Stompin at the Savoy

This is just my opinion - some dude on the internet - but I think this would be better if the bass had more of an acoustic feel. It sounds like a pickup to me (what do I know?). I feel that a big acoustic bass has a lot of tonal character if well miked. But this bass sustains a lot and has a sort of fundamental tone, it's hard to hear the woody goodness of the instrument. To me it seems overwhelming and boomy. The horn is playing something that could be intimate but the bass is playing to an auditorium.

It's a very fine set. I love it. I think I paid more for mine.

https://i.postimg.cc/xcYz7S0B/IMG-0461.jpg

Arg! Grum.

I received the set today but haven't had time to read book or listen. Will report back later.

Droste effect.

If you rip all your albums to a hard drive (and have a fairly extensive collection) it's a snap to do this with any reasonably good music player application, such as itunes. I often check out all the versions I have of a song. Not all album metadata contains all the participants but it often does, so I can often search and find sideman appearances too. The difficulty for most with a large collection is if you haven't been ripping everything to hard drive all along, it could take a long time and a lot of labor to rip them all now! Many years back I wrote to allmusic asking them to expose an interface which would allow you create queries connected by 'and' and 'or' to allow search for two musicians on the same album, etc. They never replied and the site has gone downhill so badly I no longer use it.

Presto has this as a download (44.1 kHz, 16 bit, FLAC/ALAC/WAV - cd quality), for a few weeks the price will be $14.25. Thinking of picking it up.

I haven't really used AI besides Google search ai summaries, ai summaries of comments on articles in newspapers etc. Those are often useful if not exactly brilliant. As a whole I find AI to be in its infancy and interesting if not quite ready for prime time. Unfortunately the way AI is being developed now it is a huge electricity hog which has already made electric power more expensive and promises to continue to do so. There are a lot of ecological and safety problems around this technology which are not being addressed.

https://www.prestomusic.com/jazz/promotions/blue-note-downloads/browse I took advantage of it to get Duke Pearson - The Right Touch. Some of the Capitol Vault Series (mosaic and mosaic select as downloads) are also included in the price drop. Might pick up a few selects I don't have. Some of these are a pretty good deal, for example if you don't have the Elvin Jones Mosaic (which is dynamite) you can get a legit copy for $25. Here are the Capitol Vault series: https://www.prestomusic.com/jazz/search?search_query=capitol vaults

Freddie Green very up front and audible on this album. This is becoming a fave. It's like the archetypal small group swing date.

Your attitude has hardened. You view the errors as signs of irremediable character traits in the producer and have written him off. I agree with you that there have been some significant issues. Zev is not a good writer and has, in my view, kind of bad taste. He is attracted to glitzy, glossy sort of stuff. All that means is he should delegate and let others design the covers, booklets and advertising and write the copy while he handles the bigger picture with more care. Those are my constructive suggestions but the truth is I don't care much about Zev - I care about the music and focus on the product coming out of my speakers: is there benefit to music lovers such as myself in these releases?

"All the bullshit" I assume means self promotion. He's in a business where promotion is part of the game. His advertising doesn't really harm the product and basically I don't care about it. Presumably by "blatant, oblivious fuckups" you are referring to the fact that he didn't notice the presence of a player on one disk and he endangered another release by shooting his mouth off. These are sins I find forgivable and I am willing to give Zev the benefit of the doubt. Why? Because I have made mistakes of a similar sort in other circs. I have some releases he produced that were good quality and reasonable price. All My Yesterdays by Thad Jones and Mel Lewis comes to mind. Excellent release, IMO. He could use some constructive criticism on the overdone packaging and liner notes which are long but don't really illuminate...