Shawn

I've been using Handbrake for a couple years now, invaluable tool. It's especially handy for ripping DVDs, I archived some of my TV shows into iTunes for ease of access.

I'm just glad I didn't drive you nuts talking about Pearson endlessly like I have...

Cabin In The Woods definitely looks interesting, especially since the "set-up" looks like a standard variation on The Evil Dead...but then the sci-fi elements kick in! I'm a Whedon fanboy as well and I'm sure he's got some fun tricks up his sleeve in this film. CABIN IN THE WOODS - official trailer Here's Whedon's comments on how the idea for the film came about, from totalfilm.com Co-writer and producer Joss Whedon described the film as an attempt to revitalize the horror film which he, along with director/co-writer Goddard, felt had "devolved" with the introduction of Torture Porn. He called it a "loving hate letter" to the genre continuing, "On another level it’s a serious critique of what we love and what we don’t about horror movies. I love being scared. I love that mixture of thrill, of horror, that objectification/identification thing of wanting definitely for the people to be alright but at the same time hoping they’ll go somewhere dark and face something awful. The things that I don’t like are kids acting like idiots, the devolution of the horror movie into torture porn and into a long series of sadistic comeuppances. Drew and I both felt that the pendulum had swung a little too far in that direction."

I think the series is worthwhile for the performance footage and photographs alone. It's over-long, spends too much time in some sections and then glosses over the later years too quickly, but I would still recommend it to a newbie who was interested in jazz.

You sound like Jazz talking about The Beatles! It seems to happen every 10-15 years or so, a big purge to level the playing field. Sometimes that ends up not being a good thing, but it's usually necessary to thin the herd a little and allow new groups/styles to develop.

that link is the Applause version, OJC wouldn't have the rights to this one. I only have an LP rip of this one, I don't think it was ever reissued in the states...not sure about Japan.

The second official trailer for Joss Whedon's "AVENGERS"...this is gonna rule.

Which also described my experience with Nirvana and Pearl Jam in the early 90s .

DAMN! The debut album by The Monkees is one of my earliest musical memories, my Mother turned me onto them.

It should work fine.

I don't listen to The Ramones for musical ability, I like the catchy songs and the attitude. I stuck with the rock scene until 1995, then I moved almost exclusively to jazz for the next 8 or 9 years, now the pendulum has swung back to rock again.

I don't really blame Nirvana themselves, more the record industry for "deciding" there was a style of music called "Grunge" (which never existed, it's fashion, not music) that was somehow superior to everything else at the time. I actually like Nirvana's "Bleach" album, but never warmed up to their later recordings. I started listening to Soundgarden in 1988 when Ultramega OK was released, they were more my cup of tea at the time and were ahead of the curve in the Seattle scene. I always enjoyed their new/retro approach of putting an alternative spin on the basic Sabbath building blocks...even going so far as re-recording Into The Void with new lyrics. In that era of the early 90s, the bands I really liked were the So-Cal groups like KYUSS and Sleep, the whole stoner/desert rock thing, cause it grooved like mad and had more of a psychedelic vibe to it. Plus it was just "fun" and had no delusions of importance.

Yawn. The Sex Pistols in the 70s, Nirvana in the 90s...stuff that might have seemed "revolutionary" at the time, now just feels like a stunt and not a very good musical one at that. In the grand scheme of things, I don't think the Sex Pistols inspired any kind of lasting musical inspiration. plus The Ramones were always superior.

"Your Mother was a hamster and your father reeks of elderberries."

Yeah, I don't blame you for leaving. He sounds moronic.

My brain hurts.

It's not my job to find out whether a record label pays what they should, that's for the label, the artist and all the fucking lawyers. I just make sure to buy releases from legit labels, because at least there's a better chance that the artist will get paid.

They carry these cheap sets at Amoeba, I saw a ton of them the last time I ventured through the jazz section. NO WAY am I paying any money for this crap. Why bother purchasing if none of the appropriate people will get royalties? I'll just download them from a blog until a real issue comes along.

Primeval (BBC) - Series 1 & 2

That would disqualify pretty much every kind of African American music there is, including hip hop, funk, soul jazz, free jazz and on and on and on. I meant "at the time he wrote this book". In other words, if a band is playing "mainstream" (hard bop, soul jazz, etc) and the white cats are into it...it can't possibly be revolutionary. Would a group having a large white following infuriate some of the more militant aspects of what was going on at the time? I remember reading that Archie Shepp on occasion heckled white people in the crowd...as if they didn't belong in the club while "his" music was being played.

Could his viewpoint be as simple as "If white people enjoy it, it's not a valid form"?

The term "hard bop" has always bothered me (as do all sub-genre classifications in music) because it's too limiting, trying to put an umbrella term over countless artists over a decade or so. It makes it appear on the surface that the artists usually associated with hard bop could do nothing else and never evolved. I think that's crap. Take Horace Silver. Compare the "Horace Silver & The Jazz Messengers" album with something later like "The Cape Verdean Blues" and it's NOT the same thing, Horace had evolved, younger players came in, time passes and it's a different animal. But those "genre-addicted" folk have a fix for something like that, instead of acknowledging that maybe styles have changed, they just vary up the wording into "Post-bop", in other words: "We have no idea what to call this and it doesn't fall into our very narrow view of what hard bop is...so I guess that scene is over completely, yet this new music isn't inspiring me to come up with a new title...so we'll just add post to the beginning."

Your handle is "Leeway", you use that album as your avatar and this is how you feel about hard bop? I'm confused.

You're preaching to the choir about Lockjaw.

I remember reading the liner notes to "Bacalao" by Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, written by Amiri. He essentially spends most of the notes describing how "sub-par" this kind of jazz is and how Lockjaw makes it barely listenable. I found it funny that they would choose someone to write liner notes who hates the music he's writing about.