Big Wheel

I didn't know it's legal to ship beer to Florida. If not, you'll likely be able to find the stuff at Whole Foods.

Seems like most of them are available as MP3s available for download from Amazon.

No, I didn't notice that it was Wynton doing the intro, but back in 1981-2, he either had no particular reaction or a very guarded one when I played that Shavers track for him -- again, probably, because he thought the blindfold test aspect of it meant that I was trying to trick him in some way. I just thought he might dig the music and recognize a somewhat kindred soul in Shavers, and I didn't want to put Shavers' name out there before I played the track in case that might shape Wynton's response. In any case, the days of Wynton's impishness have been pretty much gone since the mid-1980s IMO; royal role models don't behave/can't afford to behave that way. To answer your original question: If I heard that music coming out of Lester Bowie's horn, I'd be astonished and dismayed and wonder what was the matter. Back in 1982 Wynton may not have even been 21. There are a lot of precocious 21-year-old players who are completely unfamiliar with Shavers and Wynton may have been no exception. On top of this I think it's not unlikely that Wynton at the time was doing the vast majority of his trumpet listening to: Miles, Booker Little, Freddie Hubbard, and Dizzy - the pre-bebop thing didn't come until later. So I'm not too surprised that he was weirded out by the Shavers thing.

Wait a minute. There are only about 150 titles on the first two lists combined. Are you saying there will be another 150 or so in early 2009?

Funny, just picked that one up from Amazon (on sale $8.97) and am listening to it right now. It's made up of two sessions: 1) Donald Byrd, Herbie Hancock, Butch Warren, Tony Williams and 2) Kenny Dorham, Sonny Clark, Butch Warren, Billy Higgins. My preference is for the session with Dorham and Clark (the earlier of the two sessions) but both are enjoyable. This was the last of the bebop material before One Step Beyond. To me this is a good mix of the before and the beyond. Probably not the best statement from McLean, but certainly worth nine bucks. I prefer the other session. I love Sonny Clark and the tunes are solid but this session doesn't catch my attention. The first session, on the other hand, burns. Tony Williams swings his ass off, "Cheers" is an underrated composition, and everyone grooves on "Yams."

prizes seem to go up and down... but these discs are around for 10 $ these days, yes. Actually, $7.50 each if you get two. I just ordered a bunch of them plus some of the deleted titles.

I figure that many pairs of eyes are better than one, so here's a place to list any CD steals that you might have found leading up to the holidays. I've been watching Amazon pretty closely and listed the box set deals there on a thread in the Mosaic/Other Box Sets forum. What's cheap out there?

Also probably the only guy in the band not intimidated in the least by Buddy mid-tantrum.

I think you should do Misty Mountain Hop. Though repetitive, the hook seems made for bells.

Came across this sale. I already have the Nichols and Morgan Lighthouse boxes but this is a pretty exceptional deal for each! $24 for the Nichols box is the lowest price I think I've seen for this. The old Monk BN box is also part of the sale for only about $25. http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=U...51&plpage=2

Hmm, I guess the expectations gap runs both ways then. Personally I see this band as more a logical extension of the Birth of the Cool band and less a "big band."

What about all the related industries, though? Should we also be helping out the workers of the parts companies that depend on the Big 3, and will likely go kaput with them? The Big 3 are clearly dinosaurs that have a hot date with the K-T boundary, but is it possible for us to support the 1.5 million (conservative estimate) potential extra people who'd be thrown out of work?

You're talking about the Fillmore 1971 record with the Turtles? What's wrong with that one? (I've only heard samples but they seemed ok to me...)

Bumping this up, as I saw the group last night in SF. It is truly a joy to watch this band when it is firing on all cylinders - it is more than the sum of its parts. Prieto is just sick playing these grooves (African polyrhythmic stuff all over the place, often in meters like 7/8. I think I counted one or two tunes that had sections in 11/8 or 13/8.). Abdoulaye Diabate is a treasure. Personnel: Apfelbaum: piano, tenor, harmonium, percussion, flute Prieto: drums Patrice Blanchard: electric bass David Phelps: guitar Jessica Jones, Tony Jones: tenor Peck Allmond: flute, saxes, trumpet (!) Josh Roseman: trombone Charles Burnham: violin Diabate: vocals Josh Jones (guest on encore): conga Natalie Cressman (guest on encore): trombone

They also like to land the planes side-by-side on them. I've seen it many times from the freeway.

Hershey's has started making big Halloween bags that contain EXACTLY the bars that I like in them and nothing else: Heath bar, Almond Joy, Reese's PB Cup, and Kit Kat. It took an enormous amount of willpower to not plunk down $8 for a gigantic bag of the things.

I actually have the same problem right now and am eating a bowl of cereal - Honey Bunches of Oats with Chocolate Clusters (the stuff is terrible and I'm never buying it again, but it's the only sugary thing in the house right now) Here's my story of why I'm stuck at home with no sugar: I had dinner in the Castro tonight and felt like stopping for dessert at this creperie/cafe I know that's smack in the middle of that neighborhood before heading home. I passed this place on my way home last night and glanced in their window to see how busy they were late on a Saturday night, as they've started staying open later on weekends and appear to be rebranding themselves as more of a wine bar. I'm looking through the window, and there's this guy sitting in one of their cushy chairs...and he appears to be wearing nothing at all. "Heh, just another Saturday night in The Castro," I think... So I walk in the place tonight and the same dude is in there again, standing at the bar buck-ass naked. There's almost nobody else in the entire place. I turn around defeated and jump on the bus to go home.

I love my Sennheiser MX500 earphones but I put a lot of wear and tear on them. The earpads (those little foam things that keep the earphone firmly in your ear) keep falling off and I finally lost one today, so I need to buy more. The Sennheiser USA website says that they have replacement earpads/cushions in stock and the prices are reasonable (~$1 for two new ones, or you can buy a 10-pack for $3) but the shipping cost is really high ($8). I'd rather not pay $9 for a $1 piece of foam, and I don't know if I really want 10 of the things (might switch brands eventually). Buying an entirely new pair of MX500s would be about $20. Any ideas on what I should do? I'm not sure who (either online or locally) even carries these things besides Sennheiser's site.

Any coupons lately? I'm starting to get an itchy trigger finger.

I didn't think it was as good as Lebowski but it was way better than Intolerable Cruelty. I find Zeta-Jones's acting painful and Clooney's overacting in that movie crossed the line into being annoying. This was the first Coen Brothers film I've seen that didn't feel all that distinctively Coen Brothers. Most of the shots seemed like any director could have composed them.

Well duh Jim, you aren't black! Didn't you read GARussell's post?

.....and if you want to read someone who 1) is a pragmatist, not a zealot and 2) actually knows what he is talking about, try Bob Kuttner.

So Greenspan holding interest rates way down year after year after year had absolutely NOTHING to do with it? Let's consider the sub-prime mortgages. Let's say that a low-income family is convinced that it would like to buy a home, and the govt is pressuring the banks to make loans to such a family. Let's say that the family is paying $1,000 in rent, and believes that it can afford a $1,200 mortgage payment. The bank is not as particular about whom it lends its money to as it used to be, so it agrees to make the loan. The family is concerned about the $1,200 a month payment. It isn't concerned about the price of the house. With interest rates at 5%, the price of the house is going to be higher than it would be at 10%, because the family is only going to agree to pay $1,200 regardless of what the interest rates are. The real estate developers and those wishing to sell their homes like to see a higher price for obvious reasons, but the low-income buyer doesn't care. He cares only about the monthly payment. So then the husband loses his job, and they cannot meet the $1,200 payment on only the wife's salary. So they default on the mortgage loan. They return to a $1,000. apartment. It seems to me that that is the nature of subprime loans. They are risky and shouldn't have been made in the first place. I don't see that to be the fault of Alan Greenspan's low interest rates. OK , let me get this straight. This is quite simplistic, but it helps me understand. The problem is that people are just walking away from homes with these sub-prime mortgages on them. They were just paying interest on them, so they have no equity. And now as far as the banks and other institutions go these mortgages are being shown on the books as having no value. Is that correct? But, in fact, they are worth something. New housing starts are way down, so these homes will be bought and lived in at some point. If the mortgage on the house is $200,000 (which the bank "borrowed" from someone else - namely its depositers and must repay to them), and someone eventually buys the house for $100,000, the financial instituion won't have a total loss. I guess the problem is that no one knows when someone will step in and buy these homes and for how much, so they're just written down to zero now. It's obviously too late for tthe banks, but someone is going to make a HUGE amount of money buying these abandoned properties cheaply and selling them at a nice profit down the line. Capitalism at its finest! Uh....maybe. This assumes that the homes are in places where people are going to continue to want to live. See "Flint, Michigan, History of." Do you really want to live in some exurban shithole like Stockton, CA? I don't. It also assumes that the population is growing fast enough to occupy all the excess construction lying around.

I think you're being silly by suggesting that the solution to the crisis is to turn to the Libertarians, the one group who would remove any and all regulation immediately. This problem was brought upon us in large part due to the wonderful Republican "free enterprise solution" of removing "unnecessary" regulation. Now that this has been discredited, I don't think you'll convince many (other than Berigan) that we should carry this approach even farther... Moose, let me make a couple of points regarding the bipartisan nature of the problem and the Libertarian view. 1) My understanding is that this this sub-prime lending mess was started by Bill Clinton. For political (not economic) reasons, his administration pressured the banks to lend money to the poor (read "blacks"), with the threat of penalties if they didn't. This continued under the Bush administration. The banks would not have made the loans in the first place if they had not been pressured to by the government. Your understanding is incorrect and borderline racist. The root cause of the problem is not subprime loans. If it we're we'd see Countrywide go out of business, but would not be staring major financial catastrophe in the face. The problem is that the free market was allowed to securitize these loans, repackage them, and trade them, making it impossible for those trading in them to have any understanding as to their actual worth while they a) gamed the ratings agencies to pat them on the head and tell them they weren't risky and b) bought and sold them at crazy margins . No government forced Merrill Lynch to trade in these opaque CDOs against their will; they made this an integral part of their investment strategy.

The problem has nothing to do with excess government spending, which is likely going to be exactly what is necessary to get us out of whatever deep recession we're about to hurtle into. The problem was caused by a lack of regulation in the derivatives markets, which Paul as a libertarian ideologue naturally is a huge fan of.