JSngry

Besides, the very nature of digital is fluid. It is "counter-ownership" by its very nature. I download an MP3 file that I'm "not supposed to have". Ok, come and take it from me. Come and dismantle my hard drive (or my iPod's) hard drive and take away that portion of it where that file resides. Ha ha ha. Or delete the file. Go ahead, delete it. Have you "destroyed my ill-gotten property"? What have you "destroyed"? Not a damn thing. Of course, you can always arrest me. A downloaded nearly forgotten OOP jazz album = child pornography or stolen defense department secrets. Go there if you want to, but... In the analog reality, we all knew where "there" was. What changed, evolved, was the different ways to get there. But with digital, where is "there"? What is "there"? If it's still the same thing, then the same rules should apply, the same laws should be enforced, and the same end results should greet us every time we wake up. It would just be one more way to get to the same "there" we've always gone to. Is that happening? Will it ever happen? I doubt it. Digital is just a set of 0s & 1s, and that's about as malleable a base for construction as I can think of. Shit we've seen so far is bound to be just the very tip of the iceberg. It's a whole new world, really. and if we think we're going to tame it (and by god, for the sake of protecting the very notion of intellectual property, we do need to tame it, at least some) by applying the old paradigms, hey... get a good look at those taillights while you can, because they;re gonna be gone in about 5 seconds.

I doubt it. What people really want, they almost always buy. What they kind of want, that's where things get grey. $15.00 for a CD I sorta want, or $15.00 for me and LTB a salad and a sandwich? Wildly variable results. $15.00 for a CD I really want, or $15.00 for me and LTB a salad and a sandwich? We still eat, but something else gets set aside. Always.

Chris, note that the word was "dignified", not dignified.

I am never alone. I am always alone. It is my curse.

As a fellow middle-aged man with an only partially age-appropriate body mass, I gotta give props to Wynton for dressing in such a way as to make that extra heft look "dignified". Seriously.

The guy's a serious player, not some street-team or hack DIY spammer. A little slack is due, I think, maybe more than a little.

Call me a cynic, Tom, but I gotta think, based on pst performance, that either plenty of stuff will still fall between the cracks (if only becoause of ignorance of its existance by the people doing the collating) or else that "owned and digitized" will not always translate into "ready and available". However, I could be wrong, and will be quite glad to be!

Yes, it is. As CD sales slump lower and lower, we are forced to find other ways. Fortunately, the same technology that is robbing us of CD sales also allows us to have our own recording studio with results that rival or sometimes surpass the recordings of the past. The new organissimo CD was recorded in my basement. I don't even really have a great room (which is more important than all the technology in the world for this kind of music) and I think the recording sounds excellent. By tracking the album myself, I cut our production costs in half. That's pretty significant. Of course, the downside is that I'll probably never have the chance to record at RVG's. And of course, you got cats now who think nothing of assembling a full-scale demo at a workstation, and then assembling the performance of the composition over phone lines and shit, somtimes in real time, sometimes not. And no, it's not the same thing, obviously. And/but (and which one of those you choose is really the point) that is the point.

That may or may not be true - how would you ever prove that more people do this than just simply download and never purchase anything legitimately? It's anecdotal, and my suspicion is it's not the norm at all. That's why I didn't venture a guess at the amount but stated "quite a few" which in my mind would be slightly more than a "tad". And again I ask - how many people will download something just because they can & would never (or hardly ever) buy anything (or next to nothing)? A download is not really a "lost sale" if it's a download by somebody who is simply grabbing all they can. Just as if you gave me one of those old-fashioned "all you can pick up in 10 minute" shopping sprees at one of those old-fashioned record stores, I'd pick up a helluva lot of stuff that I'd not spend money on. I might even avoid picking up stuff that I'd spend money on, just to get maximum benefit out of the "free" experience. A lost sale is only a lost sale if somebody downloads something that they would, under regular, real-life circumstances, likely buy and then don't just because they get lazy and/or punk out on their ethics. And yes, I've no doubt whatsoever that there is some of that going on, it would be damn near impossible for there not to be. I'm just not sure what the statistical correlation between "numbers of people downloading" and "numbers of lost sales" is. There's a lot of reasons why CD sales overall are down, including what I've heard god knows how may times from the "young people", that you pay $15-$20 for a CD and it's only got one or two good songs on it, and hey, fuck that, I'm making $7 an hour and gas is $4 a gallon and the 99-cent value meal shit gets old after a while, and blahblahblah. Well hey. Yeah, we all gotta pay dues and no you can't have everything you want right now and SOMEBODY'S gotta pay for all of it, goddamit, but still, PAY ATTENTION BIZNESS - your prime customer base is expressing supreme dissatisfaction with your basic product and your business model and all you can do is what? The fucking tobacco business, the freakin' KNOWN merchants of KNOWN death have figured out a way to work these same motherfuckers to the point where they'll pay $5 and up for a pack of cigarettes. Even more for the fancy stuff, They've figured out how to work the market, get in their, come to the potential consumer on the consumer's terms, build product loyalty, hook them, and then keep them hooked. This in a generation that knows better than damn near any other going into it how deadly this shit truly is. This 1009 cat tells a tale that rings true. As for how "typical" he is, I suspect that he is neither peculiarly "typical" nor "atypical". What he is is a damn good example of how the "new paradigm" could work, should work. All the kings horses & all the king's men ain't never gonna put Humpty back together again, we're too far gone for that, but Humpty ain't gonna be the only egg to ever sit try to on a wall, if you know what I mean. Too many people trying to put humpty back together again, even trying to make something new out of the old pieces, instead of grooming the next badass egg to be ready to sit up on that wall - and cushioning the ground underneath him. As far as how that affects "our" music, which is waaaay out of the mainstream, hey, Chuck's right. The "big guys" set up up "the river" into which all the tributaries flow in to (and out of). So telling Metallica to fuck off, as satisfying as it might be on a personal level, is not good business, not "big picture" good business. At some point there will probably need to be "big guys" again. Maybe this time around it'll be the little guys that put the big guys back on top eventually, or maybe there ain't gonna be no more big guys again, ever, and the juice will come from a well-organized/coordinated consortium of little guys. A "collective big guys". I don't know, I'm an old-ish guy myself trying to make sense out of it from the outside looking in. All I do know is that time spent decrying what has already happened and what will never be again (excepting those who took deep, personal wounds as a result of collateral damage) is time not spent figuring out how things can be made to work today.

And seriously, I don't know how old Lourdes is now, but c'mon guys, she didn't pick her mother, has noticeably been protected and/or shunned the spotlight, and just happened to be with her mom when the paparazzi were around. Totally random act of photography from her end. I got a daughter, and I'm sure many of y'all do too. Let's show some decency here, ok?

Madonna says y'all can all kiss her motherfuckin' as right now. If you can get there to do it. In this lifetime or the next. As if.

No, my sexy little chewster, that is NOT on this LP. Do I Hear A Waltz? Long Ago Come Back To Me Here's That Rainy Day He Touched Me The Shadow Of Your Smile Gimme Some What Did I Have That I Don't Have? Run For Your Life Tell Me More Cast Your Fate To The Wind Yes it is!

So, what happens to the small local/regional/indie labels that the majors don't buy up? The ones that documented so much regional R&B & jazz? If no major company buys them up, then what becomes of them? What about all the European & Japanese labels? What I'm trying to figure out is if "all" meaning all is a corporate all or a reality-based all.

You know Chuck, I wonder who is being compensated for this one by Joe Fields: I actually have a tape of this that I recorded off the radio back in the day. It was broadcst on WBFO. "was taped in mid-winter 1976 during a long-running gig in snow-covered Buffalo, New York." For that matter, didn't Don Schlittten release some tapes on Onyx of questionable origin/compensation?

Anybody got an educated guesses on how many people: 1) Download stuff they would never spend money on, just because they can 2) Download more now due to economic concerns outside the scope of the music business (i.e. - the economy's in the shitter now and has been for years, but worse now than ever, and the disposable income ain't there no more) 3) Are in fact actual freeloaders and 4) How different these #s are now than in analog days. In other words, how different -in quality and quantity - are the 1s & 2s from the people who back int he day used to borrow shit and tape it? Seems to me that real "source" of all of this is the industry introducing a format that could pretty much be replicated exactly (and if they say that they didn't foresee that, then they are either liars or the biggest damn fools imaginable), not having the foresight to protect against that, and just going on and getting the big bucks up front for the consumer w/o any long-term consideration. Like everything else that's falling apart in America - the lust for short term profit trumped long range planning.

Hey, I paid real money for that Harold Vick disco LP a few years ago but downloaded it from the blog any way, just because it's easier for me to get a CD that way. And that's not the first time I've done something like this downloaded digitally after having bought a legit analog copy.

The chafing of jazz to come.

I hear what you're saying. Can't say that I agree, but I hear you. I do think that many people today feel that the internet is a wide open opportunity to feed their entitlement. But hey - most people are going to do whatever they can get away with. I try not to be cynical, but.... What's been proven is that the internet is one helluva effective method of distribution, and that "digital" is a lot "slimmer profile" product to deliver than "analog". For better and for worse. "Collateral damage", be it my problem or not, seems a more than fitting description.

I'm trying to laugh to keep from crying. Really.

Yeah, there's a big difference between feeling entitled to something and taking advantage of an opportunity you come across. I mean, ok, I surfing the net and all of a sudden there's this enticing OOP LP on a blog that I've never even heard of, or have only heard of. LOOKS good, it's got some good people on it and everything about it says HEY! So I do a little more research and find out that no, it's never been reissued anywhere, and yes, this is just about the only place in the world to hear it short of shelling out uber-bucks to some seller on GEMM who I've never heard of for a VG- copy. So hell yeah - I click to download. Is that a sale lost? Hell no. No way I was going to buy that $50.00 VG- copy from an unknown seller on GEMM even if I knew the album. You want it, you can have it. Me, I got a budget and some common sense. Do I feel "entitled" to a lifetime of such finds? Hell no. I feel lucky. And if I see something where the link's been pulled, hey, I totally understand. Do I talk up the artist and the album if it turns out to be as good (or better) than hoped for? Hell yeah. And here's the deal - would I buy the downloaded material in "legit" form if/when it became available? That's a simple one - if the music was good enough and if it was packaged sensibly, hell, yeah. If the music was just so-so (and let's face it, a lot of these crate-digger/blog offerings are not A+ stuff, they're often "interesting" at best, sometimes there's at least part of a good reason why they've vanished over time) and the reissue had a $16.99 sticker price for the original 0:33:42 album with nothing added as far as liner essays or anything, probably not. But I don't know that I'd have bought it anyway if I hadn't downloaded it. These days, I put my "taking a chance" money more into newer musics, just because. So $16.99 for a guaranteed ok-at-best 27 minute Billy Larkin side...just not gonna happen, ever. Download or not.

Has it been blogged yet? Seriously, I'm sure that it is "good", or even "damn good". At this point, I just don't care. About either of them. That's just me.

That's right. They did what they did as fully as it could be done, and because of that it has life beyond their time. Anybody else wants to have that, then they gotta do what they do as fully as it can be done. The rest of us, we answer the phone when it rings.

Don't get fooled into thinking that everybody (or even nearly everybody) who "has" a lot of music is a "serious listener". Far from it... And yes, there is a dark side to all this, unquestionably so. I'm just saying that a realistic assessment of the macro-picture here takes into account the grey areas as well as the black & white ones.

Also want to add, that, yeah, in the Jim, and Joe, and Randy scenario, yes, blogging might cost some sales. How many? Who knows? But - without blogging, there wouldn't be a Jim, and Joe, and Randy reissue in the first place. Remember - this was material made in 1968 that was for all intents and purposes "lost" until Craig Kratedigger & Billy Blogger got involved. So what has more value, 50-90% of something, or 100% of nothing? Especially since now that something is now out there in "contempororary" format, the odds increase of commercial/film/etc placement. Guaranteed, no. Just better than before.

Now I see no avatar. Seriously.