Big Wheel

I think you might have the exchange rate backwards--US$1=Canada $1.21, which would make gas ~US$2.70 a gallon, not $4. Still expensive. Canada$390 a month for the train seems like a ton of money to me. I think the commuter rail in Boston is maybe US$100-130 a month, depending on how far out you live. (edit: turns out the most expensive commuter rail pass is $198 a month.)

I think you can choose the "show topics as posts" option to display the exact post that contains your search query. Then there's no need to wade through everything.

There's also this one: http://www.doubletimerecords.com/scripts/dtr118.asp

That's funny, my first piano was a Chickering of roughly that age that my family got for free--sort of. The guy who owned the local music shop owed my grandparents' clothing store some money, and gave them the piano as payment instead.

The Turbanator plays piano on the Eric Allison album "After Hours." Jim, how'd you end up with a free piano?

Tonight was my quick "weekday dinner." Nothing special, since I'm usually too lazy to cook much; mixed greens with some of my grandma's garlic vinagrette and grated romano, plus some rice with homemade kimchi stirred in. Nothing required any preparation except for the rice.

Here's an awful story for you: As a favor I played a solo piano gig at the wedding reception of a friend's sister. My buddy was drafted into working as the wedding videographer, since the parents of the bride were being cheap. Very important fact that will be of relevance later: the reception was held at the Rusty Pelican, one of those Miami restaurants that have a small "moat" and fountains separating the restaurant from the parking lot, with a little footbridge connecting the two. Anyway, things start winding down and everyone starts packing up their stuff to go. My friend sees that I've got my backpack on (for carrying my Real Book) and asks to stick the $800 camcorder in there so he can free his hands for carrying out other stuff. I forget that my backpack's zipper is broken. If closed on the "wrong" side, the teeth gradually open. So we head downstairs to get our cars from the valet...there's a long line and we sit down outside to smoke some cigars. About 10 minutes pass and the valet calls out to me that my car is all set. At the exact moment I cross the footbridge to the parking lot, I sling my backpack over my shoulder, only to see a large object flying out from the corner of my eye. Splash! My buddy, who's 6'3", had to be held by his ankles to fish the camera out, the water was so deep. Somehow, this story had a happy ending. The tape of the whole wedding ended up being salvageable, with only one small blip, and the bride's dad managed to finagle himself a replacement camcorder for free, despite the warranty being void in case of water damage (a long story in itself). And the bride's dad didn't strangle me!

or Moxie and the nearest crapper.

Only two of the sessions are currently in print: Central Park North and Consummation. However, I would guess that another title is due to be released this year, as Blue Note has been putting out about one each year for the last couple of years. If you have a turntable, it may be easier to fill out the rest on LP.

Man, that brings back some memories. My grandma used to stock Faygo Red Pop in her pantry. (The bottle looked very different from that one, though.) I think she got it at Winn-Dixie. Do they still make the stuff?

A tie between bagels/lox and pastrami/mustard. (Assuming the mustard is Gulden's or another brown deli mustard.) I think I'm going to go with the pastrami on a technicality--I prefer straight-up smoked salmon to lox on a bagel. Lox is a bit too salty and slimy. The pastrami sandwich at Katz's Deli in NYC is a cliche--but it lives up to the hype. Possibly the most expensive sandwich I've ever had, but also possibly the very best.

The other thing I would recommend, if you haven't already done so: stop using credit cards entirely...cut them up if you have to. This will keep your debts from accumulating further. Use a debit card only--this means that you will never be buying stuff that your bank account cannot cover. You don't need credit card debt and 18% interest payments on top of your current headaches. If your bank doesn't offer ATM cards that can be used as credit cards, find one that does.

Is it too late/unfeasible to fight your ticket in court? Many officers never show up to these proceedings to contest your claim, or so I have heard. That could save you a quick $140 if you can afford to take time off work. If there's only a short gap between your rent being due and next payday, can you talk to the landlord/management company to see if you can wait a week or so? If you are a good tenant maybe they will be OK about it.

Dave, I don't think it usually has to do with ego. This is simply how many, many pianists go about improvising. Bud Powell did it too, as did others who are less audible about it. The idea is sort of that by forcing yourself to focus on the singing, you take the emphasis off of what your hands are doing, or what looks theoretically good on the keyboard but may not make an attractive melody. You're letting your ear take over instead of your eyes and logical brain.

Yeah, if I had $1000 right now to spend, at a time when the Fantasy catalog appears in limbo, I'd probably pick up: Jimmy Woods--Conflict Jaki Byard--Experience, Hi-Fly, Here's Jaki, Freedom Together Hal Singer--Blue Stompin Roy Haynes--We Three Harold Land--The Fox Walt Dickerson--To My Queen At least one of the Randy Weston Prestige records Sonny Criss--Sonny'd Dream At least one Curtis Counce Contemporary record At least one Booker Ervin record with Jaki Byard Bobby Timmons--Trio in Person At least one Shelly Manne Blackhawk record Tommy Flanagan--Overseas One of the early Cal Tjader records Gigi Gryce--Rat Race Blues Kenny Drew Trio Machito--Mucho Macho One of the Memphis Slim albums Two Elmo Hope albums Roland Kirk--Kirk's Work At least one Phineas Newborn record Frank Rosolino--Free For All Rene Thomas--Guitar Groove After all that I'd probably have about $600 left. Much of it would go toward much more recent stuff.

Aha--thanks for the tip, I knew I had seen that somewhere. Is the quality hurt any by not specially configuring mono encoding, or am I just wasting space?

Yes, this is disc 4, for which Mosaic used the mono masters. (Should I be using a different setting to encode mono? I remember seeing a discussion of mono encoding somewhere.)

Here's a silly question: I'm ripping the Tristano/Konitz/Marsh Mosaic right now, on alt-preset-standard. The LAME window that pops up when encoding to mp3 starts shows a number of asterisks that change as encoding proceeds. These are labelled 128, 160, 192, and so forth, which I take to mean that they represent the proportion of the file that is being ripped at 128, 160, and 192 Kbps. Now, with most CDs, when LAME is set to encode at alt-preset-standard, the encoding is roughly centered around 192 Kbps--a small percentage will be at 128, a somewhat larger percentage at 160, the highest percentage at 192, a somewhat smaller percentage at 224, and even smaller percentages at 256 and 320. With this CD, however, almost everything is encoding at 128 Kbps, with very very small percentages at 160 and 192. Is this normal, and why does it happen?

I thought that too myself, before I heard it. He is actually a fairly progressive organist...maybe in the Larry Goldings vein? I'm not sure what his full last name is.

Here's a piece o'greaze that I don't think has been mentioned much around here: link

I agree with you, Tom. That was a mismatch of sorts. One thing I've been thinking of, which may without any significance, but I though I'd mention anyway: When Ike Quebec died in 1963 Pearson took over his A&R at Blue Note. From that point, these are the Blue Note sessions where he played piano during the following two years: Johnny Coles 'Little Johnny C' (July 18, August 9, 1963) Grant Green 'Idle Moments' (November 4 & 15, 1963) Bobby Hutcherson 'The Kicker' (December 29, 1963) Rejected Grant Green session (February 12, 1964) Grant Green 'Solid' (June 12, 1964) Duke Pearson 'Wahoo' (November 24, 1964) Several of the non-Pearson led dates have been described by posters here as "in reality a Pearson date", or in similar words to the effect that Pearson seemed to have a lot of influence on the date as a whole. Perhaps he just took his A&R role seriously. But anyway, that makes me think that Person might have had something to say when the group was chosen for this particular rejected session as well. Therefore, it seems all the more odd that Gilmore would be picked for the sax part. Is it possible that he stepped in for someone else? Interesting, too, that Henderson played tenor on ALL the aforementioned dates except this one.

Another thought...perhaps Alfred was going for a remake of the tenor-vibes-guitar front line that worked so well on "Idle Moments," and either rejected the session as not matching up to the earlier effort or tossed it because he wanted to present Green in a more varied context than just copycatting the earlier lineup?

My guess is that the execution of these tunes was not as tight as Alfred would have liked. Ezz-thetic is NOT easy to play, and I bet they may have needed more rehearsal time. Un Poco Loco is not particularly easy either, and is infrequently played. Alfred must have thought the concept was basically a good one, though, hence the redo at the "Solid" sessions a few months later. (Although Solid wasn't issued at the time either, I think most of us can agree the reason wasn't poor playing on the part of the participants...there was just too much Grant Green on the market at that point.)

Jim Sangrey, in a thread from a while ago, termed Shuggie "the missing link between Sly Stone and Brian Wilson." Listening to this one, I can kind of see it...raw funk/blues guitar meets laid-back California songwriting...or something like that. (I'm not qualified to talk at length about either Stone or Wilson, really.) Anyway, the first couple of listens through the CD version had me liking the bonus tracks--recorded a couple of years before-- a LOT more than the original album. The original tracks were just a bit too sugary, I think. On a third listen, they have started to grow on me. He was a hell of a guitar player for being barely a 20 year old (and very versatile, you can hear him playing octaves a la Wes or Benson on one or two of the tunes). A shame that he just faded away into obscurity.

No Beantown? People here are much more pleasant after the events of last October... Plus, if you're willing to brave the Providence winter, might as well head 45 minutes north to a halfway real city.