Dan Gould

In the program I use, goldwave, listen to the recording and hit "pause" when you hear a click (or simply look at the wav form, its generally easy to spot a click, at least when its in a quieter passage). Telescope down into the hundreths of a second. Isolate the pop-generally it will be about 1/100th to 5/100ths of a second long. Choose "silence". Listen to the clip again to make sure you didn't take anything other than the pop away. Lather, rinse, repeat. As I said, it can take some time, but its like ending up with an almost perfect album (sometimes it gets extremely difficult to isolate a pop so sometimes I leave a small handful intact-that's why its important to listen a second time to make sure you got what you wanted to get!)

Dmitry, I'm not talking about a digital laundry. I'm talking about recording the vinyl sides as a wav file and manually removing the pops. There's no digital hocus pocus or filters or processors to distort, just the manual removal of extraneous noise, and only extraneous noise. Now, if its the vinyl sound qualities you want, then you are losing that because the end result is a burned CD. But I am not a snob who's got to hear vinyl, I want to hear music. The answer to your question is, because the vinyl has never been issued on CD or is unlikely to ever be issued. If I have a choice of a well-used original vinyl or a professionally remastered CD reissue, I'm going with the CD, always. But when it comes to rare vinyl, this "digital gadgetry" (which is not a fair description because again, I am talking about manual selection and deletion of individual pops) can make a world of difference. Just ask Lon, who I cleaned up two of his Argo Ahmad Jamal LPs, leaving no alteration in sound except for the removal of 90% of the pops/clicks. Of course, it all depends on your willingness to invest the time, and sometimes all the time in the world won't make a bit of a difference, if the background noise is really bad anyway.

TL, I am not sure if you'll get a response too quick from DrJ-Tony just made a birth announcement and really hasn't been seen around these parts since!

Did that store have any sense of how to price things? Mint, deep groove, $5? Great album, by the way, it ought to be a Conn. or RVG or Reece should get a Mosaic Select someday.

In fact, even on albums with skips, you can minimize the jarring-ness of the skip by normalizing downward the sound of the needle skipping forward. It doesn't save the missing music but it does make for a less disturbing listen. So all of this is to say that one can lower the acceptable condition standards and still get nice sounding results.

You know, so long as there are no actual skips or scratches that don't play through, most of these VG or VG+ albums can make for *awesome* listening experiences if you have the patience and set-up to throw it into your PC and manually remove the pops and clicks.

Not to hijack the thread in another direction, but what did she think about your jazz interests? Does she have some familiarity with the music? Is she open to it? Does she think Kenny G. when she hears "jazz"? Will she make you go Or will she make you go ?

I'm curious about the Maria Muldaur. She's on the Uptown Christmas comp. and sounds pretty at ease with the jazzbos, didn't know she did an album on the label.

Hey Mike, was that Griffin Argo one of the 70s pressings (in black and white) or one of the way cool originals, with the cover split down the middle? Speaking of '70s Argo pressings, I picked up a sealed copy of Benny Golson's Take a Number From One to Ten so now I can finally hear the three tracks that got dropped from the Universal reissue of "Free". Take that, Keepnews!

I have his "Big Nick" album on India Navigation. But I don't think it solves any mysteries.

Or laying off the drugs?

I was browsing through the CDBaby website and sampled two CDs by Ron Kearns, who appears to be headquartered in the DC area (one of the discs is a live recording at Blues Alley). Anywhoo, I was wondering if any of the DC Brigade was familiar with this guy. The samples sounded solid if not exactly groundbreaking.

My wife (who loves horror/zombie films) and I went to see this last week and we both enjoyed it. Interestingly, today's New York Times reports that a new version will be playing in theaters shortly with an alternate ending, more downbeat than the original film. A reflection of the importance of DVDs, I guess (the DVD is already out in Britain and it has more than this alternate ending).

I have a feeling these might linger on the shelves a wee bit longer ...

I'm gonna bring this up again as a reminder that this starts in a couple of days, and also because I don't think Brad has made his declaration of the July 27 nominee. (?)

I thought it was pretty clear that when Shrugs wrote this: I Remember Clifford for the most part but I really love Whisper Not a la Keith Jarrett and co. Have any other piano trios recorded it? "it" refers to Whisper Not, not Clifford.

AMG reveals a lengthy list of trio as well as duo or solo recordings of "Whisper Not", including Ray Bryant, George Cables, Kenny Drew, Tommy Flanagin, Harold Mabern, Ahmad Jamal and Hank Jones (on a CD I have that is quite nice, Essence with Billy Higgins and Ray Drummond) and Horace Tapscott.

Taking a short look through, I'd say there's a lot of nice one-stop shopping to be had, some of which is very tough to find these days (I'm thinking especially of the Evening Star recordings or the Blacknote recording. Anyone looking for the Another Time, Another Place two disc set featuring Benny Carter and Phil Woods, they've got it in stock. They also have the new Charles Davis/Cedar Walton disc that got a nice write up in the Times, and I also noticed that the Greg Skaff disc has Mike LeDonne on organ and Joe Farnsworth on drums. Definitely a site I need to check out carefully, anyone who gets ringers like LeDonne or Sebastian Whitiker to play on their date, there're pretty good chances I'll dig it.

Sorry if I skipped your favorite, but I think I came up with a pretty good list. Mine is definitely "Whisper Not".

Congrats, Tony, Mom and child!

Yeah, unfortunately, Jim got (I think) color xeroxes when I sent it to him awhile back, while everyone in this batch just got black and white reductions. But believe me, Kynard looks like a freakin' serial axe murderer! If I ever get a scanner maybe I can post it, along with that Hank Mobley photo from the Tete Montoliu date that some of us tried to deconstruct on that forgotten BB.

Normally it would be "I Should Care" by Hank Mobley, but lately I've been floored by LD's "Who Can I Turn To?" on the Cadet LP Blowing In The Wind. See? I got around that "choose only one" BS

My request is somewhat obscure, but a lot of Argo LPs have made their way to CD in Japan, but there is one I've searched high and low for, Richard Evans, Home Cookin'. Not that I expect Universal to put it out in America, but why hasn't it come out in Japan?

That's why I put that last option in, John!

ESPN announced the addition of Rush Limbaugh to their studio "ESPN Gameday" program; Rush is to represent "the fan" and be allowed to interrupt the regular group from a separate perch, kind of like the fan who sits on the couch and says "Mort, you don't know what you're talkin' about!" ***************** From ESPN's website" Limbaugh will be voice of fan on ESPN NFL show -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ESPN.com National talk radio personality Rush Limbaugh will join ESPN's Sunday NFL Countdown to provide the voice of the fan and to spark debate on the show, the network announced Monday. Limbaugh will appear weekly and make his debut when Sunday NFL Countdown premieres Sept. 7. "Football is like life and I know life," Limbaugh said in a statement. "I am a big fan of the NFL and now I get to do what every football fan would love to do. I get to take my observations from the living room couch to the ESPN studios and talk football with the best journalists and players in the business." Limbaugh, who will appear either on the show's Bristol, Conn., set or via satellite, will provide a weekly opinion piece on an aspect of the NFL making news that week, and participate in impromptu exchanges with the analysts and challenging their opinions on various issues. Limbaugh will be allotted three challenge opportunities to use at his discretion during the show. "Rush is a great communicator and a fan's fan," said Mark Shapiro, ESPN's executive vice president of programming and production. "His acute sense of what's on the minds of his listeners combined with his ability to entertain and serve as a lightning rod for lively discussion makes him the perfect fit for this new role. "We want to give fans a voice, and Rush is the person who can do it." As host of the top-rated Rush Limbaugh Show, Limbaugh has established a following of almost 20 million listeners in more than 650 markets worldwide. Limbaugh has written two national bestsellers, "The Way Things Ought to Be" and "See, I Told You So." One of his first jobs was as director of group sales for the Kansas City Royals in 1979. *************** Interestingly, the NY Times' TV Sports critic, Sandomir, gives a thumbs up, calling the plan for Limbaugh to interrupt the others " ... appealing. The advantage ESPN has in Limbaugh is his brilliance as a communicator, whether you agree with his politics or not. He is not a former player learning sportscasting on the job; he is an effective entertainer." So, what do our football fans, left-leaning or not, think?