Shawn

Indeed. 1998 was a great year for reissues. Many great OJC single and comp. reissues were also released that year, and Mosaic put out their usual gems (the Bud Shank among them). Even Columbia/Legacy's reissue program was going strong. Glad that Cuscuna got as many titles out there when he did. Amen to that.

Let me know which hospital to send the flowers to....

I'm afraid my Grandmother burned me out on Johnny back in the 70's. She was a big fan...I was a little kid who liked Kiss & Queen.

Agreed. I didn't recognize the name until I looked him up on IMDB and realized I know him more as an actor than a director. I had no idea he was the guy in Swingers...and also the director/star of Made. He's a funny guy, it's no wonder the comedic elements of the film work so well. Trivia: His original choice for the Pepper character was Rachel McAdams (The Notebook, Red Eye), but she turned down the role. Paltrow was the backup plan...but in view of her performance she was by far the better choice. Plus she's not hard to look at...

I'm not a big fan of comic book films...but this one was AWESOME! I went and saw it yesterday and was very impressed. Downey Jr. fits this role like a glove and he really makes the movie come to life. Paltrow doesn't have much screen time but her scenes are expertly handled and the romantic tension feels completely real, very natural and unforced. In fact most of the actors underplay the roles which make them more realistic. It's effortlessly funny without trying to be, never crossing the line into Camp territory but still has some laugh out loud segments. The film is very much centered on the character and not the special effects, bringing Spiderman & Batman Begins to mind. I find the movie to be superior to the Spiderman films...not quite as good as Batman Begins but it's not nearly as dark in tone as that one. 3 1/2 stars (out of 4).

Got my discs as well. Highly recommended!

Great description! On a related note Helen Merrill inspires that kind of imagery whenever I hear her...but I'm not going to post what that is for fear of being banned!

Yep, that's the exact thing I saw the first time.

Foobar. I haven't used another audio player since I started using it. This site will also list a bunch of other players that support FLAC. Can Foobar be used to burn FLAC files to disc? Not directly, though you can uncompress them to .wav files and then burn them with any program.

I didn't even think of using it for anything other than FLAC files, but I will now. Real Audio and the Windows Media Player both suck. Particularly RA, it crashes. The reason that Foobar is such a great player is that it's extremely light. It uses very little memory and instead of wasting power on graphical niceties it focuses on the audio. It can also convert audio files into just about any format, fix broken header information on files, etc. etc. It is also open source freeware so there are many plug-ins and tweaks available.

Foobar. I haven't used another audio player since I started using it. This site will also list a bunch of other players that support FLAC.

I downloaded the file and played it back in quicktime. Same result when I watched it, back and forth. So it's only a single file.

When I first went to the site she was going counter-clockwise, as my eyes moved over to read the text I saw her change direction out of the corner of my eye. After looking at it for a couple minutes it goes clockwise more often but it keeps switching back and forth.

A couple tornadoes ripped through a housing complex and strip mall in the town where I work this week (Suffolk, Va). Amazingly no one was killed. Luckily, I had the day off so I was 30 miles away.

There is also the issue that mastering engineers are very aware of the mediums they are producing for. The general population doesn't have audiophile stereo gear, they're listening on iPods, car stereos, little boom boxes from Wal Mart and cheap home surround systems. When mastering you always have to check playback on a variety of different devices and try to find a happy medium that sounds good on all. The iPod generation is dealing with more compression than ever before, but the general public wouldn't understand dynamic range if they tripped over it on the street. They only understand "loudness". Of course this also creates the market for audiophile labels like Classic Records, etc who have the freedom to produce geared towards high end equipment.

Found a fix!!!! I use Foobar 2000 and noticed that under the Utilities menu there was a selection for "Fix MP3 VBR Header". I tried it on a few files and it corrected the problem! Kevin, Thanks for the ripping command, I'll give that one a shot.

yes

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll probably just re-encode the files since there aren't that many of them. I did a couple test rips last night and was unable to reproduce the problem.

Happy Birthday! (sorry for the late reply)

I've noticed that the timings are off on some of my MP3 files, for example a song that's 3:42 will show as 28 minutes or something equally ridiculous. Not sure what caused the problem and I haven't been able to reproduce it. The question is now what's the easiest way to fix it? I know how to change almost all the other information aside from the song length on MP3 files. Thanks, Shawn

Pettin' & Pokin' - Louis Jordan

Our very own Jim Sangrey performs on a wonderfully clever little ditty called "Andrew Lloyd Weber Must Die".

Come down to Virginia Beach/Norfolk will ya! There's a place in Norfolk called the Attucks Theater which has some interesting acts and then there's a plethora of bars down at the beach (Jewish Mother, etc).

True. But I'm sure there were some folks at Pharoah Sanders gigs that were so wasted they SAW giant inflatable pigs where there were none.