Big Wheel

Is Jimmy kicking bass on this one, though? I thought there was a bass player, at least on this track.

Both, if possible. I realize that's not much at all to spend but I'm not exactly raking it in at 23 years old here.

Saw a cheapo copy of the original Savoy CD the other day. Has there been a remaster yet of this?

Really? Chaloff taught Kenny Werner (has he been mentioned yet?)

Anyone got any good ideas for what I can buy for $500 that will sound halfway decent? This will be my first real rig and I'd like to spend my dough wisely. Right now I only play CDs, so no turntable necessary.

Marty Ehrlich, I think. Isn't Ben Perowsky a drummer?

Thanks everyone for the birthday wishes. (Also thanks to everyone who sent their regards on the "I got a job" thread awhile back--I only haven't replied because I don't want to bump that one up on the off chance the boss is snooping on my usage at work.) Birthday dinner was at a Tunisian restaurant nearby, followed by far too much alcohol for my own good. Going to get myself a few cheap CDs at Stereo Jack's this week, I think. Adam

Actually, CD piracy is illegal in Malaysia, just as it is in most every other country. There's just some, shall we say, "inefficient" enforcement of the law in this regard. I met a 21-year-old kid there who was basically running his own DVD mafia, paying off customs officers and keeping a truck with all the merchandise waiting at the bottom of the mall where his store was, ready to split if the cops showed up. What I don't understand is why they would bother to pirate specialty items like Mosaic sets, which don't sell more than a few thousand copies anyway. It makes no sense and I would be surprised if they were even aware of the demand.

The company is Malaysian, so that may be a clue...though I couldn't for the life of me fathom why the Malaysian CD pirates would bother with copying Mosaic Selects!

Here's the threadI was referring to. There may actually be a couple others I dug up in the Lord discography. I won't have access to my full listing for quite awhile, though--my hard drive crashed and I'm not certain I was able to recover the data. Edit: Part of another Gerry Mulligan LP was at the Vanguard as well. Not out on CD as far as I know.

There are actually several more albums recorded at the Vanguard than the ones they list on their website. Some have not come out on CD or are gray-market type things (the Elvin Honeydews). I think there is a thread around here somewhere where Mike Fitzgerald set me straight and added most of the remaining ones.

My dad actually gave one of those to me as a holiday gag gift this year. It's billed as a "head massager." Dumbest. Gift. Ever.

Wait a minute...how much of "At the Organ" was already reissued on the "A New Sound--A New Star" Doubletime?

Whipped up a big batch of jerk chicken the other night and am still working on the leftovers. I even ground my own allspice for it this time. Also, some spicy okra.

If you want full-on disturbing, you can't go wrong with The Transformed Man.

Are we sure that Curly wasn't referring to Ruth Lion instead?

A similar story... Back in the early days of satellite TV you could only tune the satellite to one channel at a time, even if you had more than one TV. When I was about 8, my parents were remodeling the house and dragged me along when they went to the house of their friend, an interior decorator, to check out wall units or something. They parked me in front of the TV in the living room, which was tuned to the Miami Heat game, and went into the interior decorator's kitchen to talk. Meanwhile one team calls timeout and the station cuts to commercial. In about two seconds this naked lady shows up on TV, rubbing up against some guy in a tuxedo. This goes on for about two minutes, and then wham! The game's back on without me doing anything to the remote. A few more minutes go by, the quarter ends, and wham! More naked lady. After another minute or so of this my dad walked in to check on me. You can imagine his surprise at what was on. Turned out the decorator's husband, not realizing other people were in the house, was flipping to Playboy TV from their bedroom TV during commercials...pretty hilarious to an 8 year old.

Funding does not equal governance. WHRB gets most of its money from local advertising. By that logic, we should let the Boston Ballet, Gillette, and the bar down the street have a spot on the station's administrative board. If anything, the station's financial independence from Columbia is an argument against allowing Columbia to dictate who runs the place, not an argument for it. WERS in Boston is very dependent on Emerson College for funding--if I had to guess, Emerson probably owns the station. (Harvard Radio Broadcasting Co., on the other hand, is independent from the university.) This entails a tradeoff--a lot more money for the station (their studios are gorgeous), but a lot less student say in how the place is run. edit: in case it's not clear, I'm against having Columbia actually run the place. But I think it does play an important role in safeguarding the rights of students, if the established arrangement is for them to manage the radio station without interference. If Phil Schaap and his buddies are taking an active role in station management, that's not kosher.

I don't agree at all with what he would do with the station if he were in charge. But I do think that his overall grievance with station governance sounds like a valid one. If Columbia's institutional relationship to WKCR is like Harvard's to WHRB (and unlike BU's to WBUR), then the situation he's describing isn't very fair.

Right. You can argue on the margins all you want about who should get an extra hour here or there. Personally, this particular decision seemed pretty clear-cut to me--the game was a big one and the precedent was to air the game, but overall, that's pretty small potatoes. The management question that LED to such an issue, however, is not.

There are two issues here: an audience issue and a management issue. There's no reason, in theory, that a compromise couldn't be reached on the audience issue so that students could get their sports some of the time and the jazz and classical departments also get their time. If a couple of hours of jazz or classical are cut out to make way for sports, some people will bitch but overall I wouldn't consider it the end of the world. If students were allowed to really make management decisions, my guess is that they would not go beyond minor scheduling tweaks. I highly doubt that they would throw away their considerable audience by drastically changing to a "college" format. The real problem is the management issue. I don't know what WKCR's history or charter is like but my station, Harvard's WHRB, has always been a student-run affair. WHRB is a registered student organization at Harvard, uses Harvard facilities, and, as such, is subject to the rules governing student organizations. These rules stipulate that alumni trustees are to play only an advisory role--NOT to be decision-makers. At WHRB, however, the longtime chairman of the board of trustees exerts a de facto veto power over all station management decisions--and has been known to meddle with station affairs on numerous occasions, even to the level of what airs when. This is a guy who was the classical music director back in 1966 or so and pretty much considers jazz and rock (which take up 2/3 of the station's programming) to be degenerate forms of music. The result: programming has pretty much ossified, and classical always seems to get the lion's share of prime airtime. Got a jazz or rock orgy you want to run? Have fun running it from 1 to 7 in the morning!

I do get a kick out of the transnational appeal of the show. There are quite a few spinoffs, including: Singapore Idol Malaysian Idol Indonesian Idol

I'm not sure how exactly how much we got in Cambridge but my guess is at least 24 inches. It's up past my knees in the unplowed places. Snow football was fun until the wind really started picking up and blowing ice in our faces at 30+ MPH. Still a bit too powdery for good sledding. Crossing my fingers and hoping I don't have to go to work tomorrow.

Only just starting to come down in the Beantown area now. Going out to play snow football on (hopefully) snow-covered astroturf later tonight. If 48 hours go by and I haven't posted again, you can safely assume I've gotten hypothermia out there.

You can get the Col. Sanders stuff among others at Bill Carrothers's site: http://www.carrothers.com/billyboy/comedyjukebox.htm