AfricaBrass

It's been dormant for awhile. Maybe it's time for a revival? Let's do it!

Agree on both counts. They both made this a better place! Thanks Aggie!! I really appreciate it. I was wondering what happened to both couw and catesta. I looked up catesta's account and saw that he was last here in January, so hopefully he's still coming around. I used to exchange a lot of messages with John (couw). Is he okay, or is it something that happened on the board? They were both real assets to this place!

I wish my dad would have had some jazz albums... but I was happy that he had some Kraftwerk lps.

Or do the album and then offer a two CD package as you describe with the rest of the material? I LOVE this idea!

I drank diet sodas regularly from the time I was 7 until I was 40. I couldn't eat a meal without a diet soda with it. I rarely drank any water. I went through at least 1 two-liter bottle a day. I was always buying the stuff. In the middle of 2008, I had the onset of severe nerve pain in my left leg. I couldn't stand for more than 30 seconds without being in agony. I had never experienced not being able to walk or go to the store or anything like that. My life was over in my mind. I couldn't believe this was happening. I'd also suffered severe bouts with kidney stones in the previous two years, which lead to hospitalization. I came to believe that my life would never be the same again. During this period, I went to doctors and they were unable to help me. In February of 2009, after being nearly bedridden for 9 months, I read something which inspired me to give up drinking diet soda and consuming anything with Aspartame in it. Giving up the diet soda was one of the most difficult things I'd done. I didn't even want to eat anymore, I couldn't imagine not having a soda with my meal. I stuck to it and started drinking a lot of water. For the first time in my life, I was drinking the recommended amount of water. After about 3 weeks of doing this, the most amazing thing happened, my leg pain started to go away. It started slowly, but as time, I would feel less of this nerve pain. Within two months time after of giving up diet soda and embracing water, my nerve pain was completely gone and to this day, I have no problem standing (and I've had no more kidney stones either). Oh yeah, I have come to LOVE water! There's a lot of things I could say about soda, but I won't. My story says it all. I will say this, I was stupid and drank too much soda. I was addicted to the stuff and had no idea that I was missing out by not drinking water.

Happy Birthday, Noj!!! I hope you have a great one. :party: :party:

That's a great idea!

Your welcome! I'm so glad that you had already thought of this. I'm excited about whatever option you choose.

Maybe worth considering. A box set would reach fewer people and move much more slowly, I suspect. Although collectors love a niche product! I hope you don't mind me offering this idea; how about putting out multiple volumes? As a precedent, there's 5 volumes of the Shelly Manne Blackhawk recordings and there's 3 volumes of Hampton Hawes All Night Session. If you just released multiple cds, then you wouldn't need to pay for slipcase and people on a tight budget, like myself, could pick up the releases separately when I could. I was embarrassed to answer your previous question about pricing, since I'm between jobs and struggling. This is a new experience for me, but in the past I wouldn't have had a problem paying $50-$60 for a set of this quality. The quality of your releases make anything you issue a "must buy" for me and I will find a way to purchase them.

I wish you success with your project!

I hope you have a GREAT birthday!! :party:

I'm watching the Big Heat from 1953 on tv. I love Film Noir!

I wish I could donate to your project. I'm out of work and barely making it, but I wanted you to know that I would have helped if I could have. I would have loved to hear your album.

For years, I've been using Sennheiser HD280 headphones paired with an older Sony D25s Discman. I keep the cd player and headphones next to my computer and listen while I work (or surf). The Discman is really cool. On a tip from the Head-Fi forum, I bought it about 10 years ago in NOS condition for $25. I spent another $12 on a power supply from Radio Shack. It's been a fantastic setup. I like the Sennheisers, but would like to try some Grados someday. I've heard so many good things about them.

Apple doesn't make that high of a percentage on track sold via the iTunes Store. The label gets a bigger cut of .mp3/acc sales. Apple makes very little from per sale tracks, but they don't care because the real profit is in the sale of iPods, the store was just a necessity to get people purchasing the players. Thanks for sharing this! I didn't know this, so the record companies making a greater profit off of each downloaded album now. I guess there's also the trend with young people to not purchase the entire album and just buy the tracks they want. I could see that cutting into a label's profit from missed album downloads. lol - I'm with you on this!

Thanks for sharing this, I appreciate it. It's comforting that you've been able to make the shift to downloads and to be happy about it. I think my biggest block is just accepting that the world is changing. It's been so hard seeing the record stores disappear. I didn't realize how good things were before. I've had to get rid of much of my collection and I do admit that it's nice not being buried in music. That's neat that you make your own discs. I go out of my way to make nice covers for use with my Squeezebox and if I'm ripping jazz, I make sure to put down all the discographical information.

Mayhew, interesting dude. That was interesting. I have a number of country albums from his Little Darlin' label. It's so interesting that he was involved with Charlie Parker records at the same time.

I'm so glad to hear it was a good b-day.

How much of a CD price came from pressing, packaging, distribution? Just one source...and I'm sure others will vary...suggests: Retailer: $5 (29.4%), [now the website] Record label: $4.92 (28.9%), Distributor: $2.40 (14.1%), Giveaways: $1.80 (10.6%), Duplication/ recording: $1.10 (5.8%), Artist royalty: 83 cents , Songwriter license: 60 cents (3.5%), Producer royalty: 27 cents (1.6%), Musicians union: 8 cents (0.4%). http://blog.collins.net.pr/2006/05/cd-costs-breakdown.html I imagine the costs I've highlighted in red are still there. Prices might be different in the States but when I gave up on CD the full price in the UK was £15. Bought from iTunes/Amazon its normally £7.99 (half the price) and through e-music often as little as £3.00. All I lose is the packaging - a sacrifice I learnt to make once I realised I only read liners once. Others will feel they lose audio quality but - apart from a few dodgy transfers in the early days - I can't tell any difference. And the dodgy transfers to mp3 are as nothing compared to the dreadful mastering to CD of many albums in the 80s (which fuelled the 'remastered' boom of the 90s+). There are preference/aesthetic arguments for CD over download; but the economic argument falls heavily to download for me. Not to mention that you can hear a recording or read about it and be listening to it ten minutes later! I appreciate your thoughts and thanks for sharing this breakdown! It is very interesting to see who gets what. I certainly shows that Apple and any other seller of mp3's is the real winner in this whole situation. I guess the smartest move for the labels would be to sell their own music and freeze Apple and the others out of the equation. I do agree with Paul Secor that, "If you're happy with whatever you're doing, who cares about what others are doing? Just enjoy the music." I guess for me, the whole move away from physical media has more to it than just the delivery method of music. I have spent my life in record stores and this is really the end of an era that I've enjoyed greatly. I have purchased a couple of downloads and I didn't have the same sense of ownership that I had with records and cds. Maybe this is one of the reasons that it's hard for me to embrace downloads only. Maybe in the end, it will save me a lot of money. I can't seem myself getting much enthusiasm to collect downloads. lol The funny thing is that I have a Kindle and have no problems buying books for it. The only books I buy for it are fiction and are something I consider disposable in a sense since once I read them, I probably won't return to them for a long time. I buy these books on the Kindle because of the convenience. I agree, it is really cool to be able to get something within a few minutes. There are some books that I wouldn't buy on the Kindle because I'd rather have a hard copy. These are books that I will come back to often and have more value to me. Who knows, this might change as the display technology improves and search ability improves.

I'm sorry to butt in, but I have to make a point. I'm not for cds made from .mp3 files. Any mp3 file has already been compressed. If I burn an mp3 file to a cd, it will still have the lower quality of the original mp3 file. If I buy a cd, the files on it are not compressed and are of a higher quality than an mp3 will ever be. I love mp3's and have since the late 90's when they first came out. But I have to be honest, I've tested mp3s verses cds on my home stereo and the cd always sounds better. Even high quality mp3s ripped with EAC don't sound as good, on my home stereo, as cds. In my car, I usually connect my iPod to my stereo since, in the car, I don't hear the same difference I hear on my home stereo. I'm not trying to be combative, but I'm sad to see cds go away and to be left with mp3s as the only alternative. I feel like it's a step in the wrong direction. If downloadable music was in the flac format, it would be easier for me to accept this change, but it would still have to be at a lower price for me to get behind it. lol I respect your wisdom (and it applies to nearly everything in life). Wow!!! I LOVE Hank Mobley! My son's middle name is Henry, so I could call him Hank. I can't wait for this.

I think the new technology is wonderful! I love my Squeezebox and mp3 player. I love Spotify, and as you mentioned in another post, I use it to audition albums to see if they're worth getting. Every cd I get instantly gets ripped to .flac and I then also make .mp3 files. It's great! But... I still love my cds. I love having the whole package. I love having an actual disc in case I lose the digital files. I don't trust having my music collection on a cloud managed by someone else. I guess I'm a bit of a control freak. lol I guess my main issue with digital downloads is the price. I don't see the value in them. I know I can listen to the music, but I don't think I should pay anywhere near as much as I paid for a cd, since the music company didn't have to actually press a cd and distribute it. I don't think a digital download of an album should ever cost more than $5, and that would be for a lossless download. I just think this new business model is a rip off to the consumer and I'm not buying into it.

Good point. In the 80's and 90's, I was the guy buying up all the cheap vinyl possible. Just because most people decided that LP's were obsolete, they always kept their value with me, just as cds have kept their value with me. I've seen how these cycles work. In my town, there's a bookstore that sells cds for 29 cents a couple days a month. I'm too broke to buy a lot of cds at regular prices, but at 29 cents each, I'm like a glutton at a buffet and I'm still being selective. I've purchased some great titles there. I won't even go into all the vinyl I got on the 19 cent sale (and it was all jazz!!!). I can't imagine a day when I pay $1 a song for an mp3. lol

Thank you for letting me know what's coming up, JLH! The quality of your releases are spectacular and I'm so grateful for what you are doing for jazz lovers everywhere. I'm so excited about these new releases!!

Wow!! Thanks so much Al!! I appreciate it so much. I'm so glad to be back and will make a point to stick around. I hope I'll be able to contribute something of value here. A Blindfold test would be fun! I want to get back into the Album of the week too. Thanks so much, Paul! brownie, you're still in my thoughts and I hope your recovery is continuing!

rotflmao I forgot all about the Jim Nabors Mosaic. I'm so happy that April Fool's is coming up... muhahaha Good to see you Ron! Thanks Lon!!! I really appreciate it. I'm so glad to be back! I look forward to catching up on things around here. I'm planning on sticking around. It's so funny, I used to LIVE on this board in the old days. lol Somebody had to do it! Welcome back AB> You guys are hilarious!! Thanks for the welcome, Chuck!!