riverrat

We have a Newbury Bargains thread, and a yourmusic.com thread. How about a "catch-all" thread where we can post other assorted great deals in one easy-to-find place? Or has this already been done? I'll kick off with a copy of the hard-to-find Blue Note CD Bobby Hutcherson Live at Montreux, with Woody Shaw for $12.99 HERE on half.com.

Fun to see this thread revived...I've been on a bit of a WR binge lately, re-listening to albums I've listened to dozens dozens of times but never tire of. Besides really liking the music, I have sentimental attachment to WR - Heavy Weather was my start into jazz- really got into the great sax playing, eventually realized Wayne Shorter had had quite a career prior to WR, starting exploring that and then was off & runnin into the Blue Note catalog.. I decided I had to have the definitive versions and tracked down SACDs of Black Market and Mysterious Traveler (paid a pretty penny for 'em) to add to the Heavy Weather SACD I picked up for a song a few years ago. The sonic improvement was worth it to me, especially for Black Market. (With the advent of Blu-ray, now is a great time to get into an SACD/CD/DVD-A/DVD-V multi-format player for a great price...) And I would agree about Tale Spinnin if for some sad reason I could only have one WR session, that would be it. I picked up Sweetnighter much more recently, and now consider it right up there with the other four favorites previously mentioned.

Check your PMs...sent one RE Grass Roots

Just noticed this is an LP not CD. So it is still available, or at least I can say that I am not trying to claim it!

PM coming!

I think there are a couple of different main business models being used by big Amazon Marketplace sellers: 1. Use some type of HTML script that automatically detects when another seller undercuts the price on one of their offerings, and also automatically updates their price to be $.01 below that. I am pretty sure this is being used because in some cases, you can drop your price to be the lowest, then check back in an hour and the other seller has done the same to be lower than you, over and over again. It has to be some kind of automatic function, not sure how it works exactly though. 2. Other sellers seem to put up listings at ridiculously high prices, apparently hoping to occasionally catch buyers who check during some window when no other sellers have lower priced offerings of the same title. e.g. seller "anybook". I don't see any other way to explain the insane prices by some such sellers. Then there are the myriad of small potatoes sellers like me, who just put stuff up, try to beat the current lowest price, and then sporadically check back to revise my prices to be competitive and otherwise just wait...

PM sent RE Africaine

Pm sent with question...

Couldn't agree more. It is probably time to let this sorry thread die, but I very much want to avoid any appearances or assumptions that I'm part of the camp that allegedly expects to download copyrighted material for free. So a few clarifications... This thread was (originally) about false advertising, and the utter lameness of a service that is offered, ADVERTISED but not provided in any practical sense. This thread was NOT (originally) about whether or not a person is entitled to either 1) free service or 2) free access to copyrighted material. Any assumptions about CONTENT that I or anyone else might download are just that- ASSUMPTIONS, and in any case not the original thread topic. Rapidshare advertises a free service that doesn't really exist in any practical form. When a firm advertises a service, they should provide it. Simple as that, seems pretty reasonable. The fact that some of us are willing to call Rapidshare on their dishonesty in no way implies that we are surprised by such actions as NOF mistakenly assumes. NOF, you are certainly entitled to your opinion that dishonest or misleading advertising is "just the way it is" and that we should just get used to it. Such meekness and acceptance in the face of corporate BS is commonplace. One could also argue that it is a waste of time to fight it. But your assertion that those of us who choose to discuss or complain about certain examples of it are "delusional" is ludicrous and insulting. Am I surprised that Rapidshare's free "service" sucks? No, I'm not. Does that make it acceptable? No it does not- they offer it, actively advertise it and therefore should provide it. If they don't want to offer a usable free service, they should quit saying they do. (And yes thanks I understand that the paid service works much better- that is clear as can be from their site- don't need that pointed out.) To repeat once again, I fully understand their business model and have no gripes about it, makes sense in fact. But I draw the line at dishonesty. The free "service" Rapidshare purports to offer is, in my experience anyway, a farce. Lastly, a few thoughts regarding the touchy area of CONTENT that gets downloaded, which this thread veered off toward. The files I've personally tried (unsuccessfully) to download through Rapidshare were a couple of bootleg live recordings by a certain well-known "greatest rock & roll band in the world". I'm a longtime fan, and have spent hundreds of dollars on their recordings, stretching back almost 40 years to at least 3 copies of Exile on Main Street vinyl bought with my hard-earned paper route money and on to several different CD versions of many of their official releases. Tons of Stones vinyl and CDs in between. And I plan to step up and buy the forthcoming Exile reissue too. Do the Stones make any money off the bootlegs I have acquired? No, at least not directly. But Keith Richards has actually referred to some of them in interviews as some of their best live material, which they unfortunately don't seem to be able to release through official channels for copyright reasons. So is my acquisition of such material "legal"? Well technically I suppose not. Is it wrong? Well, that's a gray area with no definitive answer, IMO. I can tell you I sleep just fine at night. In short, when discussing downloading, please be careful what you "assume". I do understand that illegal downloading is a huge problem for the music industry and hits small independent labels, (e.g. Nessa's) particularly hard. There is no doubt a wide spectrum of moral behavior WRT downloading but IMO it is a mistake to tar every person who downloads with the same feathers. My $.02 on that.

We heard you the first time, but apparently Dan's reply (which I heartily agree with) did not sink in. The fact that their fee for service works well is irrelevant to his point. Rapidshare sucks because they are lying about their free "service". It is not unreasonable to expect a functional free service IF THEY SAY THEY OFFER SUCH A THING, WHICH THEY DO. But that service effectively does not exist. Ergo, RAPIDSHARE SUCKS, regardless of whether their "service for a fee" is great or not, because they are lying about their free "service". They are purporting to offer something which they do not actually offer. This isn't about naivete about how services like Rapidshare operate. We all understand the whole bait and switch technique, no need to lecture us on that. The point is that it is fair to expect an online business to provide what they say they provide, and call them out on it if they don't.

Yes, good to keep that in mind. After much time wasted, I'm mostly off the up-grade-it-is train, despite my chiming into threads like this one. Been really enjoying my new headphones and tuning out with them after the munchkin is in bed and the chaos ramps down in the evening..

I always was somewhat gullible... Who cares what a group of strangers half way across the planet think! If you like JRVGs more power to ya. There isn't much doubt they are generally more detailed than TOCJs, and if they complement your system and speakers, could sound very good indeed. And added to the BN CD reissue/remaster mystery pile is the whole issue of if and when the separate RVG remasterings for Japan and the US ended, which titles were remastered separately, how the two differ for each title, etc. Another can of worms that I have run out of steam trying to definitively sort out...

Interesting, very interesting, assuming you are being serious here, which despite your proven sense of humor I assume you are. No, I was not privy to the follow-ups...perhaps because they were not helpful in "marketing" 1st pressing Japan Blue Note CDs? Hmmmmmm....

Don't view it as a fight at all, just an interesting discussion. That is just a commonly-used figure of speech to indicate that I don't feel strongly one way or the other. And I was just passing on 3rd hand info on that Sonny Clark comparison, it is not my stereo system, don't know any of the people involved, etc etc. Just thought it might be interesting to add to this discussion. Beyond a preference for the BN Works series, I'm not an early Japan Blue Note CD fanatic, but do remain casually interested in the fact that some people purport to be able to hear sonic differences in what seem to be the same masterings but issued separately for the US and Japan. Whether these differences are attributable to these actually being different masterings, differences in manufacturing standards, psychological and not actually real, are issues that I have come to believe will never be definitively resolved. What matters more to me at this point is that good sounding versions are available, and that there are two great reissue programs underway producing even better sounding versions. These days, I've largely wound down my search for new BN titles, or replacing ones I have with better sounding pressings and am focusing more on listening to my collection!

As a person who has spent quite a bit of time (probably too much) trying to sort out details of the various remasters and pressings of the BN catalog on CD, I'd be interested in where you found this info, i.e. a link and/or a list of titles purported to be the same mastering. Also, in regards to Kevin's post about the CP35 and CP32 Japanese Blue Note CDs that preceded the BN Works series (commonly referred to as "TOCJs")- it was my understanding as well that aside from the 6 titles in the CP35 series, all others i.e. the CP32 series, used the McMaster remasters. But there some members of the SH forum swear that many of the CP32 series at least sound different than their US counterparts. This is interesting to me in an academic way, but as I indicated awhile back in that post on AK that is quoted above, I have kind of lost interest in pursuing this actively, and certainly won't be paying $30-$50 per title for 1st Japan issue BN CDs. The BN Works (TOCJ) series sound fine to me, although the new SACD Hybrids and XRCDs are even better. I will pick up a few of those, but probably not the whole series, for economic reasons. FWIW, and to be clear, I have NO DOG IN THIS FIGHT, don't really care one way or another, here is a PM that was passed on to me regarding a recent "shootout" of several different version of Sonny Clark Cool Struttin: [begin quote] "Held a "blind" shoot-out during the Chinese New Year holidays amongst "audiophile" types at my friend's house. Cool Struttin’ used. XRCD HQCD [riverrat comment: never heard of this pressing, what are they talking about?] BN Works TOCJ BN Works Mono [riverrat comment: TOCJ 6194, not part of BN Works Series] CP32 [riverrat comment: Japanese pressing, referred to as McMaster mastering below] JPN RVG Hardware Esoteric X03SE/Accuphase C2400/A60/Wilson Sophia 2, XLO cables throughout. Amongst 7 people, 3 were out and out audio nutters, others are jazz fans with good systems but I am the only one who likes BN (ouch). The others are more ECM, euro jazz types... The title track was played in full from every single version. Then each person got to select the bit they want to listen to again. Anyway the results were surprising... in order of preference: BN Works Mono/CP 32 [McMaster] version - 2 votes each XRCD/HQCD stereo/BN Works stereo - 1 each JRVG - no vote XRCD were thought to be too "ping pong" but the piano sounds best. [riverrat comment: WTF does "ping pong" refer to?] BN Works Mono has the best sounding horns and organic sounding. CP32 bass light but most natural sounding. HQCD and BN works considered "too warm", "like fake analogue". J RVG - "is this a joke?" My preference (within this system) 1) CP32 2) BN Works Mono/XRCD 3) HQCD 4) BN Works" [End quote]

Couple of new releases from Soundway, details HERE. Nigeria Special Volume 2 Modern Highlife, Afro Sounds & Nigerian Blues 1970-6 Nigeria Afrobeat Special The New Explosive Sound in 1970s Nigeria Should be great, based on the quality of their last few!

Hannibal, I can offer a few opinions, and that is what they are my opinions only. I suppose one could argue that the new XRCD and SACD Hybrid Blue Note series aren't really "necessary", given that all titles announced so far are readily available in less expensive versions. But I'm very glad that the two companies responsible decided there is enough demand to support the new remasterings and reissues. Most of the RVGs sounded OK to me too, but I can also easily notice an improvement, even on my relatively modest system, when I hear a better mastering- until now generally the Japanese BN Works series, long out of print. I just about always prefer the BN Works versions, although it is true that they are usually slightly rolled off in the high end, with less overall detail than most RVGs. I think you could also argue that there is really no reason why the RVG series could not have produced much better sounding reissues. The fact that most of them are not that good has been variously attributed to Rudy Van Gelder's potentially declining hearing, and/or to the industry trend to use boosted loudness and compression, apparently to make the CDs sound more punchy on crummy playback devices like ipods and personal stereos. But in the hands of a different engineer, or with RVG given different instructions, it seems that we could have had reasonably priced, smooth sounding, detailed remasterings. Sadly that did not happen, so now we are left with having to pay $30 each for really nice sounding remasters. I'm personally not convinced that SACD hybrid or XRCD technology is necessary for good sound- in fact the great quality of the redbook layer on the SACDs is evidence to that effect. The good news is that both the SACD hybrids and XRCDs seem to easily beat all other CD masterings for sound quality. To my ears, they combine the smoothness and analog-type sound of the BN Works versions, but with considerably more detail like the best RVGs had. In other words, the best of both worlds...

Yes that one is good and so is this one- The Other Side of Benny Golson, 1958 session with Curtis Fuller on board, $1.99 and also OOP: Other Side of Golson

Newbury Comics is selling the OOP Original Jazz Classics CD of Don Wilkerson Texas Twister for $1.99 plus shipping. Nice price for an OOP title that is also a nice session, easily compares with his Blue Note sessions, with maybe a little more fire... They also have the SACD Hybrid pressing of Wynton Kelly Kelly Blue for $3.99.

PM: Ahmad Jamal Trio, Cross Country Tour: 1958-1961 2-cds $10.00 Gene Ammons, "Goodbye" Japanese Import w/obi strip. VICJ 60233 $10.00

All I would add is that in an online community that big, there are bound to be some wingnut posters and threads. Some of the obsessive stuff about "weakest link" in a particular recording, bickering about waveforms, etc. seems like it would fit right into the Onion...you wonder how they could possibly be serious, or have enough time on their hands to obsess over such matters.. But there are also some knowledgeable folks who post, and some good info to be found in the archives. And say what you will about some of the over-the-top focus on early CD pressings, the fact that there is so much discussion and negative press regarding the "loudness wars" is a good thing, IMO.

Yup, I agree. For over 2 years, I attempted to crush paypal by refusing to use them. After that apparently failed and they were still thriving, I reluctantly set up a free account, but refused to allow them to take any of my money through fees for accepting payments from credit cards. More recently, having accepted that I was unlikely to bring them to their knees, I knuckled under and set up a "Premier" or some such account so I can accept payments any way a person wants to pay. I just have to fork over 2.9% of every payment. But paypal is so convenient and saves me so much time and hassle, with both buying and selling online, that it is still worth it to me. I hate to admit it but it is true...

Adding: Coltrane, Settin' the Pace, JVC-XRCD, $12

Great price on Plectrist, currently the cheapest on Amazon is $28..

PM coming RE Charles Tolliver, Live in Berlin at the Quasimodo, volumes 1 & 2 $30