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Big Beat Steve

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  1. Seen from that angle - yes ... Subtle and subversive ... probably ... but would you be surprised if this were turned the other way round today? You can find odd stuff on the web and everything seems to have been evoked before (and some of it can give you the creeps): https://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3744745/posts But be advised that you are on the verge of turning this into a political thread ...
  2. When I read about this some years ago I could not help wondering what the finer points of the lyrics of Bob Wills' "Take Me Back to Tulsa" may have been ... What did Johnny Duncan do when singing about "getting off on Archer" and walking "down to Greenwood"? (I hope it's all as innocent as it sounds - because musically it IS a great tune ...)
  3. Makes those of us over here who do not check THIS section that regularly wonder what that pic and that "Americana" was all about ... Or else, why not discuss this via PM with the original poster?
  4. To bypass the NYT paywall: https://variety.com/2019/music/news/nick-tosches-dead-dies-rock-writer-1203376760/ https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/nick-tosches-music-journalist-novelist-obituary-901445/ Only 69? Way too early. I remember well when in 1986 (long before having read his r'n'r and country books, though I had been aware of them) I bought a copy of his "Hellfire" novelized bio of JLL at a Stars & Stripes bookstore at a US Army post here (i.e. straight from the source in those days long before the WWW) and immediately had to stop by again to buy the other remaining copy after I had told the editor of a rockabilly magazine about that book. Very entertaining reading ... RIP and thanks for many a good read.
  5. Depending on how anyone would interpret these improvised (and certainly not liguistically accurate) phonetic "transcriptions", this would amount to essentially the same thing, though I am fairly sure the accent is on the "Lob", not so much on the "lee". And I would not have expected someone in US English to interpet "Schwah" correctly (though I would have used it in a transcription for German speakers).
  6. The French way, obviously. Lobb-lee-shoaah
  7. Her recordings for Signature have indeed been under the radar, falling between the Krupa and Granz/Verve periods. But I wonder what made the Doctor Jazz label (that reissued a lot of Signature sessions) use such idiotic cover "art"work for this 1984 reissue (the previous 1974 reissue on Flying Dutchman wasn't much better)? Were they all out to shove some money photographer buddy David Redfern's way, kicking any stylistic consistency between cover "art" and the contents in the you know where? Sorry to say, but this kind of '"art"work would probably not have hit it with many of those 40s jazz collectors who were looking for these particular recordings (and would not have made them fall all over themselves to pull this one out of the racks), and I doubt her then-current recordings were a big draw either so I don't think they were trying to lure people into taking this for then-recent recordings. So what WERE they thinking?
  8. Considering how the European music copyright laws were revised as of 2012 just to make sure the P.D. cutoff date was extended from 50 to 70 years for anything first released post-mid-1962 (following severe lobbying by interested parties, to the extent of the new copyright law becoming known as the "Paul McCartney law" over here), I'd say the compensation angle is taken care of ...
  9. The most important thing i have always done is to ALWAYS, really ALWAYS handle my LPs with only the thumb against the outermost rim and 2 or 3 more fingers near the center hole on the label, never ever touch the surface with my bare fingers when pulling the record out of the sleeve or holding it to put it on the turntable etc. And it makes me cringe and almost cry out with disgust at the fleamarkets when I see so-called vinyl lovers (browsing through my vinyl crate) ineptly grab my LPs with their thick, fat clumsy fingers not just near the edge but right on both sides of outer surface of the actual grooves! Fingers that at the stall before may have grabbed rusty gardening tools or whatever ... And when you very politely, in a very low voice call them to order they react as if it was the most natural thing in the world to handle vinyl leaving their fingerprints all over the place ... As if it was sooo difficult always to practise a (piano) "octave grip" when handling an LP!! And I do take care to always put my LPs in inner sleeves that are not such a tight fit that you have to force the LP out of the sleeve. The LP ought to slip out of the sleeve by itself when turning and handling the cover properly. As for inner sleeves, of course I prefer those with inner clear plastic liners. And if it is just paper sleeves they really ought to be as smooth inside as possible. P.S: I have seen the wood glue trick (see video above) demonstrated to me. Unbelievable but it seems to work. And believe it or not - a collector friend (quite finicky about getting the best out of his original 45s) uses a method that involves adding some WD40! No kidding .. Haven't tried it myself but what he demonstrated to me sounded (literally) convincing. Will have to inquire again ...
  10. Well, you do know, I guess, how many "BN-umpteenth-sonic-upgrade-cost-what-may" geeks there are out there, for example. I have little reason to believe that "must have it all, really all, no matter in how many guises" fanatism is much less pronounced in other areas of popular music that have a substantial fan base.
  11. A problem (also including ring wear) specific to cardboard US covers of yesteryear with fairly seedy paper strips round the cover edges to hold everything together. Much less of a problem with European LP covers.
  12. Quite true. There are moments when I have a feeling we are not THAT far away from that day, I am afraid. At least in some quarters and at some moments. As for records/CDs, I've usually bought "blind" (except in those cases when I had managed to locate a specific item I had been looking for) and have not very often been disappointed. Quite a lot have turned out to be "non-essential" but usually have a handful of nice/worthy tracks that make them good enough to keep (to round out the stylistic coverage) at the low secondhand prices I bought them at. Except that space eventually is a problem indeed. So my buying has slowed down too. As for listening in before buying, one local secondhand shop has turntables for the customers to use (and when in doubt I make use of them, and this sometimes has helped avoid costly mistakes - such as Vi Redd's Bird Calls, where on listening I found I just cannot digest her singing to warrant paying a collectible price for that platter ), but back in the day when I bought new vinyl in stores (mid-70s to very early 2000s) listening facilities were already on their way out by the mid-70s. Only one shop still allowed you to hand a record over to the clerk who put it onto turntable and let you listen to a few tracks over a sort of telephone (with rather doubtful fidelity). Listening booths had been junked long before so the Perry Mason episode mentioned asbove would have been a tale from days long gone by here too. As for reselling, tough indeed. Over time I do manage to shift my jazz duplicates (I take along my crate whenver I set up a fleamarket stall - 4 times this year, for example) but it takes time. You'd never guess what I have found to be the hardest artist to sell: Duke Ellington! I do wonder why ... Occasionally I've also had a stall at specific 50s vintage fleamarkets but things have not been radically different there. In fact my experience with response at general fleamarkets is the opposite to what others have said above. My stuff is "straight ahead" (mostly swing, some 50s cool and hard bop) but many, many punters in fact are more into fusion/jazz rock etc. (often my generation but weaned totally differently, obviously ). Once when the name of Miles came up in a chat at the stall and when I mentioned that my most "recent" Miles LP in my own collection is "Seven Steps to Haven" one punter actually told me "Now that is VERY old ..." Records/CDs from other stylistic areas have come in handy as birthday presents but unfortunately I do not have many friends with jazz tastes to match ...
  13. Pre-order for the set and the book sent through Paypal. Looking forward to it.
  14. Mine may be a Brit-centric view of that segment of the music (and brings me back to my early days of collecting) but from all I have heard and read bands like the Hollies and Hermans Hermits were very much on the outermost fringe of actual Merseybeat. Not really comparable (except from the angle of "British Invasion" to the US, of course). Merseybeat purists would cringe, I guess. Like they would cringe at the Merseybeats platter you chose, EKE BBB: Did you notice the fine print in the upper corner? "Re-Recorded in Stereo 1977" OUCH!! And what about that "This record contains previously recorded material" disclaimer at the bottom? Another way of saying "No, you are not getting the real thing here"? I'd hate to hear what kind of rehash this really is (compared to the original recordings). At any rate these do look like none of these are the originals. I remember being fooled in the same way in my very early collecting days at age 15 (at a time when Merseybeat reissues were exceedingly thin on the ground) when I was glad to find an LP by the Swinging Blue Jeans at a local record store, only to find out at home it was all rerecordings with heavy-handedly modernized sounds and some tunes that actually had never been part of their original repertoire (I had not noticed that a cover of CCR's "Bad Moon Rising" could hardly have been a Merseybeat era recording ... served me right for my lack of detail knowledge at that time ...) Unfortunately such re-recording practices were not uncommon in the 70s. And the clueless songwriter's credits of "You Can't Judge A Book By Its Cover" on THAT Merseybeats LP should make any blues fan throw up in disgust ... At least the German release of that copycat record was a bit more forthright, spilling the beans to the wary with its cover photo (but still retaining the songwriter credit nonsense): https://www.discogs.com/de/The-Merseybeats-Greatest-Hits/release/5080266
  15. It is true in my case. But over time the 80 and 20% sections do shift. I.e. there are periods when I revisit items I have not listened to for a long (or even very long) time. Yet there remain records that I am certain I will never listen to for the rest of my life. But do I know now which ones they are? No - so for the time being they are keepers (on the premise that it is nice to have the music ready to listen to when I feel like it). But at times I wonder what unlistened-to music I am missing out on. Though I am not one of the bookkeepers' mentality who runs checklists for listenting to music in a set row in order to "work off" what he has. So the unlistened-to music will have to wait until its time comes (which may come or not - but again: Do I know if it actually won't come? Not yet, I am afraid ...)
  16. Tell you what ... when I am in the mood to relax and let just the sound patterns of the music sink in (without wanting to analyze or dissect it to death), there is a lot in jazz that would be Easy Listening to me - starting e.g. with Lennie Tristano's Supersonic/On A Planet etc. session of 23 Oct. 1947 and going up to a lot of what is on KOB (yes indeed ..). And I'd find nothing of that "easy listening" wrong with me. Music that serves a purpose - at that time and in that mood. At different times and in different moods it will serve other purposes for sure but that is not the point ... Ought to listen to "The Phantom" too, I guess ... just to see ...
  17. I agree. I bought the "Musician of the Year" LP a long time ago some time after it had been reissued by French RCA in the mid-80s. It's been a while since I listened closely to it but remember I was very impressed by the effortless fluency and swing of the proceedings. I have "Encore" (feat. Monterose and Puma et al.) on the Savoy-Denon reissue CD of the early 2000s. TIme to pull out that one again too. So I guess, owning 2 out of 3 of the contents of this FS reissue I will have to make do without "Montage" (until that one comes along somewhere else if it turns out to be a must).
  18. https://www.discogs.com/de/Benny-Goodman-The-Benny-Goodman-Treasure-Chest/master/598690 The original release is older than I had figured it was.
  19. In this case, a link to the actual Discogs entry in your reply would have helped a lot for those interested.
  20. That may have been a procedure with this series but I really don't know about the "Trio" CD I mentioned. The Kirk Felton remastering is dated 1999 and so is the (C) date (which would coincide with the beginning of the reissue period of this digipack series you mentioned) and there are NO other (later) remastering credits anywhere on that reissue (contrary to your example above). Did the practice with indicating credits vary THAT widely?
  21. Actually the turn of the milennium was a period when I was flooded with collectible vinyl purchasing opportunities so my CD purchases at that time certainly were limited to items I KNEW one THOUSAND % sure to be unavailable or unaffordable to me in ANY vinyl format. Which is why I may have missed most of these. Actually on checking my CDs now I see that whatever OJC CDs I purchased were jewel case items except one which is a 20-bit digipack: Hal Gaylor/Walter Norris/Billy Bean - "The Trio", an "obscurity" item bought from the cut-price racks at 2001. I remember being sort of surprised at the time that OPJC had gone the digipack route too (a couple of other items i bought at 2001 at that time all came in jewel cases so apparently were earlier reissues) And this one sounds OK to me (of course I have never seen or heard the original vinyl to compare). The fine print says it was remastered by Kirk Felton at Fantasy Studios, Berkeley. (Whatever that would indicate to the experts ... )
  22. Strange ... I cannot recall having ever seen those XYZ-reissued OJC digipacks over here. And even though I did not browse the CD racks THAT attentively during the past 15 or so years anymore they would have been candidates for the jazz bins in the Zweitausendeins shops, for example. And these I DID check out regularly (while our local shop lasted).
  23. Donna Lee is on both LPs and the Bruyninckx discography says Fine and Dandy (Keen and Peachy) is on both too but for the life of it I cannot find this tune on my copy of Xanadu 146 (which has 7 tracks, not 8 as indicated by Bruyninckx).
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