JohnS

When driving in the US I was puzzled by the jake break road signs. I guessed it must be noisy but that's about all. Question answered, thanks Aloc.

Happy Birthday Victor!

mono.

Lucky Thompson; Dancing Sunbeam. Impulse

I wasn't aware of this one. One to get. Thanks Brownie.

I've found the ones I've heard disappointing and a shade too polite. Alan puts on a good live show but his records don't seem to catch fire for me. Is there a Silver tribute, maybe not on Woodville? If so that might be worth a try. He's playing at our club tomorrow night as a member of Terry Seabrook's Milestones, playing Kind of Blue and a Davis inspired suite.

Sad news, excellent playing with Mulligan and Konitz. edited for typo

Fine album, really deserves its place in The Essential Jazz Records.

IIRC I saw this band at the Bracknell Festival (remember that?)

J R Monterose - Straight Ahead. Xanadu Gold Sounds fine to me except for some mild distortion. An excellent record.

Many happy returns Michael

I ordered two CDs which together fell below the minimum limit of £18 but when shipping was added they fell very slightly above. I was charged something like £4 for VAT and then another charge of over £8 for collection! Therefore on two CDs I paid an additional £12. In future I will ask for them to sent individually, even if the shipping charge might be slightly dearer. I'm sure that can't be right. If you feel strongly about it complain. Air mail packets going by ship. Now that's what I call service. Disgraceful.

I'm an ex-Royal Mail manager. There may well be extra screening on packets to and from the UK for security reasons, but I doubt this would add more than three or four days to the usual 7-10 days transmission times. Also remember that many packages from the US are sent bulk air frieght for economy reasons to a European distributor (could be anywhere, Holland, Germany, Scandinavia) where they are then put in the local post. This can add a week or so to transmission times. I imagine the same goes for packages to the US. The only excess charge should be customs duty. Always best to make sure your order value falls into the free of duty range. Not sure what this is now, used to be £18.00 although many items are not charged you can never be certain.

I don't believe the Avid's are needle drops. They can cost as little as £3.99 which is very good value especially if you are filling odd gaps in a collection. Some of the choices for the "classic albums" seem to be chosen at random. (edited for typo)

My Xanadu (doesn't sound too bad to me) has this cover except it's in Xanadu's gold.

JohnS, you are officially the coolest guy here. This was one of my luckiest finds, especially as it was very hard to find at the time. I came across it in the secondhand bin at Asman's London. IIRC it cost the equivalent of about $3. I can't recall it sounding inferior to other BNs.

UA blue label

One from my collection (posted before, but what the heck)

Southampton UK 27 March - not on list either.

Sums up my view too.

Perhaps I've just been unlucky but the few things I've heard by Simcock have left me cold.

I have a Japanese Baybridge lp of this. The piano sound isn't that great, rather thin and flat but but listenable. I've heard much worse.

Nice one, John! Lives up it's name, The Happy Blues. Now playing