RDK

Happy Birthday, Barak!

Same here.

I agree. I have no problem with such promotion. And it helps that it's free.

Damn, I had forgetten what an ass Geraldo is. Funny stuff there!

Fred's not dead - he's just doing his MJ impression.

When my wife told me that Billy Mays died, my first response was "didn't he die a few years ago?" But I was thinking of Billy May, Sinatra's great arranger. I guess Mays was a TV pitchman? Man, celebrities ain't what they used to be.

Mine still says "In Process."

Absolutely. No single artist, not even Elvis himself, spanned such extremes as did Michael Jackson. Jackson's highs were brilliant. His lows were abysmal. Listening to "Off the Wall" right now, myself. To me, this album represents one of the great missed opportunities in music history (great as it is): One of the tracks, "I Can't Help It," was written by Stevie Wonder. Can you imagine what a Stevie written and produced Michael Jackson album would have sounded like? Another one of the great missed opportunities also involves Michael: The song "Bad" was originally conceived as a duet for Michael and Prince. They wound up not doing it (Prince claims because they couldn't agree who would sing the line, "Your butt is mine...") and I think it's tragic that they didn't. A Michael Jackson and Prince collaboration...the mind reels. Tragic? WTF? Oh well, they never collaborated. Big fucking deal. Tragic is what that POS did to little boys. And now there's this... http://awkwardstar.wordpress.com/2009/06/2...ichael-jackson/ If true, perhaps there's the real "tragedy."

I have a goldfish named Jsngry

Ironically, after being so excited to get this set so quickly and cheaply ($32) I'm finding it kinda boring...

Yep, heart attack at least. Many reports now suggesting the big sleep. So far, everything unconfirmed.

I was very much interested in this, but the audio-video format sucks and most of the albums are complete except for 1 or 2 tracks. Though DVDs are okay for home, I want CDs for the car/office, there's too much repetition of what's already been released, and too many "hidden" tracks that one must search for in the video portion. Just because we can do something with the technology doesn't mean we should.

Arrived here too - very fast! Will listen tomorrow.

I was gonna say it sounded rather Bixielandish...

Wilco! And more tomorrow night...

Paypal sent!

I used to see Mose quite often when we were both living in/around San Diego back in the mid-80s. I particularly remember a free performance he did at the public library in Escondido or somewhere near there. He was always gigging like that, often with Bob Magnussen on bass iirc. My favorite Mose performance, though, was seeing him open for Van Morrison at the Universal Ampitheater around 1990 or so. Obviously the crowd (several thousand) was there for Morrison and I suspect that few had ever heard of Mose Allison before that night... but he won them over famously. One of my favorite lyrics ever: "Your mind is on vacation but your mouth is working overtime."

Successfully ordered last night, but no confirmation email as of yet. Oh well, wait and see...

Very sad to hear this!

True, but why would anyone want/need to d/l the same track more than 4 times? That's also 4 times more than itunes provides. edit: once again, I'm redundant!

I have my sound issues with that box. Jack the Bear is unlistenable. The first few discs in the box have a whistling sound near the end of each number-- apparently caused by noise-reduction. I'm sort of reluctant to mention this latter problem because I didn't notice it until someone on line pointed it out. Now of course it jumps out at me. Hope I'm not doing it to you. ( I didn't need anyone to bring the Jack the Bear sound issues to my attention.) I don't think that's noise reduction, Joe (if you're talking about that big 20+ disc box that is). Iirc, there was a problem with the original lacquers (or mothers or whatever) were used for it. It was discussed before, though maybe elsewhere; I'll try to dig up the reference. Now that older 3-disc Duke set from 1989 or so was no-noised.

Happy B-day, Kevin!

Thanks for this. His Grey Album was terrific!