John Tapscott

Yes, I think we had a thread on it back when it first came out in Coda. Chambers can be a good writer at times, but I believe (and I think this was the general consensus ) that he missed the mark on this one. Rather superficial, actually. BTW, I couldn't find Lee's and Cuscuna's comments nor Chambers' reply.

More to the point, maybe GM ought to pull out of making vehicles (couldn't resist that one).

Happy Birthday Phil! Time for another Cd, I would say.

Phil Woods Quartet/Quintet 20th Anniversary Set

Thought about it for a few days - of the black box sets - these 3 Jones/Lewis Basie Roulette "Live" Elvin Jones Runners-up Kenton - The Holman/Russo Charts J.J. Johnson Tristano/Konitz/Marsh

Some of my favorite Joe on record is on Sam Noto's "Act One" Xanadu date. He also has solos on record as a sideman with big bands such as Buddy Rich and Capp-Pierce, among others. R.I.P Joe. The only time I saw Joe live was playing lead alto with Buddy. R.I.P. Joe.

The Complete Capitol Recordings of Gene Krupa and Harry James

My personal favorite is Lew Tabackin. Lew usually plays flute on one or two tracks on each of his albums. One of Lew's quartet albums, "Dual Nature" I believe it's called, has flute on side A and tenor on side B.

I would say that for me re-listening to a recording after a number of years seldom results in a downgrading of the session. It either stays just about the same as I thought it was, or actually comes up in my estmation. Which of course, means that my collection only gets larger, never smaller.

I have to disagree. I think they will close all the Michigan plants and Toyota/Honda/etc. will expand plants elsewhere in the US, mostly Tennessee. If GM does go under, Southeast Michigan is f***ed even more than it is now. I think what bugs me the most about this idea that in the long run we will all be better off in some post-industrial economy is that it ignores the truly wrenching dislocations that happen -- large parts of the country have never recovered from deindustrialization (the same is true about the North of England and most of East Germany for that matter). Second, most people have gone from decent blue-collar jobs to truly shitty, temporary and unstable service work. Ultimately, if we can't provide jobs that pay a living wage, then we can't keep the economy stable. The rich keep too much in savings and the growing numbers of people sliding down the economic chute have been putting it on credit, and that is what has led us to where we are today. (Ironically, if everyone really started living within their means then the US would be in a Depression within a few days.) The winners out of the globalization sweepstakes have simply paid no attention to the losers, and they are legion. Well, for one thing under Chapter 11, as I understand it, the union contracts will be torn up, and Toyota/Honda/Hyundai etc would be able pay the workers the same very good (though non-union) wage and benefit rate they earn now at plants in Tennesee & Alabama etc. So there's no need to move the plants. And even if they did move and set up shop down south, so what? Lots of workers migrated from the southern United States to the north decades ago, why can't it happen in reverse. A dynamic economy will create lots of new jobs, but those jobs may not always be in places where the old ones were. (Northern England and East Germany are hardly good examples of places where you would want to invest in a new plant). Look, I'm not a complete union basher (agree with Sangrey's earlier post), but the unions are at least partially responsible for this mess the Big 3 finds themselves in. The union's recent flexibilty comes too little too late. I think it was in one of the articles posted. - Big 3 hourly compensation (wages and benefits) to union workers = $74/hour; non-union auto plants =$48/hour, the economy as a whole $28/hr. The reasonable question has to be asked - why should the taxes of the $28/hr guy subsidize the guy who's making $74/hr.? Nor am I an apologist for the "rich" , but the rich I know don't usually stuff their money under a mattress. Much of it is in some kind of investment which provides capital for the economy to grow and develop. Look, consumers and investors have both made their judgement on the Big 3. There's no point in propping them up or bailing them out in their current form. Having read all the arguments here and elsewhere I think Chapter 11 is the way to go. It's going to happen sooner or later, so we might as well face the music and do it now.

My guess is that there will be a bail-out THIS time, but this is only to help get everyone's mind around the fact that GM is for all intents and purposes BANKRUPT and that will be no NEXT time. The bail-out is only putting off the inevitable. There's enough blame to go around, but the bottom line is that consumers are basically saying to GM - "we don't want your stuff - it doesn't measure up." Why bail out a company when consumers have given thumbs down to their product? Let Toyota or Honda take over the GM plants and put out product people want to buy. This is why the hand-wringers over bankruptcy like Gov. Jennifer Granholm of Michigan are on the wrong track. The plants will be bought up and someone will produce vehicles from them and employ workers and need parts etc. Yes, there will be a harsh adjustment period but it's either now or later. My father was a driver of GM vehicles all his life and my mother still dives a small Buick, which to be honest is a decent car and serves her purposes well. I've never had a GM vehicle, and likely won't in the future. Not that I haven't tried, but I have always found GM dealers to be arrogant and unwilling to really make a deal. They always low ball your trade-in and want top dollar for their product. The attitude is (or at least was) - "We're GM, we're great, so pay up!" One would hope that attitude is disappearing. Oh yes, I worked in a GM plant for several summers when I was in college. Here's how stupid the work rules are. The supervisor can tell you how to do something but can't actually show you how to to do it. A non-union supervisor can't touch the product, only the unionized workers can actually touch and handle product. Now how stupid is that? What is a supervisor for, if not to show you in a hands-on way how to do your work properly?

Montreal 31-24 (55 total points)

Tom, perhaps it's because of her compositions, which IMO are not at the level of her outstanding (again IMO) jazz piano playing. She always sounds great on other people's music, which is why this release is really one to look for. One of her early CD's on Blue Note, a swinging date with strings (Without Words, is the CD's title, as I recall, and contains mostly standards) has some very strong piano playing.

Happy Birthday, GA!!

Thanks everyone for the birthday wishes! Much appreciated.

My investments have taken a big hit like everyone else's. My investments are mostly geared towards retirement (I was hoping to in a position to retire in 4 or 5 years; not that I would necessarily do it; but it's good to know that I could, if I so chose.) But all that's certainly out the window now. Thankfully our house is paid for and in an area where house prices have not gone down too much. What happened to me recently is this: Our main family car is 9 years old and has nearly 100,000 miles on it. A month or so ago, I thought about buying a new one by taking enough money from from my investment account to do so. (I like to pay cash if I can rather than making finance or lease payments). But then the market started tanking, and I decided that instead of buying a new one to put $1,400 into repairs on this one. My mechanic said the car should be good for another 30-50000 miles. I bet many people are doing this kind of thing. This is going to be a big problem for the economy over the next couple of years - diminished consumer demand. The question is whether GM, Ford, and Chrysler can hang on until demand for autos picks up again in a few years. My guess is that one of them will declare bankruptcy.

Have a great birthday, Ken!

Thanks for the tip. I pre-ordered the set today from Tower and just got a message that it has shipped!

"Stompin' the Blues" - the title track from the Harry Allen-Joe Cohn Quartet CD with special guests John Allred and Scott Hamilton (Arbors) Allred is great on this.

Though I have all the LP's in the box save one I just ordered the TA/LT - will be great.

Thanks for posting that, Larry. Nice interaction between Buddy and the organist (don't think it's Barry Kiener, though)

So Greenspan holding interest rates way down year after year after year had absolutely NOTHING to do with it? Let's consider the sub-prime mortgages. Let's say that a low-income family is convinced that it would like to buy a home, and the govt is pressuring the banks to make loans to such a family. Let's say that the family is paying $1,000 in rent, and believes that it can afford a $1,200 mortgage payment. The bank is not as particular about whom it lends its money to as it used to be, so it agrees to make the loan. The family is concerned about the $1,200 a month payment. It isn't concerned about the price of the house. With interest rates at 5%, the price of the house is going to be higher than it would be at 10%, because the family is only going to agree to pay $1,200 regardless of what the interest rates are. The real estate developers and those wishing to sell their homes like to see a higher price for obvious reasons, but the low-income buyer doesn't care. He cares only about the monthly payment. So then the husband loses his job, and they cannot meet the $1,200 payment on only the wife's salary. So they default on the mortgage loan. They return to a $1,000. apartment. It seems to me that that is the nature of subprime loans. They are risky and shouldn't have been made in the first place. I don't see that to be the fault of Alan Greenspan's low interest rates. OK , let me get this straight. This is quite simplistic, but it helps me understand. The problem is that people are just walking away from homes with these sub-prime mortgages on them. They were just paying interest on them, so they have no equity. And now as far as the banks and other institutions go these mortgages are being shown on the books as having no value. Is that correct? But, in fact, they are worth something. New housing starts are way down, so these homes will be bought and lived in at some point. If the mortgage on the house is $200,000 (which the bank "borrowed" from someone else - namely its depositers and must repay to them), and someone eventually buys the house for $100,000, the financial instituion won't have a total loss. I guess the problem is that no one knows when someone will step in and buy these homes and for how much, so they're just written down to zero now. It's obviously too late for tthe banks, but someone is going to make a HUGE amount of money buying these abandoned properties cheaply and selling them at a nice profit down the line. Capitalism at its finest!

Just paid my $2,000 annual premium for my life insurance policy to AIG (Canada) yesterday. When I took out the policy 5 years ago, my broker told me that AIG was the most sound insurance company of all. I'm not particularly worried though, since a more solidly grounded insurer will surely buy up AIG's good in-force policies . The management of these companies is really screwed-up. The whole melt-down is shades of Wall Street's Gordon Gecko ("Greed is Good"). I really feel badly for all the laid-off employees of these firms, as for the upper management , not at all. (in any case, they've already sucked out millions from the companies for their own pockets- I'd love to see the off-shore bank accounts of these greed bags).

Yes, Ephemera is a great album, which I have on vinyl, with back cover photo of Pepper in London's Soho, where it was recorded. Saw him with the Jones/Lewis orchestra (Hanna/Mraz/Lewis rhythm section) in Manchester in 1978, so they must have visited Britain more than once in the seventies. BillF. Ephemera was, I believe, recorded on tour with Thad and Mel in '73, so that was the year you would have seen the big band with that rhythm section. The pianist with the band in '78 was most likely Harold Danko and probably Bob Bowman on bass. It's easy for all the tours to kind of merge into one (especially 30+ years ago).

Ditto to all of the above to which I would add Ephemera (Spotlite) from 1973 (with Hanna, Mraz, Lewis). Pepper passed in 1986.