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Two more cat books that I find interesting for the art work (and maybe I am not so subtly trying to condition my kids to want a cat when my wife keeps selling them on a dog ). The Calabash Cat by James Rumford and Wabi Sabi by Mark Reibstein and illustrated by Ed Young. Wabi Sabi is in the general tradition of Muth's Zen Shorts (itself a pretty cool book) though the concept is a little harder to put my head around. Still very nicely illustrated. I'm definitely leaning towards picking this one up. There is actually a fairly interesting backstory to this where the original illustrations were lost (and recovered much later after the artist did them all over again). He feels that the new illustrations far surpass the original ones: Ed Young interview

I'm starting to think about seeing this in the theater. It's been ages since I've seen Star Trek on the big screen -- either Star Trek III or IV. I've seen no more than one or two episodes of any of the follow-up series. I think maybe I was afraid that once it expanded so dramatically, I would lose so much time that I would regret getting into it. Or maybe it is I lived for five or so years without a TV and missed all the intermediate stuff and thought I would never catch up. Not sure. But this looks kind of interesting. Of course on the other hand I hate reboots in general, so it might be hard to get past that. In any case, I just bought my son the coolest toy -- a rocket that is more or less in the Playskool line: Rocket. I'll find out later on if it ends up leading him down either the Star Wars or Star Trek path.

An element of this may be true, but I think there has to be some other reason too. Well, everyone plays the shorter Ellington tunes, but hardly anyone plays the suites or the pieces that are heavily orchestrated (no touring big bands left to speak of). Much of Mingus' output is pretty complex and does need a larger group to play. I don't know if there is any concern with stepping on the toes so to speak of the Mingus Big Band, which is keeping his music alive. But could we turn the question around and ask how many other composers post 1950 say have a lot of their work covered? Monk yes and a subset of Ellington. Herbie Hancock. Maybe Horace Silver and Tad Dameron. A couple of Brubeck(Desmond) tunes are frequently covered, and a handful of Coltrane's. Possibly the top ten hits of Lou Donaldson and Lee Morgan. It doesn't seem that many to me. Seems to me most people go right back to the true standards rather than covering songs from the bop era or more recently. There aren't that many jazz "hits" that musicians want to cover -- or think the audience would recognize -- and that they should stick to originals or the true standards. Maybe I am wrong in this.

Could be. Certainly Walmart is now the 900-lb gorilla, though I think you can only get jazz on-line and not in the stores themselves. Probably after Walmart, it is Borders and Barnes & Noble (as troubled as they are).

While this doesn't happen all the time to me, I've had a couple of similar problems. Honestly, this is one of the advantages of going through Amazon, as they are pretty good about replacing defective merchandise. And if it keeps happening over and over, they have a lot more leverage to lean on EMI (or Anchor Bay is a DVD manufacturer with a somewhat spotty reputation) to get it right. I think if it hadn't been for Amazon, we might never have gotten the corrected disc for the Glenn Gould set from Sony. With the disappearance of Tower and essential dissolution of Virgin, it's gotten even harder for bricks and mortar stores to keep the suppliers in line.

This probably doesn't go here, except as a tangent on the general scuminess of companies and how they will do everything in their power to keep you on the hook. I get this message from a software vendor for some anti-virus software (SpyTools) I don't use anymore that I have an automatic renewal. I then have two days to try to turn this off. It takes almost an hour poking around on the site to find where you turn this off. So I turn it off, after about a dozen warnings, and having to write in the box that I will never use their software again. Etc. So I get an email confirmation of the change. Or rather what should be a confirmation. Instead, buried at the bottom, it says that I have two more steps to verify that I have moved over to manual renewal. WTF! Well, I really didn't see this first time around, and the deadline passed and the thing renewed on me. WTF!! I did call my credit card company right away to dispute the charge, but ultimately I think I am on the hook. Personally, I think it is a violation of fair business practices. I cancelled. They know I cancelled, and now they claim I need to confirm that I cancelled. It's not worth anymore of my time, though you can be damn sure I am extra-confirmed cancelled now. There's some similar story with a magazine subscription where you call, and get chased around endless voice mailbox options trying to cancel, and you don't know how to cancel. I think these deceptive practices are every bit as bad as the credit card fraudulence, though it's hard to imagine Congress could write a law that would adequately deal with the issue. Oh, BTW, there was an excellent article (probably in the NY Times) about the rise of a new telemarketing industry that is geared towards making the survivors pay off the deceased's credit card debt -- even when they aren't legally liable to do so (either the debt is supposed to be forgiven or it should be directed at the estate). I am going to write in 36 point font at the bottom of my will: don't agree to anything over the phone and let the lawyers hash it out.

Well, if it all about being in a major market, then Cleveland is screwed no matter what. AFAIK, the Knicks have little room to maneuver for the next batch of free agents. Same with LA. Bulls have a bit more space, but it probably means dumping Ben Gordon and/or Luol (maybe, just maybe Reinsdorf would agree on paying the luxury tax if it meant getting LeBron). Nets probably do have the most room of the major market teams. Never say never, but I don't think the financing for their new arena will come together, and the Nets will ultimately end up in Newark.

I am trying to determine if they ever recorded on a legit LP/CD. I see that Hutcherson was part of the ensemble backing Dizzy that played at Monterey, supposedly in 1965, on the bootleg Angel City. I've read that the sound is just terrible, but if anyone has direct experience I would be interested to see if the music overcomes the lousy recording. Anyway, I do have my doubts about 1965, since none of the material shows up on the fairly recent Concord recording Dizzy Live at the 1965 Monterey Jazz Festival. Of course, the Dizzy & Moody and Gil Fuller CD was not a live concert recording nor does it have Hutcherson on it. Well, any leads on whether they did play together would be appreciated. Thanks. Eric

Stan Getz Reflections Barney Wilen Dreamtime (this is Wilen near the end of his life returning to straight-ahead jazz -- pretty nice but I need to listen more closely. DG still has a few copies in stock.)

Ben Gordon might walk anyway. He wants more money than he is really worth (of course try telling him that when Kirk and esp. Luol Deng are way overpaid). BG also makes plenty of brain farts, and is jealous of Rose. This is becoming more apparent as Rose improves (he generally won't pass the ball back to Rose). Chicago fans would give him up in a second to go after Lebron. Personally I think Rose and LeBron would be a lot more compelling -- and more watchable -- than trying to fit Dwight Howard and Lebron onto the court where their styles (to me) are so similar. But I don't think either move will happen.

If I'm reading it correctly, Red Shirt says Because Tomorrow May Never Come, which is certainly better than what I was thinking Red Shirt: May Smell Like Death. Does anyone remember Galaxy Quest, when one of the extras who gets swept along for the ride, spends the whole picture worrying about being "red shirted"? Classic.

Have to agree, especially if there's a game seven, it would take the Cavs right back in Orlando. Tonight was the Cav's big chance to level the series and it slipped right through their hands. That can't be right. The format is 2-2-1-1-1, so game 6 will be in Orlando (if necessary as they say). I don't know. LeBron clearly wants a ring, and this should have been his best chance yet, but the rest of the team is letting him down. He may very well bolt to a team with deeper pockets that can sustain a better run at it. Well, we would welcome him here in Chicago. There's remarkably little ill blood between Chicago fans and LeBron, so that could work. I'm trying to picture LeBron and Derick Rose together, but I think it would be pretty incredible.

That's awfully persuasive, and I might reconsider the Rich, which isn't on my radar at all. It is kind of interesting, since I have the Elvin Jones and Max Roach sets, so it isn't that I am against drummers (I'm just trying to prioritize really). I would agree. Get the Mobley. It's probably not that long until it times out (I think this was actually the first Mosaic I ever bought and that was a while ago), and then there will be a lot of bitter tears shed. Eric

Two really different shows on Thurs and then Sat. Thurs was Chicago Symphony - two pieces that mixed jazz and classical. Mercer Ellington finished his father's Three Black Kings suite (recorded a handful of times most recently by the American Composers Orchestra on Nimbus). Saxophonist Donald Harrison took chief solo duties. The middle section was played at a very fast clip. I still don't think orchestras can swing -- it just isn't what they are trained to do -- but the CSO was pretty game. The last section, dedicated to Rev. King, was really soulful. The second half was Mark-Anthony Turnage's Scorched, which is his reorchestration of John Scofield pieces. The piece has traditionally been played by Scofield himself, bassist John Patitucci, drummer Peter Erskine, and orchestra. I do wonder if it is one of those pieces that just couldn't be played by some other guitarist. Anyway, it is far more involved that one of those typical jazz with strings in the background. The orchestra cuts across the trio's playing. Sometimes only the guitar and orchestra play. Sometimes it is just the orchestra alone (usually then the trio plays the same tune -- considerably better). I probably would have enjoyed the trio just played their music more than Scorched but it was an interesting experiment. As it happened I had second row seats, so I could actually see the jazz trio close up, and could even watch them reading the music, again something that they wouldn't normally need to do. Still I had a good time, and it was so much better than my last trip to CSO! Sat. I was visiting my dad, and he thought we should go see a bluegrass music show. I wasn't real big on this, but agreed to go. Well, we went to this small concert venue in a former strip mall church in Thomasville, NC and saw the opening act, which was fairly entertaining, esp. the rapport between the fiddler and the guitarist which was very much in the Sonny and Cher mode. Then the main act was Scott Fore and the Hillbilly Hot Club. The lead guitarist comes from the flat picking guitar tradition, but recently has gotten really, really interested in the music of Django Reinhardt. So these guys play gypsy jazz, with just a slight bluegrass inflection on the guitars and the bass is moved up in the mix. It was really great, much more interesting than a was expecting. I told the rhythm guitarist that I hoped they would record soon. They don't have a CD out yet, but they do have a myspace page with some songs. Hillbilly Hotclub I would encourage people to go see them, though they don't seem to be touring much outside of North Carolina and Virginia so far.

Led Bib - Sensible Shoes First CD by this British group that is readily available in the US. Sounds very much in the same spirit of Acoustic Ladyland/ Managed to pick up a copy of the Complete Louis and Ella on Verve for $17, which I thought was a steal. I also picked up the 5 CD Syllart compilation from DG, and am very much digging it. One CD dedicated to Mali, Congo and Sengal each with the last two CDs being sweeper CDs. I am generally listening to more world (read African) music or pop music than jazz, but still plenty of jazz is being listened to.

Oh dear! I wonder how many sets are affected. And I fear that the bonus of healthy preorders could be largely negated by setting this booboo right. Which I'm sure they will. Well, perhaps things are so dire that they will just link us pre-orderers to a site where we can download the missing track. I'd prefer they fix the CDs but not at the cost of not being able to press any of the backordered sets.

It looks like this CD (Hard Bop Academy) is kind of hard to find. Charly also released the Blakey session backed with a Max Roach session (presumably the same one) on a CD called The Hard Drive (different from the Bethlehem CD), which is also OOP but a little cheaper used.

Well, moral (or near mortal) victories aren't particularly interesting to fans. However, the Bulls outperformed all expectations, and most people I know are fairly excited about next season, since it looks like they are back on an upwards trajectory. Getting to draft Rose from the lottery really made a huge difference, and I have to give Paxton props, his trades worked this time around. (Boston can console themselves to some degree that this would not have happened with KG healthy, so assuming his injuries aren't career-ending they should be a force next year.) What I think the Bulls proved was that no one really had to fear Boston, even on their home court, and yes, I think that was very helpful to Orlando in getting over the hump of game 7 in Boston. And yeah, it probably didn't hurt that the Celtics are a bit older and actually played the equivalent of 8+ games (well, at least it felt like that). So maybe Van Gundy owes Vinny a nice thank you card and some flowers.

I didn't link to it, since I don't go onto YouTube that often. It's kind of a blackhole of time for me, so I try to ration myself. However, I did have a little time tonight and found that there is a cottage industry of Beatles songs on ukelele, and then I was drawn in a bit to Julia Nunes and the soap opera of her life. This is sort of interesting watching fairly talented kids make music assisted with technology. I really do like the enthusiasm and showing the positive side of the Facebook/MySpace/Twitter generation. But I wouldn't bother clicking through the links unless you have patience with the young'uns. (For instance, I was beside myself this morning when a young woman would not stop texting and just walk down the subway stairs and stop blocking the rest of us from getting to work -- so that we could do something productive -- like email all day.) I can't quite get my head around what it would be like to be 20 and have grown up inside the digital revolution, and I can barely imagine what my children will be like -- probably WiFi implants by the time they are twenty. Anyway, you might find these ukelele covers of interest, though certainly not as professional as Jake Shimabukuro. Julia plays Her Majesty (music) (Many more where that came from.) Wade plays Regina Spector On the Radio (music) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8CtKFESsdQ...feature=related Julia responds http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XCL6s4L1gY Wade responds http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oIgp5CBzvk...feature=channel Wade & Julia play Across the Universe (music) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yT6z_-niUIU...feature=related

It's sort of a novelty, but frankly even with the big band, the arrangement just seems so close to the original that it isn't particularly interesting to me. Now there is a ukelele version of While My Guitar Gently Weeps that is kick ass. That's where the unusual instrumentation really adds a new twist. (FWIW, I like the bassoons doing Watermelon Man.) I have heard some interesting Take Fives though, my favorite probably being Ozzie Hall's take on Cult Cargo -- Grand Bahama Goombay. And there are a few that put it into 4/4. I'm thinking of one, but I can't recall what it is precisely (or where I might have stashed it). There is "You Can't Wear Another Man's Hat" by The Black Sorrows, which they've renamed but still credit to Desmond and Brubeck, so it is clearly supposed to be Take Five in 4/4 and not a new composition.

Yeah, I think they will have to change the law and make this a jailable offense. It seems to me the only deterrent against such scumbags starting up a new service after another one is shut down.

Do you mean 2 different DVD releases or that the film is different in each release? My understanding is that it is the same basic film, but marginally different package (a trailer in one case, no real bonus features on the other one).

I was actually thinking about your tales when I heard this, since it sounded pretty similar. The comments on the article are pretty amusing, since they point out that FTC had thousands of complaints, but it wasn't until Schumer got personally involved that they decided to act. Pretty lame. But much lamer is that the scumbags are still making robocalls. I got a call on my cell phone tonight. I decided to press 1 -- and waste someone's time = money before hanging up. I was so close to asking how it felt to be working for a criminal enterprise, but I held off. Next time I will do it for sure.

I don't know how serious an art collector he is, but he has at least a few pieces. I know because I bought a small piece from an artist at Art Chicago, and the gallery later told me that Groening owned a piece by the same artist. So two degrees of separation right there. By the way, that is way cool that he liked your CD -- and wrote to tell you. You guys coming through Chicago anytime soon?

I only listened to disc 7, but it sounds fine (of course I am listening at work on headphones!). According to the booklet, nearly all of the source material did escape the fire (maybe stored elsewhere or on loan) with the exception of the last three sessions covering 1944-1946 (roughly the last 1/3 of disc 7). They note that this material comes from LPs and even CDR! , which has to be a first for Mosaic. They surmise that one alternate take may be gone forever. But otherwise, the vast majority of the 1930s/40s Decca material survived. Hope the same can be said for the 1950s Decca material!