Dave James

JM - First of all, congrats on your upcoming nuptials. I'd suggest Time After Time. Up over and out.

Seems to me the relative simplicity of a belt drive table gives it a reliability advantage, i.e. a lot fewer things to go wrong. I recall someone telling me once a long time ago that belt drives only have about three moving parts. Up over and out.

Well at least he appears to be awake. Apparently that more than you can say about Willy when he attended the Reagan funeral services. Up over and out.

I've used PayPal ever since I started using E-bay, way before E-bay bought them out. Probably 60-65 transactions give or take. Never a problem. Of course you're always worried about someone hacking into their system and getting ahold of your credit card and/or bank account numbers, but that's the price you pay to buy on the Net. And you do occasionally get e-mails from creeps trying to get your personal financial information and claim to be with PayPal, but a word to the wise in that regard should be sufficient. Not PayPal's fault anyway. I was wondering something else. Do most of you use credit cards or have withdrawls made directly from your bank account?. PayPal certainly prefers the latter. Up over and out.

Don't overlook shipping and handling costs when you put together your pricing model. Up over and out.

Pete - Is your Pepper Paich a monaural or stereo recording? One of them, and I'm not sure which, is worth a fair amount of money. I found a copy of this a number of years ago at a Goodwill store in Ellensberg Washington. I believe I paid less than $5.00 for it. Up over and out.

My collection is heavily skewed towards hard bop. Whenever I "hit the wall" I get past it by going in a completely different direction. More often that not, this involves the avant garde. By concentrating for a period of time on something that's completely different, a sort of aural palate cleansing seems to occur. Up over and out.

I spent some time this weekend getting my ears around the three RCA Lafittes. I would rate them as follows: Sugar & Spice, Blues in Sumertime and Jamba!. Not that any of them are bad, but that's just my personal preference. I especially like the handful of cuts on S&S where Lafitte is backed by four trombones. That's some seriously good stuff. Lafitte is a nice player. Handles the blues and ballads especially well. He's right out of Coleman Hawkins and that's never more apparent than on S&S. If you like Hawkins, you're gonna like this guy a lot. Nicely remastered sound too. Recommended. Up over and out.

My personal preference would be for the earlier less "busy" design, but I'll go with the flow. Just get T-shirt stock with a decent neck, the closer to a mock the better. I hate those things that droop halfway down your chest as soon as you pull them over your head. Up over and out.

Put me down for one of these bad boys. Gotta let the freak flag fly. Up over and out.

I got a care package from Dusty Groove last night with three Guy Lafitte CD's, "Jamba!", "Blues in Summertime" and Sugar and Spice". I haven't had much of a chance to familiarize myself with the music as yet, but I got a kick out of the liner notes on the outside of these French RCA reissues. Here are some examples: From "Jamba!": "A longtime representative of middle jazz, Guy Lafitte resolutely oversteps the stylistic boundaries in which he earned his wings." From "Blues": "Guy Lafitte treats us to nine pieces that let him develop freely, preaching, conversing, convincing, gentle, or serious on the topic he values above all: musical emotion." From "Sugar and Spice": "In this record, the tracks quite sweet, even meditative at times, counter-balance the magical and that sort of frantic swing of the others." Sounds like someone got ahold of a French to English dictionary and ran a fairly literal word for word translation. It is a nice touch though. Up over and out.

IMO, The Byrds possessed one of the most unique and recognizable sounds in the history of R&R. Their vocal work certainly was a factor, but I always attributed it mostly to the 12 string guitar of Roger McQuinn. I saw these guys twice. Once in their very earliest iteration (along with the Jefferson Airplane and a long forgotten SF aggregation called the PH Factor) and once late in their collective lives at my alma mater Lewis & Clark College. I really think they are terribly underrated. Up over and out.

Chuck, If your struggles become unbearable and you feel it would be theraputic to share your pain, I'm sure there are a number of folks on this board who would be happy to help see you through during these difficult days. Up over and out.

Ordered three Guy Lafitte's from Dusty Groove. Should have them no later than Friday. And, although this is severely off task, I'm going to pick up Velvet Revolver's debut CD on the way home. "Slither" is an instant hard rock classic. Up over and out.

There were periods in Chet Baker's life when if you'd asked him to record My Funny Valentine with a kazoo orchestra and children's chorus, he'd just have wanted to know where, when and how much. If you've read the rather troubling Baker bio by James Gavin, you'll certainly know that Chet was driven by many things, few of which had to do with his music. As to the issue at hand, "duds", how about Art Blakey's "Hold On I'm Comin'"? It was made up of Messenger-ized renditions of tunes like "Monday, Monday", "Walkin' My Cat Named Dog" and my own personal favorite, "Secret Agent Man". Ouch!!! Up over and out.

Sidewinder - Think that plane you saw might have been a Lancaster. I know one of them was involved in a fly-by during the Normandy ceremonies. It was flanked by two fighters, one of which I'm sure was a Spitfire and the other probably a Mustang. I'm not familiar with the Lockeed you mention, but many Lockeeds from that era had the same double tail configuration you see on the Lancaster. From a distance, it might be easy to mistake one for the other, although the Lancaster was a four engine heavy bomber. Also, given the nature of the event, I would find it odd that what I would assume to be a non-combat aircraft like the Lockeed would have been involved. I've watched a lot of the D-Day coverage on TV. I also took another tour through Saving Private Ryan. I kept trying to picture myself trying to confront the kind of things our soldiers were forced to confront during this time, and I keep coming up short. It's truly remarkable what these people were able to accomplish and what they did to make it possible for all of us to have what we have today. I know it's become popular to call their's "The Greatest Generation" but even that doesn't seem to it justice. My hat is off at all times to these people. Someday I hope to be able to visit Normandy. I'm sure it would be an emotional experience, much like visiting the Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor but perhaps on a grander scale. Up over and out.

I learned the he BNBB can go away and you barely feel it. I learned that while none of my friends would give two hoots about jazz, I have a lot of cyber-friends who do. Makes one's love of this music a little less lonely. I learned that there's a lot more to learn about about something I already thought I'd learned about. And I wholeheartedly agree that in spite of the differences we may all have from time to time, that jazz fans are a pretty decent group of folks. Up over and out.

From out twice weekly independent newspaper here in Portland, the following headline appeared on page 2 the Friday edition three weeks ago. "50% of Men Prefer Bush." It doesn't get any better than this. I'm just worried about the other 50%. Up over and out.

Notorious is one of my all time top 5. A perfect movie. I have always been totally and completely smitten by Ingrid Bergman. I can't help myself. Agree with everything that's been said about Claude Rains. And don't forget his pivotal role in the original Wolfman with Lon Chaney Jr. He brought a dignity to the proceedings that the film itself probably didn't warrant. Rains was like Cary Grant in a number of ways not the least of which was his background and his ability to create a character that become not only what he did on screen but how he lived his life off it. Up over and out.

It occured to me when I was contributing to the "The Day The Earth Stood Still" thread that some people may not be aware of the best source on the Internet for finding information about movies, television shows and entertainment in general. It's called the Internet Movie Database and can be accessed at www.imdb.com. If you've ever seen a picture or a show where you said, "where have I seen that guy before" and you gots to know, then this site is for you. Joe Bob says "check it out." Up over and...

Isn't the Raymond Burr-less Japanese version of Godzilla scheduled for release on DVD sometime soon? Seems to me I recall reading that fairly recently. Bruce - Visually, parts of Forbidden Planet don't hold up very well, but I think the story still does. One of my favorite scenes in the movie is when Morbius takes Commander Adams and Dr. Ostrow for a tour of the Krell "complex"...when they're walking across that bridge and the camera pans up and down and reveals a giant atomic power generation grid for as far as the eye can see...and further. It's designed to make you feel small both physically and intellectually and it works to a tee. I also like the scene when the monsters from the Id are trying to penetrate the ship's electronic defense perimeter and you see the monster outlined by the eminations of the ship's ray gun. In spite of its not having the timeless legs of a TDTESS, it's still firmly ensconsed among my all time faves. Up over and out.

I know the Dead was loaded most of the time, but they must've gotten into some serious Owsley blue when they decided to roll out the welcome mat for Donna Jean. In a band that's distinguished itself over the years by a fair amount of mediocre vocal work, she takes the cake. Just plain awful. Speaking of Dark Star does anyone else have the CD called Greyfolded? It's a full disc of various and sundry live versions of the tune spliced together so it goes on and on and on. Interesting if not essential. Up over and out.

The latest batch of Fantasy reissues includes one from Wess. It's from their Moodsville series, but don't let that deter you. Some nice slow to mid-tempo tunes with Wess on both tenor and flute. I'm not much of a flute fan, but even those pieces work for me. Good stuff. Up over and out.

The Day the Earth Stood Still is my favorite sci-fi movie from the '50's or for that matter, any other era. As to the DVD. as others have pointed out , it's chock full of interesting extras, especially the Robert Wise commentary. Don't forget this was the first time most people had ever heard that weirdest of instruments, the theramin. Made for a weird but appropriate soundtrack. In second place for me is Forbidden Planet. Like TDTESS, it's head and shoulders above the rest because of the quality of the story, the quality of the cast and the intelligence of its script. It's also fun to see Leslie Neilson when he was still a serious actor. And Ann Francis isn't hard to look at either. Pretty good special effects considering the era. Another of my favorites, and one I finally found on DVD just this weekend is Fiend Without a Face starring Marshall Thompson. About as low budget and cheesy as you can get, but it works. I'll never forget being freaked out as a kid by the creatures once they appeared towards the end of the movie. Brains and spinal cords moving around like inch worms. My Lordy me. Up over and out.

I got it for a pretty good price on e-bay. Mixed reactions. Obviously, there's a ton of music on 20 CD's. I've had this set for over a year and I think I've made it through maybe 12-15 of the discs. Lots of tunes done over and over again and let's face it, this isn't Miles with his chops completely intact. I've likened the Montreaux set to Billie Holiday's "Lady in Satin". Tremendously emotional at times, but far from the best work either ever did. My bottom line would have to be that even if Miles from this period is your favorite Davis, this is still overkill. If I'm not mistaken, there are some "best of" discs that have been culled from this set. Unless your a Miles completist (now there's a scary thought) I think most folks would be better off with something like that than with the whole box. Up over and out.