Muskrat Ramble

If you want to hear some Hardman on a Blakey album, check out Hard Drive (the one in my avatar). That's an absolutely smoking hard bop album that's unjustly obscure.

I think I'll save my $6000 for the never-ending string of Coltrane reissues, remasters, and repackagings

One of the great highlights of the Blakey discography. Go for it.

I know Mike certainly bent over backwards to make everyone feel at home, to his credit. Btw, until you've moderated a big board (which I have), you might not realize how hard it is to keep abreast of all the threads and make fair decisions that the majority can live with. Don't jump all over some guy when he makes a mistake; try to offer some polite constructive criticism. As for Mike commenting about someone being a twerp, that wasn't very classy for a moderator to do since he should set an example, but judging by the childish, obscene posts from the person in question, can you blame him? Sounds like Mike was excercising great restraint by merely saying "twerp." OTOH, it wasn't classy for a bunch of folks to suddenly appear over at AAJ when they rarely post there, act like there's some big emergency when their beloved Organissimo is down for a day (get a grip!), and then take off again only to badmouth AAJ over here after this latest incident. All this behavior is so childish, clubby, and self-congratulatory that it's really a sad commentary on the online jazz community. I know I won't be posting much here or at AAJ (except to help answer newbies' questions--it's good to contribute to community instead of tear it down) for some time after all this crap. That said, everyone take it easy.

I agree with Simon. What a lot of folks did by popping in at AAJ mainly/only to post in one thread about Organissimo being down temporarily (as if it's some big emergency when you can't log into a forum for a day!) and then leave again was quite rude. I can understand Mike being ticked off by that, though I doubt the way he's handled it is particularly helpful.

You're a lucky man! What wonderful music to discover. Beethoven never ceases to amaze me. I recently finished listening to all his symphonies again (Harnoncourt leading the COE on Teldec--brief review here) and once again found new things to appreciate, admire, and be moved by. Re: period instruments: in my experience, music up through the Classical/early Romantic periods almost always sounds better on period instruments and with period stylistic approaches. Modern instruments and performance practices too easily obscure the fine, crisp textures and rhythmic drive of those earlier musics. Baroque music in particular can sound too "clogged up" if played on modern instruments using heavy vibrato, etc. Leave the lush sonorities and romantic approach for Mahler and Zemlinsky

Ed, I understand where you're coming from and can respect that, but for me, it doesn't pay to get caught up emotionally in these forums or their attendant issues. That's part of the reason the loss of the BNBB was no great loss to me: we all seem to have found other places to discuss jazz quickly enough.

Won't stop me. I'm not chilled--though maybe shaken and stirred Some of you guys are getting too serious and melodramatic, methinks. Sure it is. This stuff all looks so petty and funny if you step back from it for a minute: everyone staking out their tiny corner of Internet turf and worrying what's being implied or said or not said about "their" board at another and so on. If you don't like a forum, just say, "Screw it" and quit visiting. Easy as pie. If enough people on the Net want to talk about jazz somewhere, they'll find a way. Witness the birth of this forum after the demise of the BNBB. This all smacks of kids arguing in the sandbox.

I just read about this tempest in a teapot. For clarification, Mike wrote in one of the relevant posts That strikes me as a questionable policy, to say the least, but in fairness it doesn't equal

None. I won't pay that much for a CD. Too many great ones at more reasonable prices out there. Now, US RVGs are a different matter

Great Kubrick film with Kirk Douglas. Check it out!

Sun Ra

Looks like BMG only has about half the Ella songbook sets. (They have the big complete box set, but that's only at full price.) Did they have the others already and sell out of those, or do you all expect them to get those in some day?

Ghost of Miles, thanks for the clearance updates. Please keep them coming.

Back to the topic at hand: one I really dig is Ron Carter's So What, with Kenny Barron and Lewis Nash. Technically it came out six years ago, but that's close enough. This one is hardly ground-breaking, but it's a fine example of straightforward, straight-ahead, urbane and elegant jazz. Plenty of fine musicianship, of course, and some neat little twists and surprises to keep things interesting. The engineer really captured Carter's bass beautifully, too, so you can really appreciate the details.

I just do not understand the relative lack of trombones in "modern" jazz, occasional stars like JJ Johnson notwithstanding. It's such a beautiful, expressive instrument in the right hands--"in the right hands" always being the key for any music.

Ditto. Why live in the past? It (both the past and the BNBB) doesn't exist anymore. The here-and-now does. The BNBB wasn't any Shangri-la anyway; like every Internet forum, it had its share of childish, annoying, or just plain stupid posts and posters. No great loss.

I already recommended that one on the first page of the thread Awesome discs! One of the Messengers' best live sets.

Danke, Ubu!

So ZYX is just the distributor of Fantasy discs in Germany and the sound quality would be equivalent to US discs? I notice that Amazon.de, for example, has two versions of the Live Trane box set: one listed as "Fan/Presti (ZYX)" and another as a US import from Pablo, which is rather more expensive (and more in line with the US prices for the set).

For me, despite its omissions and errors, AMG is more useful as a database than as a source of reviews. The latter, regardless of writer, often seem rather dry and perfunctory (in fact a lot of them just have a star rating and no text). Whatever you think of the reviewers' opinions in Penguin--and I tend to agree with them--their reviews generally seem more thoughtful and insightful, as if they've really spent some time with the recordings in question. Their reviews are certainly better written on the whole and more fun to read.

I'm not sure you mean it this way, but that sounds almost like saying, "If we had all been good boys and girls, Mommy and Daddy wouldn't have sent us to our room." Ideally, the online jazz community will have forums, such as this one, AAJ, etc., that cater to community needs and not vice versa. I for one won't be kowtowing to Blue Note any time soon. The customer is always right, after all (That said, if you're referring to CD-R trading on the BNBB, I don't engage in or support that myself.) As for BN the corporate entity, I feel neither love or hate towards them and certainly no sense of loyalty at all. They're just a company. I buy jazz albums I like, whoever releases them. Of late, it looks like BN has putting out a bunch of uninteresting crossover stuff, so they don't get my buck, at least where those albums are concerned.

I know the coolest album title: Orgasm, by Alan Shorter (brother of Wayne)

Speaking of AMG reviews, as an alternative or complement to AMG I strongly recommend the Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD. It's not as comprehensive since it focuses on in-print releases, but it is huge nonetheless, and the writing tends to be more intelligent, elegant, insightful, witty, and provocative. Great fun to just browse and discover new artists and discs, too.

No clue, but "Dorham's Epitaph" from Whistle Stop would be good if you want to go the elegiac, autumnal route. "Shake your Bon Bon" by Ricky Martin if you want one last laugh on the way down/up