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Not sure what the price was back in Feb., but with some careful navigation you can now get the 1925-2005 version for $20 or 1925-2008 for $40. I opted for the first case. Still sort of pondering whether the (last) update DVD is worth it for 2005-2008, but at $20 the answer is probably no. Now a book just of the Seymour Hersh investigations beyond 2005, that would be worth it. Looks like his Chain of Command was published in 2004, so it stops short (not that I shouldn't get it anyway -- if my blood pressure can tolerate it, that is). BTW, there is a coupon for 15% off anything at the site (probably good for about a month): CATV515 and here is one for 20% (through Friday Oct. 2) but it may only activate if you have bought previously: CLEANUP20 Shipping is still a bit steep as noted.

Well, they got 6 of 7 right in my last order, but somehow the warehouse scrambled some digits and I got Johnny Cash instead of Sonny Stitt. Despite my calling, and then sending along a letter explaining the situation along with the return, they proceeded to send me the Cash back. At this point, I'm through with them. I had nearly all the OJCs I wanted anyway, and I need to cut way back on music purchases, so it's not a difficult decision.

See you keep over-egging the pudding. I can easily imagine nearly all Beatles albums without Ringo's vocal contributions, and I vastly prefer them that way. If I am close enough to the player, I skip over Ringo's features with only a couple of exceptions.

Sounds like something that would have come out in Astounding or Analog (maybe even one of their best of annuals). I doubt it would have been Asimov. It does sound vaguely familiar, and I'll see if anything comes up. You could ask these guys: http://www.outofthecradle.net/forums/viewt...asc&start=0 (I can't get their search working)

Please explain. The fiasco that was The Complete Fillmore West 1969, that was released a couple of years ago. Sold out quickly, people make a killing off it on ebay, record company "forget the customer, we won't print any more." so everyone buys up a ton of the sets to sell on ebay. Why is Apple going down this road anyway? Just print all the mono boxes that people want, why this limited run stuff to begin with? I think I read that there is no longer an upper limit on the number sold, but they will still be available in a fairly narrow window for ordering. Still a bit dumb, but anyway I am pretty sure that my order for the mono box from Amazon will go through.

Just listening to this today. Jelly Roll was quite the story teller. It's like the pre-cursor to Behind the Music (or maybe a Benny Golson concert ). Talk a lot, play a couple of tunes, talk some more, repeat for approx. 8 hours. I think one disc at a time is the way to go.

I'm in pretty much the same position as last year. If anyone here knows anything about academics, it is that the bottom fell out of the academic job market and hiring for 2010 looks even worse. I am moving closer and closer to going to half-time at work and take the rest of the time to work on a non-fiction book and some articles. However, I did manage to finish a project - a 90 page play. (Now that it is done, I can afford to spend a bit more time here after a long lay-off.) Some actors I know will be giving it a reading soon to help me polish it. Then I don't know. I suppose try to get it produced locally. I have a couple other significant projects, including the proverbial novel in a drawer, that I would like to finish up. I'm hoping the inspiration from actually finishing a project will carry over for a while at any rate. Eric

A few clunkers lately. Now to a certain extent, this doesn't surprise me, since I am working through a stack of paperbacks I am pretty sure I will give away when I am through (trying to reclaim some shelf space). But it can be a bit tiring. Expiration Date by Tim Powers One of only a handful of novels I've stopped reading midway through. It's a ghost story, but more specifically about living people that go around and try to snort up ghosts. This is preposterous, but ok. Then he adds more unusual ground rules, such as pre-adolescents can't absorb ghosts and then they carry around the undigested ghost "inside." Pushing the envelope but ok. This kid gets into a stressful situation, and the ghost emerges and creates a flesh shell around the boy while it (the ghost) goes Rambo and takes on one of the villains -- and eats a dog in the process. Ok, stop, just stop. This is stupid. There have to be half a dozen better ways to extricate the boy from the situation without completely violating a dozen rules of physics (like the instaneous creation of flesh). It struck me that the Onion had it right, as always: Sci-Fi Writer Attributes Everything Mysterious To 'Quantum Flux' http://www.theonion.com/content/news/sci_f...iter_attributes A writer that just keeps adding one inplausible thing after another without having any stable ground rules is not one I want to read. 'Nuff said. Platitudes by Trey Ellis A very sadly dated exploration of Black literature from the late '80s. Basically, an experimental (male) Black writer is getting feedback from a feminist Black author, who rewrites his chapters in her own voice. So the book zigzags between these two disparate styles. It should surprise no one that the two authors meet and "get it on" as the ending to the book. Highly recommended by Ishmael Reed, which probably tells you everything you need to know. It is very short, however, so I will finish it up and give it away. I've also been reading some of the shorter fiction of Stephan Zweig (put out by Pushkin Press). Some I think is ok, but I'll never be a huge, huge fan. His preoccupations are just so different. Maybe works that are so "interior" and psychological fare worse than ones that are more action driven when social mores change over time. It's a little like watching someone raised on a steady diet of Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther try to cope with the late Twentieth Century. And there is no question that suicide plays a huge role in Zweig's fiction, as well as his actual life.

There was a bit of a feature on Empirical's new CD Out 'n' In on BBC a week ago. I caught part of it and was pretty intrigued. Anyone else heard much about this CD? The CD doesn't release until a bit later in the month, but it can be ordered or downloaded from the Naim website: http://www.naimlabel.com/recording-naimcd139.aspx This is the same label that has the Charlie Haden Private Collection and some other things. They seem to be doing it right -- offering the CD, or MP3 or Wave or FLAC files (all formats with digital art) at different price points. I would definitely like more labels to move in this direction, which gives me an extra incentive to download from them.

I managed to snag this at Reckless Records -- used no less! According to Amazon, it doesn't even hit the US for another month. I had actually gone to Reckless to pick up Brubeck's The Riddle after some on the board were praising it. I also knew from their website that they had Abbey Road remastered -- used. It was still there when I went in, so I buckled and got that as well.

But if part of the attraction of these sets in the first place is that they are limited editions, I would think that Mosaic would, and should, do everything they can to ensure that they remain so. Otherwise they'll have to change their sales pitch to, kind of limited. Well, part of the attraction to some group of fans -- and of more importance to speculators. The limited edition aspect of Mosaic is of no interest to me at all. However, I understand/accept that they would not have been given the rights to the vast majority of their sets if there wasn't some kind of a limit.

Correct. I get the impression that posters here forget that. That's different from whether they could sell FLACs going forward. Furthermore, EMI (or at least the pressing plant it subcontracted to) clearly violated Mosaic's agreement with regards to the Selects and big boxes by destroying the masters to sets that were still under license. I find it fairly incredible that Mosaic had such a weak contract that they apparently get no compensation from this or at the very least cannot force the pressing plant to create new masters. Under those circumstances, I would certainly have my lawyers approach EMI and say that one way to make Mosaic whole would be to allow FLAC sales of this material during the remainder of the license period. In fact, the longer they take to attempt such a thing, the more likely that the holier-than-thou jazz blogs will start offering the stuff for free on the basis that there is no legal way to purchase the material anyway.

I'm leaning towards getting the Mono Box and then some of the individual Stereo remasters: the Beatles (possibly) Abbey Road Let it Be (possibly) Past Masters (possibly) I'm not interested enough in Yellow Submarine to bother with it, and probably won't bother with Past Masters since the mono material is in the Mono box. Is The Beatles best heard in mono or stereo? I've heard that the stereo mix is the one that the Beatles spent more time on. Edit: From one of the earlier posts, yes it is clear that anything I'd want from the Past Masters set is in the Mono Box and even the important Yellow Submarine songs are there too. The interesting thing is that if you go to Amazon and buy during this initial frenzy the cost of the CDs are lower than the typical retail price of the old CDs. I guess the only remaining question is whether I go ahead and get The Beatles double album remastered in stereo.

As of right now, DG has at least one copy of the Curtis Amy, so if you think Mosaic will run out -- or you were going to put in a big DG order, you might try that route.

Well, this may end up in its own thread, but really WTF!?! As it happens, I do have nearly all these Selects, and certainly all the ones that interested me, but this on top of the whole back-order fiasco makes me really wonder how much longer Mosaic can go on.

Well, what a huge disappointment. I don't have particularly strong sports allegiances, and mostly pull a bit for Chicago teams, except when it comes to hockey where the 'Wings are my team. I realize they won it recently, but I really thought they would pull it off again. I guess they just didn't have enough gas in the tank at the end there. It just seems like one more kick in the shins for Michigan.

In an interview, Mr. Scott said he'd never taken the subway except maybe once or twice when he was so drunk he didn't know what he was doing. An exaggeration, perhaps. However, shooting the subway for a film, mostly in one station and then CGI'ing most of the rest, is not the same as riding the subway and having any understanding of what that feels like and entails. The city is cleaner for better and worse, but that still doesn't mean the film needs to treat the city as no more than a video game background. I certainly have no intention of watching this version.

I would think so. Unless you count Lassie's ever changing owners. Collies must live well into their 40s. Whoops -- could this be... Anyway, there are certainly longer revamps or retreads, sort of like the Lassie. I was thinking Battlestar Gallactica, Gallactica 80 and Battlestar Gallactica. (Or Star Trek for that matter.) But this seems more like Family Guy, where it was cancelled, then brought back with essentially all the original producer/writers/voice talent, so it is the same show and not a remake. And I do think the layoff for Futurama was longer than for FG. I figure it might take a little while to hit their stride (the DVDs were quite good but not amazingly good) but with 26 episodes they can really get back into the swing of it.* *Please don't suck, please don't suck, please don't suck.

Like most things, there are young reviewers and old fart reviewers, and I side with the old farts on most things. Here's Ebert's review: http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.d...VIEWS/906109994 If you like video games, you'll probably like the new movie. If you like cities and film as film, you will prefer the original. Slate perhaps had a review where they talked about how Tony Scott has never taken the subway in his life, and it shows. There is one semi-clever twist from the original, but otherwise it just seems a completely pointless remake from a guy who doesn't understand or care about cities. Frankly, they might as well have shot it on the new LA rail system, and then at least you would have had more above-ground shots of trying to get the train up to Speed-like speeds.

So my wife told me this, and I was skeptical, as it sounded like a dream, but apparently Futurama is coming back (with an order for 26 new episodes!): http://www.gotfuturama.com/ This is mostly because the new DVDs sold so well (so I told her it was all worth pre-ordering every one). Most likely they will appear first on Comedy Central, but if Fox looks at them at likes them, they could actually air on Fox. (Given how Fox kept pre-empting it, frankly Comedy Central is probably better. There just doesn't seem to be the same stigma of being on a smaller channel anymore.) Anyway, very very excited. Is this be the longest layover for a cancelled show to come back from?

I guess one question is whether we expect other people to play these "tunes," and for the most part I wouldn't expect it with the originals from Osby and Moran, though they can be very nice pieces. Now is that because they are too personal, too tied to the performer? Is it because everyone needs their own originals and if they cover anything it will be a "true" standard? Is it because recording opportunities to say nothing of gigs are so much harder to come by? Anyway, in the same group as Osby and Moran, I would put Stefon Harris, Vijay Iyer and Rudresh Mahanthappa. Really interesting pieces but not music that I would expect to become a jazz standard in the traditional sense.

Well, true. Though it looks like a lot of recent sales have been for the going price of the real estate owned by the paper: http://www.slate.com/id/2220223/ Going rate for Boston Globe's real estate - about $80-85 million. The value of the good will (as alluded to in the Slate piece) trending towards $0. One real question is whether in a sale situation can the new owner void all the contracts and tell the union to fuck off.* That would certainly make it appealing to a guy like Zell (not that he is in the mood to buy more papers himself). But assume you spun off the Globe and immediately the new owners forced it into bankruptcy, I imagine you could get away with a lot. * I'm not inherently anti-union, but I am anti-stupidity and to vote down this contract when your paper is the main drag on the NY Times was the height of stupidity.

Saw it once at Manhattan's Film Forum. Enjoyed it. Should probably Netflix it soon -- before the database gets all screwed up and sends the wrong one when you want the original. Not too interested in the remake, but if reviews are good, I might, might rent it one day.

Weird. It is back up, but I had never had such a widespread problem. It was like their whole inventory was unavailable. Anyway, I'll take the topic down tonight.

I think Amazon must be going through incredibly fits right now. Either a failed upgrade or maybe even a coordinated service attack. Anyway, virtually all of the CDs and DVDs I've been looking at say currently unavailable, including a bunch of ECMs that I know are still in print. And my basket is completely unavailable. Anyone else having similar probs? I noticed that Amazon.co.uk seemed fine. I imagine it will only last half a day at most, then I will delete the thread. I'm mostly curious if it is across the country, or just if come to Amazon from specific IPs.