Tom Storer

"Astral Black Simulations" sounds like a Steve Coleman title! But "Techno Voodu" gives me a very bad feeling. I think I'll sit this one out.

Surely both could be true?

I'm not Dylan-obsessive but I do like him a lot. With some apprehension, I'm going to go see him in concert in April--boots I've heard of Dylan over the past couple of years reveal that his voice is now a painful wreck, although his artful phrasing will probably make up for it. Does anyone know who the opening act will be? He generally picks 'em well. A decade or two ago I saw him with Van Morrison as the opener; recently he had Merle Haggard.

Many happy returns!

She was only a maroon with respect to not doing what her friends expected of her. The random number she went for had just as much chance of winning as the number they had been using. And since the chances of either one of those numbers winning was infinitesimal... I wonder if that group will continue playing the lottery, and if they'll keep using the same number.

People who write well are relatively rare, but it's not often that something this bad is published for public consumption. Lindsay Lohan's publicist, or whoever looks after her, shouldn't have let this go out without correction. It's embarassing for her. She should join a message board. Frequent practice on message boards definitively improves people's writing!

Well, I guess I won't be chucking out my iPod any time soon.

That machinadynamica site is clearly a fraudulent operation out to catch gullible faux-audiophiles. Check out this paragraph for their "Clever Little Clock" product: The Clever Little Clock is a small, battery-powered alarm clock that has been extensively modified using a number of highly-specialized techniques. The Clever Little Clock does not plug into the wall and has no direct or indirect influence on the audio signal per se -- not on house wiring, audio components, cables, interconnects, power cords or acoustic waves. Yet the Clock has a pronounced affect on the sound produced by all digital and analog playback systems. In addition, all video systems/formats in the house will be improved by placing one or two clocks in the listening room; the video picture will be clearer, with better contrast and color saturation -- TV, cable TV, DVD, etc. And yet they apparently are happy to take your PayPal payments. Amazing!

I'm trying to remember high school...

Yeah, I love Firefox. I was perfectly happy with IE but someone insisted I give Firefox a try. It was tabbed browsing that got me hooked. Not all sites work well with Firefox, but you can designate specific sites to open in IE-compatible tabs, so that took care of that problem. Also there are loads of add-ins that are useful and/or fun.

A friend of ours who's a great cook invites anywhere from 10 to 20 guests to her place every year for a Thanksgiving weekend. Being in France we obviously don't get Thanksgiving as a holiday, so she does it the weekend before or after. So it's Nov. 25-26 for us. She does turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, Brussels sprouts, green beans and bacon, various other side dishes, and sweet potato pie, all washed down usually with an abundance of excellent burgundy. Guests bring whatever strikes their fancy. Saturday night is the main pig-out, then a hard core stays over and we brunch on Sunday on leftovers and whatever else she whips up until we can take no more. The turkey, incidentally, she buys fresh (one or two of them) from a local farmer, generally killed within the last 24 hours. Frozen turkeys are simply not available anywhere here, and I don't regret it.

Betty Carter once said (paraphrasing), "When Rufus Harley came out, he was playing downtown and everybody went down to see him, myself, all the cats. He was playing OK but before long we realized his bagpipes were in the key of G. Every tune he played was in G!"

I can't say I ever figured out what to do with my life, but I ended up doing it anyway. When I moved to France as a young man I had no saleable skills other than the fact that I could speak English and French and knew how to touch-type. I took a job as a typist for a translation agency, then moved up to proofreading translations, then went into business as a freelance translator, then took a technical writing course and found a job as a technical writer, then became an editor of technical writers. Meanwhile the better part of three decades went by and now I'm 48! How did it all happen so fast?

You're right, she has such a non-descript look that it's difficult. But I figured since she was sitting with Swallow it had to be her.

Forgot to mention seeing Steve Swallow, Carla Bley and Andy Sheppard in a restaurant in Paris. But the real question is: how many times have we been recognized by jazz musicians on the street?

George Coleman on the street in NYC; Michel Petrucciani on a bridge in Paris; Steve Lacy on the street in Paris more than once, and once at a party given by a friend who happened to have once been a neighbor of Lacy's--chatted with him for a little while, he was very sociable; Archie Shepp in a Virgin Megastore on the Champs Elysées (looking through his own records!); Mark Helias on the subway in NYC; David Murray on a TGV platform in Paris; Al Levitt in a record store in Paris; and too many to name in the audience at jazz clubs.

I feel your pain, but you gotta give them some love and understanding. These are elderly gentlemen doing this as a labor of love. It wouldn't be at all surprising if they've never surfed the web in their lives. It's the label that publishes their compilations, Le Chant du Monde, that needs to get a functioning website up and running. They have one now (http://www.chantdumonde.com/) that just says it's "under construction."

I had never even heard of it. Having read the description of what it is, my conclusion is: life's too short. Maybe I'd give a listen to "Best of Library" if someone makes a 1-CD compilation.

The 1955 box is available in France--just saw it tonight at the FNAC on my way home from work. I got the first box, 1898-1943, instead, because I'm afraid it might go out of print or something, and I'll have time to get the 1955. If these superb compilations have a weak point, it's the relatively lightweight description of the music. All the discographical information is complete, but the discussion of the music is relatively brief and aimed at the neophyte rather than the confirmed fan. But this is justifiable, of course, if that's the target audience.

John--you perform with drummers?

What's this about other boxes by these two, such as piano or vocal? First I've heard of those. EDIT: Just looked on the FNAC site. Goodness! In addition to the chronological series, there are: Histoire des Big Bands, 1914-1955 (10 CDs) Histoire du Piano Jazz, 1906-1952 (10 CDs) Histoire du Jazz Vocal, 1911-1940 (10 CDs) Histoire du Jazz Vocal, 1941-53 (10 CDs) Does anyone know how much overlap there is between these and the chronological series?

I fail to see what's remotely ethically unsound about buying a second-hand CD in any case.

Actually, FLAC files are compressed--a WAV file converted to FLAC is up to 50% smaller. But as you say, when decompressed (decoded), the resulting file is identical to what it was before compression.--there's no loss of quality. Hence the name of the format, which stands for "Free Lossless Audio Codec."

I edited to reflect this before seeing your post... In fact, the only one I don't have of the first five is the first one, 1898-1941. I'm going to order it today.

I second the motion. This is a series that is not your usual "how can we profit from the back catalog" kind of compilation. Two French aficionados, André Francis and Jean Schwartz, pick the selections from their extensive collections based simply on what they like best and feel is representative. There have actually been five boxes; 1952 was 5 CDs (and two samples from the two first boxes) and the others are 10 CDs. The first was from 1898-1943 and was packed with cherry-picked masterpieces. The second was from 1944-1951. Then came 1952, 1953, and 1954. All the stuff is in the public domain in France, which explains why they're now doing it year by year. As Tjobbe reports, the 1955 box is now supposed to be available. Here's a rousing review: http://www.livingwithmusic.com/index.php/m...resors_du_jazz/