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Yes, that's One on One: http://www.amazon.com/One-Stephane-Grappelli/dp/B000000XTB/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1331312654&sr=1-1 I've never even heard of this album. Maybe I should pick it up. I have a few other late Grappelli CDs and LPs. I'll try to recommend one or two tonight...

This must have been pretty upsetting to the passengers, but I can't help but think of the Twilight Zone with Shatner: Full story here

I agree re: the downloads but am not so concerned on the liners (a pdf would work for me). I'm not on Facebook either but emailed stating my preference and received a "Thank You" from Sue within a couple of minutes! Yeah, same here. Pretty wild! I went ahead and replied to her email that I thought the best strategy was Mosaic first, then digital download in 3-5 years. I'm too lazy to do it, but someone could set up a similar poll here and email her the results in a month. It definitely would be more representative of potential buyers than Facebook.

I've gone back and forth on this issue of what is basically the right to unlimited, hurtful speech. The freedom of speech is not completely unlimited anywhere, but it is certainly more unfettered in the U.S. than in Canada or Europe where there are more explicit boundaries put in place. I definitely used to be in the "let 'er rip" camp, but the sheer toxicity and lack of consequences of internet speech leaves me depressed and numbed. Beyond the problem of echo chambers ramping up the feelings on both sides of the aisle, I am starting to think that there is a "broken window" effect, i.e. the more nasty comments that float about, the more people do feel it is acceptable to wallow around in the mud and the more hateful people become, i.e. people who were somewhat on the fence actually become less tolerant and more hateful of outsiders. I expect there is research on this, and I will perhaps dig into it a bit. Basically, I no longer subscribe to the dictum that the only answer to hateful free speech is more (illuminating) free speech, because I am starting to believe that the hateful free speech is actually adding to the level of hatred in the U.S. Now will we ever see a change in the U.S.? Doubtful, given how many free speech absolutists there are in the judiciary. And I don't think there is any easy remedy, other than far more effective monitoring of the internet and a push for anti-bullying in all spheres of social life. But I think it is a problem that will continue to worsen and coarsen public and private life in the U.S. Of course, I've given up on the U.S. anyway.

For those not willing to get the Mercury Living Presence box, there is a 4 CD set of Byron Janis playing piano concertos on Brilliant: Janis-Brilliant As far as I can tell, these are a repackaging of material from 4 or 5 of those Living Presence CDs. There was a bit of a heated exchange in the comments on the topic of royalties, but according to Brilliant, they did license the material and paid royalties. Anyway, for completists, you'd be better off with the Mercury box anyway, but in my case, I had too much of the material in other forms and was no longer in the market for that particular doorstop set (though I have gotten a few others recently).

Ok, I finally wrapped up Ellison's Juneteenth (March 1, not Feb 29 as planned). I just found it really disappointing. In many ways, it is Ellison grappling with and perhaps trying to one-up Faulkner. Ok, you want stream-of-consciousness, I'll give you an entire book alternating between two characters' streams-of-consciousness (one of whom lies dying in a hospital bed). Almost nothing happens after the first chapter, they just delve into their separate pasts. Maybe, just maybe, I could excuse that, but we never get a plausible explanation for how the former child minister could have gone on to become an early film maker -- and then become a Senator from New England! Certainly the impression one has of New England is that it is relatively insular, particularly in regards to its politicians, and that a complete unknown with a checkered past is going to become a Senator? And that his entirely political platform was to engage in race-baiting? When New England (particularly in the early part of the 20th C) pretty much defined itself by its abolitionist past? Sorry, Ralph, this is weak-ass stuff that makes no sense at all. And then when we finally see a little bit of the story of how Hickman "inherits" Bliss, who will become the boy preacher, it also has no internal logic. To me this book failed on basically every level, though there were occasional passages of interesting writing. I don't really think Ellison could have salvaged it had he lived, since the basic premise and set-ups just don't make sense.

Well, in terms of gathering marketing info, I am firmly in the other camp. I am not interested in bulky box sets and don't appreciate the ones I do have since they make it hard to store on my shelves (irregular shapes and so forth). If it was the difference between a large box set and a slimline thing or even a double-CD case that would hold 3 or 4 CDs, I would go for the latter every time, esp. if it kept the prices down. My budget is far more constrained than I am used to, and there is no way I would take a flyer on a $50 set anyway. However, in the larger scheme of things it doesn't matter as I am clearly not the target audience either (no longer any interest in free jazz at all).

It appears to be out of print, though some used copies are circulating. And typically enough, there is a 2008 version from RJR that clearly takes this mastering as the starting point and then adds some unrelated tracks to fill up Disc 2. It's hard to know what Membran did in this case for this release.

We've had this discussion before. The internet is your friend. Or maybe it was your friend before the Feds threw the book at Kim Dotcom -- and quite a bit of stuff vanished overnight. On the whole this is a positive -- rampant and blantant piracy of that nature cannot be justified. Maybe for some people the stakes raised just to the point where they would rather pay for a PD copy (50 year cutoff is still the law in Canada! -- probably for only another few years) than 8 to 10 times as much for the legit product.

Four more box sets from RCA (most fairly recent) Guarneri Quartet Plays Mozart String Quartets -- it looks like quintets 1-6 and quartets 14-19, so not a complete cycle. Mozart quartets+quintets Juilliard Quartet Plays Mozart String Quintets 1-6 and quartets 14-19, plus Clarinet quintet Mozart Quartets, quintets and clarinet quintet Leinsdorf with a Beethoven Symphony cycle Leinsdorf Stowoski Unfortunate typo* but it still shows up in searches. This appears to be a repackaging of the old RCA Stereo Collection (which I own), so I will pass. It is certainly possible they did a bit of remastering, but I can't justify buying this twice, even though I do like the space saving aspect of it. * It is the Stokowi Stereo Collection, according to Amazon. At the moment, it is actually cheaper for me to pre-order these on Amazon.ca, though I am basically only in the market for the Mozart. It doesn't look like I have either the Julliard or Guarneri, and I am not sure which set is of more interest. There is so much overlap between the two (and a fair bit of overlap with the Amadeus Quartet box set, though Quintet 1 and 2 are not on the Amadeus set). The price is low enough you could get both, but I am not that inclined to do so. In fact, at the moment, I probably should pass on both and just listen to the Amadeus set.

The Free World ended up being a very solid novel that sort of supplements some of the Soviet fiction I was reading for a while (esp. Vladimir Voynovich). I'll probably go seek out his first book of short stories. I also brought Banville's The Infinities on the train with me. Unbelievably fey and unmoving (in the sense I actively disliked all the characters), I decided to abandon this after the first chapter. Banville is definitely not my kind of writer. I actually found the same with Nabokov, though there are a remaining few of his novels I will probably force myself to finish.

In a non-sports context, this describes my situation. A lot of work situations where I produced but wasn't really "making it" in part because the incentives lay with the consultants that could generate work, not just complete it. Now I am in a situation where the pressure to sell is non-existent, and I can focus solely on improving products. It's like night and day.

To me this is awfully tempting, as I don't think I have any of the material. However, I am willing to wait a bit and find out from others how it sounds. I suspect it will be good enough for my ears.

I have no problem with people buying entire albums and often they do. But no, I don't think you need to hear the entirety of a live session, even though most jazz fans do prefer it that way. And no matter the intentions of the artist, there may be songs/tracks that you just don't like and skip every time (I have two I dislike on a recent Benny Golson CD), and I think that is a perfectly acceptable way to listen. In many ways, it was the CD that really issued in this way of listening, the simplification of skipping songs (far simpler and more predictable and less potentially damaging than moving the needle on an LP) rather than MP3s per se.

Frankly that strikes me as pretentious hooey on the part of the artists. The number of albums that HAVE to be listened to as a unified suite is remarkably small. Once the music is released into the cruel world, it is up to each listener to receive it as he or she chooses, not necessarily as the artist intended. I think someone on another thread was pointing out that the attention span of the typical person with regards to music was 3-4 minutes, in other words single-length, and that this hasn't changed much, if at all, from the early rock n' roll days.

Speaking from personal experience, I have to say that the resale value of CDs is declining to the point where it no longer figures into my calculations of buying a CD vs. downloading. I expect this will only get worse with time.

5 Buster Williams Live at the Montreux Jazz Festival 1999 TCB spinecut 2 Dom Um Romao Lake of Perseverance JSR 10 Various Artists Cult Cargo: Salsa Boricua De Chicago Numero Group Thanks for looking. Eric

Hello all, I've been struggling to get established in Vancouver and things are finally a bit more under control. I have the following CDs for sale. AFAIK, none of them are cut-outs, though in some cases the cases are cracked, so let me know if you need them replaced (or alternatively ship without cases). The CDs themselves are near-mint with one or two exceptions noted below. I really don't have a good idea of the cost of shipping from Canada. I will tentatively set it as $5 for 1-3 CDs to Canada and the US, and $6 for 4+ CDs to Canada and the US (box sets will be at cost).* Overseas shipping, I will have to go check and provide a quote. I'll probably be listing more over the coming weeks. Paypal or Amazon gift certificates are the preferred method of payment, but we can look into other arrangements. Thanks for looking. I'll be in Portland much of this weekend, so it will take longer than usual to respond to PMs. (Maybe go ahead and leave a reply after you PM.) Eric 5 Cannonball Adderley Love, Sex And The Zodiac BGP 5 Dave Brubeck London Flat London Sharp Telarc 7 Giorgio Buratti - Jazz Forms For Export ITJ 8 Frank Foster Manhattan Fever BN Conn 10 The Tony Fruscella & Brew Moore Quintet. The 1954 Unissued Atlantic Session Fresh Sounds 6 Coleman Hawkins Saxes Inc./Trombone Scene Lonehill HOLD 6 Milt Jackson Statements/Jazz n' Samba Impulse 2-fer 10 Stan Kenton City of Glass Capitol 6 Junior Mance Junior Mance Touch Jazz Lips 12 Art Pepper Unreleased Art, Vol. 5 - Stuttgart Widow's Taste 2 CDs cracks to CD case, CDs in great shape 8 Paul Quinichette Plays Quincy Jones/Moods Lonehill HOLD 7 Don Rendell Roarin' BGP HOLD 10 Don Rendell-Ian Carr Shades Of Blue/Dusk Fire BGO 2 CDs tiny scuff on Dusk Fire outside of playing area 10 Sahib Shihab & The Danish Radio Jazz Orchestra Oktav 8 Sonny Sitt Don't Call Me Bird Fresh Sounds 6 Sonny Stitt Plays Jimmy Giuffre Arrangements American Jazz Classics minor marks on CD not affecting play 8 Sonny Stitt Blows the Blues (+ The Hard Swing) Fresh Sounds 8 Various Artists Eccentric Soul: Nickel and Penny Labels Numero Group A few price drops so far. I'll try to list more CDs on Sunday after I am back from Portland. * I mean that I will leave shipping at these rates for now, but may update in the future if it is significantly more than this educated guess.

I wrapped up Banville's The Sea. Flashes of Ford Maddox Ford's The Good Soldier towards the end. Not sure I felt they were earned. In general, I wasn't particularly moved or even interested in this book. At least it was short. Pretty inconceivable that it won the Booker. I am enjoying David Bezmozgis's The Free World considerably more. This is a novel about the movement of Soviet Jews towards other countries in the late 1970s, primarily Israel, U.S. and Canada. The family at the heart of this novel is waiting out their time in Rome until they get clearance to enter Canada. Bezmozgis's own family chose this route (he resides in Toronto), though I don't know if this is lightly fictionalized version of his personal history or he just takes this migration as a starting point for inventing new characters out of whole cloth. I'm leaning towards the latter.

I was fortunately enough to see the Pacifica do the entire Shostakovich String Quartet cycle. It was incredible, and I picked up so much that I don't think I would have caught just listening to CDs; this was particularly true of #2 and #3. While most of these are on the cusp of 50 years, these string quartets are definitely worth investigating. I do think I like 13-15 the most. I'm partial to the Fitzwilliam String Quartet cycle, but the Emerson Quartet also has recorded the complete cycle. Pacifica is in the midst of recording them as well, but including an additional string quartet by one of Shostakovich's contemporaries: Soviet Experience 1. It will probably take a couple of years for them to wrap this project up.

Probably my favorite modern composer is Messiaen, who spans this 50 year period, though most of his better known compositions are over 50 years old. I never get tired of hearing Quartet for the End of Time. I've actually managed to see it live 3 times. It requires considerable control, particularly for the clarinet. Messiaen plays with unusual combinations of the 4 instruments throughout. As far as "postmodern" composers, I like some of the work of Osvaldo Golijov, including Ainadamar, which is a quasi-opera about the murder of playwright/poet Federico García Lorca. I really wanted to like the Kronos Quartet recording of The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind, but the volume kept swinging from ppp to fff, and my ears really can't bear that. Regardless if that was the composer's intentions, I won't listen more than once to pieces that do that.

They actually were touring last fall, and I (and my son) got to them in Chicago. Very nice concert in a terrific location (South Shore Cultural Center).

Last night was pretty bad. I only happened to catch Jennifer Hudson and then the Chris Brown/Foo Fighters/Deadmau$ event. Indeed it was so bad, that my wife, who watches pretty much all the awards shows, has decided she is done with the Grammys and will only watch the highlights on Youtube from now on. I guess the various Whitney tributes weren't too bad, but the "tribute" to Don Cornelius was offensive (Chris Brown) and worst of all boring. There was nothing even remotely approaching soul -- or even any danceable music during the Foo Fighters/Deadmau$ section. I'd heard some good things about Deadmau$, but that was just horrible.

Not to get too political, but how much of this can be attributed to state support, both directly to pay for the orchestras and indirectly to keep ticket prices down? I very much enjoy classical music concerts, but it is an elite activity and how much state support can be justified to prop up elite interests? You could say the same thing about theatre and museums. (Classical music and theatre both get vastly more support in Western Europe than in the US.) I would never say eliminate all support, but it is worth taking a step back and asking why it should be that the playing field is unbalanced in terms of state support between elite interests and mass interests. Is there actually something inherently better about these activities, or is it merely taste (and snobbishness) that has become encapsulated into official policy. (Here I am thinking of Bourdieu's Distiction, which is mostly about taste masquerading as something else.)