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I thought this collection definitely had its moments, but felt that her novel The Namesake was almost a quantum leap above this in terms of the themes and characters. So if you like Interpreter, you will definitely like The Namesake. She has a new novel, which I haven't gotten yet, but will get around to fairly soon.

Well inspired by picking up Hitchcock's Masterpiece Collection, I went and tried to do some digging through his US releases. It appears as though you can get virtually all of his films with no overlap if you get: The Masterpiece Collection Signature Collection Premiere Collection Ultimate Hitchcock Collection (St. Clair) -- these are the public domain films and this appears to be the best of many competing editions There are a few that are not included in any of these, most notably Murder! and To Catch a Thief. I actually had little Hitchcock on DVD, a bit of overlap with the Masterpiece Collection and a bit with Signature Collection but that's it. My question is that early reviews of the Premiere Collection indicate the quality control was very, very low in the beginning and lots of people had to keep returning sets. The more recent comments may suggest this has been worked out. So I am wondering if anyone does have this set, and was it problem free or did you have to return several times? Thanks in advance. Eric

What a farce. Seriously. This decision is a complete joke. Somewhere Walt Disney is laughing his ass off. In this case, it ain't Disney, it's The Beatles. Everyone knew this was coming when The Beatles approached public domain. Anyone who thought otherwise was kidding themselves. Their recordings generate millions of dollars. Millions of dollars get politicians attention. Right, so copyright gets extended again -- almost completely because of Disney and the Beatles. The public would be so much better off if they just went ahead and put an infinite extension on those two monoliths (who do keep their works in print it must be said) so that the 95% or so of the uneconomical and ignored could go into PD as originally intended.

You mean New Tet? I've got that. Pretty nice. There's a piece where he explicitly draws on Verdi, and that's pretty cool. I was lucky enough to see him touring in support of this CD.

High Energy is already sold out at DG (didn't check other venues yet).

Great news, Sal! Now if some better gigs come along, maybe we can get Mark back too.

My wife and I are going to this at the end of May. I do wish it was a real Tap performance, but this should be fun.

Not you specifically, but these discussions almost always get into a deep rut. There is no question it is a catch-22 as far as whether US majors will continue to reissue music that can be legally "ripped off" overseas. However, I don't feel any major compunction against PD releases (particularly when I am overseas) for the reason that the ground rules at the time they were recorded was 50 year copyright (indeed it might only have been 35) and everyone made their recording decisions on the basis that they would have to recover costs within that window. As far as the artists, most of them aren't going to see money from reissues one way or the other because of the bad contracts they signed (although obviously Blue Note and Nessa are far better than most), so locking things up and never reissuing them seems abusive but in a different way from PD releases.

I ordered these three from Mighty Quinn, and they'are all fine! The Land sounds much better than the Blue Note LT series LP. Hmm. Looks like the Land was under my radar. Sounds like I will have to check it out. Thanks.

Sure, a law is a law. And the copyright law has been consistently interpreted to only apply to recording date and not to remasterings. So it is perfectly legal for Europeans to buy anything from the PD folks so long as the 50 year window is observed. (True, it is possible that the cover art has a different legal status. I'm not as sure of that.) We seem not to have such a hard time accepting this for printed material (most of the classics are in PD and any publisher can compete to put out any edition they would like), but get so hung up over music. Laws can change. They could stretch to cover remasterings, but they don't. The current copyright regime in the US could be (and certainly ought to be) shortened; it could be lengthened. I think the law is completely removed from ethics; they are separate things. There is no point in playing holier than thou over copyright laws and their loopholes. Once you claim there is some sort of universal ethics that would automatically include this but exclude this, I would counter that the current copyright laws are such a distortion of the Founders' original intent that they themselves are unethical. Again, not to do this to death, but Night Waves on BBC just had a piece on Handel and how he along with every other composer of his age would basically be liable for thousands of pounds of damages if today's intellectual property rights regime was in place in his era; the point was that Western civilization would be so much poorer for it. As far as loopholes, I think there is an interesting issue for people who travel or live abroad. I bought several items that were legal in the UK at the time I was living there. Should I destroy them when I return to the US? Should I have declared them separately from all the other CDs I brought back and forth, which were indeed passed through customs (I didn't smuggle anything in either direction). I think it is actually an interesting grey area that is hardly touched upon, since import rules sometimes do make exceptions for limited quantities of items normally barred if they are for personal use (I think importing peanut butter into the UK was one). Does the length of time a PD CD is in my possession before returning to the US matter? So if I lived there 5 years everything would be kosher, but if I was there for a weekend trip it would not be. Rules can be drawn up to cover all these cases, but they will be arbitrary and again separate from the ethics of it all.

I am going to see Kronos Quartet right after work (a 6 pm concert). This is taking place at the Art Institute. I've never seen them live. I'd say the show is criminally underadvertised. I wouldn't have known about it except for stopping in at the Art Institute last weekend. Perhaps it has been in the daily newspaper listings, but I certainly don't recall seeing it.

True, but their confidence is pretty high. If this was the best a fired-up team could throw at them, and they lost by 3 ... Also, the Bulls play well at home (not that I am going to guarantee a victory by any means). However, Rondo's ankle injury may well be serious, and without KG and Rondo, I don't think the Celtics can advance.

Happy Birthday, Mark!! Have a great time on your day. Sorry you won't be in Chicago to celebrate this weekend. Eric

Can't tell if this is supposed to be snarky or black humor or a mix: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jason-notte/...i_b_181013.html Anyway, one thing that will also go away (with the death of newspapers) is the punchline to "What's black and white and re(a)d all over?" Now it would be "What's white and black and going down the drain?"

Definitely gloomy news at the NYT, but more specifically for the Boston Globe: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/business...tml?_r=1&hp Some of these figures were reported before, but it is notable that the New England group is losing 70% more than the previous year, and their share of the losses look to be almost 30% of the total. It is pretty staggering to go from fairly close to breaking even to a $75 million dollar loss company wide. So I think more changes will be coming their way.

Same with Paypal (which is sort of the same thing). I was scrupulously hoarding my credit card payments accepted to my Paypal account to under 5 a year, so I could keep the personal account rather than professional or whatever it is called. Then I got a large credit card payment from a UK-based buyer, and they didn't even give me the option. I had to convert or lose the funds. Well, I capitulated, but I certainly resented it.

One thing that does change the equation a bit in the States is that it costs so much to go to university, even a public university. It is now pretty common to be $20,000 in debt after getting your BA/BS. That may or may not be sustainable, but then to openly encourage students to go for further education (MFAs and so on) in fields where they will almost certainly not find employment, that is borderline abusive. Most kids right out of college still don't know anything about the world, but for the most part, they would be better served by avoiding MFAs (or cooking schools which are an even bigger scam). My parents were able to get me through undergrad debt-free (along with my scholarship and work contributions) and said that I was on my own beyond that, which did focus the attention a bit. Knock wood, it looks like I will be able to do the same for my 2 kids. I'll still probably steer them away from humanities as their major, but ultimately it is up to them.

Which has a short story with one of the best titles ever: "Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan". Classic Ballard. RIP There is an appreciation over in the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/apr/1...or-dies-aged-78 Curiously, he was apparently a Thatcherite (despite wanting to Fuck Reagan), which will cause no end of hand-wringing among those who expect their literary heros to reflect their own politics: From an interview with Toby Litt: http://www.tobylitt.com/ballardinterview.html See also http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/...death-toby-litt

I generally rip jazz CDs at 224 and classical at 256. But I also am not as constrained by space considerations as I actually mostly listen while at work off of a laptop. I've been debating getting one of the really cheap players (not iPod) for listening on the train but haven't gotten to it.

Classical musicians (& composers too) have the same problem - lack of jobs. There was a series of articles in the NY Times a few years ago about how most folks who went to the big music schools in NY didn't even end up working in the business. Once a musician gets a job in an orchestra or teaching in the school, they hold on to it for life. So there isn't much room for anybody else.... Could definitely say the same thing about higher education, particularly PhDs in the humanities. Things are slightly better in social sciences, sciences and engineering. But now in English students coming out with a brand new PhD have less than a 50% chance of landing a tenure track position at a 4 year university. It's probably slightly better for history and geography, considerably worse for philosophy and languages. So some schools are belatedly cutting down on the number of grad students they accept, but this is kind of a vicious circle as it really undercuts morale in these departments. Maybe it was unrealistic for academe to escape market pressures, but they have certainly caught up big time. In general, it is becoming clear that if you aren't going to participate in the market economy as a wage slave, you will have less than a 50% chance of pursuing your dreams as a musician, as a historian, as a scholar, and you will be severely punished if you fail. In general, I think a really creative individual starting out now wouldn't choose to become a jazz musician (obviously there are certain exceptions), but it is too much like working in a dead or least frozen language. And certainly part of this is opportunities in other areas. I'm trying to remember if it was Ben Webster or someone else that said when he was starting out, if you were an ambitious Black man there were three avenues to pursue: music, the church and pimping. That's not really the case anymore. The church is probably roughly as lucrative, and drugs have largely but not entirely supplanted pimping. The military, athletics, rap, web design are all far more stable and lucrative careers than being a jazz musician. I imagine that a lot of well-meaning people get into jazz via school, but they simply are not the cream of the crop the way they would have been a couple of generations ago (if jazz curriculum existed in the same way). I'm sure there will be a handful of isolated geniuses that are driven to express themselves in jazz, but for the most part I think they have gone elsewhere.

If you're stupid enough to post damaging and even criminal goings on on the web, you just have very poor judgement. And this might carry over into work. I know a lawyer who got canned for what she had written in an email (can't recall if it was a work email or personal email). The problem is that young people make very poor decisions all the time. It is part of growing up, but now the evidence is there floating about forever (nothing really disappears on the Web).

PM sent.

I sense a rematch!

PM sent on the Basie Roulette.

Exactly my behavior and sentiments. It is getting really boring -- the spats and the sticking up for the boorish behavior of others. I recall the last major split was maybe a year ago over the US style "free speech" vs. European consensus approach. The Board bounced back. I'm not as sure now, since the disagreement do seem more personal and pointed. Or maybe the direction the board is going in seems a lot less interesting to me. Is it just there is so little activity on the new music and reissue front, that all we can do is moan about 50 year public use doctrine and the death of the majors and whether they are related. It could also be personal, in that I feel a lot more urgency to finish up some of my own projects and am disengaging more to get more time for that. But it certainly doesn't feel like the O Board I joined several years ago. That said, I think it wiser to follow Brownie's lead and not add even more drama to the mix.