The Magnificent Goldberg

Papa Wembo Rochereau Tabu Ley

Billy Larkin & the Delegates - Dr Feelgood - World Pacific stereo Billy Larkin & the Delegates - Ain't that a groove - World Pacific mono Billy Larkin & the Delegates & Clifford Scott - Blue lights - Aura stereo Billy Larkin & the Delegates - Hole in the wall - World Pacific stereo MG

I vaguely remember the name Walter Gates. Didn't he have a big pop hit in the early sixties? Or am I thinking of someone else? Can you remind me some more, Patricia? MG Just remembered - that was Walter Brennan I never heard of Walter Gates. Who he?

Johnnie Bassett Bill Heid The Searchers

Hamas Hezbolla Al-Qaeda

Jimmy Tarbuck Kenneth Cope Alexei Sayle

Lowell Fulson - Chess Blues Masters series - All Platinum pressing Etta James - Chess orig - Etta's greatest album ever! MG

Well, at least they have all those nice King pressings in Tokyo's vinyl shops. Indeed! I didn't take NEARLY enough money to Japan in 2002! England 28-3 to USA. But from what I see in BBC blog commentary (football on other side), USA showing up well from time to time. MG

QRT Jim! MG

And an even bigger number at the end. 91-3 almost made the Japanese Prime Minister wish he were Italian USA v England just started not long ago. England a bit shocked. 3-3 after 12 mins. MG

Anthony Armstrong-Jones Alec Douglas-Hume Dai double dash (he knows who he is)

Princess Rudean Madame Kilroy Billy Wright, Prince of the blues

Hey! What happened to my earlier post? Oh well Houston Person - Stolen Sweets - Muse promo Howard Roberts - Color him funky - Capitol orig Jackson Southernaires - Too late - Songbird orig MG

One could argue that this is also the case with going to orchestra concerts in the US. Not among everyone in the audience, of course, but a significant percentage. I wouldn't say you're wrong there. Opera seems to be a bit different in that, in Britain anyway, it is subsidised to hell, AND FOR THE SAKE OF PEOPLE WHO ARE THE RICHEST AND MOST POWERFUL IN THE LAND, and who, therefore, could well afford unsubsidised opera. But they are also the group in control of the subsidies. MG

Gibson Gretsch Guild

Good news then. This recently came out on CD on Groove Hut, one of the numerous "Andorran" labels. Perhaps they will also reissue Kynard's own PJ album? As for The Soul Brotherhood, I got it from Newbury Comics, but it's still in the backlog! Thanks for that; now on order. When I did a search at all the European Amazons for "sonny stitt" "my mother's eyes", I got no results, so I left off "sonny stitt" and up it came. What's with this? If Groove Hut thought of issuing "Where it's at", they could have put it on the same CD as "My mother's eyes", so I doubt that it will come out. MG

In the days when I had only a couple of hundred LPs, I used to play the new ones far too much, and ended up learning them. I found that, if I'd learned an album, I might play it, but I'd ceased to listen to it. It also monopolised the time I had available for listening to music too much, so that I didn't have time to play old records. And neither outcome seemed to me, by the late sixties, to be what I wanted. So I play most new albums about 20-30 times in the first year I have them; perhaps a handful the following year; once or twice thereafter (though there are exceptions, of course, in both ways). So I don't do what I see a lot of people here doing; playing a new album over and over for a short while. By listening to recent acquisitions at the weekend, I can absorb them adequately for me to get to know them, but not so well that I take them for granted. And so most of my collection gets on the player at least every couple of years. And if I upgrade an album in some way, the new version comes out to play quite a bit. There are only 35 albums I haven't listened to for over ten years and most of them are ones I keep for other reasons. So: a) I don't usually have a huge backlog (only when I buy a load of, usually African, music when I go away on hols); b) the lack of a backlog means I'm always keen to get some new stuff. I strongly suspect it is the big backlog of records either totally unplayed or played only one or twice that makes people think of buying records as an addiction. In those cases, well, perhaps it is. Of course, I only have a small collection compared to some - 4110 albums as of today. MG

My wife is off to South Africa and Namibia on Monday, but she'll be back two days before the final, so I can't ask her to film the celebrations MG

Thanks for the links VBII. I don't know whether to support Scotland, where I was born; England, where I was brought up; Wales, where I've lived more than half my life; or Namibia, where we'd planned to live when I retired. I think SA is the likely winner. MG

Well, "Soul brotherhood" was one of Kynard's best albums. It's a good bit better than "Reelin' with the feelin'" which is the other album on that CD. It's also a good bit better than either of the LPs on the Legends of Acid Jazz CD - "Afro-disiac" and "Wa-tu-wah-zui". "Soul brotherhood" is as good as "Professor soul", which has only been issued on CD in Japan. But I think that was one that was reissued quite cheaply earlier this year, so Hiroshi can probably get it. The other great Kynards are "Where it's at" on PJ, which has never been reissued, I think. Dan will agree, won't he? And Sonny Stitt's "My mother's eyes" also on PJ. And I think that one also has never made it to CD. In the last couple of weeks, since I got it from Hiroshi, I've been groovin' quite hard to "Charles Kynard", a recent Japanese reissue from Mainstream. That one's a LOT better than either of his other Mainstream albums. Nearly as good as "Afro-disiac" and "Reelin' with the feelin'". Two more bits of Kyard are on their way to me from Hiroshi: "Paul Humphrey" by Paul Humphrey and "Night blooming jazzmen" by the Night Blloming Jazzmen And don't forget that next month, there is another Japanese reissue of some classic Kynard: Afrique - Soul makossa No one needs to go short of Kynard. MG

Moses Gunn Tom Gunn Peter Gunn

In the days when I used to listen to classical music, I was never really too interested in opera; give me a nice little oratorio like Delius' "Songs of sunset" or Elgar's "Dream of Gerontius" though... What Jim and Rod have been hinting around is class politics - perhaps the English are better at identifying this than Americans. And opera is awash in class politics. It is - or at least has become (I believe it was different in Mozart's day) - the apogee of ruling class identification. Back in the early seventies, when I was much less left wing than I am now, my wife and I, together with a couple of our mates, got cheap tickets from our friend who ran the record shop, for Glyndebourne; "Ariadne auf Naxos". In a sense, this wasn't anything special for us, because Glynde was only the next village to the one where my wife was born and where we lived when we were first married. But I do have to say that the very long intervals between the acts, during which one could have one's champagne picnic in the beautiful gardens (the weather was wonderful that afternoon - though we had no champagne, just a flask of tea) was the most pleasant part of it all, the opera itself being stupid beyond belief. But actually, I didn't mind that, because the whole thing was so much larger than just the opera; so much so that the opera itself became merely an unimportant element of an event. Something's happened to the font! I can scarcely read this. Anyway, I conclude that the music REALLY doesn't matter; the social milieu is all important and those who seek to promote a different view have a (not very well) hidden political agenda. MG Edited for typos once I'd got the font sorted.

That's right. Nashboro was one of the most important Gospel labels. Glad to say I was able to contribute significantly to that discography. MG

Professor Harold Boggs - Heaven in my soul - Nashboro orig Jimmy McGriff - The groover - JAM orig MG

Not in our libraries, you can't - well, I guess you could, but they monitor what you access and there are notices threatening expulsion. MG