7/4

April 20, 2008 No Fortissimo? Symphony Told to Keep It Down By SARAH LYALL, NYT LONDON — They had rehearsed the piece only once, but already the musicians at the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra were suffering. Their ears were ringing. Heads throbbed. Tests showed that the average noise level in the orchestra during the piece, “State of Siege,” by the composer Dror Feiler, was 97.4 decibels, just below the level of a pneumatic drill and a violation of new European noise-at-work limits. Playing more softly or wearing noise-muffling headphones were rejected as unworkable. So instead of having its world premiere on April 4, the piece was dropped. “I had no choice,” said Trygve Nordwall, the orchestra’s manager. “The decision was not made artistically; it was made for the protection of the players.” The cancellation is, so far, probably the most extreme consequence of the new law, which requires employers in Europe to limit workers’ exposure to potentially damaging noise and which took effect for the entertainment industry this month. But across Europe, musicians are being asked to wear decibel-measuring devices and to sit behind see-through antinoise screens. Companies are altering their repertories. And conductors are reconsidering the definition of “fortissimo.” Alan Garner, an oboist and English horn player who is the chairman of the players’ committee at the Royal Opera House, said that he and his colleagues had been told that they would have to wear earplugs during entire three-hour rehearsals and performances. “It’s like saying to a racing-car driver that they have to wear a blindfold,” he said. Already there are signs that the law is altering not only the relationship between classical musicians and their employers, but also between musicians and the works they produce. “The noise regulations were written for factory workers or construction workers, where the noise comes from an external source, and to limit the exposure is relatively straightforward,” said Mark Pemberton, the director of the Association of British Orchestras. “But the problem is that musicians create the noise themselves.” Rock musicians have talked openly about loud music and ear protection for years. The issue is more delicate for classical musicians, who have been reluctant to accept that their profession can lead to hearing loss, even though studies have shown that to be the case. At the same time, complying with the law — which concerns musicians’, not audiences’, noise exposure — is complicated. One problem is that different musicians are exposed to different levels of noise depending on their instruments, the concert hall, where they sit in an orchestra and the fluctuations of the piece they are playing. In Britain, big orchestras now routinely measure the decibel levels of various areas to see which musicians are subject to the most noise, and when. Orchestras are also installing noise-absorbing panels and placing antinoise screens at strategic places, like in front of the brass section, to force the noise over the heads of other players. “You have to tilt them in such a way so that the noise doesn’t come back and hit the person straight in the face, because that can cause just as much damage,” said Philip Turbett, the orchestra manager for the English National Opera. They are also trying to put more space between musicians, and rotating them in and out of the noisiest seats. At the Royal Opera House, the management has devised a computer program that calculates individual weekly noise exposure by cross-referencing such factors as the member’s schedule and the pieces being played. Musicians are spacing out rehearsals and playing more softly when they can. As the Welsh National Opera prepared for the premiere of James MacMillan’s loud opera, “The Sacrifice,” last year, the brass and percussion sections were told to take it easy at times in rehearsal to protect the ears of themselves and their colleagues, said Peter Harrap, the orchestra and chorus director. Conductors are also being asked to reconsider their habit of “going for a big loud orchestration,” said Chris Clark, the orchestra operations manager at the Royal Opera House. Composers, too, are being asked to keep the noise issue in mind. “Composers should bear in mind that they are dealing with people who are alive, and not machines,” said Mr. Nordwall of the Bavarian orchestra. And companies are examining their repertories with the aim of interspersing loud pieces — Mahler’s symphonies, for instance — with quieter ones. They are also buying a lot of high-tech earplugs, which are molded to players’ ears and cost about $300 a pair. Many orchestras now ask their musicians to put the earplugs in during the loud parts of a performance. “I have a computer program that gives me a minute-by-minute timeline chart through the whole piece,” said Mr. Turbett of the English National Opera. “I can go back to the musicians and say, ‘Between bar 100 and bar 200, there’s a very loud passage, so please put in hearing protection.’ ” But these remedies can bring problems. Some musicians in the brass and percussion sections resent being screened off from their colleagues, as if they were being ostracized. Musicians, even if they accept the need to use earplugs occasionally, tend to hate wearing them. Mr. Garner, the Royal Opera House oboist, said: “I’ve spent nearly 30 years in music and I know all about noise, and occasionally, if I’m not playing and there’s a loud bit next to me, I might shove my fingers in my ears for a few bars. But I have yet to find a musician who says they can wear earplugs and still play at the same level of quality.” The modern noise-level-conscious orchestra is also dependent, of course, on the indulgence of the conductor. Arriving at an orchestra to find that decisions have been based solely on musicians’ noise exposure can be galling to the sort of conductor who likes to be in control, which is most of them. Although Switzerland is outside the European Union, an extraordinary noise-related argument between the conductor and the Bern Symphony Orchestra disrupted the opening night of Alban Berg’s “Wozzeck” in March. The piece called for 30 string players and 30 wind and percussion players, all crammed into a too-small pit. When the stage director complained in rehearsals that the music was too loud, the conductor didn’t order the orchestra to play more softly, but instead asked for a cover over the orchestral pit to contain the noise, said Marianne Käch, the orchestra’s executive director. That meant the noise bounced back at the musicians, bringing the level to 120 decibels in the brass section, similar to the levels in front of a speaker in a rock concert. The musicians complained. The conductor held firm. But when the piece began, “the orchestra decided to play softer anyway in order to protect themselves,” Ms. Käch said. That made the conductor so angry that he walked off after 10 minutes or so, Ms. Käch said. Told that there had been “musical differences” between the conductor and the orchestra, the perplexed audience had to wait for the two sides to hash it out. In the end, the orchestra agreed to return and finish the performance at the loud levels. For subsequent performances, a foam cover that absorbed instead of reflecting the sound was placed above the pit, and the conductor agreed to tone things down. “This is the problem you find in many places, that the conductors are conducting more and more loudly,” Ms. Käch said. “I know conductors who have hundreds of shades of fortissimo, but not many in the lower levels. Maybe the whole world is just becoming louder.”

Dig it. Look who you share a birthday with! .

Yesterday I was wondering, thinking it was about time and it is. Congratulations on the new member of your family! .

Yeah. The box folds open and each disc has it's own cover with different artwork. .

Record Stores Fight to Be Long-Playing In Princeton, an Offline Haven for Music Shoppers Thrives

Happy birthday, Aggie! And what the hell is that!?! Sometimes a trombone is just a trombone.

have a good un'! .

This week it's Monk's Mood. .

Kids today, I tell ya...kids. .

April 18, 2008, 3:32 pm Return of Lost Bass Proves to Be a Jazzy but Thankless Effort By Corey Kilgannon The flier posted on Broadway, at 120th Street, that told of the missing musical instrument. (Photo: Corey Kilgannon/The New York Times) It seems as if some virtuoso is always leaving a Stradivarius in a yellow cab in this city. Then some good Samaritan returns the irreplaceable instrument and can be seen posing with the grateful musician in front of news cameras. So when I saw fliers pasted along Broadway last weekend — “Found upright bass in black case” — I called the number on the flier to get the story. I got a 64-year-old man named Manny Ramirez, who lives at 108th Street and Broadway in Manhattan. Mr. Ramirez said that while leaving work on April 9, he saw a “crackhead” dragging a bass up Broadway near 131st Street, where Mr. Ramirez works as a dispatcher for a moving company. “I say crackhead, but I mean, you know, a homeless dude — he was clearly out of it,” Mr. Ramirez clarified. “He was definitely mistreating the bass, dragging it on its neck. I knew there was a musician somewhere missing his instrument.” Mr. Ramirez is friendly with a lot of jazz musicians and lives with the legendary pianist Hank Jones, who he helps care for. Mr. Ramirez was recently honored with a humanitarian award from the Jazz Foundation of America for helping Mr. Jones through his triple bypass operation last year. Manny Ramirez, a recent honoree of the Jazz Foundation of America, found the bass and returned it to its owner. (Photo: Corey Kilgannon/The New York Times) Mr. Ramirez said he gave the “crackhead” $50 and took stewardship of the bass. He then pasted fliers along Broadway, hoping the owner was a student perhaps at the nearby Manhattan School of Music or Columbia University. “I brought a flier to the 26th Precinct but the desk sergeant wouldn’t take it,” he said. “He said, ‘How do we know the instrument is really stolen?’” I called Mr. Ramirez again on Tuesday and he said the bass had been claimed, but he did not sound happy. “I shouldn’t have gotten involved,” he said, explaining that the student had called him to claim the instrument and arrived on Monday with two detectives who questioned him. They told him they recorded the phone call with the student, and also ran his name looking for a criminal record. Mr. Ramirez said he refused to let them enter his apartment and was questioned in his hallway instead. “They asked me why I was in possession of stolen property,” he said. “I said: ‘Are you kidding? Why would I go to all that trouble if I wanted to steal the bass?’ Then the cops said: ‘Nice building. You really live in this apartment?’ I said, ‘I own it.’” Mr. Ramirez has a three-bedroom coop overlooking Broadway: “I bought it years back for $40,000, and now it’s worth $1.5 million.” He mentioned Hank Jones to the police, and the bass owner’s ears perked up. “The whole time, the guy wouldn’t even look at me — all he did was look at the nicks and bruises on his bass and say, ‘Oh, how much is this going to cost to repair?’” “But when I mention Hank Jones, the guy was like, ‘Man, Hank Jones, that is really something.’ But he was saying it to the cops, not to me.” A neighbor came out and asked what the fuss was about. The neighbor said she was a lawyer and told Mr. Ramirez to show the detectives his plaque from the Jazz Foundation, which he did. The framed award to Mr. Ramirez from the Jazz Foundation bears an inscription from Hank Jones: “To my good friend Manny, peace and love, Hank Jones.” Mr. Ramirez said: “Finally, the detectives believed me and treated me a lot better, but the kid just left with the bass, never said a word. He never offered me the $50 I laid out to get the bass back. I really just wanted a thank you.” Mr. Ramirez still had the bass owner’s number. I copied it and called the man later. It was John Romey, 23, an accomplished soloist with an impressive résumé. He said the bass was stolen from his car parked at 140th Street near City College, where he is completing his bachelor’s degree. “There were people all around,” he said. “I couldn’t believe someone could take a rock and break my car window in broad daylight and pull a double bass out and run down the block with it.” The police arrived and began searching for it. Mr. Romey put the word out in the musician community, putting postings on Web sites and sending mass e-mail messages. “I spent days e-mailing people and posting it online, on bass sites,” he said. “Everyone in the bass community knew about it.” He said the bassist Ron Carter heard about it and called him. “Ron Carter, who I’ve never met, called me and said: ‘I’m renting you a bass right now. Go down to David Gage’s bass shop downtown and pick it up.’” Mr. Romey did. After all, he had concerts on Long Island and at Columbia University that weekend, and he is preparing for a solo bass recital of 20th-century music on May 14 at City College. The bass was handmade for him by Sam Kolstein, a Long Island bass maker. It cost him $10,000. “But it’s priceless to me,” Mr. Romey said. “I’ve played it hours every day for five years. It becomes part of you.” Mr. Romey is from Baltimore and moved to New York at 19 to study the bass after hearing the music of the French double bass virtuoso François Rabbath. He is on scholarship to City College, he said, and has gotten three grants to travel to France and study with Mr. Rabbath, about whom he is writing a book. He lives in Brooklyn and teaches, composes and works music gigs. After the theft, Mr. Romey and detectives searched for the bass. Mr. Romey said he never saw Mr. Ramirez’s fliers because he did not search south of 125th Street. But he said a woman who had heard about the lost bass saw a flier at 120th and e-mailed him the image of it from her BlackBerry. Mr. Romey told the police he had Mr. Ramirez’s number and they had him call again from the 26th Precinct detective squad, and recorded the call. “They warned him that the man could be trying to rip him off, he said. The evening that Mr. Romey wanted to pick up the instrument, Mr. Ramirez said he had a bicycle race, and they eventually decided on the next evening. Assistant Chief Michael Collins, a Police Department spokesman, said that detectives grew concerned after Mr. Ramirez said he could not meet Mr. Romey when Mr. Romey first called. “The fact that the finder said he was not immediately available,” Assistant Chief Collins said, “raised some suspicions that detectives to do a through follow-up.” Mr. Ramirez told Mr. Romey he lived with Hank Jones. Mr. Romey said, “When I heard that, I hung up the phone and was like, ‘Is Hank Jones still alive?’” “I told the police I would go by myself, but they said, ‘Well, you could get robbed and we don’t want to take that chance of not getting the instrument back.’ They said this could be a grand larceny case, that I should be careful. They said, ‘Maybe he’s telling truth but we want to recover it right now — let us come with you.’ They drove me there in an undercover car with the siren going, and they questioned him in the hallway. I felt kind of bad because he seemed like a good guy doing a good thing, but I was still in shock that the whole thing was happening — I never expected to see the instrument again.” “I feel bad because Manny seems like a great guy, but I was a wreck the whole week and I just shut down.” Mr. Romey said on Thursday that he called Mr. Ramirez and thanked him profusely and offered to repay him — or at least take him out to dinner and give him free tickets to his performances. Blog comments here: http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/...ankless-effort/

I'm not too happy about it either, it could be the start of something like this:

This recent story was also interesting: Swarm of earthquakes detected off Oregon Coast ASSOCIATED PRESS 3:55 p.m. April 11, 2008 Scientists listening to underwater microphones have detected a swarm of earthquakes about 150 miles off the central Oregon Coast. Geophysicist Robert Dziak (ZEE-ak) says they don't know what the earthquakes mean. But he says they could be the result of magma rumbling underneath the Juan de Fuca Plate – away from the recognized earthquake faults off Oregon. More than 600 quakes have been detected in the past 10 days. Three were of magnitude 5.0 or greater. On the hydrophones, they sound like low rumbling thunder and are unlike anything scientists have heard in 17 years of listening. Most are too small to be felt on shore.

An autographed copy of the Ken Burns Jazz box!

I remember when I was a kid - late '60s or '70s - I heard predictions that California was going to slide into the ocean. I'm still waiting... .

Major quake almost inevitable for California Mon Apr 14, 2008 5:07pm EDT By Dan Whitcomb LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - California will almost inevitably be struck by a major earthquake, and possibly a catastrophic quake, sometime in the next 30 years, scientists said on Monday in the most comprehensive geologic forecast for the state. California faces a more than 99 percent chance of being hit by a magnitude 6.7 temblor -- the size of the 1994 Northridge quake -- in the next 30 years, according to a study using new data and analyzing earthquake probabilities across the state. The analysis found a nearly 50 percent chance that California would be rocked by a magnitude 7.5 quake, which is capable of inflicting catastrophic damage if it is centered under a big city like Los Angeles or San Francisco. "We can expect that we're going to get hammered by a big earthquake and we'd better be prepared," said Tom Jordan, director of the Southern California Earthquake Center at the University of Southern California. "Magnitude 7.5, that's a really big earthquake," Jordan said. "If that were to hit on the San Andreas Fault it could be very destructive. You're talking about an earthquake that might span 200 miles of fault length and a displacement of 12 feet or more. "If that were to take place in say, the Los Angeles region, then you would have a big problem," he said. Jordan said the chance of a 7.5 magnitude quake hitting Southern California was 37 percent, compared to 15 percent in Northern California, largely because the 1906 San Francisco earthquake relieved stress from the San Andreas Fault there. The 1906 San Francisco quake was thought to have been a magnitude of around 7.8 or higher. The last temblor of that size in Southern California was in 1857, and the southernmost section of the San Andreas Fault has not seen such an event since 1680. "Those faults have been accumulating stress all this time and that makes large earthquakes highly probable," Jordan said. The January 17, 1994, Northridge quake in Los Angeles killed 72 people, injured more than 10,000 and caused billions of dollars in damage. The study was conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey, the Southern California Earthquake Center and California Geological Survey and is significant because it presents the probabilities statewide for the first time. "This is the most comprehensive earthquake forecast ever for the state of California," Jordan said, adding that it was requested by the California Earthquake Authority and would be used by the agency as a basis for

There used to be a photo of my Epiphone Joe Pass on post #1. My guess is they got lost during some old problems with the board database.

I don't understand how a young artist just starting out, without substantial financial assistance from Mom and Dad, can make it anymore in Manhattan. Room mates. Living in Brooklyn or NJ helps.

It's insulation, probably made in Manville, NJ.

It's not uncommon to have setup problems on a new guitar. A shame, but true. .

...and many more! .

April 18, 2008 Record Stores Fight to Be Long-Playing By BEN SISARIO, NYT The Downtown Music Gallery is looking for a home. NOW added to the endangered species list in New York City, along with independent booksellers and shoe repair: the neighborhood record store. The hole-in-the-wall specialty shops that have long made Lower Manhattan a destination for a particular kind of shopper have never made a great deal of money. But in recent years they have been hit hard by the usual music-industry woes — piracy, downloading — as well as rising real estate prices, leading to the sad but familiar scene of the emptied store with a note taped to the door. Some 3,100 record stores around the country have closed since 2003, according to the Almighty Institute of Music Retail, a market research firm. And that’s not just the big boxes like the 89 Tower Records outlets that closed at the end of 2006; nearly half were independent shops. In Manhattan and Brooklyn at least 80 stores have shut down in the last five years. But the survivors aren’t giving up just yet. Saturday is Record Store Day, presented by a consortium of independent stores and trade groups, with hundreds of retailers in the United States and some overseas cranking up the volume a bit to draw back customers and to celebrate the culture of buying, selling and debating CDs and vinyl. Among the highlights: Metallica will be greeting fans at Rasputin Music in Mountain View, Calif., and Regina Spektor is to perform at Sound Fix, a four-year-old shop in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, that like many has learned to get creative, regularly offering free performances. At Other Music, a capital of underground music on East Fourth Street in Manhattan that faces a shuttered Tower Records, a roster of indie-rock stars will be playing D.J. all afternoon, including members of Tapes ’n Tapes, Grizzly Bear and Deerhunter. One-day-only record releases will also be part of the event. Vinyl singles by R.E.M., Death Cab for Cutie, Vampire Weekend, Stephen Malkmus and others are being sold on Saturday, and labels big and small are contributing sampler discs and other goodies. (Schedule and information: recordstoreday.com.) “Record stores as we know them are dying,” said Josh Madell of Other Music. “On the other hand, there is still a space in the culture for what a record store does, being a hub of the music community and a place to find out about new music.” Some retailers are hoping that the effort is not too late. Jammyland and the Downtown Music Gallery, two East Village institutions — Jammyland, on Third Street, specializes in rare reggae, and Downtown, on the Bowery, in avant-garde jazz and new music — are facing untenable rent increases and are looking for new homes. Jammyland is “the model of what a great record store can be,” said Vivien Goldman, the author of “The Book of Exodus: The Making and Meaning of Bob Marley and the Wailers’ Album of the Century” and other books. “D.J.’s congregate there from all over and exchange ideas. It’s a crucible of music knowledge.” For a local music shopper with a memory of even just a few years, the East Village and the Lower East Side are quickly becoming a record-store graveyard. Across from Jammyland is the former home of Dance Tracks, a premier dance and electronic outlet, which closed late last year, as did Finyl Vinyl, on Sixth Street. Stooz on Seventh Street, Sonic Groove on Avenue B, Accidental on Avenue A, Wowsville on Second Avenue and Bate, an essential Latin store on Delancey Street — all gone, to say nothing of stores in other neighborhoods, like Midnight Records in Chelsea and NYCD on the Upper West Side. “Rent is up, and sales are down,” Malcolm Allen of Jammyland said as he sold a few Jamaican-made 45s to a customer last weekend. “Not a good combination.” Like many longtime clerks, Mr. Allen is frighteningly knowledgeable. Testing out a random single on the store turntable, he discerned in a few seconds that it had the wrong label: it wasn’t “Good Morning Dub,” he said, but rather U-Roy’s “Music Addict,” from around 1987, itself a response to Horace Ferguson’s “Sensi Addict.” That earned him a quick sale, and later research confirmed that he was right on the money. Casually dispensed expert knowledge like that is exactly what Record Store Day is looking to celebrate. Ms. Spektor, who started off selling homemade CDs and is now signed to a major label, Sire, said that independent stores had been the first to carry her music, and that their support helped her career take off. And though she said she now feels contrite that for years her music collection was made up mainly of items copied from friends — “I just had no money” — she is supporting the stores out of gratitude. “I’m the record label-slash-store nightmare,” Ms. Spektor said. “Everything I had was a mixtape or a burned CD. But I don’t like the idea of all the record stores where people actually know what they’re talking about going out of business. They have their own art form.” Every year consumers buy less of their music in stores. According to Nielsen SoundScan, retail outlets accounted for 42 percent of album sales last year, down from 68 percent in 2001. To adapt, many stores are devoting more space to DVDs, clothes and electronics. That’s the case even with the biggest retailers, including Virgin Megastore, which has 10 outlets in the United States. (It has closed 17 since 1999.) The company reported that last year its sales were up 11.5 percent. But nonmusic purchases accounted for the jump; music sales were flat. Simon Wright, chief executive of the Virgin Entertainment Group North America, said that over the last four or five years music sales had gone from being 70 percent of the stores’ total to less than 40 percent. “The sheer drop-off in the physical music market is going to inevitably cause the space allotted to music to come down,” Mr. Wright said. “That will obviously contribute to further decline.” He added that the future of Virgin’s Union Square location was up in the air; though profitable, he said, the store is just too big for the current market. Whatever people buy there, the store is doing a brisk business. It buzzed with shoppers on Sunday afternoon. Some of them, like Kim Zeller, a 37-year-old clothing designer pushing a baby carriage, said that buying music on the Internet just can’t compare to the experience of browsing in a store — and getting out of the house. “It kind of gets boring when you’re trapped inside listening to music from your computer,” said Ms. Zeller, who had bought new CDs by Erykah Badu and the Black Keys. “I still like coming to the store.” Although many have been shuttered, more than 2,400 independent shops still exist around the country. And even in the most gentrified parts of Manhattan, some are carrying on the same as ever. A-1 Records, on East Sixth Street, which has Polaroids out front of the D.J.’s who shop there, is still a popular trove of rare vinyl, as are the Academy outlet on East 12th Street, Record Runner and Strider on Jones Street, and the venerable House of Oldies on Carmine Street. The Academy store on West 18th Street has one of the most picked-over CD inventories in the city. Products that aren’t fundamentally made up of ones and zeros — vinyl records, for instance, which have a habit of turning casual fans into collectors — have proved a salvation for many retailers. Eric Levin, the owner of Criminal Records in Atlanta and one of the organizers of Record Store Day, said vinyl accounted for a quarter of his music sales. “That may only be a niche as we go forward,” Mr. Levin said, “but it’ll be a giant niche you can make a lot of money on.” For many New York shops, however, the real estate crunch is making survival difficult. The Downtown Music Gallery, which sells about $60,000 in CDs, DVDs and other items every month, has been searching for a new home for six months, said Bruce Lee Gallanter, its founder. So far it hasn’t been able to find anything affordable in its namesake area in Lower Manhattan and is considering moving to Queens, Brooklyn or Washington Heights. “We would love to stay downtown,” Mr. Gallanter said. “That’s what we’re all about. But we have to be realistic.”

££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££

Maybe his best leader album in years, IMHO. .

http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Pickguards.html, but they don't show one for a thinline with two humbuckers. The only one for a thinline is - get this - white pearloid. That's what my MIJ Thinline has... .

Looks like a pound sign, of course.