GA Russell

jmjk, I've played this record more than any other this month, and I'm really digging it. Without a doubt my favorite new record in many months.

Following the new regime taking over at EMI, The Rolling Stones are, for their new album, letting Universal release it rather than EMI, which continues to be their record company for the time being, whatever that means. Inasmuch as the Stones have their own record company, Rolling Stones Records, I don't understand what difference it will make; but I have to think that EMI is not pleased. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/17b24080-c487-11...00779fd2ac.html

Here's a surprise: Jason Maas has signed with the Eskimos to back up Ricky Ray. This article says that they are now admitting that Maas had two arm surgeries and two back surgeries. No wonder he hasn't been any good since he left Edmonton two years ago! Personally, I'll be a little surprised if he makes the team. I think he's through. The article says that Montreal cut him, and I don't think they would have if he had anything left. Edmonton has Stefan LeFors as their backup QB, and I don't see them paying three guys who can start, unlike BC. http://www.globesports.com/servlet/story/R...tsFootball/home

Happy Birthday HBJ!

Wow! Kent Austin has resigned as head coach of the Roughriders to become the offensive coordinator of Ole Miss. http://www.canada.com/reginaleaderpost/sto...169&k=78303

I have cdrs much older than five years old with no sign of any deterioration at all. Great news, Lon! But I'm not making it up. Don't CDRs go bad sooner than professionally made CDs?

Happy Birthday Clunky!

ak, for a couple of years now there has been a shortage of quality QBs in the Canadian league. Good QBs have played well past their prime because the teams didn't have anybody to replace them. Danny McManus and Damon Allen come to mind right away. Today, the BC Lions are the only team whose backup is considered any good. I get the impression from commentators that many are unimpressed with most NFL QBs as well; but I am not sure whether the quality is going down, or maybe we just have more commentators who treat as a bum anybody who is not good enough to be in the Hall of Fame. Still, my feeling about the pass receivers is based upon the number of times I've seen passes dropped that hit the guy's hands. Can't blame the QB for that!

ak, thanks for your interest! For as long as I have been a sports fan, I have felt that in pro football there was no shortage of quality players. The shortage was in competent management and coaching. However, the last two years we have seen a great many dropped passes in both leagues, and I now feel that there is a shortage of quality pass receivers. Remember the Super Bowl between the Steelers and the Seahawks? That game was loaded with dropped passes by both teams. One of the Seattle players took the brunt of the criticism in the press, but he had plenty of company. I believe the fault lies with the college coaches, who are recruiting and playing guys with speed instead of guys who can catch.

The league has increased the salary cap $150,000. to $4.2 million. http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Football/CFL/New...4774690-cp.html The Bombers' Kyries Hebert has jumped to the Cincinnati Bengals. The Ticats have named former Stamps defensive co-ordinator Denny Creehan as their new defensive co-ordinator. http://www.thespec.com/Sports/article/305759 ***** I received for Christmas a book called The Canadian Football League - The Phoenix of Professional Sports Leagues by Steve O'Brien. I learned a great deal about the financial difficulties of the league in the mid-90s and the US expansion of that same period. I recommend it. ***** I also received for Christmas a book about the American Football League called Going Long by Jeff Miller. I was an AFL fan when I was a boy, and I recommend it if any of you are old enough to remember that league. It mentions that Cookie Gilchrist today has his own website at http://www.cookiegilchrist.com Edit to add: It looks like Cookie Gilchrist has taken his page down. Oh well! I lived in New Orleans when he led the boycott of the league's all-star game there. Then I remember when he refused induction into the Canadian Football Hall of Fame, claiming that he was the victim of racism. According to the book, he was a headache wherever he went. But he was a great player!

What you say has the ring of truth, Chris. My first thought upon reading your prognostication was that people would want to collect "hard copies". But upon reflection, I think the audio fidelity will have something to do with it too, just as 50s LPs are sought after, while 80s LPs are not. I remember that 1987 was the year in the US that CDs started to catch on. The following year, the record labels said that they would not accept vinyl returns, so the retailers quit ordering vinyl, giving the consumer no choice but to buy a CD player and CDs. But by then you could buy a decent CD player for between $100. and $150., so people were willing to go along. But most important, most people perceived that the CD provided better sound. That was because a cheap hundred dollar CD player did indeed provide better sound than a cheap hundred dollar turntable did. But now it is different. I think that most people feel that an mp3 is good enough, but no one thinks that it is superior to a CD. So I expect that sales of downloads will depend upon the price. The price for an album download at AAJ is typically $12., I think. I don't think many people will be willing to spend that for a download. Jim has suggested that a download should cost five bucks, and I can imagine that there are people who will spend that amount who won't spend twelve. The other issue about downloads is the question in my mind about how long the burned CD will last. As I understand it, burned CDs of downloads go bad after five years. Is that right? Does anyone have any personal experience in that regard? I think there are a lot of adult music collectors who will be unwilling to spend more than a few bucks for a record that's going to go bad in a few years. Let me mention one more point. We here use the internet, and I suspect that none of us is intimidated by the concept of downloading, although few of us will prefer it. But I read a number of times last year that Walmart is the #1 music retailer in the US. A lot of people who shop at Walmart don't have computers. They spend their money on big screen TVs to watch Nascar (at least in the Southeast which I am familiar with). I can't recall what I read sometime in 2006 about the percentage of total album sales claimed by country music, but it was a lot. I can't believe that the country music labels will stop making CDs to sell at Walmart, because I believe that a sizeable percentage of country music fans will never become used to dealing with the internet. One final thought. No matter what the majors do, I suspect there will always be a supply side demand for CDBaby. There are going to be artists who will want to sell CDs at concerts, and will have CDBaby keep a few copies on hand for internet sales. So while the days of Blue Note (and other old recordings) CDs may be numbered, the days of current artists selling their own hard copies may be just beginning.

Thanks for posting that 7/4. It's funny that these articles about iTunes and such never discuss the success of eMusic. If the majors are willing to go without DRM, why aren't they doing business with eMusic?

Johnny Podres died yesterday. I had his bubble gum card in 1959. I would say that he more than anyone else was given credit for Brooklyn's World Series championship. Baseball is a team game, but Podres got all the credit! Here's his AP obituary. The obit mentions Tommy Byrne. I read in Byrne's obituary a few weeks ago that he became quite a civic leader of Wake Forest just outside Raleigh. http://www.globesports.com/servlet/story/R...tsBaseball/home Obituary: Johnny Podres, 75 Pitched the Brooklyn Dodgers to their only World Series title Associated Press January 14, 2008 at 2:41 AM EST GLENS FALLS, N.Y. — Johnny Podres, who pitched the Brooklyn Dodgers to their only World Series title in 1955, died Sunday at the age of 75. A spokesman for Glens Falls Hospital confirmed Podres' death but said he didn't know any details. The left-hander was a four-time All-Star and the first Most Valuable Player in World Series history. He became a hero to every baseball fan in Brooklyn when the Dodgers ended decades of frustration by beating the Yankees to win the World Series. It was the first time a team had won a best-of-seven World Series after losing the first two games, and it was Brooklyn's only World Series victory. The Dodgers moved to Los Angeles after the 1957 season. A June, 2007, file photo shows members of the 1955 world champion Brooklyn Dodgers, from left, Johnny Podres, Duke Snider, Carl Erskine and Don Zimmer in St. Petersburg, Fla. The Dodgers lost the first two games at Yankee Stadium, then the Dodgers won the third 8-3 at Ebbets Field. Podres, going the distance on his 23rd birthday, scattered seven hits. In the climactic seventh game, at Yankee Stadium, Podres shut out New York 2-0 on eight hits, relying on his fastball and a deceptive changeup. As the story goes, Podres told his teammates to get him just one run and the Dodgers would win Game 7. They got him two, and the franchise celebrated its first and only championship while playing in Brooklyn. Years later, Podres was uncertain he made such a brash statement. “I don't know if I said it or not. That's what they said I said,” a grinning Podres recalled in 2005. “Probably young and dumb — something like that would haunt you your whole life. ... You put on a big league uniform, you've got to think you're pretty good.” Tommy Byrne, the losing pitcher in that game, died Dec. 20. Podres' career spanned 15 years with the Dodgers in Brooklyn and Los Angeles, the Detroit Tigers and San Diego Padres. He retired in 1969 at age 36 with a lifetime record of 148-116. Podres also served as a pitching coach when he was older, helping develop Frank Viola when he was with the Minnesota Twins and Curt Schilling when he was on the Philadelphia Phillies staff.

Gerry Staley has died. I had his bubble gum card in 1961. I remember seeing on the card that he was born in 1920, and was one of the oldest major leaguers at that time. Nowadays, there are plenty of 40 year olds in the majors, but then it wasn't so. Here's his LA Times obit: http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-...news-obituaries Gerry Staley, 87; 3-time All-Star pitcher From Times Staff and Wire Reports January 6, 2008 Gerry Staley, a three-time All-Star pitcher who was a key reliever for the 1959 Chicago White Sox team that lost to the Dodgers in the World Series, has died. He was 87. Staley died Wednesday of natural causes at his home in Hazel Dell, Wash., his son, Brian, told the Associated Press. The right-hander pitched for six teams during a 15-year career that lasted from 1947 to '61. He compiled a win-loss record of 134-111 and had a 3.70 earned-run average. Staley went 8-5 with 14 saves and a 2.24 ERA in 1959. He came out of the bullpen to pitch in four World Series games, tossing 8 1/3 innings with a 2.16 ERA as the White Sox lost to the Dodgers in six games. He gave up the game-winning home run to Gil Hodges in the eighth inning of Game 4 at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Staley led the American League that season by pitching in 67 games. The next year, he went 13-8 with 10 saves and was named to the American League All-Star team. "I played in an era when there were a heck of a lot of good ballplayers," he said in 2005. "You can't single out one over all the rest. If you kept the ball in the park, you were doing a good deed." Staley broke into the major leagues with the St. Louis Cardinals in 1947 and, as a starter, compiled 54 wins from 1951 to 1953. He was selected to the National League All-Star team in 1952 and 1953 and is one of the few pitchers to make All-Star teams as both a starter and a reliever. After pitching for the Cincinnati Reds and the New York Yankees, he landed with the White Sox in 1956 and soon became a full-time reliever. Gerald Lee Staley was born in Brush Prairie, Wash., on Aug. 21, 1920. He played in the minors and served in World War II with an Army evacuation hospital unit in the South Pacific. After his baseball career ended in 1961, Staley returned to Washington state and was superintendent of the Clark County Parks and Recreation Department for 17 years. Staley spent his later years tending to his garden and fishing for steelhead. He was inducted into the State of Washington Sports Hall of Fame, the Clark County Hall of Fame and the Washington State Horseshoe Pitchers Hall of Fame. "He had to find something to pitch after baseball," Brian Staley said. Staley is also survived by a daughter.

Likewise, Maynard Ferguson - A Message from Birdland is no longer available.

I am close to completely out of touch with today's hits. I read this morning the list of the week's top ten, and I had never heard of any of them or the singers either. But I will say this. When I was in high school in the 60s, all of the kids on American Bandstand agreed that what they were looking for in a rock 'n' roll record was that "it had a good beat and was easy to dance to". I have heard only a few of Britney Spears' hits, but every one of them fit that bill.

Belated Happy Birthday Andy!

Belated Happy Birthday Patricia!

Belated Happy Birthday 7!

Belated Happy Birthday Clifford!

Wait till TTK gets here! I have Rain Forest, Cheganca, A Certain Smile and Samba So! I enjoy them for what they are, particularly Rain Forest. I pulled all of them out over the course of 2007, and was a little surprised that I found him to be more lounge than I did forty years ago.

Happy Birthday Nate!

If I recall correctly, I have him on Herbie Mann's Standing Ovation at Newport. What else did he do?

Happy Birthday m!

Good for a laugh Chris!