micha

I completely missed this in past years but thank you!!

For coffee I liked both Great Lakes Coffee and Roasting Plant. The former had a cozy laid back atmosphere and also offered wine and beer. The latter was on the same intersection of one of the main jazz stages downtown, and had a large selection of freshly roasted beans, with a more streamlined urban-commuter type of atmosphere. For restaurants, the one downtownish that I went back to is Seva, which is a vegetarian place but the food is creative and well done. It's a bit hidden down an alley so easy to miss, but is clean and has a nice and serene outdoor garden patio that I ate at both times.

I went last year and was floored by how vibrant, alive and engaged with the community it was. In some ways it felt like I was going to a festival in the heyday of the music. The music felt very alive, and not like a museum or a quiet polite orchestra performance. The festival itself seemed to take over a third of the downtown area, enthusiastic crowds for endless blocks in any direction. Extremely diverse crowds of every age, class, race, it felt like the entire community really embraced it. There were plenty of the traditional faces you'd see in the festival crowd, people who grew up on the music and diehard fans, but there were just as many people who probably did not consider themselves "jazz fans" but were just as engaged, enthusiastic and respectful. I booked a relatively cheap hotel right less than a quarter mile from the main stages, using Expedia or a similar site. I was surprised and very impressed with that portion of downtown Detroit. You can see the city really has a rich history and the many buildings downtown were very impressive in scale, but also in the beautifully diverse architecture and history. The city felt like a lost treasure. I realize the real problems the city has, and that everything might not be as clean and nice on weekends when they aren't hosting the jazz festival but it felt more like Manhattan than the bleak and decaying city that I'd imagined based on a couple of prior visits to venues on the outer rings of the city. The city was easy to get around, which is refreshing in comparison to Chicago. They had some cool coffee shops and restaurants too. I had a great memory my last night of the festival, doing an impromptu three mile walk down the main strip with my girlfriend, from the restaurant back to the hotel. We walked past a Tigers MLB game as it was letting out, a bunch of theaters, all while watching fireworks along the horizon on one of the most beautiful nights of the year. It really made me a fan of the city and I root for Detroit to start to turnaround like other rust belt cities like Cleveland and Pittsburgh are slowly starting to do. Seeing Ahmad Jamal perform at a packed and enraptured crowd was in my top three all time musical experiences. Similar to Chicago, it really made me a proponent of free outdoor urban festivals that fit into the community.

Similarly, I also ripped everything to FLAC with Exact Audio Copy (custom configuration using guide). I'm listening from a Windows 7 computer using J River Media Center 16 as the player. I'd certainly recommend J River after trying a bunch of others as in my experience it's handled a large music library much better than iTunes but with a similar interface and with many more options available for technical users, plus nice features for tweaking audio setup for your audio card or DAC. I play from my computer to an external Asynchronous USB DAC (Ayre QB-9) to my stereo. It took me six months to rip all of my albums into FLAC so I tried to be meticulous with tagging everything right the first time, with recording year, album cover art, record label, and some instrumentation data stored in each file, as well as a filterable "keywords" tag I added where I can give each album or track as many keywords as desired such as "AACM", "Solo", "New Orleans", etc. Needless to say, I make sure to keep several backups of my library on external hard drives in case of hard drive failure. I'd love to one day key my digital library into an online discography database to fill in searchable sidemen and session info for each track but I'm very happy with the current set up, admittedly still a bit of work and probably overkill for many people. It makes listening to Mosaics and other sets much easier as well as the fun of simply being able to click into a record label or sub-genre and listen on shuffle for a couple hours.

I was fortunate enough to have caught the Nat King Cole set (with 14 of 18 discs) right as the seller listed it the other day so I snagged it for the $30. However, I'd have practically given my left arm though to have gotten the Basie Studio set instead as that has been at the very top of my wishlist for years now. I'm actually hoping that eventually I'll find someone who'd like to trade a copy of the Basie set for my partial Nat Cole set plus one or two other OOP mosaics.

I'm also happy to see that I've received a shipping notice for the Crosby. The Mobley set from the same order is still out of stock so I wonder if they're waiting to re-stock that one or just processing it differently in some way.

I also ordered the Crosby and another beginning of June and neither have shipped. I received an automated email last week, at the 30 day point, where they wrote that they "expect" to receive more sets in from the manufacturer within three weeks. Based on my past experiences with this retailer, they'll have us wait the two months, not make any attempts to fulfill or get more stock, and eventually cancel the orders.

Thanks for the heads up, I ordered the Mobley and Crosby even though they're both listed out of stock. I know I tried to order a black box Mosaic at least once from them before and it was out of stock and eventually canceled but it's worth another attempt, especially with the numbered Mobleys getting into the last 50 or so, wouldn't want to miss that one.

Now I think this is a thread I could contribute to as I find myself spotting insane eBay deals, often oop Mosaics, fairly frequently. When they're for sets I own already I've sometimes thought about creating such a thread but I didn't want anyone to think I was spamming my own auctions.

Read this ten minutes ago and was wondering if I'd get my discs too. Sure enough, about five minutes later the USPS guy knocked on the door with my full order and bonus disc. Happy that I received everything made sure to close out the dispute with Paypal.

I was forced to open a dispute with Paypal today after still not having received a fairly expensive order placed the first week of February, nor having yet received any response to my email request or voice mail message left at their phone number listed on the website. The Paypal window to open up a claim is 45 days so I made it into the last day or two where I even have that option. From my understanding, the seller has a couple of weeks to respond to the Paypal request - either by fulfilling the order or returning my money - before Paypal actively gets involved. I'm hoping they do so; I'd still love to receive the music I ordered but, at the same time, I haven't heard back in more than a month and that was a sizable amount of money to me.

For those who haven't received it in email yet/aren't on the mailing list, here is the garbled html link converted to readable bbcode for the board: March 17th, 2010 Mosaic Records Special Sale Selected Box Sets, Selects & Singles March 17th - 31st Each of our sets is a time-consuming affair to assemble from securing rights to tape research to studio mastering to the photographic, historical and discographical research for our booklets. The current long delay in producing a new release since our Bing Crosby set in November is not caused by an absence of projects, but rather by the fact that record company clearances are taking longer as their staffs experience one round of cutbacks after another. We have a number of projects about which we are personally excited and expect to produce this year. In the absence of a catalog mailing and to keep the boat afloat, we are announcing an Ides Of March sale with selected releases on sale through the end of March. We hope you take advantage of these Special Sale prices on these historical Limited Edition releases. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Limited Editon Box Sets The Complete Lionel Hampton Victor Sessions 1937-41 (#238) We regard this set as among our very significant releases, because of the moment in music it captures; because of the quality of the music and the sidemen; because of the comprehensive nature of the collection; and the meticulous sound restoration. 5 CDs (Sale Priced at $72) The Quincy Jones ABC/Mercury Big Band Jazz Sessions (#237) It didn’t make sense economically, didn’t make sense logistically, didn’t provide ego satisfaction for star players, but Quincy Jones formed a big band for the sheer sake of the music. 5 CDs (Sale Priced at $72) Classic Chu Berry Columbia and Victor Sessions (#236) A Master Class in Swing. This is a comprehensive collection with countless pivotal sessions. If he hadn't died young, Chu Berry might have become the most influential tenor saxophonist of the 20th Century. 7 CDs - (Sale Priced at $107) Duke Ellington: 1936-40 Small Group Sessions (#235) This set gathers together all the small group sessions led by Duke Ellington and his sidemen Rex Stewart, Barney Bigard, Cootie Williams and Johnny Hodges, during the years 1936-40. 7 CDs - (Sale Priced at $107) Complete Count Basie Verve Fifties Studio Recordings (#229) When Count Basie reformed his big band in the 1950s, he managed to become entirely new by sticking with what had made him great from the start. And in the process, Basie achieved some of the most extraordinary success of his career. 8 CDs (Sale Priced at $119) The Complete Roost Sonny Stitt Studio Sessions (#208) The prime focus of this set is the ten remarkable quartet albums that the saxophonist made for Roost between 1955 and '65, usually with Hank Jones or Jimmy Jones on piano and Shadow Wilson, Charlie Persip or Roy Haynes on drums. 9 CDs (Sale Priced at $129) The Complete Pacific Jazz Joe Pass Quartet Sessions (#207) Always clean, articulate, and effective, Pass had unstoppable swing and an ability to create memorable, beautifully-constructed solos. The Mosaic collection lays out the full range of what this musician could do. 5 CDs (Sale Priced at $72) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mosaic Selects Five Mosaic Select 3 CD Sets (Regularly $44; On Sale for $39 each) Mosaic Select: McCoy Tyner (MS-025) Influenced by the beauty and intensity of Coltrane’s music and Eastern forms of music, McCoy Tyner fashioned a dense, lyrical sound. This set covers the last two years of McCoy Tyner's tenure with Blue Note. Mosaic Select: Gerry Mulligan (MS-021) In December 1957, Pacific Jazz's Dick Bock came to New York for several weeks of a marathon recording schedule that included dates by Bob Brookmeyer and Chet Baker as well as four Gerry Mulligan sessions. Mosaic Select: Andrew Hill (MS-016) Only six of the 31 selections on this set have ever been out in any form. Their common denominator is Andrew's brilliant improvisations and unique compositions. Mosaic Select: Dave Liebman & Richie Beirach (MS-012) Coming of age in the late ‘60s, saxophonist David Liebman and pianist Richie Beirach are virtuosos on their instruments. It has enabled them to take the lessons that they learned well from Miles and Trane and create exciting, often tumultuous jazz of the highest creative order. Mosaic Select: Paul Chambers (MS-005) Paul Chambers was more than the greatest bassist of his generation; he was the premier team player with a pliant, robust sense of swing that took any group he played to another level. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mosaic Singles All 20 Mosaic Singles Sale Priced at only $12 Each For A Complete List Visit Mosaic Single CD Releases Thank you for your support. Sincerely, All of us at www.mosaicrecords.com www.thebestvinylshop.com www.truebluemusic.com Email: info@mosaicrecords.com 203-327-7111

I imagine there are others who placed orders around the 5th who are still waiting? I saw the update a couple weeks ago about ESP being swamped with orders but with it coming up on a month later, I want to make sure I'm not waiting around for a lost order at this point.

I thought this was kind of crazy - the Columbia Small Group Swing Sessions going for $296 a few days ago. Especially considering it was still in stock and selling for $134 through Collectors Choice until earlier today (seeing those prices on eBay, I couldn't pass it up any longer and picked up the last one they had).