Shrdlu

Paypal really outdid themselves for being a pain in the neck today! I am helping a friend who is about to move to a city near to me. This help includes looking at a house that he found to rent, and making the deposit and initial payment to the real estate agent that is handling the rental. My friend decided to send the deposit to me through Paypal - about $1900, to be specific. It arrived at Paypal, and I told them to put the money into my checking account. Today, I received a very nasty pair of messages from Paypal, pretty well threatening to close my account. The wording was very high-handed and patronizing. They have frozen my account, pending my faxing to them some photo ID and three other forms of verification. In a way, this is reasonable, but the emails were written in lousy English and give a very bad impression. Their stupid website does not give a phone number or email address - all you get is a "round the mulberry bush" of FAQs and similar junk. I have a saying: "Frequently asked questions never are". It's just as well that a street address is not given, or I would be there with my pickup with the whiplash aerial, "toolbox" and 12 gauge pump. Once this mess is over, it will be "NEVER AGAIN". You have been warned. Oh, and by the way, I was in the middle of an eBay transaction with Paypal when this happened, so now I can't pay that person either.

"Blue Spirits" is an excellent idea. That's a superb album, made varied by having two different lineups. Just the original album would do. I especially don't like the track with the harpsichord (incorrectly listed as a celeste) that Michael added to the old CD. An egg like that does not deserve to be in the company of such a great album. I also like the "Tippin' The Scales" idea. I think it's a fine album, with quintessential McLean and Clark, capturing the flavor of a period that can never be recreated. I haven't seen the Japanese cover, but it would have to be awful not to be an improvement over the cover used for the old CD, which looks like an old picture of grandpaw found in a rundown farmhouse.

Lon is dead right. The box set is poor and should be deleted. Rudy did a superb job especially with the old 78 masters. (This also applies to the Monk 78s.) Using existing RVG issues, I made custom CDs of most of the box set, except for the Roost items, as the track order on the RVGs was all jumbled up. Also, the RVGs had a few tracks that are not in the box set. I didn't know about the TOCJ of the Roost sides. I will keep an eye out for those.

My Grantstand could use a sonic upgrade. Can't have too much Grant Green. There is some audible tape deterioration on the JRVG of "Horace Silver Trio" which is not present on the old U.S. CD. (This damage had occurred in the 10 years or so between the issue of the two CDs.) This will obviously show up on the new RVG, so the TOCJ is the way to go if you want the best sound without tape problems, for the tracks that are on it. The RVG will, of course, have several tracks that weren't on the Japanese CDs or the LP.

Another vote for the Chicken Shack/Midnight Special material. This is the ultimate organ/tenor date. I have the JRVG of Chicken Shack, and it came out really well. No McMaster, please. I don't think this will be issued in the Connoisseur series anyway - it does not fit that category.

I'm very keen on Andrew Hill, but it has been said for years that his BN sessions after the Mosaic ones are not all that good, so I wonder how good this session will be. Please, why not have a poll on who should replace Ron McMaster. He made a pig's ear of "Thinking of Home" and "Jacknife". How much longer is he going to be used for reissues of sessions that are not available in any other versions? Maybe one day, Toshiba will be given access to the vaults.

What is Nat's prose style like in the novels? I like him, but his liner notes have too much flowery language. I can always tell that it's him before I see the name at the end.

This is par for the course for the Disney Corporation. They have always been very good at wringing as much money as possible out of their products, even if they are ancient, recycled items. There's certainly no free lunch, not even a glass of water, with that bunch! One thing that really ticks me off about them is that there were about 200 Donald Duck cartoons made, yet you hardly ever get to see them. I must have seen only about a dozen in my lifetime. I happen to be very keen on DD cartoons. The one with the dripping tap that kept him awake really broke me up when I first saw it. Occasionally, they release a video with about 6 cartoons, for an astronomical price.

I haven't heard the JRVG of this, but the TOCJ is so good that, for me, it's the definitive CD version. (I used to have a mono LP from when the album first came out, but, sadly, I don't have it anymore. It sounded great, but I remember it being a poor quality, noisy pressing, as so many U.S. LPs were back then. The Germans did a much better job, and they issued several Prestige LPs which were much better than the South Bergen, NJ LPs.)

Needless to say (so why am I saying it ), Mosaic sent out corrected CDs to purchasers. "Thandiwa" is a real cooker, with Wayne Shorter, so it is easy to distinguish between it and "Hipnosis". Now, if only they had got the sound right on this excellent set. At least, you can get most of it on TOCJ CDs.

My dog does a bunch of shit on my back lawn every day.

"Expansion", by Denny Zeitlin. This LP came out in 1973 and you had to order it through the mail from Denny. It is a very interesting and experimental album - not experimental in the avant garde sense, by the way.

Rip, Rig and Panic Out Of The Afternoon I Talk With The Spirits The Spirits one is a good follow-up to Horace Parlan's BN sessions. His solo on "Trees" is a masterpiece. I also like "Here Comes The Whistleman", which came out as one of those Verve CDs with a three-letter abbreviation. Kirk's work with Jaki Byard is also outstanding.

The French 2 CD set with the Columbia/Epic material was not pirate, but a licensed issue. But it sounds as if it has been dubbed from LPs, and the parts from the LP "The Ahmad Jamal Trio" have the fake stereo/reverb. Actually, all three LPs of the guitar trio (two Columbia, one Argo) have strange studio sound, and they sound like music from Mars in a way - it's odd. I wish that Columbia had used their regular engineers, who were amongst the finest ever.

I've had bad experiences trying to get the "Chamber Music of the New Jazz" LP, too. I found one in reasonable shape on the Gemm website, but with the dreaded fake stereo. (When it arrived, I had forgotten what a bugbear that was back in the 60s, when it spoiled many an LP - one had to search all over the place for real mono versions. I still remember my delight when I tracked down a mono LP with the Miles Davis "Green Dolphin Street" session, on a trip to Paris in the early 70s. Who could have known then that the session was recorded in real stereo by Columbia, as well as the "Milestones" session.) Next, I landed a "still sealed" real mono LP on eBay, for about $50. (I only paid that as I intended to sell it again and recoup some of the money.) This disk had some gunk on the surface that made it sound as if it had been used as a frisbee on the beach for the dog. Totally worthless. It sure did nothing to change my dislike of LPs, which, when you consider the fact that they almost always sound crackly, are not worth getting if there is a CD available. So, it sure is frustrating not to have a CD reissue of such a magnificent and important album. A friend sent me a burn of the Epic/Columbia sessions with guitar from the early 50s, but half of the tracks are marred by an added reverb (which is probably a form of the fake stereo again). These are great tracks, but the sound is so poor that they are not very enjoyable to listen to. They were released in France on a pirate 2 CD set.

Thanks, Roger, but I knew about the planned Brubeck "Time" box set. But that set does not help a lot, because most Brubeck fans will already have most of its contents. A single CD of "Countdown" would be the best solution. I have the LP, but I'd like to see a CD of it available to everyone. They may do what they did with the Miles/Trane box and issue separate CDs a few months later. Perhaps the box set will be chronological, which might be a good idea as most of the tracks on "Time Further Out" and "Countdown" come from the same sessions. (I only discovered this recently, as Columbia rarely gave recording dates on their LPs.)

I'm looking forward to Getz's "Captain Marvel", a classic from the days when Chick Corea was becoming really big on the scene. Columbia needs to put out some more of Brubeck's classics, such as "In Europe", "Southern Scene", "Brubeck Plays Bernstein Plays Brubeck" and "Time In Outer Space". The old CDs of "Dave Digs Disney" and "Gone With The Wind" need to be upgraded, too.

I get vinyl versions of albums that have not been issued on CD, and the Gemm website is always my source (www.gemm.com). It is rare not to find an album there. You deal directly with the seller, once you have located an LP that you want. As the website says, "If you can't find it here, fuggeddabout it". All the stores from which I have purchased have been very honest about the quality of the disk, and I can usually find an LP in at least VG+ condition. One warning: don't buy a "still sealed" LP. Get the seller to open it and test it, and if they refuse, walk away. I paid $50 for a mono copy of Ahmad Jamal's classic "Chamber Music Of The New Jazz", and when I opened it, it was so noisy that it was only good for landfill. This was an eBay deal, by the way. The seller would not make good on the deal. So I have a very large drinks coaster.

Having lived through this problem of Blue Note CD masterings for several years now, I have kinda summed it all up in my mind. My main conclusion is that it is a shame that, for an outstanding catalog such as Blue Note, there should have been so many poor CD remasterings. When you compare them with CDs of such labels as Columbia, Impulse and the Fantasy family (i.e. OJCs and the box sets), it is clear that there is no excuse for all these bad CDs, and that includes the early ones from the late 80s. (I just got the Bill Evans Riverside set, from 1987, and it puts nearly all BN CDs to shame.) It sure gets tiresome, having to grub around for the best version of these classic sessions. (And I'm NOT an audiophile.) You will not convince me that remastering is difficult for a pro - especially with all the fancy equipment at their disposal. I am a total amateur, and with Musicmatch I can easily make a superb LP to CD transfer. I agree with the comment above that Malcolm Addey is a fine U.S. BN remasterer. I sure wish that BN and Mosaic would use him for the non RVGs. Ronnie has laid some eggs recently. I am quite happy with most U.S. and Japanese RVGs that I've heard, though. And, on occasion (especially when he still used 20 bits), Ron does a good job. The Hancock box set is great, and I like the Parlan Mosaic. The "Koers Rule" is correct though: the TOCJ "BN Works" versions are by far the best, where they exist; these are McMasters, though, in the case of albums that never made it to LP.

... in case you didn't know ... Elmo is on a Rollins Prestige date called "Movin' Out". ... but you probably already knew that.

My daughter rented a tape of the recent Spielberg movie "Catch Me If You Can", mainly, I suspect, because she likes Leo. "You'll like this, Dad", she said, so I watched it. It was a good workout for the new speakers in the Shrdlu living room - the sound is really good. The music is fantastic, and most readers would enjoy it. The score is by Johnny T. Williams (as his name appears on the "Peter Gunn" album), but it isn't the usual tiresome blaring row with a symphony orchestra that is such a movie cliché. (Uggh, how many of those have I heard!) The style is reminiscent of early 20th century French music, no doubt because the main character's Mom is from that country. There are a lot of sections featuring some very tricky alto parts, which would be a brute to read. (The credits gave the alto player's name, but I didn't recognize it.) Recommended, and it ought to win one of those silly statuettes for its originality, which was a breath of fresh air. The story (a true one) is pretty neat too: a young boy successfully impersonates an airline pilot, a doctor and a lawyer. If you liked "Chameleon", you'll enjoy this one. But enough with the Siskel/Ebert thing!

PD says "As to the thought behind this thread, seems to me it was just a bit of humour which seems to have been taken out of context by those who are outraged at it. " Right on, PD! It was a great gag. Keep 'em coming (in moderation)!

Sidewinder, the CDs of the "Blackhawk" set sound great. I don't think you would be disappointed if you got them. I recently bought a set for only about $27. The Mosaic LPs will cost a lot more than that.

Gary, I don't have any respect for people who only bought a set because it is limited. That might be a secondary aspect of such a purchase, but the main motivation ought to be to listen to the music. But, Mosaic has made a legal agreement with the various record companies, and they have to respect that, I suppose. In this case, though, it's only Blue Note (Capitol), which is pretty close to being the same crowd, so what harm would be done if they put people out of their misery and reissued the whole set. This set just came out too soon for most would-be collectors to get it, and we know that they didn't even sell the whole run (5000 or 7000, whatever it was).

Unlikely, Temple: the recent "Jacknife" sounded just the same as the Mosaic, except, probably, louder (I haven't played it for awhile).