Big Beat Steve

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 ...

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.

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.

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 ...

Pre-order for the set and the book sent through Paypal. Looking forward to it.

"Ferry Cross The Mersey"?

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

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 ...)

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 ...

"And Tells The Truth Later On"?

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).

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.

In this case, a link to the actual Discogs entry in your reply would have helped a lot for those interested.

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?

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 ... )

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).

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).

Agreed. And it goes (must go, actually) well with the performances on "Jam Session Record No. 101" (or SAJ 1003) recorded the same day at the same venue.

That woman with her phone sure had some nerve ... Amazing that nobody else in the audience (particularly those others up front) callesd her to order in no uncertain terms at once when she started trying to argue with Mutter. Or did she surround herself with like minds in neighboring seats to shroud her off? As an audience member anywhere near her I'd certainly have frowned on this kind of behavior in a concert of CLASSICAL music and in THAT setting. I'd certainly would have liked to see what would have happened if someone in a neighboring seat would have casually waved his hand on front of the camera eye of her phone - and more than once. That motion could have been done as quite a natural sign of appreciation towards the stage - "what, there's a camera on? Did I know? Do I care? What's the idea of a camera there anyway?"

Le Quattro Stagioni rather reminds me of a pizzeria menu. And as for whether one is more famliar with Le Sacré du Printemps or with The Rites of Spring, I'd call it a draw. Of course I agree with you that it is a matter of taste and also of what is "habitually" done (I'd wager to say that in most cases it's because the target market is exceedingly unable to handle a foreign language). So to cut a long story (and discussion) short and repeat what my (linguistic) point was, IMHO the information on the Berlioz/Debussy cover that started this discussion isn't nearly as inept as Chuck Nessa made it out to be.

Isn't that one atypical because it is a straight reissue of an actual LP (JARO 5004) (as is the Kenny Dorham Memorial LP, for example), as opposed to many of the other reissues featuring compilationns of individual 4-tune sessions or releases of previously unreleased live recordings? That Warne Marsh Live in Hollywood LP must be uncommon. I canntor ecal having ever seen it aynwhere (I would ahve picked it up ...9. BTW, a question to the real experts: Is there a fundamental, overriding difference in the reissue programming between the gold Xanadu and silver Onyx LP series? The fields they cover do seem to overlap quite a bit, even if Onyx leans more towards the Swing era.

Isn't that exactly what it says on the cover too? Translations of such titles (particularly if the original and genuine title is a non-English one) are common, aren't they? Of course it might have been more appropriate to put the French one first and more prominenty and the English one in brackets and in fine print. But what would the marketing execs have said if it was an English-speaking target market this was all about? Look at how many recordings and record covers there are of the Franz Schubert "Trout Quintet" (to name just ONE example I as someone not overly concerned with classical music am familiar with). Including one on RCA too, BTW. More appropriate than the bilingual cover above? I doubt it.

Would you have an alternative that improves significantly on the Berlioz title? P.S. Looking at the RCA label, if you remember how often they included SPANISH translations in brackets on the their track listings back in the 50s (apparently not only on records PRESSED in Hispanic countries) you will be aware that silly or at least rather awkward translations were no isolated case. And Capitol wasn't any better overall. FWIW, the English title of the Debussy item IS a fairly apt rendering of the title of that works for the English-speaking world and actually was based on a poem of the same (English) title by Rossetti (an Englishman, not Italian - sez WIkipedia ). So in turn the French translation seems quite appropriate to me ("elu" meaning "chosen" conveyed by the term "blessed" here - not all that linguistically unreasonable, given the era).

+1

There comes a point in any discussion when it just becomes meaningless fighting the same fights over and over again. Maybe that's what Mike meant. Some reach ths point earlier, some later (much later). What I don't get, however, is why everybody is so exceedingly touchy about this particular topic. Is this a US thing? Discussions where there are so many (imaginary) stumbling stones that everyone needs to go out of his way to avoid, lest he be blamed for being non.P.C. and then exposed to some sort of cultural witch hunt for having the "wrong" opinion? I'd venture a guess everyone around here pays the creators in music their dues in every imaginable way and won't need to concern themselves with accusations of "cultural appropriation" in any Jim Crow (or racist or other) manner (to sum up things in a simplified way). So why does anyone around here feel they need to let the blame be put on them? BTW, as you will have seen from our previous exchanges I understand you are sick and tired of this generalizing "cultural appropriation" one-accusation-fits-all swipe. But in fact, like JSngry pointed out correctly, the irony in how Allen Lowe approaches the subject should be obvious enough. Allen's hint at "appropriating culture" and its ironical implications in the way this is opposed to "cultural appropriation" ought to have been rather obvious. I did sense it but when he pointed out that turn of words it became ever so obvious. "See how the artists appropriated each other's culture across racial and stylistic boundaries." A "leitmotiv" in those of his writings I for one am familiar with. And correctly so IMO. Nuff said now for an explanation why I for one would not want to fuss about that title of his collection? (Allen, please keep it!!) Looking closer at it, this would be a door that swings both ways anyway. You named Ray Charles's excursion into country music. Cultural appropriation? If not, why not? Certainly not from a oppressor-oppressed angle (the oppressed being entitled to appropriate the oppressor's muisc? Country music? With roots to the proverbial poor white rural hicks in the sticks as the oppressor?? And chart topper Ray Charles as the oppressed one? B.S.!).I'd even go a huge step further: If this "cultural approriation" pseudo argument is taken seriously, what business did John Lewis and the MJQ have appropriating Bach and European classical music anyway?? Not their "natural" playing ground (like whites accused of "cultural approriation" allegedly have no business taking from and engaging with black music - according to the zealot proponents of the "cultural appropriation" thing). And the MJQ sure made huge money from their appropriation. Which leads us to the money angle. No doubt JSngry is right there. And IMO he nailed it in how he got Allen's intentions about the title right and I have no problem siding with him there - regardless of whether he likes it or not , because - as any of those of you who follow this forum relatively closely will have noticed - I do speak my mind too and have been at odds with JSngry more often than I'd care to remember. But for all the verbal flak I certainly won't feel there is any reason why I should take that "Sangrey-only worldview" (to quote Ted O'Reilly) as anything like the final word. Ever. Whatever he says is one single man's opinion and not more. Never. He is entitled to his as I am entitled to mine. We can go on discussing opinions from there but I won't be frightened away. To paraphrase a saying we have around here, "To accomplish that, it'd take a gardener, not a seedling." I usually take in stride whatever comes my way in discussions like this. In a way it's part of the game once discussions reach a certain intensity. Because, after all, all these exchanges, no matter how "aggressive" they sometimes get (I'd call them "outspoken" but apparently that is a no-no attitude today in many circles too these days), this is how forums work. And no doubt this is nothing compared to feuds on other forums. So I really wonder why people are so touchy? Just like Allen Lowe ought to be known for what he stands for, Jim Sangrey ought to be known well enough too. And I really wonder what anybody would gain from ducking this kind of controversy by shifting to the Hoffman forum where - by all accounts - you can get expelled on one man's whim??