GA Russell

My guess is even more.

Ken Albers was the big blond who sang the bass part (even though his voice wasn't very low) and played trumpet for The Four Freshmen. Here is his obituary from today's LA Times: Ken Albers, 82; singer harmonized as one of the Four Freshmen From Times Staff and Wire Reports April 21, 2007 Ken Albers, 82, who contributed harmonies to the Four Freshmen vocal group that was popular in the 1950s and '60s, died Thursday in Simi Valley after a long illness, according to Ross Barbour, one of the original members of the quartet. Barbour, his brother Don Barbour, their cousin Bob Flanigan and Hal Kratzsch formed the close-harmony group at the Arthur Jordan Conservatory of Music at Butler University in Indiana in 1948. The quartet sang such standards as "Moonglow" and "Mood Indigo." By the time Albers joined the Barbours and Flanigan in 1956, they had had several hit singles and a debut album, "Voices in Modern." In addition to singing four-part harmony, they all played instruments, and Albers contributed performances on trumpet, mellophone and fluegelhorn. Until 1982 he performed with the group, which had top 40 hits with "It's a Blue World," "Day by Day" and "Graduation Day," which the Beach Boys covered. Brian Wilson often cited the Four Freshmen as an influence on the California surf band's harmonizing sound. John Kenneth Albers was born Dec. 10, 1924, in Woodbury, N.J., and served in the U.S. Army during World War II. He attended the Philadelphia Conservatory of Music and sang with the Stuarts Quartet before joining the Four Freshmen.

Happy Birthday Mark!

Forbes released its annual valuation of MLB teams today. Pittsburgh had the third highest operating income, but were ranked the third least valuable franchise. The Yankees were rated the most valuable team, but were the only team to lose money. http://www.globesports.com/servlet/story/R...tsBaseball/home Yankees valued at $1.2-billion (U.S.) by Forbes Associated Press NEW YORK — There's money in those pinstripes. The New York Yankees' value increased 17 per cent in the past year to US$1.2 billion, Forbes magazine said Thursday in its annual estimates of franchise worth. The Florida Marlins, given the lowest value at $244 million, had the highest operating income at $43.3 million, according to the magazine. "As usual, the franchise valuations and operating income numbers are pure fantasy and based on no correct information," Marlins president David Samson said. "To comment on such irresponsible journalism would only give it more credit than it deserves." The magazine defended its story. "Forbes compiles its annual valuations of Major League Baseball franchises based on information obtained from team executives, sports bankers, public documents, and other sources believed to be reliable," spokeswoman Elizabeth Wasden said. "We stand by our figures, and the content published." Despite the record evaluation for the Yankees, Forbes said they were the only ones to post an operating loss after revenue sharing last year. The magazine estimated the Yankees were $25.2 million in the red on operating revenue of $302 million, after revenue-sharing payments to the commissioner's office. The Yankees estimate their revenue-sharing bill for 2006 will be about $70 million. "I am gratified at the Forbes valuation of the Yankees," New York owner George Steinbrenner said in a statement. "We are continuing to build a worldwide brand for the people of New York and Yankee fans everywhere." The New York Mets were given the second-highest value ($736 million), followed by the Boston Red Sox ($724 million), the Los Angeles Dodgers ($632 million), the Chicago Cubs ($592 million), World Series-champion St. Louis ($460 million), San Francisco ($459 million), Atlanta ($458 million) and Philadelphia ($457 million). At the other end were Florida ($244 million), Tampa Bay ($267 million), Pittsburgh ($274 million), Kansas City ($282 million), Milwaukee ($287 million), Minnesota ($288 million) and Oakland ($292 million). The Toronto Blue Jays were ranked 20th, valued at $344 million. Franchise values did not include provisions for television networks owned in whole or part by teams, such as the YES Network (Yankees), NESN (Red Sox) and Comcast SportsNetChicago (Cubs), Forbes associate editor Kurt Badenhausen said. The Dodgers had the second-highest operating income at $27.5 million, followed by Pittsburgh ($25.3 million), Cleveland ($24.9 million), the Mets ($24.4 million), Colorado ($23.9 million), Cincinnati ($22.4 million), the Cubs ($22.2 million), Seattle ($21.5 million), Milwaukee ($20.8 million) and Tampa ($20.2 million). Rob Manfred, baseball's executive vice-president of labour relations, criticized Forbes' figures last year but declined comment Thursday.

I'm sad to hear this of course, but the news makes me happy that late in life he was able to enjoy the recognition that his life's work deserved. P.S. When Charles Brown died, Mosaic received a rush of orders for his set and sold out of them. Perhaps those of you who are fans of Andrew Hill should consider immediately ordering his Mosaic Select.

Those crazy Catholics. They think of everything. Any bets on when this dogma goes the way of "limbo"? Apropos, Pope Benedict issued a statement today regarding the church's teaching on limbo: http://my.earthlink.net/article/int?guid=2...704202098145655 Pope Revises 'Limbo' for Babies By NICOLE WINFIELD (Associated Press Writer) From Associated Press April 20, 2007 11:41 AM EDT VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI has revised traditional Roman Catholic teaching on so-called "limbo," approving a church report released Friday that said there was reason to hope that babies who die without baptism can go to heaven. Benedict approved the findings of the International Theological Commission, which issued its long-awaited document on limbo on Origins, the documentary service of Catholic News Service, the news agency of the American Bishop's Conference. "We can say we have many reasons to hope that there is salvation for these babies," the Rev. Luis Ladaria, a Jesuit who is the commission's secretary-general, told The Associated Press. Although Catholics have long believed that children who die without being baptized are with original sin and thus excluded from heaven, the church has no formal doctrine on the matter. Theologians have long taught, however, that such children enjoy an eternal state of perfect natural happiness, a state commonly called limbo, but without being in communion with God. Pope John Paul II and Benedict had urged further study on limbo, in part because of "the pressing pastoral needs" sparked by the increase in abortion and the growing number of children who die without being baptized, the report said. In the document, the commission said there were "serious theological and liturgical grounds for hope that unbaptized infants who die will be saved and brought into eternal happiness." It stressed, however, that "these are reasons for prayerful hope, rather than grounds for sure knowledge." Ladaria said no one could know for certain what becomes of unbaptized babies since Scripture is largely silent on the matter. Catholic parents should still baptize their children, as that sacrament is the way salvation is revealed, the document said. The International Theological Commission is a body of Vatican-appointed theologians who advise the pope and the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Benedict headed the Congregation for two decades before becoming pope in 2005.

Here's an interview I found with Will Friedwald, in which he discusses the fact that he no longer listens to CDs, except to audition to see what he will put onto a hard drive: http://www.glennwolsey.com/2007/04/19/inte...nes-collection/ Interview: Will Friedwald, Owner Of The Worlds Largest iTunes Collection Apple April 19th, 2007 Will Friedwald proclaims he has the world largest iTunes collection. An avid listener to Jazz music, and a writer for the New York Sun, Will spends his days in front of his Power Mac G5 running “The Maxtix”, his mammoth 200,000 track iTunes library. Will took some time out of his rigirous daily schudule and took some time to talk with me about iTunes, his music collection, and how he manages it. The question we all want to know. How large is your iTunes music collection? I just re-compiled the main library (something that takes about six hours – I only do it a few times a year!). Here are the new stats: 849 GB | 172,150 tracks | 809.2 days 2,935 artists | 11,561 albums iTunes library database file - 282 MB iTunes library XML file - 259 MB For reasons I will get into later, I also have several sub-libraries; theoretically, all my music will eventually go into the main library. I also have a separate “annex” of about 200-300 GB of stuff that I am gradually adding in to the main library. If I were to put everything together, which I am slowly doing, it will be around 1200 GB. How long have you been using iTunes to manage your digital music collection? I started using iTunes when I made the leap to OS X, which was in 2003, the year I bought my G3 iBook (which I am still happily using four years later – am typing this on it, as a matter of fact). Originally, I planned to just transfer a few CD artists into the library – Frank Sinatra, Duke Ellington, Bill Evans, Louis Armstrong, John Coltrane, Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis. Then, the next thing I noticed was that iTunes was great for listening to box sets: I could take, for instance, the 18-CD that I did on Nat King Cole (Mosaic Records actually won a Grammy for that in the early ‘90s) and instantly find the track that I wanted to hear. No more opening a big clunky box, fumbling around to find an individual CD, and then looking for the right track! It was astonishing that as soon as I typed “You Must Be Blind,” there it was! I started transferring all my big boxed sets – especially the Mosaic and Bear Family boxed sets almost immediately. When was the takeoff point where the library started to drastically grow? I could tell you “when” in terms of the theoretically breakthrough, if not precisely in terms of calendar time. For the few months or so, I went back and forth between listening via iTunes and listening to standard compact discs. Then, at a certain point, I realized that I was doing nearly all of my listening via iTunes. In fact, I gradually reached the point where I am now, and that is the only time I listen to standard CDs now is when I am “auditioning” them to see if I want to put them into iTunes. Early on, I didn’t want to make my iBook internal hard drive work so hard to house all that music, so I purchased my first of many external drives (it may have been 160 GB, which at that time I thought would last me forever!). Then I bought a used blueberry iMac just to run iTunes – and that held me for a while. But basically, it was at the point that I began doing all my listening via iTunes that the library began to grow exponentially. When I started to put every piece of music I thought I would ever listen to again, I began referring to the iTunes music library as “The Jazz Matrix” – although since then I have shortened it to just “The Matrix.” How many tracks do you add to your library each week? I couldn’t really estimate in terms of a number; the way I work is, this week, for instance, I did a feature article for my paper (The New York Sun) on Charles Mingus, which ran today (Monday 4/16) in honor of his the 85th Anniversary of Mingus’s birth. Since I wanted to listen to as much of his music as possible, I loaded all of my Mingus CDs into The Matrix. I have about 50 albums by Mingus, some of which were already in there, but I added all the others. It’s an incredible tool for someone writing about music, to be instantly able to listen and compare every recording of “Fables of Faubus” and see how they differ from one another. Right now I have two Mac OS X desktops – a G5 Power Mac and the G3 iMac – I use them both for importing. There are some days when I just keep the iMac going all day long; I just keep feeding the beast, when The Matrix yells “feed me!” It’s the only way to tackle some of the more prolific artists in the history of recording, and massive projects like the 17-CD Complete Art Pepper Galaxy Sessions box. I also have also added massive amounts of material that otherwise only exists in the analog domain – CDRs transferred from LPs and 78s that have not been digitally remastered. What do you like about using iTunes to manage your library? iTunes is, without a doubt, the best and most intuitive program out there for transferring, archiving, and listening to music – not to mention buying it from the store and putting it on an iPod. There’s nothing I’ve seen that has its ease of use, and its flexibility – especially with the aid of the applescripts made available by Doug Adams. With a smallish library, especially, it is incredibly easy to compile playlists, to search for songs using any criteria. I particularly like that you can search by criteria other than recording artist; much of the time I look for music by composer, so I do a search under “Gershwin” or “Ellington” and all of a sudden, every recording of a song by thousands of different performers magically appears. If anyone has a better music program, bring it on! What things would you like to be added/improved within the application? I’ve actually written an editorial essay about the limitations of iTunes (which hasn’t been published yet), where I talk about some of these issues, but it to boil it down to a paragraph or less: Essentially the problem is that iTunes was designed for people to buy music from the store, to put CDs on their iPods, and then, perhaps lastly, to store some of a personal CD collection in the library. It was NOT designed for what I am doing with it, which is to store, manage and access a major music collection of nearly 200,000 tracks. As a result, when I am working with the full 800 GB library, it is painfully slow, getting around the library, doing searches, and editing info on individual tracks or whole albums just takes forever! As an example: when I want to edit the information on an individual song – the “metadata” as technically-minded people call it – I highlight the track, then I press Apple-I. With a small library (under 50-100 GB), the edit info window comes up instantly. But with my 800 GB Matrix, I have to wait three or four minutes before the window comes up. That’s time enough to go to the bathroom, make a cup of coffee, or entertain myself with 99% of the clips on youtube! As I see it, there are two possible solutions (other than using multiple libraries, which I am doing now, but which is more of a temporary workaround than a long-term solution): The first (which is quicker but more expensive) is to get faster hardware, although I am not even sure if one of the new 8-core Mac Pro desktops could process a 1000-GB music library as fast as I would like it to. (Not that I can remotely afford a fully-outfitted new Mac Pro!) The second is a vague but hopefully optimistic possibility for the future: I find that more and more individuals out there are getting saddled with these mega-libraries like mine. Also, at a certain point, institutions like The Library of Congress, The Smithsonian, and, most importantly, the Rutgers Institute of Jazz Studies, are going to want to make their collections of recorded sound available in a digital system. Right now, as far as I know, the technology to do that does not exist – it certainly would be very difficult to do that using iTunes as it currently exists. What I would like to see Apple do is build a specific program to address this need. The same way that there are several levels of Final Cut, why couldn’t there be an upgraded edition of iTunes – something like iTunes Pro or Super-iTunes? This new program, obviously wouldn’t be a freebie, but if it could do what I want it to do I would gladly pay Apple almost anything that it wants. $200 for new software is a lot cheaper than having to spend $4000 for a new Mac Pro! How much time are you spending building, organizing, and listening to your music on a daily basis? Way longer than I should! I usually start the day by importing a few Cds as I answer the morning email and downing my first cup of coffee. As I’m working on a story, I keep on importing – somethings transferring two discs at once simultaneously on the G5 and the iMac. I’m forever tinkering with the library, several hours a day, often when I’m on the phone, sometimes even when I’m watching TV (on the extremely rare nights when I’m not out covering live music). What genres of music do you most enjoy listening to? I’m essentially a jazz guy: I review jazz in New York for The New York Sun, which boasts the best arts section of any NYC newspaper (even the Times – it’s true!). I’ve written a bunch of books on jazz and pop singers, but I write mostly about instrumental jazz for the paper. Lately I’ve had more of an appreciation for classic rock, though there’s still very little from after 1970 that I listen to, pop-music wise. I also have nearly every original Broadway cast album in the matrix, and lots of classic country. When it comes to classical music, I’ve been using Rhapsody, since I don’t have enough of my own personal classical CD collection to make it worthwhile. As of now, there is no Classical Matrix, but maybe someday soon. What hardware are you using to run your mammoth collection? In 2005, I invested in a single-processor G5 PowerMac, and that has powered the collection ever since. The Matrix is currently housed in a mirrored SATA RAID array of three four-hundred GB drives (3 x 400) in a Transintl enclosure. (I have recently learned, to my great annoyance, that I can’t get PCI-X on my G5, which might have helped to speed things up a bit.) I also do frequent back-ups, using a PCI magic bridge and three barebones external SATA drives. 849GB, 172,150 tracks, and 809.2 days of listening pleasure. Envy the collection? edit for spelling

Happy Birthday Aggie!

Happy Birthday Ubu!

In 1967 I attended a daytime concert in which pianist Ellis Marsalis and his buddy clarinetist Alvin Batiste jammed with Roland Kirk! It was in a Catholic parish gymnasium in New Orleans. The crowd had a geat time. I remember in particular the enthusiasm which greeted Three For the Festival. So now forty years later Marsalis's son Branford operates his own record label called Marsalis Music, and he is recording his friends from New Orleans. Batiste has been a college professor at Southern University, a black college in Baton Rouge, since he founded a jazz studies program there in 1969. He appeared on two Cannonball Adderley records in the 70s, Messiah and Lovers. But for the most part he has been on campus, not recording. Marsalis Music Honors Alvin Batiste is his first recording in ten years. There are 10 songs totalling 64 minutes. The songs are Batiste originals except Skylark. The group is made up of two young people, Lawrence Field on piano and Ricardo Rodriguez on bass, and Herlin Riley on drums. Both Field and Rodriguez hold their own, particularly Rodriguez. Ed Perkins sings briefly on four tracks. He is not a great voice, but he swings and the vocals make a nice contribution to the album. Branford Marsalis plays on two songs (one tenor, one soprano). Russell Malone plays guitar on two tracks, including Skylark, the best cut of the album. I have had this album for three weeks, and it has grown on me. This is modern jazz, not old-timey stuff. Most of the compositions are better than average. But the star of the show is Herlin Riley on drums. He usually sounds as if there is also another guy playing percussion! Lots of that polythythmic New Orleans beat! Too bad that this was not released in time for Mardi Gras. I'm sure that I'll be playing it a lot every year during the Mardi Gras season. CD Universe says: List Price $17.98; Their Price $14.04. 4 stars

Hope that this was issued a while after 1964. Michael Cuscuna was 16 in 1964 - doubt that he'd have had much of interest to write then. Yes - Just Sunshine was the label for which Stuff recorded in the late seventies; a WB subsidiary. My guess is that this is the album originally issued on Transatlantic called "Red hot from Alex" - it contains "Back at the Chicken Shack" and "Haitian fight song", as far as I can remember. MG Paul, I thought Cuscuna was older than that! I seem to recall his writing record reviews for Downbeat when I subscribed circa 1969. MG, great memory! Here is the song list: Woke Up This Morning Skippin' Herbie's Tune Stormy Monday It's Happening Roberta Jones Cabbage Greens Chicken Shack Haitian Fight Song Personnel included Dick Heckstall-Smith and Herbie Goins. I didn't make a note of the date that I bought it. It was a cutout, about 1977. The liner notes say that Just Sunshine Records was a G+W (Gulf and Western) Company.

Thanks, Tom. I'm not really keen on anything in my queue right now, so maybe I'll bump this up to the top.

I've just come back from the dentist, by coincidence. A filling fell out and needed to be glued back in. No pain, except the $124. Yikes!

Richard "Groove" Holmes - Misty (Prestige) 1966? Danny Toan - First Serve (Embryo) 1977 John Mayall - Primal Solos (London) 1966, 1968 Mose Allison Sings (Prestige mono) Alexis Korner's All Stars - Blues Incorporated (Just Sunshine) 1964 (liner notes by Michael Cuscuna!) The Hi-Lo's, discs 1&2 (MCA) 1955?

Wynton Marsalis - Black Codes (From the Underground)

Doug Ramsey on his Rifftides blog today has a quote from Concord Records in response to a reader's question about the possible deletion of the OJC catalogue. Here's what Ramsey says: I passed along Mr. Quick's question to Nick Phillips of Concord Records, since Concord's purchase of Fantasy Inc. the owner of the OJC (Original Jazz Classics) archive. I asked him about the closing of the company's Berkeley, California, warehouse where much of the OJC stock was stored. Here is his reply: While it is true that the Berkley warehouse is closed, that doesn't mean we're embarking on any kind of wholesale deletion campaign. That warehouse facility is closed because we've consolidated our warehousing operations to one facility, in Cleveland (where our Telarc operations are based). We are not planning to "delete the OJC catalog." That said, as the consumer trends in acquiring music continues to shift toward downloads (much in the same way that there was a shift from LP to CD) there may be, however, instances of titles that simply are not selling any more on CD that we will not reprint in that format; but they will continue to be available via digital download (via i-tunes, emusic.com, etc.). Finally, there are also many examples of titles where we've taken the OJC CD version of a classic album off of the market, when we reissue a new version of the same title (such as our RVG Remasters series, and our new Keepnews Collection series).

I'm looking forward to this. Glad to see Concord do something positive.

Chet Baker Studio PJ, disc 1

Tom. I've got Nothing Serious in my queue. What do you think of it?

My favorite is the second album with John Mealing of If on organ. If you can find it, get it! I've never seen it on CD.

John Surman - Morning Glory (Br. Island) 1973 Steve Marcus - Sometime Other Than Now (Flying Dutchman) 1976 The Byrds - The Notorious Byrd Brothers (Columbia) 1968

My pick this month is Kenny Dorham - Trompeta Toccata. It has received high praise in the Kenny Dorham thread, so I thought I would give it a go.

Happy Birthday Bright!

Here's a Billboard report out today I found on Yahoo News: Music business suffers a long, cold winter By Ed Christman Mon Apr 9, 1:16 AM ET NEW YORK (Billboard) - While it is no shock that CD sales plummeted in the first quarter, what may be more surprising is who and what are leading that decline. ADVERTISEMENT First things first: Overall album sales for the January 1-April 2 period are down 16.6% to 117.1 million units, led -- or perhaps misled -- by a 20.5% decline in CD album sales. Industry executives attribute the decline to a weak release schedule, the consumer's loss of confidence in the CD and a reduction in store space for the format. Certainly, the last point is documentable. Between first-quarter 2006 and now, several key retailers have disappeared. FYE shuttered 131 stores in January, and Tower Records liquidated 89 superstores in December. Musicland also closed 500 stores beginning in January 2006, so many of those outlets -- and their going-out-of-business sales -- contributed to first-quarter 2006. "We are seeing a customer dislocation," says Mike Dreese, CEO of Newbury Comics, a 27-store chain based in New England. "A lot of people are confused about where they shop, and it's changing their habits ... it takes a while for people to find new stores." Digital track sales, although they are still growing, could not pick up the slack. More than 280 million digital tracks were sold, outpacing album sales by more than 100 million units, according to Nielsen SoundScan. When those digital tracks are converted to track equivalences (10 tracks counting as one album sale), unit album sales were still down 10.3%. Digital sales growth is slowing from last year, when tracks were up 87% and digital albums up 144% at the end of 2006's first quarter. At the end of first-quarter 2007, digital track sales were up 51.9%; digital album sales, which total 11.5 million units, were up 56%. But as a percentage of album sales, digital albums are nearly 10% now, versus the 5.2% they were at the end of first-quarter 2006. Meanwhile, two tracks topped the million-unit milestone: Fall Out Boy's "This Ain't a Scene, It's an Arms Race" and Gwen Stefani's "The Sweet Escape." The top-selling digital download at the end of first-quarter 2006 was James Blunt's "You're Beautiful," which stood at 714,000 scans. IT'S ROUGH TO BE A WAL-MART IN NASHVILLE For the first time since the early days of the industry, such mass merchants as Wal-Mart, Target and Kmart have surpassed chains, which include such retailers as Trans World, Best Buy, Barnes & Noble, Newbury Comics and Gallery of Sound. The discount department stores scanned 44.8 million album copies versus the 44.5 million units that chains sold. But in a subtle change, for the first time in recent years, mass merchants, with a 17.8% decline, didn't turn in a better performance than the overall U.S. market's 16.6% decline. Meanwhile, the independent store-sector seems to have stabilized, after shrinking faster than the overall marketplace for the last five years. In the first quarter, indie stores declined 14.5% to 8 million units. In contrast, at the end of first-quarter 2006 when total U.S. album sales declined 5%, indie stores were down 18.5%. Nontraditional sales -- which include digital album downloads, CD sales through online stores, retailers like Starbucks, TV 800-phone sales and concert hall sales -- continue to be the star performer, with sales up 29.2% to 19.8 million units. Despite worries about the reduction in store space devoted to CDs, catalog sales, down 14.6% to 47.5 million units, continue to show more strength than current album sales, which are down 18.9% to 69.6 million. The top-selling album so far this year is Norah Jones' "Not Too Late," with nearly 1.2 million scans, the only album to top the million-unit mark. Last year at the end of the first quarter three albums had hit 1 million units -- Mary J. Blige's "The Breakthrough," the "High School Musical" soundtrack and Blunt's "Back to Bedlam." Within genres sales, rock, which includes alternative and hard rock and is responsible for nearly 30% of all U.S. album sales, showed resilience to the sales downturn, with the genre and both subgenres down in the 10%-12% range. The country and rap genres appeared to be the big losers. Rap, which SoundScan also counts within R&B, had the largest genre decline. Sales fell 33.6% to 10.9 million scans from the 16.5 million units the genre tallied in first-quarter 2006 sales. R&B, the second-largest genre with scans of 24.7 million units, was down only 17.6% for the year. If rap's decline is removed from the equation, then R&B albums actually showed a 1.9% increase in sales for the year, making that category the only genre to grow. Country sales were the second-biggest loser of the large genres, with a 30.7% decline to 12.1 million units. "Country hasn't had sizzle in the new-release category so far this year," says Ben Kline, executive VP of sales, marketing and new media at Universal Music Group (UMG) Nashville, who also notes that carryover sales of 2006 releases are not as strong either. Indeed, last year, Carrie Underwood's 2005 release "Some Hearts" sold more than 900,000 units in the first quarter; there were two Johnny Cash-related albums that between them sold 1 million units; and Rascal Flatts, Trace Adkins and Keith Urban each had albums that, combined, generated another 1.25 million in sales. In contrast, this year the three best-selling country albums were Rascal Flatts' 2006 release "Me and My Gang," the Dixie Chicks' "Taking the Long Way" and Tim McGraw's "Let It Go," which just sneaked in with 325,000 units sold in the quarter's final week. Combined, the three have eked out 1 million units. Fortunately, Kline says the country release schedule for the rest of the year "looks pretty stout." In the market-share race, UMG held steady in the top spot, racking up a 30.6% slice of the pie in total album market share and 33.6% in current market share. But because of the overall sales decline, UMG's album scans were down 1 million units to 36 million. Sony BMG Music Entertainment had a 7.5 million-unit drop in sales. The industry remains generally stymied by the freefall. "I don't know what's going on," the head of sales at a major record label says. "Except it's scary out there and changing every week." Reuters/Billboard

kh, I've always enjoyed that one. Not the greatest, but very solid. PS - As I recall, it was issued after Groove left Prestige to rejoin PJ, and it kind of slipped under the radar.