Hardbopjazz

Earlier this year, January, I placed an order and it never came. I never got a response to my emails or phone calls. I called my credit card company and they were able to get my money back.

May it be a good one.

Wow, Silver in a wheel chair. That doesn't sound too good. Hope it is nothing serious.

Here is an interesting article. To save records, take care of CDs MICHAEL HIMOWITZ April 9, 2006 A physicist working for IBM has spread fear and loathing among digital photographers, music fans and others who store data on CDs. His message: the discs we're using to archive photos, album tracks and financial records may turn into useless lumps of plastic after just two to five years. A January Computerworld article quoted Kurt Gerecke, a storage expert in Germany, who warned that the dye that forms tiny pits in the surface of a CD-R can degrade to the point where the laser in a CD-ROM drive can't read them. How long this takes depends on the quality of the disc and the conditions under which it's stored. Prerecorded audio and data discs, pressed by duplicating machines, don't have this problem. But we certainly shouldn't expect any writable compact disc to last very long, Gerecke said - certainly not the 25 to 75 years that CD makers have traditionally promised. Given the source of the warning, consumers are taking him seriously. What should you do? I think Gerecke may have exaggerated a bit. Plenty of us have 5-year-old CDs that read well. But maybe it's time to think about replacing them. Here are a few tips for keeping your photos, music and other digital artifacts safe. Buy brand-name CDs and avoid making backup discs at the highest speed your drive can handle. Discs written at high speed are often harder to read. Store your backup discs in a cool, dark place. Jewel cases are probably better than sleeves in binders, although there's some disagreement about that. No, you don't have to put CDs in the freezer - in fact, some engineers think that's a bad idea. Just avoid heat and direct light. Replace your backups every couple of years. It doesn't take that long to copy CDs, and even expensive discs are only half a buck or so. The real investment is your time. Also, use write-once CD-Rs instead of rewritable disks (CD-RW), which don't last as long. For safe long-term storage, consider a magnetic tape backup unit - which Gerecke's recommends for businesses. They start at less than $200 for 20-gigabyte internal models (you'll have to open your computer's case to install one). More money buys higher speed, more capacity or an external unit that connects to a USB or Firewire port and doesn't require messing around inside the computer. Just remember that tape is a slow and awkward medium. It's not nearly as popular as CDs or hard drives. So you may have trouble finding a compatible unit to read your tapes 15 or 20 years down the road. Also, although magnetic tape stays good for a long time, it won't last forever, either. Store it under the same conditions as any archival medium - a cool, dry place. In addition to CDs and tape, consider additional forms of live backup. External hard drives are cheap - $100 to $150 for models that store up to 200 gigabytes of data. A good-size drive can back up several computers on a home network - and some come with one-touch backup software. Every few years, you can replace the drive. Considering the value of what it's holding, it's a bargain. Store copies of really important data at another site. As many Hurricane Katrina victims found out, having a copy of your data on a shelf in your home office doesn't help if your house is submerged. Or if there's a fire, or if a burglar cleans the place out. Put copies of critical discs in a safe deposit box, or ask a friend or relative to hold on to a set. This entire issue, by the way, is an unintended consequence of the digital age. Twenty-five years ago, the longevity of an image, song or motion picture was tied to the original medium - and there wasn't much we could do about it. Consider the family photo collection. Over the years, the most popular original photographic media have been Kodacolor negatives for prints and Kodachrome transparencies for slides and home movies. In the analog film world, that original image - negative or transparency - is always the best one that will ever exist. You've probably seen this if you've tried to copy an old photo without the negative. A photofinisher or desktop scanner can do the job from the print - but it won't look as good as the first print - and will never be as good as a print made from the original negative. Of course, negatives and slides can fade and change color if they're not properly stored. Now and then, filmmakers also produce substandard materials (many Kodacolor prints from the early 1970s have faded). Still, when my cousin recently had hundreds of old family slides scanned onto disc, I was astounded by 50-year-old Kodachrome images that looked as though they'd been snapped yesterday. Today, we're replacing film by dicing images into millions of little dots, or pixels, and recording them as a series of ones and zeroes on a computer-based medium. In the camera, that medium is a flash memory card. When we get home, we transfer the ones and zeros to our hard drives - an entirely different medium. Then, we make copies of those ones and zeroes on CD to preserve them (yet another medium) or send copies via e-mail to Aunt Rhoda, who stores them on her computer and passes them on to Cousin Becky and so on. What makes this revolutionary is that each of those images is exactly the same as the original. And so is any copy I make. With the right software - including the photo viewer built into Windows - I can display that picture on my screen in perfect detail or make a nearly perfect print, because each image is the original. Thus, we've divorced the photo from the film, as it were. The same goes for music, video, correspondence and financial data. Because we can make multiple perfect copies, it's easier to make backups. But that flexibility gives us more responsibility to make sure those copies will stand the test of time. E-mail Mike Himowitz at mike .himowitz@baltsun.com.

Where exactly is Pizza Express Jazz Club? I most likely will be in London on business the end April or the first week of May. I would like to go check out Andrew Hill if I’m there that week. Is there a web site for the club?

Open up the wallet. tower

The company I work for has an office in London, and I might have to travel there the beginning of May for a few days. I would have to make time if this does happen to go and see Andrew Hill.

Jackie's horn from the stage of the Iridium, May 27, 2004.

Just saddnes is all I am felling. Thanks Jackie all the great music you gave the world. You may be gone, but you're music will live till the end of time.

Here's a chance to see a legend. She's been at this for too many years to count. Anyone plan on checking her out either of these days? I'll be there for at least one show.

He could have been older too from what I read since he was already a nice size when found.

When we listen to a jazz record we tend to think there has been no cut and pasting going on behind the scenes. I am wondering do the artists and producers touch up tracks by cutting and splicing takes together. I am sure it has happened. One that does come to mine is a Lennie Tristano tune. I can't recall the tune, but Tristano's left hand is flying faster than I think anyone can play with the left hand. Makes me wonder if the tape was sped up.

Sylvester Stallone Sylvester the cat Tweety bird.

I will pick it up when I have some extra cash. Their music is great. Most likely worth getting.

<<<Not long ago, Kenny G put out a recording where he <<<overdubbed himself on top of a 30+ year old Louis Armstrong <<<record, the track "What a Wonderful World". With this <<<single move, Kenny G became one of the few people on earth <<<I can say that I really can't use at all - as a man, for his <<<incredible arrogance to even consider such a thing, and as <<<a musician, for presuming to share the stage with the <<<single most important figure in our music. Question: Pat, could you tell us your opinion about Kenny G - it appears you were quoted as being less than enthusiastic about him and his music. I would say that most of the serious music listeners in the world would not find your opinion surprising or unlikely - but you were vocal about it for the first time. You are generally supportive of other musicians it seems. Pat's Answer: Kenny G is not a musician I really had much of an opinion about at all until recently. There was not much about the way he played that interested me one way or the other either live or on records. I first heard him a number of years ago playing as a sideman with Jeff Lorber when they opened a concert for my band. My impression was that he was someone who had spent a fair amount of time listening to the more pop oriented sax players of that time, like Grover Washington or David Sanborn, but was not really an advanced player, even in that style. He had major rhythmic problems and his harmonic and melodic vocabulary was extremely limited, mostly to pentatonic based and blues-lick derived patterns, and he basically exhibited only a rudimentary understanding of how to function as a professional soloist in an ensemble - Lorber was basically playing him off the bandstand in terms of actual music. But he did show a knack for connecting to the basest impulses of the large crowd by deploying his two or three most effective licks (holding long notes and playing fast runs - never mind that there were lots of harmonic clams in them) at the key moments to elicit a powerful crowd reaction (over and over again). The other main thing I noticed was that he also, as he does to this day, played horribly out of tune - consistently sharp. Of course, I am aware of what he has played since, the success it has had, and the controversy that has surrounded him among musicians and serious listeners. This controversy seems to be largely fueled by the fact that he sells an enormous amount of records while not being anywhere near a really great player in relation to the standards that have been set on his instrument over the past sixty or seventy years. And honestly, there is no small amount of envy involved from musicians who see one of their fellow players doing so well financially, especially when so many of them who are far superior as improvisors and musicians in general have trouble just making a living. There must be hundreds, if not thousands of sax players around the world who are simply better improvising musicians than Kenny G on his chosen instruments. It would really surprise me if even he disagreed with that statement. Having said that, it has gotten me to thinking lately why so many jazz musicians (myself included, given the right "bait" of a question, as I will explain later) and audiences have gone so far as to say that what he is playing is not even jazz at all. Stepping back for a minute, if we examine the way he plays, especially if one can remove the actual improvising from the often mundane background environment that it is delivered in, we see that his saxophone style is in fact clearly in the tradition of the kind of playing that most reasonably objective listeners WOULD normally quantify as being jazz. It's just that as jazz or even as music in a general sense, with these standards in mind, it is simply not up to the level of playing that we historically associate with professional improvising musicians. So, lately I have been advocating that we go ahead and just include it under the word jazz - since pretty much of the rest of the world OUTSIDE of the jazz community does anyway - and let the chips fall where they may. And after all, why he should be judged by any other standard , why he should be exempt from that that all other serious musicians on his instrument are judged by if they attempt to use their abilities in an improvisational context playing with a rhythm section as he does? He SHOULD be compared to John Coltrane or Wayne Shorter, for instance, on his abilities (or lack thereof) to play the soprano saxophone and his success (or lack thereof) at finding a way to deploy that instrument in an ensemble in order to accurately gauge his abilities and put them in the context of his instrument's legacy and potential. As a composer of even eighth note based music, he SHOULD be compared to Herbie Hancock, Horace Silver or even Grover Washington. Suffice it to say, on all above counts, at this point in his development, he wouldn't fare well. But, like I said at the top, this relatively benign view was all "until recently". Not long ago, Kenny G put out a recording where he overdubbed himself on top of a 30+ year old Louis Armstrong record, the track "What a Wonderful World". With this single move, Kenny G became one of the few people on earth I can say that I really can't use at all - as a man, for his incredible arrogance to even consider such a thing, and as a musician, for presuming to share the stage with the single most important figure in our music. This type of musical necrophilia - the technique of overdubbing on the preexisting tracks of already dead performers - was weird when Natalie Cole did it with her dad on "Unforgettable" a few years ago, but it was her dad. When Tony Bennett did it with Billie Holiday it was bizarre, but we are talking about two of the greatest singers of the 20th century who were on roughly the same level of artistic accomplishment. When Larry Coryell presumed to overdub himself on top of a Wes Montgomery track, I lost a lot of the respect that I ever had for him - and I have to seriously question the fact that I did have respect for someone who could turn out to have such unbelievably bad taste and be that disrespectful to one of my personal heroes. But when Kenny G decided that it was appropriate for him to defile the music of the man who is probably the greatest jazz musician that has ever lived by spewing his lame-ass, jive, pseudo bluesy, out-of-tune, noodling, wimped out, fuÇked up playing all over one of the great Louis's tracks (even one of his lesser ones), he did something that I would not have imagined possible. He, in one move, through his unbelievably pretentious and calloused musical decision to embark on this most cynical of musical paths, sh!t all over the graves of all the musicians past and present who have risked their lives by going out there on the road for years and years developing their own music inspired by the standards of grace that Louis Armstrong brought to every single note he played over an amazing lifetime as a musician. By disrespecting Louis, his legacy and by default , everyone who has ever tried to do something positive with improvised music and what it can be, Kenny G has created a new low point in modern culture - something that we all should be totally embarrassed about - and afraid of. We ignore this, "let it slide", at our own peril. His callous disregard for the larger issues of what this crass gesture implies is exacerbated by the fact that the only reason he possibly have for doing something this inherently wrong (on both human and musical terms) was for the record sales and the money it would bring. Since that record came out - in protest, as insignificant as it may be, I encourage everyone to boycott Kenny G recordings, concerts and anything he is associated with. If asked about Kenny G, I will diss him and his music with the same passion that is in evidence in this little essay. Normally, I feel that musicians all have a hard enough time, regardless of their level, just trying to play good and don't really benefit from public criticism, particularly from their fellow players. but, this is different. There ARE some things that are sacred - and amongst any musician that has ever attempted to address jazz at even the most basic of levels, Louis Armstrong and his music is hallowed ground. To ignore this trespass is to agree that NOTHING any musician has attempted to do with their life in music has any intrinsic value - and I refuse to do that. (I am also amazed that there HASN'T already been an outcry against this among music critics - where ARE they on this?????!?!?!?!, magazines, etc.). Everything I said here is exactly the same as what I would say to Gorelick if I ever saw him in person. and if I ever DO see him anywhere, at any function - he WILL get a piece of my mind and (maybe a guitar wrapped around his head.)

I've never seen him live, but at $75 to $100 I will most likely pass. Anyone going to see him at birdland this summer? OSCAR PETERSON Tuesday, August 22 through Sunday, August 27 - *Special show times 8 &11pm Music Charge: $75 General Admission; $100 VIP first two rows.

I guess is costs too much to have so many titles in a record company's catalog. Some titles have to meet the ax.

I can think of two 1. Henry Grimes 2. Teddy Charles Would Horace Silver fit into this? He is retired.

I am stuck at level 4. I can't manage to make it. http://www.winterrowd.com/maze1.swf

All the best man.

Well I ended up getting this anyway. I should have listen to the board members. The sound isn't too good. Oh well, live and learn.

I ordered some CD's 10 days ago, but they never arrived. I called them up today. The woman told me there is no way to track a USPS package only UPS. She checked and said I don't have those disc anymore but you can select different ones to replace them or you can select store credit. I selected new ones and they are on their way. If I was not honest, I could do this again at sometime. I could call and say my order never arrived. Maybe it was my voice that sounded so honest.

Maybe it did.

Sometimes pipes spring leaks and water gets out, and I guess somehow this session found it's way out of the pipes.

Anyone ever see the German anti smoking commercial where a whole office is out on a balcony smoking? One worker starts to walk towards the balcony to join the rest of his co-workers for a smoke. As he gets near the entrance to the balcony, it breaks loose from the building and falls a good 20 stories to the street.