, I'd read it so much. So I asked my wife to get it for my birthday last year and she got me a 1940 hardback edition, that looks a bit like the illustration only without the cover I started reading it again a few weeks ago and am just over a third of the way through. There are things I never noticed about it before. It seems to have taught me to write. I keep being DELIGHTED at some of his phrasing and frequent emotionally over the top descriptions - he wasn't an unbiased guy. I found out, when I started working on education policy in 1974, that Fisher is one of the very few Britons who have given their name to an Act of Parliament (unlike US Acts, British Acts are all tabled by the Government) and that's because they had a big part in writing and pushing through a very important Act; in Fisher's case, it was the Education Act 1918, which raised minimum school leaving age to 14 and laid down the basis of further education. He was the equivalent in those days of Minister of Education under Lloyd George. So he'd probably have been pleased someone learned to write from his book. (He was Virginia Woolf's first cousin.) Anyway, I'm revelling in it. MG

Certainly not the case here, either. When we decimalised from pounds shillings & pence to pounds and pence, all the old stamps went out. Now we do what Daniel said - we have stamps with no nominal value but which are good for whatever class of post it says on them, so inflation be damned. MG

Didn't know about this. Ordered one from Discogs which ships from UK. Thanks for letting me know. MG

TERRIFIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AND DON WILKERSON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'll have two - one'll be a surprise for my mate. Thanks a lot for telling us about this. MG

Well, I didn't howl when I saw the name Ricky ford on #7. He's not terribly unfamiliar to me. Someone I don't mind listening to, but not someone I care too much about. VERY surprised Sun Ra turned out to be a guy MG

That KEEPS happening to me. My fingering on the keyboard is getting more and more lackadaisical as I get older, I think. I leave the board for a couple of hours and it's often gone when I go back. No comprendo. MG