JohnJ

Hans, I would be happy to look out for these titles whenever I am in one of the various Disk Union stores here in Tokyo. I may come across a used copy in the condition you require.

Thanks for that Lazaro. For me, Patricia Barber is easily the most interesting and rewarding female singer/songwriter around today. I eagerly await this new release.

Reporting in, but pretty lonely with nobody around for thousands of miles.

Nothing annoying about 'The Thought Gang' for me. I thought it was hilarious and recommended it to all my friends. Currently reading 'The Final Country' by James Crumley. Probably my favorite modern crime writer.

My sincere condolences Jim. I do know how you feel, one of my best friends was murdered on Christmas Day 1991 in Manila, at a Christmas party I was supposed to attend but did not as I was too hung over. That was a great shock.

Von Freeman - 'The Improvisor'.

This is very sad news. I was crazy about football as a kid in England in the late 60's and 70's and George Best was definitely in a class all of his own. He really was idolized and apparently still is as half a million people are expected to attend his funeral in Belfast, which would make it the biggest in the UK since Diana's.

Came across this less than positive (one star) review from the U.K. Guardian. The Band, A Musical History (EMI) David Peschek Friday September 23, 2005 The Guardian If ever there was an argument for the occasional pernicious evil of the CD reissue, this five-disc-plus-DVD box is it. A Musical History is certainly comprehensive: it runs from the Band's early backing-band days - first for Ronnie Hawkins, then the newly electric Dylan - through seven albums that document their evolution into trad-rock behemoths. And, for completists otherwise at a loose end, it includes 37 unreleased tracks. Critical consensus has it that this is seminal and hugely important music. But it's clear - especially over five CDs - that it is music whose ersatz nature, conservatism and ill-disguised fakery attains a crushing critical mass of boredom. Creating a plodding, hybrid Americana from borrowed blues and country, the Band have squatted over a certain kind of North American music ever since their heyday. But painfully evident in their cod-soulful straining for gravitas is the lack of the vitality of their influences, smothered as it is by the deadening weight of heritage. And does anyone need to hear The Night They Drove Ol' Dixie Down ever again?

Meanwhile, in North Carolina. City Council to make offer on Coltrane's childhood house 11/8/2005 11:29 AM By: Associated Press (HIGH POINT) - High Point's city council will make an offer for the childhood home of jazz legend John Coltrane. The council authorized an offer Monday night of $42,500. Mayor Becky Smothers says several local nonprofit organizations have offered to renovate the dilapidated house if the city would purchase it. Smothers says the organizations also would run programs at the home. Coltrane was born in Hamlet in 1926 and later lived in High Point. He died at age 40.

I really like Archie Shepp's Venus releases. 'True Ballads' is a gem. Also, if you are a fan of piano trios, you can't go wrong with any of the Eddie Higgins discs. He is pretty big in Japan.

I noticed that all 12 of ESPN's experts are picking the Spurs to win it all. Also, if I recall correctly, 7 out of 12 are picking the Heat in the East, 4 the Pacers and only 1 the Pistons. Meanwhile, here in Japan the new professional league, aptly called the bj-league, starts Saturday with Joe Bryant, Kobe's dad, managing the Tokyo Apache.

#107 last week. Pretty good, all things considered.

Congratulations to the Chicago White Sox. I am delighted to see them win the World Series and I am not alone, there are a lot of happy baseball fans here in Tokyo today.

I prefer Asian beavers myself.

Zwerin's at it again. From today's IHT. Alas, the unfreshened Cream By Mike Zwerin Bloomberg News TUESDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2005 PARIS I wish that for just one time, Cream could stand inside my shoes, to know what a drag it is to see them. The Bob Dylan song from which the above line is paraphrased, "Positively 4th Street," is about a loss of love. Musically, many of us were in love with Cream in the 1960s. These are master musicians who have investigated many different styles and they have always had our respect - which makes it even more of a drag. (The audio tracks of the same Albert Hall concerts have been released on a three-CD box by Rhino Records.) Watching and listening to a reunited Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker on the new DVD of "Cream Live at Royal Albert Hall" (Warner Vision) for four days in May of this year, another verse of the same song comes to mind: "I know you're dissatisfied, with your position and your place. Don't you understand, it's not my problem." It's their problem if these three superstars want to come out of retirement and make spectacles of themselves by playing rickety versions of the same arrangements of their hits of yore. Whether it was because they needed the money or the attention or to recapture their youth doesn't really matter. It was one thing when all of those enthusiastic young Englishmen suddenly began to play the blues in groups with such names as Ten Years After, the Rolling Stones and Cream. Their fresh white versions of the African-American originals helped promote a welcome blues revival, but - not to be ageist or anything - Cream are old white Englishmen now, and they are not so fresh any more. Trying a bit too hard to look dignified, they come across as three guys who haven't changed their licks in 37 years. The blues is basically just one 3-chord, 12-bar tune. The authority and emotional investment of such founders as Robert Johnson, Blind Lemon Jefferson and John Lee Hooker overcame any technical or formal limitations. It was the genuine music of poor, disadvantaged people. Sensitive musicians who wanted to take the trouble - Jimi Hendrix (and the original Cream, with "Crossroads," and "Spoonful"), for example - expanded the deceptively simple form. Not enough trouble was taken on May 2, 3, 5 and 6 in Royal Albert Hall. Alexis Korner, the founder of the sixties English blues movement, whose early bands (including Mick Jagger) later constituted the nuclei of Cream, the Stones and Led Zeppelin, was famously bitter about the success of white English blues. Korner was frequently quoted saying that they were corrupting honest folk music, that exploitation was the name of the game. Of course, the Rolling Stones are no longer young either, but, helped enormously by the ex-Miles Davis bassist Darryl Jones, they manage to keep sounding as though they mean it. Despite their genuine love for the blues, once these sexy, square-jawed, thick- haired white rock musicians turned up the volume and sold in large quantities, they were in dangerous territory. Condescension and co-option were never far away. Do not confuse the blues with "bluesy." Bluesy is a type of funky intonation and articulation that stretches and compresses the beat and leans on quarter-tones and "blue" notes. Billie Holiday was always bluesy. With his sparkling soloists, laid-back groove and explosive head arrangements, the "blues band" of Count Basie was playing a lot more than only one tune. Duke Ellington converted the blues into a kind of new version of the sonata-allegro form. Charlie Parker attacked the three-chord, 12-bar form as though he was deconstructing Stravinsky. And do not disrespect contemporary Delta blues just because the reconstructed Cream is so lame. Until he died earlier this year, R.L. Burnside kept the storytelling up to date with songs like "Tojo Told Hitler" (on his Matador album "A Ass Pocket of Whiskey"). Otis Taylor is perhaps the best example of the continuing relevance of the basic blues form. There were three cellists on Taylor's Telarc album "Double V," and this year's "Below The Fold," also on Telarc, features jazz trumpeter Ron Miles and the mountain-music fiddle of Rayna Gellert. Taylor, who is also a bicycle enthusiast and an antique dealer, writes his own songs, and he sings them and plays banjo, mandolin, harmonica and guitar. His abstract, dissonant, cosmopolitan trance-blues is particularly popular in France - the French voted him bluesman of the year, which is one reason to like the French. The Cream revival was about celebrities, affluence and slick nostalgia; it was very far from the expression of the honest emotions of poor black folk. If you have a hankering for the blues, go and listen to Otis Taylor sing "Hookers in the Street," "Working for the Pullman Company," and "Mama's Selling Heroin."

How do you know his name? ← I asked myself the same question, so searched for Morton and it says that cheques should be payable to Brian Morton in the payment info. It would make me more likely to buy from him if it were true! Illogical I know. ← Exactly. Also, apparently the Penguin Guide author lives in Scotland, as this eBay seller does.

Me neither. The individual cds can be found though. ← Forgot about this thread. Actually, I have seen used copies of this box a couple of times at different Disk Union stores in Tokyo over the last few months. Price was around $40. If I see it again I will pick it up.

Incidentally, I notice the seller is Brian Morton and lives in Scotland. Maybe the Penguin Guide guy?

In the 60s, I dunno. Which Frank are we talking about? The one who recorded with Jobim.

Kenny, it's a pity that Australia don't get top play the 4th place finisher in the CONCACAF zone, Trinidad & Tobago, rather than Uruguay. That would have been a little easier I think. Instead, Trinidad & Tobago play Bahrain to determine which team will advance to the World Cup finals. Anyway, the main thing is that England have qualified . All is right with the world. Also, I would not expect too much from Japan or South Korea next year. They have both been fairly awful recently.

The stuff that dreams are made of.

June 4th is my birthday. Baker, Fred - 1960 Branscombe, Alan - 1936 Braxton, Anthony - 1945 DRivera, Paquito - 1948 Ellis, Tinsley - 1957 Harper, Winard - 1962 Jinda, George - 1940 King, Morgana - 1930 Kotick, Teddy - 1928 Kovacs, Andor - 1929 Nelson, Oliver - 1932 Russell, John - 1909 Salmins, Ralph - 1964 Thompson, Chuck - 1926 Woodman, Britt - 1920 Not to mention Socrates (a bit before my time) and Angelina Joile

No, fortunately we were not affected. Thanks for asking.

Actually, very different from where I live too (Nerima-ku).