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This seems another example of herd mentality taking over. For decades, advertisers have always aimed at the under 30s, particularly males, as they supposedly had the most disposable income. Not sure that was that true then, and it probably isn't true any longer. But most business models are still built around capturing the youth demographic, and these are the ones completely decimated by the changes in on-line behavior (including a completely casual approach to IPR and downloading as a way of life). Try telling some entertainment exec that they could have a perfectly respectable career going after the 30-50 year old crowd, and they'll think you're bonkers.

Don't have a lot of discipline, but I've generally been able to keep off the booster packs. Speaking of Apti, I managed to score a used copy cheap off of Amazon (or maybe half.com).

Had the same thing happen last night. I was listening to Late Junction and a very cool world music track came on -- something off of Issa Bagayogo's new CD Mali Koura. Well, I am a real sucker for music out of Mali (and kora music more generally), and I thought to see if eMusic had it. They did, and I even had some credits left so I didn't have wait at all. I'm listening to the rest of the album now, and if I really like it, I will probably get the other CDs by this artist (eMusic has 5 total), though that would mean a booster pack or waiting nearly a month!

Well, more negative changes coming to Chicago. I am probably most bummed that the Reader has decided to no longer carry all reviews while a play is in performance, though in this case the review is still on-line, and I guess I will adapt fairly quickly. Still, there was something great about being able to skim through 3, 4, even more pages of theatre reviews to let you know that Chicago was a great theatre town. The Tribune is shifting to a smaller "tabloid" format, though they will allow home delivery subscriber to get the old format. Frankly, this seems like a totally stupid decision. Doesn't this mean twice as much set up time at the printing press? They'll end up forcing the subscribers to get the tabloid format eventually (it's inevitable) so I don't know why they don't bite the bullet now. Sun Times is looking like it will be bankrupt within the year, and is trying to extract more concessions from its workers. Indeed, it is moving copyediting to India! And more and more professional writers are being seduced into giving it away for free: http://www.chicagoreader.com/features/stor...hottype/090115/ Again it's just hard to see that this is a sustainable model. What we will be left with when the last major daily goes on-line exclusively? Mostly puff pieces and more blogs about popular culture. Little if any reporting on science, economics, world events. Well, as the saying goes, you ain't seen nothin' yet.

And how are we going to know that the vendor isn't using cheap blanks? I certainly have a handful of CD-Rs where the top layer is peeling around the edges and flaking off, making it difficult for the computer to access the data. It's my experience that CDRs don't last as long as regular CDs, and I think it is kind of crazy to be asked to pay full price for one.

Not that long ago it was £1 = $1.90, so I've actually been ordering a handful of things off of Amazon.co.uk, and even with the shipping it hasn't been too bad. Obviously only for things you just can't find on Amazon.com (which still beats the pants off almost anything in the UK cost-wise).

It's looking more likely that I will be leaving Chicago and most likely ending up in the DC area. As I am pondering this, I thought I would check in with some of the resident experts on the quality of access at the Library of Congress to the academic websites like Jstor, EBSCOhost, Sage, etc. I recently learned that the LOC has access to nearly all of these at the public terminals, but it is kind of case by case on how much access they have (how far back rather), and whether you can print the articles -- and most importantly to me whether you can download them as PDFs. I have download access at Northwestern to nearly all the journals of interest to me (primarily the urban-oriented journals, esp. urban sociology). I am hoping access would be at least as good at LOC, so I can continue to do my research (roughly one or two days a month). Any thoughts from people who use LOC on a regular basis would be great! Eric

Sounds like Larry is onto Plan A. Quick scramble and implement Plan B. (By the way, anyone read Chester Himes' Plan B? Wild apocalpytic stuff.) I did have one of those dreams when I was considerably younger. I dreamed my cat had died. It was incredibly vivid and it took quite a while to wake up and recover.

I have a copy of Milt Jackson's Ain't But a Few of Us Left (Pablo) to give away. Very minor marks on back; plays fine. Unfortunately, the artwork, etc. is damaged, so I will only be shipping the CD. (My inbox is kind of full and I don't have time to empty it, so I will send this to the first person to reply in the thread itself. Thanks.) Eric

I suspect that, just as with transit systems, the physical stuff is expensive, but the salaries/benefits are the vast majority of costs at newspapers, so going on-line isn't going to help much (and will probably be worse as a lot of advertisers won't follow them). Now sure if a bunch of journalism school majors decide to become unpaid interns for life then that model would be sustainable (or we all become potential feeds to CNN -- check out their iReporter stuff some time) but in terms of professional journalism that led to uncovering government or corporate malfeasance, I think that is pretty much over. Most reporters at all but the largest papers just retype PR releases anyway. Yeah, this is the real problem, and as we discussed elsewhere it is absolutely clear that standards are slipping and that wiki is going to be considered "good enough" for anything except graduate level work, and that's some depressing shit.

Yeah, I didn't phrase that right. I meant, can we put on a single cd any Hill material that's on the Mosaic, but hasn't been issued on a single cd, that non-Mosaic owners don't have on a single cd. I believe the answer is no. I don't have the Mosaic, and after gradually collecting the single CDs, I have everything from the box. It has all been issued though many of the individual CDs have gone back OOP. I would like to say (again) that we do owe MC a big thank you for getting out the two Mosaic Selects, and I am particularly glad that they came out before Andrew passed on.

Obviously I am deeply pessimistic, since I see that Americans prefer to avoid depressing news (and certainly don't want to pay for it); shiny happy features are all that will thrive in a post-print news media world. But more fundamentally, the thing about on-line papers is how easy it is to avoid the ads. And if they become more ubiquitous there will be an arms race in Explorer and Firefox on how to bypass them. But let's say for argument's sake that the same quantity of ads in the print media was forced upon on-line readers. So you'd have to scroll through page after page of used cars and bra ads to get to the news content. I can't see that, and I don't think most advertisers do either. And when advertisers do make the switch on-line, they overwhelmingly have been going to Craigslist and other basically free sites. This is the reason that all the free weeklies like the Chicago Reader and the Seattle Weekly are getting thinner and will probably go under soon without those property rental ads (this is certainly true of the Reader, whose parent company has gone bankrupt). And I suspect that the Village Voice's days are numbered as well, based on all the layoffs there.

Yeah, that's what most of us do. However, my impression is that they will never be able to achieve the same advertising revenue from an online only edition. And we all know how well the paying for editorial content experiment went. I personally can't see how they will be able to raise enough revenue to pay for a reasonably-sized stable of beat reporters once they go to on-line only. Same thing with the Associated Press (AP). Even before the financial crisis, 100 papers have taken steps to pull out of AP (including the Chicago Tribune and LA Times). You think Americans are ignorant of world events now, just wait until the local papers stop carrying AP stories. Reporting news (as opposed to blathering about the news and blogging on the backs of newspaper reporting) is expensive, and no one seems willing to pay for it. Once these papers collapse and the AP dissolves, I just don't think the replacements will be adequate. It's the tragedy of the commons writ large.

I hear that Verve has perfected their remastering techniques so that formerly lost sounds, such as the engineer coughing in the booth, have been imprinted on the sessions, so they now sound exactly as they did going down. Fingers crossed that MC will convince Blue Note to follow suit. Personally I am looking forward to the RVG2 (that's Rudy-squared) series to follow.

Yeah, I ran into that a few times. You are generally better off running the VHS outputs into a computer, but sometimes you run into Macrovision!. Finally watching the inputs directly on the computer screen, I could figure out macrovision. The whole picture goes bright, then dark, then bright in an endless loop. VHS players can cope with this in playback mode, but they are supposed to be prevented from dubbing over/copying anything with this pattern. Most of the commercial software packages for your computer have built in functions that prevent the recording of Macrovisioned inputs, though like most things there are hacks around it. I even bought a gizmo that you insert between the VHS output and the computer input that is supposed to run interference and "remove" Macrovision, but it only works about half the time.

Borders was having a fairly impressive in-store sale today (30% off all CDs), and I picked up 4 - Gateway, Balladyna, Sargasso Sea and Dave Holland's Extension. I don't think they had the Towners in stock. So I was pretty consistent, but I decided I wasn't that into solo sax (Private City) and that Animato sounded way too New Agey. If I have a chance, I will check out one other Borders to see if they have the Towner titles, and then I think I will be done.

So has anyone been able to get a line on ordering the Grappelli The nearness of you in the US? Dustygroove will probably be the most reasonable when they actually get it in stock, but no guarantee when that will be. I came close to pulling the trigger at Amazon.fr but they wanted 10 Euros shipping, which I thought was a bit steep. (Maybe with the base price being so low it still works out to be reasonable, but if there is a US distributor I'd rather go that way.) I did *exactly* the same thing! Looked at Amazon.fr and decided the shipping was too steep, so I'm waiting for my email notification from Dustygroove that they have it in. I just have to have patience, I guess--not my most notable quality! greg mo I did notice that the shipping didn't go up appreciably when adding 2 or 3 copies of the Grappelli to my cart. I figure I'll wait until spring to see if Dusty gets it in and, if not, then perhaps see if a few folks on the board want to split the shipping. Even after redistributing within the US, there would still be some savings. It works out to about 13 Euros (each) for 2 copies and I think 11 Euros for 3.

Agreed - I'd forgotten about that record until the Randy Brecker piece reminded me. Played it last night and Freddie is scary! Not familiar with this, but it turns out that this album -- and the Keystones -- are on eMusic, so I'll be checking them out today.

So has anyone been able to get a line on ordering the Grappelli The nearness of you in the US? Dustygroove will probably be the most reasonable when they actually get it in stock, but no guarantee when that will be. I came close to pulling the trigger at Amazon.fr but they wanted 10 Euros shipping, which I thought was a bit steep. (Maybe with the base price being so low it still works out to be reasonable, but if there is a US distributor I'd rather go that way.)

Less than five years? Several of these were released last year!! The following were released in 2007 and are deleted now in 2008!! Horace Silver - You Gotta Take A Little Love Introducing Kenny Cox Frank Foster - Manhattan Fever Stan Kenton - The Compositions Of Dee Barton If that is the case, then I suspect that the 500 minimum sold quota still holds (maybe Kevin or someone on the inside can verify). But needless to say, the Foster and the Cox are extremely worthy sessions, and if you don't have them, consider picking them up. I can't comment on the rest. Well, I did my part. I picked up three of them (except for the Kenton). I wasn't entirely sure about the Foster, so I checked and there it was. Not really a comment on how memorable the session is, just the fact that I have a bit too much new music to fully process it. (Maybe one of the benefits of a slowdown is that I will savor each CD a bit more.)

That's pretty radical - they'll be opening up in Butte, Montana next ! Is this for the Avant-Garde Survivalist market? Maybe the rent is a bit cheaper out there. That's good, because they'll only get 10 people paying at the door and about 100 cows.

I've probably only gotten 10 or so CDs from 2008 (not counting reissues), so getting to 10 is hard, though ordering them is a different story. Rudresh Mahanthappa - Kinsmen (I do wish I had Apti and will seek that out) Roy Hargrove - Ear Food Vijay Iyer - Tragicomic Rava/Bollani - The Third Man Greg Osby - 9 Levels (even though I was not crazy about the vocals) Pat Metheny - Day Trip Nik Bartsch's Ronin - Holon (liked Stoa better but this was good) Sonny Rollins - Road Shows, Vol. 1 (mostly a reissue but I'll include it) Reptet - Chicken or Beef? and of course Organissimo - Groovadelphia So I guess that's pretty much all the brand new music I listened to in 2008 Best world music of 2008 Toumani Diabate - The Mande Variations (Andy Palacio's Watina is very good but apparently from 2007)

I also read A Case of Conscience a few months ago, but its theological slant wasn't my cup of tea, leaving Cities in Flight as the preferred read. I read A Case of Conscience years ago and remember liking it. So, finally convinced, I started on the Cities in Flight books (I have the four old Avon paperbacks) today. That's funny. I hated A Case of Conscience, specifically because of the conceit that an entire planet of non-religious reptilian aliens essentially existed solely to "test" the faith of a Catholic priest. Might as well call it St. Anthony in Space. I probably mentioned that I am boycotting G.K. Chesterton for similar reasons.

I managed to score a copy at Dusty Groove. You might try them. They are out of stock now, but will get more, so you can sign up to be notified when it is in stock. It's good, though a little on the short side.

Well, I hear you, but on the other hand, if I am going to sit down and watch your work, am I going to want to lug it home to my somewhat broke-down VCR or do I want to watch it on the DVD player on my laptop? As it happens, I still have probably 50 VHS tapes that my wife has been bugging me to go through and discard. For better or worse, I mostly used the format to tape TV shows that later came out on DVD and only a handful of movies, so I don't have the mountains of tapes some people have. I haven't joined the DVR/Tivo movement yet, mostly because I have cut way, way back on the amount of TV watching I do. In fact, the only thing I have bothered time-shifting in the last six months was an episode of the Simpsons (which I recorded on VHS).