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BruceH

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Everything posted by BruceH

  1. I like these sets. If you consider them "core samples" of person's (pre-WWII) career you'd be close to the feel of them. The Bunny Berigan and Joe Sullivan sets actually got me into those figures; the others were just nice additions to what I already had. The Ellington box has got to be my all-around favorite Ellington anthology, even more than the Smithsonian, just on sheer listenability. Not all the booklets are equally good, but the average is quite high, and some of them are just a joy due to the combination of info and good writing. Frankly, I think there is still a great need for anthologies like this. Well-done, reasonable-length overviews done for the general public rather than overwhelming super-complete megaboxes for the specialist (though I have my share of the latter.) I really, really, (really!) hate to say it, but the closest thing on the market now are probably those Ken Burns compilations, but they are limited to only one CD per artist, which seems a tad slim in some cases, though good for newcomers. And why did Burns & co. feel compelled to make the covers ugly as sin? Ah, well... In short: Hell yeah, if you're into vinyl and see some of these Time/Life Giants of Jazz boxes in good condition at a cheap price, believe me, you could do a lot, lot worse. They be good.
  2. BruceH

    chris botti

    You've got it!
  3. I was a big sci-fi geek growing up, but even then I didn't see what people got out of Heinlein ... it was/is literally unreadable to me. I was more of an Asimov kind of guy! Clarke, Heinlein, and Asimov were my favorites growing up. (But that was before I got into Philip K. Dick.) BTW, just read Supreme: The Story of the Year, yet another Alan Moore self-referential superhero schtick. Eye-crossingly recursive at times, but fun.
  4. I think A Beautiful Day is a good album. My main problem with it is that the worst two tracks are the FIRST two tracks. Not the best programming, for my money. Your mileage may vary.
  5. The two most essential Sinatra albums, INMHO: Songs For Swingin' Lovers A Swingin' Affair! But if you really get hooked, you'll probably want to get everything on Jim's list and then some. Sinatra!
  6. Those damn crack whores! They really piss me off!
  7. That's what happens when you read too much "real" literature! Seriously, you are so right that Heinlein should have stuck to juveniles (what would later be called Young Adult fiction.) Just about all of his NON-juvenile novels are unreadably bad. I've got a soft spot for some of his short stories, though, but you could probably designate those as juvenile without much of a stretch. Let's face it: When it comes to things like felicitous prose or physical descriptions, that's just not what sf writers get paid for. The number of sf writers who could consistently turn out good prose can probably be counted on the fingers of one hand, and that's being generous. There are a lot more who have the pulp-writer's assets, i.e., forward momentum, interesting twists on old ideas, etc.
  8. Morgan/Shorter---discs 4 & 5
  9. The first thing that came to my mind, too. But I'd have to say I like Nuggets 2 even more. That's the rhino box of garage songs from outside the U.S. More stuff on it that I didn't already have, and much of it just rocks out more. As one friend put it, there's a "turbo-charged" quality to some of the songs. Zombie Heaven is great too.
  10. He's an artist a pioneer
  11. That's one president I can respect!
  12. Hot and strangely sunny. I love how the summer weather here waits until AFTER school starts to make an appearence. On the other hand, I'm glad we're not getting any hurricanes.
  13. This reminds me of album covers such as Queen's News of the World. Which, to me, at the time, looked way too much like C-3PO. It was the Star Wars era, indeed. In fact, this is a copy of an old Frank Kelly Freas cover for Astounding dating from the fifties. The only difference is that members of the band are painted in.
  14. Pretzel Logic!!!!! (That's my all-time favorite.) Everything Must Go makes great driving music. Anybody else here love Fagan's first solo album, The Nightfly? Personally it ranks right up there with the best Steely Dan albums, and better than some. I must have listened to it about a billion times.
  15. Thanks, Larry. The albums I mentioned got huge raves from somebody on CD Universe, so I thought I'd ask someone whose opinion I respect.
  16. BruceH

    Bix Beiderbecke

    Sounds like something MY mother would do, though...
  17. This has to have been done by the same jokers who posted the fake study that said fellatio reduced women's chances of breast cancer.
  18. Never mind that toddler they just ran over.
  19. Larry, what do you think of his other albums, Refractions, Look At the Time, and so on?
  20. You devil, you! (It's like this man is my twin!) I'll probably only get the Wilson, for now. (Much easier to hide.)
  21. Is she drawing from the bottom of the deck?
  22. For those who already had the vinyl release, how are the bonus tracks? I hear there are SIXTEEN of 'em! If the extra stuff is veryd good, it may justify buying the CD version.
  23. I've never before seen a brick mailbox. Thanks.
  24. I can send you a photocopy in black & white if you want. (American.)
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