JSngry

Brian Eno Yoko Ono Pizzeria Uno

Whereas I'm barely over 40, and I'll only download something if it's NOT available on CD (and I practically never download). I do settle for burns from time to time, to "tide me over" until I can find a legit copy (used, if OOP). I'm no absolute purist as far as wanting to adhere to copyrights (though I'll admit that's part of it). I just trust physical media WAY more than downloads -- since I presume I'll want to hear much of this same stuff 20 years from now and beyond. Yeah, physical media has it shortfalls too -- still, I'll take it over managing a huge collection on a hard-drive, with the worry of data becoming corrupt, lost, and/or not playing back 10+ years from now (and the associated hassles of converting files to keep up with format changes). You know that you can back up your downloads to a DVD-R data disc (from which you can burn hard copies of all the CDs you'd ever want), right? Beaucoup CDs on one disc. I don't do this, because I have enough already-hard copies to last me forever should my digital files disappear, but I'm just saying...a drive of any type is not the only available storage medium for digital files.

Uh...maybe. Sometimes. Hardy ever. Almost never. Most of that stuff sounded like crap compared to the analog then, and no matter how much better the playback equipment is today, it still sounds like crap compared to the analog. Maybe a nicer grade of crap, but still... Thus the need (as in true need) for new remasterings that can sound better than the analog, which is what we were supposed to have been buying 30 years ago!

Dude - I bought the two most recent Ursula Rucker CDs a few weeks ago (one of them out for only a few weeks) & they were only available as downloads. Didn't bother me at all, hell, when was the last time you could buy a new CD for only $7.98, but I would gladly have paid a dollar more for some kind of data file to have been included with production and performer credits (especially for the brand-new one, which utilizes a lot of live players). That stuff does still matter to me. Tell you what, though - if I get a sudden hankerin' for a song, and it's a song by somebody I have no interest whatsover in having more than that song or just a very few more, I'm downloading it from Amazon without thinking twice. For 98 cents, it's like buying a 45 (even if there's no b-side involved...and what a great idea THAT would be - offering true download singles, with A-sides & B-sides..."er..."sides", that is...even include a picture sleeve!)

Just offering "on-demand", custom CDs in stores - replete with artwork (also customizable) would have been a great transitional idea if it would have happened before Napster caught on...instead of about 3-4 years after it did. The ship has indeed sailed. In fact, it's pretty much off the horizon now for all but the specialists. But here's the deal - you can get really, REALLY good sound from a lossless format like FLAC. Specialists (like us here) would have been a good target for legal, reasonably priced FLAC downloads, especially if bonus material and/or "artwork" could have been involved. You can burn a FLAC to a CD if you like, and unlike even the best MP3, there's no loss of quality (if the conversion is done right). But too late for that now - instead of "specialty music" being a leading indicator of which way the technology's going (which it once was), it's now a lagging one. Again, oh well! Are these items being recorded in analog, or is there an analog link anywhere in the chain? If not, it's "cool" that vinyl refuses to die, but on the turntable is a totally useless place for the first analog link to appear...

They - CDs - were introduced on a major scale long before the quality was where it should have been because there were big bucks to be made right now (all the "perfect sound forever" hype has pretty much been revealed as the BS that it was, as anybody with honest ears could - and was -saying at the time), and they insisted on focusing on the media long after consumer interest was clearly trending otherwise, just because that was all they knew. They feared downloads from jump, big time, precisely because of the implicit/inevitable decentralization involved. But rather than innovate (or at least co-opt, something they've been really good at over the years...), they hunkered down. Lotta good that's done them, and really, it serves them right.

Downloads could have been made a salable item early on, if "the industry" would have had even a fraction of a clue about what was going on. Instead of stuffing CDs down our throats at the earliest possible minute (if we knew then what we know now, would we have settled for all that early digital crap?) until the very last possible minute and going all hyper-paranoiac about The Evils Of Copying, they could have realized that digital media by nature meant the decentralization of the supply chain and been proactive instead of reactive. All they were interested in was harvesting the profits, not nurturing the technology. They could probably be making a lot more money now than they are. Oh well!

It's a term going back to radio days when shows would be recorded for broadcast later. In a day when a lot of shows were still broadcast live, the distinction was made between a live broadcast and "transcribed for broadcast". Technically/harcore, I suppose the term should only be reserved for real-time preservation of real-time performances, but given the amount of post-production that came into the mix (i.e. - announcers & advertisements, even, as you note, applause being added after the fact), I suppose the term could be used to indicate any set of performances recorded live in the studio for the sole purpose of being broadcast later (i.e. - not intended for commercial release as a standalone album). That's how i see it, anyway.

Slim Whitman Slim Pickens Jake Pickle

Heard of a walkman? It's a gadget that appeared around 1980. Just as mobile as an mp3 player, but didn't kill the music industry. Exactly my point. The Walkman was a transitional analog device that still required the purchase of analog software (cassettes). Consumption (hell, life in general) has continued to become more mobile, not less, and you can't even buy cassettes any more. Remember when cassettes were going to make the LP obsolete? First wave, baby, first wave... The end result of digital anything is to reduce size and eliminate the need for a rigid/fixed specificity of place. Unless you're a "collector" or a "real fan", the need to buy albums no longer exists. Truthfully, the need to buy anything except hardware no longer exists, and that's only if you're semi-honest. Paradigm shift, anybody? Or are we still in denial?

Major Harris Dan Minor Bobby Keyes

Digital is about being "in motion" all the time. Analog is about "being still". Digital is a jet stream. Analog is a statue. To successfully convey information today, you gotta keep it fluid & find a way to slip it into the jet stream (using a paper clip if necessary...). Building a statue & then sitting to look at it is not really where the action is today.

I've got the Blood Ulmer BN on cassette...bought a still unopened second copy, just in case...that's a good record...

So it was a "transcription date", to use the old parlance. Interesting...wonder how many more of those there might be floating around... # 1611 @ BNBB? Could be, I honestly don't know.

Manolo Badrena & Joey Barron? WHOA!

Indeed. Thae aforementioned Laughing To Keep From Crying date springs to mind...Too often "profundity" is assumed to carry with it some kind of "symbolic" quality, some detachment between purveyor and recipient that allow the "weight" of the statement some room to float, lest it crush the recipient under its own weight. But Prez was not that type of man - he gave you what he had, how he had it, and on that fate, he was not in a good place physically, and maybe not mentally. Not being there, I don't know. Plus he had a clarinet sprung on him. But instead of looking for a generic "safe" place to play from, the man simply put it out there like it was - difficulty is breathing, in fingering, you name it, it was all there, and yet....there's a definite-ness to it all, and an authoritative overall design to those troubling statements that says, yeah, this is it. This is exactly how and where I am right now. Any questions? Didn't think so. Not just anybody can be that honest under those circumstances, ya' know?

So it was a "live in the studio" thing done for a later broadcast (what used to be called a "transcription"? Or was it an actual broadcast that was also recorded live in the studio as it was being broadcast?

Bob Freedman!!!!

Interesting opening line... and alto solo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kj4UpbjiUyI&playnext=1&list=PL0DD549A8EC438225

Sounds food, with good players, but who is she and who are they? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huGO-_GJ5ZM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfTgtc4jWh4

And funny too!

The only mystery left to me is what generated this session. Was it ever released, was it a demo, just what?

Holy...fucking...shit...that's incredible footage...personalities aplenty, even w/o the sound...and that groove...gone forever, except for when it was recorded...which it wasn't very often.., Per http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1466165/soundtrack Charlie Shavers Henry 'Red' Allen (really?) Lester Young J.C. Higginbotham Pee Wee Russell Coleman Hawkins Willie 'The Lion' Smith Harry Sheppard, Dickie Thompson Vinnie Burke Sonny Greer Sonny Greer & the Lion together, man, you're talking distinctive flavor!

Glad I out-meaned the original meanie...it's more than deserved, so long has/did (yes, the new conventional wisdom is that the newer is worthy of much consideration) that "pale shadow of his former self" BS float around. It was the "conventional wisdom even while the man was alive for crissakes, you think that didn't hurt Prez? What is true is that Lester never ran out of things to say. What is also true is that as he became more ill, he had periods of weakness, along with periods of relative strength. And what is ultimately most true is that Lester was always finding new ways to say whatever it was he had to say at the time, meaning that since what he had to say in 1958 was quite different than what he had to say in 1938, so were the techniques used to tell the respective stories. Don't people actually listen? Well, yeah, I'm sure they do. But quite often phonetically, I think...

On a PC, such a problem often indicates that you need to stop & restart your print spooler (not an actual piece of equipment, just a process). Not sure about a Mac, or even if it'll be called that.