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I believe it is 4. They have a few other 8 album sets and they were all 4 CDs. No idea about sound quality, but it is hard to beat that price for the Gryce!

Fred Mertz has his own Wikipedia entry (lol), which states: "Eventually, Fred and Ethel retired and bought a brownstone apartment in New York City. In 1942, Lucy and Ricky moved into the brownstone apartment building where Fred, Ethel, Lucy, and Ricky quickly became friends. Fred's best friend, Ricky Ricardo, and Ricky's wife, Lucy, live in the apartment house." Here the link: Fred I'm not disputing they owned the place, I simply don't remember it but I'm sure I never saw all the episodes. I think Fred was business manager for Ricky's band, in addition to having had an earlier vaudeville career, or something like that. Yeah, I love how sometimes TV episodes (Chuckles) not just the shows themselves get their own wiki page. Well, wiki certainly has its finger on the pulse of what matters.

Seriously, these are historic concerts, and you prefer not to see footage of these legends playing? A CD won't sound better than a DVD (except if your DVD player is sub-par). Well, I agree with Brad. I am simply never going to sit down and watch this even if I had it on DVD. If I had it on CD, I would listen to it.

Just finished both of these. The Hungry Tide is really a solid novel. What makes it quite special is that he shows people coming from a number of different viewpoints sympathetically -- scientists/ecologists, managers working within the system, simple fishermen, villagers striving to better themselves -- and showing (at least implicitly) the positives and negatives of these different ways of life. It's a fairly non-judgemental work, though there are a couple of nasty personalities that come into play. I'd say Ghosh hits his stride (for me) about 50 pages in. By contrast, The Studhorse Man is pretty hilarious from page 1. I really don't know why this isn't better known, as it is one of the really great Canadian novels (I guess there's your trouble). The novel is another riff on the Ulysses story (as the scholarly intro to the latest edition points out at length -- I would probably just skip this), with plenty of inversions. It's actually probably a riff of Joyce riffing on Homer, if you get my drift. But that doesn't take away from the fun.

I thought I would enjoy and watch these DVDs far more than I actually do. It turns out that I just don't have that much interest in watching jazz on the telly. I got Jazz Icons 1-3 and the shrinkwrap is still on most of them. I only got 2 single DVDs from the 4th set, and it turns out I don't miss the others. The only one here I would actually buy and then watch is the Griffin* -- I'm sure the others are great, but I'm sick of (and a little ashamed of) buying stuff I don't actually use. So I think this is no longer the set/series for me. * And indeed, if this concert has been released on CD, then that would be my preferred format.

I don't recall that (that he owned the place) but I do remember he is generally portrayed as a bit of a miser, though he usually goes along with the crazy scheme of the day.

Blimey, can't help but compare Allen's opening salvo with the overwhelming content of subsequent posts. I don't see much rock and roll being discussed here. True, but he also explicitly stated that he was coming here more for the jazz-side of things and implied he was going elsewhere for rock and roll opinions.

All I know is if anybody starts booting any boots in this boot-free forum, he's gonna feel Larry's boot in the back of his bootin' head when he gets back. Just sayin'

I did get the Ebo Taylor listed upthread and the Sorry Bamba CD. Towards the end of summer, I managed to see Ballake Sissoko and Vincent Segal play together in Chicago (took my son also). That was a great experience. They have recorded a CD of their duets called Chamber Music (I think I just dl'ed this one). Finally, I guess DG was promoting this recently, but I got it as an Amazon dl -- Contreband Mentality by les Frères Smith. Definitely worth checking out. If I understand their back story, they are a bit of an African music collective based in Paris.

I'd agree with Riley, but also John Cage Steve Reich For the later 60s Love Sly and the Family Stone

I think ensemble comedy has evolved way beyond 'I Love Lucy' in the last several decades! See 'All in the Family', 'The Odd Couple', 'M*A*S*H', and 'Frasier' as some of the more shining examples. Well, it's all about taste, but as far as ensemble chemistry, I would take Lucy over All in the Family any day. Now Dick van Dyke Show vs. I Love Lucy -- that's a much closer call. To each his own, I guess! Carroll O'Connor was brilliant. Lucille Ball and Dick Van Dyke were just goofy, IMNSHO. For me, despite knowing where the show was coming from and the "growth" demonstrated by the Archie character by the end of the series, I still find myself turned off by the bellowing, blow-hard Archie is in so many of the episodes. Cruel put-downs of his son-in-law and berating his daughter and even his wife at times? Just not feeling it. My guess is I won't ever watch another rerun of All in the Family in this life at least whereas I frequently catch the I Love Lucy Show.

I think ensemble comedy has evolved way beyond 'I Love Lucy' in the last several decades! See 'All in the Family', 'The Odd Couple', 'M*A*S*H', and 'Frasier' as some of the more shining examples. Well, it's all about taste, but as far as ensemble chemistry, I would take Lucy over All in the Family any day. Now Dick van Dyke Show vs. I Love Lucy -- that's a much closer call.

Speaking of Kleinzahler, who has come up a couple of times on this forum, I've been kind of impressed by the Poetry Foundation website, which is a pretty interesting resource. Here's their page on Kleinzahler: Poetry Foundation. Sadly many of the audio tracks of poets reading their own works are not available outside the U.S., but most folks here can still listen in.

So I reread Simic's Master of Disguises and decided I liked the 4th section a bit more the second time around -- it actually had some of the surreal touches of his earlier collections. I find it interesting that we dwell on some of the same imagery -- keys to lost locks, broken bottles, etc. -- though these are not that unique in poetry of course. Then I checked out That Little Something, which was published a few years prior to Master of Disguises. Not as good -- I only connected with a few of the poems. I think in general his collections from the 1990s are the best: Hotel Insomnia, A Wedding in Hell, Walking the Black Cat, maybe even Night Picnic from 2001. Maybe there is too much of a sameness to his recent work, but when he tries to depart too much from his earlier style that doesn't work as well and people keep asking him for more poems like the earlier ones. I think it is a real problem for artists who kick around for long enough (another reason why it is better -- from a legacy perspective -- to only be on the scene for a relatively short while -- Rimbaud or Jackson Pollack). One equivalent from the art world might be Giorgio de Chirico who tried to make a major shift in his painting style but was roundly attacked for it. One odd thing at the library today. I have been reading Robert Kroetsch's late poetry. The Snowbird Poems -- not too bad. The Hornbooks of Rita K. -- kind of a long and tedious metawork where the author is commenting on short poems by a poet (Rita K.) who has vanished. For completists only. Anyway, it turns out that one of the fairly recent Galway Kinnell books has been catalogued in the midst of the Kunitz's books (so even if someone like me filed it properly, eventually it would be reshelved into its proper, i.e. wrong location). The librarian just sort of threw up his hands and said that sometimes the Dewey decimal system was off. Frankly, that strikes me as unlikely. I think it is more likely that when the book came through, someone on staff put the wrong sticker on it -- and maybe they have a Kunitz book shelved with Kinnell. It's awfully annoying when librarians act as if they are completely helpless to fix errors (and this isn't the first time). When I worked at a library (many, many long years ago), we wouldn't have been quite so quick to admit defeat.

While I don't know the ins and outs, I can't imagine that it would be worth pressing 300 or 500 LPs. That strikes me as real money. Personally, I am 60% CDs, 40% mp3s, but that is mostly because in many cases, you can get used CDs for next to nothing. Since you aren't gigging and selling CDs, you probably shouldn't press many this time around. I wouldn't have any problem just with MP3s.

Yeah. I'm finding that out. I think it was already problematic, and now that the postal workers union was basically broken by the PM (shades of Reagan and the air traffic controllers), service is even worse.

What do you base your assumption on that "99% of the people here own the material in various forms"? ... I think 99% of the people on the forum have some of it (like "Body and Soul") but to have all of it? 10-20% maybe. Even if you have the Affinity box, the Mosaic appears to cover more material. Anyway, I think it is a great looking set, and I will pick it up, despite some overlap. Might be my last Mosaic for some time actually. My U.S. mailing address is going away in early Jan. I guess it isn't that much more to ship to Canada, but it's still a disincentive. Well, nothing lasts forever.

I probably have a fair bit of this, but mostly from PD sources. Between the improved sonics and the discography/booklet, this is a must-get for me. I'll probably pre-order but depends on finances at the time.

So there was a little snag in terms of the Giulini in Chicago (DG), but Amazon replaced a copy that was lost in the mail. Both are quite nice, but in terms of the performances I am far more interested in the recordings with Chicago (than LA). The repertoire is a bit more adventurous at least relatively so. In the Chicago box, you have Dvorak Symponies 8 and 9, Schubert Symphonies 4, 8, and 9, Prokofiev #1 and Mahler #9. In the LA box, you have Beethoven #3, 5 and 6, Brahms Symphonies 1 and 2, Schumann #3 and Tchaikovsky #6. All pretty much mainstream canon, but the Chicago contents still grab me a bit more. I was hoping that the Melos Ensemble box would get here this week, but it is looking like next week for that one.

I know. Most of the movies I've looked up have been "DVD only." Not bad for a dying medium. Are you saying DVD's are dying because of Blu-Ray discs or is it due to other means of access, e.g., streaming, or a combo of the two? I've noticed lots of discount DVDs, quite a few of which I've copped, because I prefer tangible access, e.g., disc, notes, cover art, extra features only available on a 2nd disc, etc. Visual fidelity is excellent, a feature of which I suspect there exists the proverbial law of diminishing returns on the significantly pricier Blu-Ray editions. I know people who have switched have been really impressed by Blu-Ray. I'm not convinced it is worth it to me, esp. given the quality of my TV and player. I think most exec. are thinking that streaming is the way of the future, though it seems the fidelity is so spotty. On the other hand, MP3 downloads (legal or mostly not) have more or less crushed CD sales, and they probably assume DVDs are headed the same way.

And maybe he feels, justly in my opinion, that there is a world of difference between trading CDRs or tapes of what are obvious bootlegs and a CD from an actual label purchased through Amazon. I personally don't feel it is my responsibility to call up each label and ask if they paid the artist and/or the artist's estate.

This is certainly my impression. You try to have a discussion with someone about the underwhelming selection of streaming content on Netflix, and they get all defensive -- but look at the huge number of TV shows and 80s movies you can watch. Weird. Since most people are mostly interested in recent films and whether they can stream them, it seems perfectly legit to point out that Netflix isn't doing that well in this area, and my impression is that they will probably be even worse after their current contracts expire.

For me, it would be someone like Eric Alexander, esp. if he is playing with Harold Mabern. I've seen this combo 3 or so times.

I'm much worse with DVDs than CDs. That said, there is a lot of my recent classical music splurges I haven't listened to. As I was preparing for the move, I came across at least 10 jazz CDs still in shrink-wrap (odd because I usually at least unwrap them). And several Mosaic sets where half the CDs are still wrapped. I will make a point of addressing that at least when they show up (should be Wed. that the delivery guys unload my boxes). On massive box set that I did get through was the Jazz in Paris box (back when it was only 75 CDs). I've listened to every CD at least twice -- I remember since this was a bit of a mission of mine while I was doing final revisions on my dissertation. Now whether it was quality listening is a different story. But honestly, most of my listening is basically background listening, which in itself begs the question of why I need so much variety...