The Magnificent Goldberg

I'm not perfectly sure, but I remember reading in Billboard in the mid-nineties that Alliance Entertainment offered over $100 m and was turned down - so they bought Concord instead. My personal guess is that Saul Zaentz decided he wanted to retire and then wasn't in such a good negotiating position as he had been before, if he settled for $80-90 m. MG $80-90 mil doesn't sound like a bad settlement. Indeed! I wouldn't mind half! But compared to over $100m it might be regarded as disappointing. But obviously, if A doesn't want to sell and B wants to buy, what's offered may well be higher than if the boot is on the other foot. MG

Bjorn Borg Bjork Dick Berk

In my own defense, when I worked in IT -- I worked for slightly over ten years all for just one company -- which was the first full-time job I had after college. Started part time at first for one year (minimum wage, at that) -- worked my way up to full time, then got a huge promotion when I landed a much better job (in the same company) at the corporate offices in Kansas City (which is what brought me to KC). I moved up the ladder pretty steadily for almost 8 years. If I had stayed with it, and moved into the management track, I'd probably be making 6-figures (or fairly close to it) by now. (Heck, I was 70% of the way to 6-figures when I got laid off). Of course, I absolutely didn't and don't have any "management" DNA in me, not one drop -- and I had gotten about as far as a non-technical, non-management IT guy could get. In short, I've never been job-hopper -- in fact, I can't imagine working any place for anything less than 5 years -- unless it was truly a temporary situation. Nor was I, once I'd turned 26; Having done 36 jobs in 10 years, I was ready to settle down. I joined the Civil Service then, which is a great way of doing lots of different jobs without changing your employer. I did 7 years in IT, in a finance environment. Good intellectual challenge but not what I wanted to do. Even so I stuck at it, until the project I was on was finished. I don't have any management DNA in me, either. I got by, by making sure my staff were all nice people - interview for sense of humour rather than CV. So all I had to do was join in (or start) the sing-alongs MG

I'm not perfectly sure, but I remember reading in Billboard in the mid-nineties that Alliance Entertainment offered over $100 m and was turned down - so they bought Concord instead. My personal guess is that Saul Zaentz decided he wanted to retire and then wasn't in such a good negotiating position as he had been before, if he settled for $80-90 m. MG

Oxtail soup. MG PS - what happens to all the rest of all the oxes?

Like Rooster, I went from one job to another, really until I was 36. Then I found what I really wanted to do – political economics – but needed to get promoted again, which didn’t happen ‘til I was 46, but luckily the job I wanted had just been vacated and I got it. From then on, work was brill! I had a real sense of achievement. I punched one Secretary of State (in the shoulder, not to injure him); swore at another fairly frequently; made another laugh a lot; and embarrassed the nastiest of them all in front of the Prime Minister. These were the REAL achievements, but I also changed a few economic policies for the better (I think). Now I'm retired, I've some real smartass remarks to look back on fondly. MG

OK, discog fired up. Here are the results (a few years out of date, so they don't reflect the album from which you took the BFT track). I've cut out the personnel details This is the one you put on the BFT. This session, a month later, produced what has always been regarded as the "original" version, released on Voc 4021, with an alt take on Columbia P514320. Interesting that Vocalion issued the other two songs first. They must have thought they had greater commercial potential. MG

He also said, "In the long run, we are all dead." MG thank you! Quite all right That's why they call economics "The Dismal Science". MG

He also said, "In the long run, we are all dead." MG

Legless, yet! And wide eyed? MG

Pencil Packin' Papa Horace Silver The Tin Man

You can't, you just CAN NOT have Reuben Wilson's "Set us free". No serious lover of BN has that album! MG

I finished "Pandora's star" by Peter F Hamilton the other day. Not quite as good as the "Night's dawn" trilogy, but a good solid SF yarn and I ordered the concluding part. While waiting for it to come in, I plucked out of my shelves George Bernard Shaw's "The adventures of the black girl in her search for God". A short little thing he wrote in South Africa in '32. The publisher must have seriously underestimated the sales potential; it was published in December 1932 and my copy, which is the fifth printing, is also December 1932! It's beautifully illustrated with engravings by someone called John Farleigh. I bought it in the late '60s and can't have read it more than once before. Really nice to read really felicitous prose! The other short one I plucked out is one of my favourites: "Sundiata: an epic of old Mali", written down by D T Niane from the words of the Mandinke djali Mamadou Kouyate. It's the story/history of the creation of the Empire of Mali in the second quarter of the 13th century. Hard to say which bits are history, which bits are fantasy, and which are political propaganda. But the whole story is magnificent and puts Tolkien and others to shame! However much is fantasy, it's a great adventure and also a great window onto Mandinke culture. MG

Big Boi Dre OutKast

74 used & new available from $0.23 Sorry - it's beyond my budget limits MG

Very groovy indeed! A compilation of his 3 LPs and first CD on Muse 1. Broadway (from Broadway) 2. Hackensack (from Good vibrations) 3. Stella By Starlight (from Shippin' out) 4. Good Vibrations (from Good vibrations) 5. My One And Only Love (from Good vibrations) 6. Plenty, Plenty Blues (from Broadway) 7. Do Nothing Till You Hear From Me (from Good vibrations) 8. Groove's Groove (from Blues all day long) 9. Where Or When (from Shippin' out) 10. Blues All Day Long (from Blues all day long) Not a dud among them! But there wasn't a dud among any of the 4 albums anyway. So you couldn't pick a bad compilation, however hard you tried. So if you find any of the originals, you can buy with confidence. But in the meantime, buy this with confidence. It is GOOD Groove! MG

Elvis Presley Jerry Lee Lewis Carl Perkins Jr

Argghh! You beat me! Bob DeVos Gene Edwards Steve Giordano

I've written a whole series of skits called "668: Neighbor of the Beast." It involves an urban apartment dweller who lives next door to hell. Satan (his neighbor) is all done up in red makeup complete with horns and a cape. He drops by to borrow sugar, stuff like that. He's a nice guy. In one skit, the main character (Dave) is passing 668. He hears moaning and wailing. He knocks on the door. Satan answers (behind him we see an ordinary apartment, nothing hellish about it at all). SATAN: Oh, hi, Dave. How's it going? DAVE: Not too bad. Look, Satan, I hate to bug you, but it's a little late for all the wailing and gnashing of teeth. Do you think you could turn it down a couple of notches? SATAN: Hey, no problem. My bad. We were just going to knock off for the night anyway. Sorry for the disturbence. DAVE: It's okay. Ordinarily it wouldn't bother me, but I have an early meeting tomorrow. SATAN: Sure thing. Hey, I'm in charge of the lobby Christmas tree this year. Think you could kick in a couple of bucks? DAVE (reaching for his wallet): Sure. Here ya go. SATAN: Thanks. Let me write you a receipt. DAVE: Don't worry about it. I trust you. (both laugh) Anyway, have a good night, Satan. My best to all of the damned. SATAN: Night, Dave. Good luck with that meeting tomorrow. DAVE: Thanks. (to himself after the door closes) What a nice guy. I bet you'd enjoy a book called "Titivullus; or the verbiage collector" by Michael Ayrton, a British novellist, painter, sculptor (his main gig), art historian, biographer, poet, humorist, book illustrator and all round good guy for late night chat shows in the '60s. Titivullus is a minor demon (clerical class) who's found paddling in the Styx and set to work collecting verbiage, so people can be damned out of their own mouths. Satan is depicted as a retired Indian Army officer, constantly moving in a black cloud and reading, so far as he is able to do so in the dark, a pre-publication copy of his biography, which Milton will be writing in several hundred years. Titivullus, turning the verbiage into propaganda, eventually takes over. MG

I try to be as precise as i can be with the information that is in the booklet. In the tracklisting they wrote: "Master unissued on 78 rpm" and the record date is Januar, 19th 1938. In the liner notes they tell us the nice story with the time capsule of 1939, where a copy of the vocalion version was placed in this box, which has to be opend in the year 5000. And the author says: "...a copy of the original Vocalion record of "the flat foot floogie" (included here) was placed.... " For me this sound like... they have used a Vocalion session, which was not issued on 78rpm in the old days. Maybe another point (it was mentioned in the discussion) will or might support this. I quote the following from the notes: "...And, as if by magic, Gaillard sold a nonsense ditty he'd written, "The Flat-Fleet Floozie (with the Floy Floy)", to a publisher and recorded it for Vocalion--but not before executives got him to doctor the title, recasting the slightly raffish "Floozie" as "Floogie"...." I think, we can all hear, what they sing.... I hope, this can be helpful. Maybe someone knows more than me, i have only this liner notes. I'll check this later. I seem to remember there being two originally unissued versions, one from the same session as the Vocalion - that came out on Columbia LP - and one from a few days or weeks earlier. Not enough time to fire up the discography at present. MG

The only Groove Holmes albums I don't like, because I haven't heard them, are the three he made for Flying Dutchman. Anyone got these and want to say what they're like? MG

George Jefferson Weezie Weizen I've been holding this in for a long time, but.... For the record, "weizen" is pronounced with a "Germanic" v as the first letter. So it's "veiss-en". All the "Weezie" jokes are embarassing! So.... Vice President Vice Admiral Vice Squad So it's the Mod Squad for me Leon Spencer Jr Melvin Sparks Idris Muhammad

Here's part 2 of the data file. MG

OK, here's the data file. (Too big for one post. This is 62-66) It sets out which albums were on the pop or the R&B album chart from May '62 - the end of '70. You get the usual details, the year of entry, the date of entry, highest pos, weeks on chart, and weeks at #1 or #2, for the pop chart, then the same for the R&B chart, then the name of the co-artist (where there is one). The R&B album chart didn't start until '65, so there are no entries before then. You'll see that Don Patterson got in, quite high and fast, with his Christmas record. But like all Christmas records, only stayed a short time. I had a look at the BN discography to see which Patton tracks were issued as 45s. The silver meter came out as a double sided single. Along came John/I'll never be free Fat Judy was also a double sided single Amanda/Ain't that peculiar Ain't that peculiar/The yodel was issued as a coupling on the L series, which was a 7" 33rpm series. I think BN made a mistake with the single issues from "Got a good thing goin'". I stil think "Soul woman" was the hook track. However, "The yodel" was very popular over here. There were at least two British versions of the tune in the late '60s: one by a band called Spirit of John Morgan and the other I've forgotten who it was by. I don't think I agree with Jim about the way the grease comes at you off a Patton record. In the mid '60s, we were picking up on these cuts immediately as stuff for dancing. Maybe it wasn't the same in the US, but these were very hot with the trendies over here (er - I was one of those, then, don'tcha know?). But we were a kind of hip minority who THOUGHT we liked the same things that people over there liked. But maybe there were slight differences. But anyway, not all of those hit albums were greasy. And a lot of the non-organ jazz hits weren't terribly greasy. It certainly isn't an adjective I'd attach to Monk's "Criss cross" or "Search for the new land", "Song for my father", "A new perspective", or Wes', Getz and Herbie Mann's hits, for example. So I don't know, which is why I started the thread MG

... floy-hoy... floy-hoy ... ...i can't wait for it with regards Mr. Bassman Actually, I should have said that that was the first time I've heard the original. I have only seen them do it on film. So thank you Mr B. MG But i have to thank mikeweil, because he is the real source for this version. He invited me to S&S! The liner notes of the package state, that this version was unissued on a 78-rpm record. and here something for all of you... who can withstand these gentlemen ??? Oh, so this isn't the original Vocalion take? So it must be the alternative take that was issued on a Columbia LP. MG