paulfromcamden

Fair point Steve 👍

Obviously depends on the venue but just to note that in small venues the records and CDs (and tapes!) on the merch table are often the artist copies supplied to the musicians by the label. I've done the merch table in those types of venues a bunch of times and know how much the musicians appreciate any income it brings - those guys often aren't making a lot of money. In a way it's another benefit of physical releases - it's very hard to sell a download at a gig!

I regularly see 1980s French Blue Note reissues of common titles priced up at £30-40. In my mind these are still the £10 records they were a decade ago 😂

Feel sorry for us Europeans paying 25% more for Blue Note Tone Poet reissues! Funnily enough over here a lot of used jazz vinyl seems to be dropping in price if anything. I think the market has shifted heavily towards original pressings and 'audiophile' reissues. Lots of regular 1980s (non Blue Note) reissues of common titles can be found cheaply. This was confirmed to me by a dealer I spoke to last year who is struggling to shift this stuff even at beer money prices. And still people are buying expensive reissues of Pablo records when the originals can be had for a few quid. Seems nuts to me.

@Pim that's pretty much how I feel about records too. My idea of a perfect afternoon is a hour rummaging in a good secondhand record shop, getting the records home, cleaning them, them settling down with a cup of tea and discovering what they sound like. I just love it. Maybe the sensible thing to do would be to stream most of it, save a pile of money and get a lot of space back. But I don't find scrolling down a screen as satisfying as flicking through a stack of records. Records are just nice objects. I've been buying them for forty years and expect to carry on. Not rational but I don't think appreciation of art should always be entirely based on reason.

I have a theory that now you can stream most things some folk prefer to invest their record buying budget into occasional purchases of exclusive limited 'art editions' and so on rather than just buying a whole bunch of records to listen to. £150 seems like an insane amount of money to me for a record but they sell out so I guess there's a market. So long as the music is available elsewhere no harm done. And if it helps finance the label so much the better. I'm quite happy with my 1970s Delmark reissues.

Politics aside I imagine many musicians will now think twice about performing at a venue that sues for $1m following a cancellation.

Sure. Me too. And others that are a decade old that are unplayable. Some dyes degrade more slowly. Storage conditions (temp and humidity) also contribute to how soon they fail. They might last 10 years, 30, 50 but CDRs are inherently unstable and ultimately will all fail at some point. No one is going to be playing them a hundred years from now. Whether that's a problem or not depends on what's on them I guess. Plenty of papers on this published by the Library of Congress, NIST and so on.

CDRs certainly deteriorate. Not through use but the dyes aren't stable over the longterm.

Who knows what the licensing situation is.... but from their Bandcamp page looks like a legit label. Shame there's no physical release. https://caligolarecords.bandcamp.com/

I'm looking forward to this. Mats and Thurston are both massive record nerds whose enthusiasm I find infectious (I'm less familiar with the work of Byron Coley). Based on the sample pages both the record picks and writing style are accessible. I think it's going to be a fun book to flick through. I'm seeing Mats and Thurston play tomorrow and kind of hoping there might be copies on the merch table.

New release is from two dates May 12th and 19th. That CD has six tracks from May 12th plus a bunch more from Oslo October 28th.

Thurston is a regular at London record fairs and no stranger to the jazz dealers. He's generally pretty friendly and really is the total record nerd his reputation suggests 😀 Living in the UK it's always a treat to visit used record shops in Europe. It sometimes feels like our European neighbours were all digging Mingus and Monk while we Brits were stocking up on Chris Barber LPs... One of those pirates with the weird paper sleeves? I have a Taiwanese Jimmy Smith LP with both a Van Gelder stamp and a bunch of Chinese characters in the run-out groove. I couldn't figure out what that was about until I read how they created the stampers from regular imported US copies 😂🙃

Probably not if you're looking for jazz tbh.

Downbeat obit. https://downbeat.com/news/detail/vocalist-andy-bey-dies-at-85

Yes me too. Given the history of BYG would also be nice to know the artists and their estates are getting paid!

BYG website indicates it's being operated by the Charly label. CHARLY BEGINS THE FIRST MAJOR REISSUE CAMPAIGN OF LEGENDARY FRENCH INDEPENDENT RECORD LABEL BYG Definitive editions of original BYG albums reissued as deluxe LPs edition on audiophile vinyl and expanded CDs in deluxe gatefold digi-sleeves. Newly remastered by Nick Robbins from recently discovered original BYG tapes. Each format comes with in-depth sleeve notes by authors and music journalists Kevin Le Gendre and John Masouri in fully illustrated booklets and LP inserts.

Can still be ordered from Cafe Oto. Other distributors may also have copies.

Just to add my impressions. This was the fourth time I've seen The Cookers play over the past few years and quite possibly the best I've heard them. Can't comment on the sound balance as we were front row and mostly hearing stage sound with the piano reinforced through the fill speakers on the front of the stage. From where we were sitting the sound was superb and Billy's drums were in no way overpowering. I didn't pick up on any tension in the band. There was a lot of interaction with the audience and a great moment when Donald took a seat after one of his solos and Eddie turned and congratulated him. The whole evening had a really nice vibe. The introduction at the start struck me as weird and kinda disrespectful "please welcome x who has played with y and z etc etc.." No one ever introduced Bill Evans as "here's a guy who once played with Miles..." This is a band consisting of absolute legends. Surely everyone in the room knows who they're about to see. Everyone played superbly but the revelation for me was Donald Harrison who absolutely killed it. I walked past him in the street afterwards and wish now I'd gone up to him and told him how much I'd enjoyed his playing. Thanks for playing David - we cherish the experience too. Come back soon!

So not their usual $100 for a double LP... I get that they're about producing high quality editions of music with a finite audience but it would take them 30 minutes to make this stuff available as a $10 Bandcamp download. At the moment the label has a distinct whiff of elitist gatekeeping.

I think one other consideration with Bandcamp is that it allows music to be released that may not otherwise see the light of day. We've all seen CDs on merch tables that were pressed in a run of 1000 or whatever five, six, seven years ago and haven't sold out yet. The market for improvisation is healthy but not huge. Now good quality digital recordings can be made at reasonably low cost it's great to have a way of releasing more material without having £££s tied up in boxes of CDs. I always prefer physical product but Bandcamp seems like a good option for music we might otherwise not hear.

Congrats on your Ruckus! Brilliant little bikes. I ride a Yamaha XF50 daily - similar idea but like a beer cooler on wheels. Loads of space for groceries under the seat 😀 I ride in most weathers unless there's a lot of snow or it's really icy on the road. I've done that a few times and it was a bit unnerving. Otherwise those little wide wheels are really solid and grippy. I've always gone with a full face helmet. The one time I was knocked off (car pulled across my lane at a junction without looking....) it was the chin part of the helmet that took the impact. Also consider a white or bright yellow helmet - they make a big different in helping car drivers see you in low light. A helmet that can take a pinlock insert will help with fogging - though I generally ride with the visor up anyway so I can hear what's going on around me on the road. Little bikes like ours don't make much noise. If you haven't already consider getting some decent boots. A pair of DMs will do it or there are lots of 'bike trainers' that give more support to your sole and ankles if you take a tumble.

Sad to learn he holds these views. A quick google was an education. I somehow managed to completely miss this previously.

Just wondering out loud if anyone knows how Charles is doing and if he's playing at the moment?

I only met Steve a couple of times - I think first when he was performing his Insomnia Poems at at Cafe Oto. He inscribed a copy of his Evan Parker poems for me ("I don't normally do this but...") which I treasure. A really really nice guy - within ten minutes of chatting instantly your new best mate. I was very sad to hear of his passing just a few months later.