John Tapscott

At the old Sam the Record Man store at 347 Yonge St. in Toronto (a great store in its day) there were 3 floors - the 1st floor had rock and country and the cashiers; 2nd floor - jazz and classical; 3rd floor, I think, had sale items and concert ticket sales. When you came in at ground level, they were always playing rock music at an ear-splitting level. I don't know how anyone could have worked on that floor. You could hardly speak to any of the check-out clerks. If you were a jazz or classical fan, you raced for the stairs to get to the 2nd floor as quickly as possible. One day, and this would be around 1979 or 1980, I walked in the front door and to my absolute amazement, they were playing the Bill Evans Trio throughout the whole store - 1st floor included. It was truly beautiful, like I had walked into musical heaven. I was never so proud to be a jazz fan as I was that day.

Count Basie Live Roulette '59-'62 - My first Mosaic purchase and still one of my very favorite sets!

Thad/Mel

I hope you enjoy this set as much as I do, Peter!

Complete Atlantic Recordings of Lennie Tristano, Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh

Just ordered the Pacific Jazz Piano Trios and Gerry Mulligan Selects plus the Ellington Newport '58 single - $100 even, including shipping. Not too bad at all. 5.5 of the 7 CD's are music I've never heard before. I have a feeling I'll enjoy all this.

No, someone has a listening problem.

Speaking of offenses, I am never all that impressed with the Steelers offense. They sometimes seem slugglish to me, I thought they played rather poorly when the game was 16-14 - what was that 3rd and 1 pass at midfield out of the shotgun all about? (not to mention the near misses by their punter). Even the Steelers fans were booing. Big Ben and the O rarely light up the scoerboard big time, but they seem to do just enough to win the game. Ben generally is able to avoid the big mistake or turnover, and sometimes he gets lucky, like that floater that went for a TD. But I'm guessing that Steelers offense is really going to click against the Cardinals defense. I'm thinking this could be one of those boring blow-out Super Bowls, especially if Hines Ward plays.

Well, I know I'm in the distinct minority here, but my reaction is that if it was anyone else BUT Wynton playing that solo, we'd all be talking about what a great solo it is and what great chops the guy has!

Thanks Peter, for the rec. I listened to the samples at CDBaby (what a great site) and ordered one! My kinda jazz, for sure.

Stick with it. You may not get it, but some day Evans will "get" you. Guaranteed.

Indy Miami Minnesota Atlanta

Alan Broadbent was born in New Zealand; Valery Ponomarev in Russia.

Haven't seen too many articles or reviews by Yanow in recent editions of Coda. My appraisal of his work is quite the opposite. I tend to think he's too superficially un-critical.

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?