ejp626

Actually the two essentially merged for all practical purposes a few years back.

Probably could put this on the radio topic, but here is ok too. There is one more day to listen to an Amadou & Mariam concert on BBC's World Routes World Routes Then the upcoming WR program is a special on Miriam Makeba. Good stuff.

Wow. This guy has a totally different view of the 'to read pile' than I do. The 'to read pile' has an honored spot on my shelves, and if it drops under fifty books I get extremely nervous. My 'to read pile' is not something to dread, it's my security blanket. Yeah, there's a few books there that I've been carrying from place to place for twenty years or more, but what the hell... I don't mind carrying books about if they are great books (Proust and Musil -- and I'll tackle one in 2009 for sure) but I am trying to weed out the marginal books and open up space on my shelves. So in general I am pretty close to Moose, but this year I really wanted to get rid of a lot of books, and I've been doing a pretty good job so far. Of course, this is nothing compared to the summer after I graduated from college when I learned that all my books stored with my parents had to come with me or get donated. I think I probably threw out 500 books.

I thought this was an interesting piece on the "to read" pile: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/...ks-sam-jordison This year, I have really been making a concerted effort to stack up books that I am pretty sure I will only read once (usually you can tell) and working my way through the list. After reading, I either sell the book, give it to the library donation pile, or in very rare cases keep it. I've done pretty well, maybe going a third of the way through the list so far. Now if you consider all the books on my shelves I have to read, well that is too depressing to bear thinking about (or viewed the other way, I have more than a lifetime's worth of good-to-great literature still to discover). I just finished this: Here's a case where the Amazon reviewers have it exactly right. The main character is a book-loving detective with existential doubts. Actually, kind of an interesting, though perhaps too passive character. The book starts off as a police procedural (a la Simenon) but then adds more twists. However, the sheer number of coincidences driving the plot and threads left hanging at the end is very unsatisfying, along with a uniquely unbelievable ending. Nonetheless, this was only the first book in the series, and the others have much more solid ratings, so I am starting the second one: However, I will be alternating with this (which is one of the books I will most likely keep):

Well, it could have been a lot worse. I believe the folks north of us in Wisconsin got 9-10 inches of snow. We had cold rain for over 12 hours, finally turning to snow at about 4 or 5 pm and leaving us with maybe an inch of snow. Just wonder how bad a winter it will be.

My top two would be Farmer/Golson Jazztet Mobley Really don't know as there are a lot competing for third spot. I'll have to ponder. I guess I have all the content from the Andrew Hill set, but not the box itself. That would be #1. That'll have to do for now.

They actually quote a review you wrote on one of the Wellins' CDs (When the Sun Comes Out). I think it has swayed me to buy the CD. What is the other one - Snapshot - or something else?

The one with Tracey and Wellins, "Amoroso ... Only More So," mostly standards, is the best vocal album I've heard in a good while. ... I was going to post elsewhere, but this is as good a place as any. Trio Records, which put out Amoroso Only More So has a website with a fair number of Tracey and Wellins CDs: http://www.triorecords.toucansurf.com/ Not a bad price as UK pricing goes (generally 11 pounds and more for this one as it is a double CD). However, I wanted to find out the price to ship to the US, and they said that it was included in the price, so maybe a better deal for US (and European) residents than for UK residents. I'll probably hold off on this one, but am eyeing two other CDs of interest.

Please explain! Why is Jazz Record Mart a shadow of its former self? I have not been there in several years--what happened? They kept getting squeezed on the rent. Now they are in a walkdown location with maybe half the space of the old location. I just find it claustrophobic. The used CD area is generally a big mess. The staff are far less approachable than before (maybe because they sense more hard times for the store -- hard to know). It's probably still the best dedicated jazz store in Chicago, but I find it so much less pleasant that I don't want to go in anymore. How long ago did they move to this new location? I didn't notice an address change in recent years on my copies of Rhythm and News. Don't remember - 3 or 4 years ago. We discussed it a bit on the board at the time. They still have a ton of stuff (though mostly new material - few great finds in the used CDs), but I just don't like the vibe there anymore, so I don't go.

Please explain! Why is Jazz Record Mart a shadow of its former self? I have not been there in several years--what happened? They kept getting squeezed on the rent. Now they are in a walkdown location with maybe half the space of the old location. I just find it claustrophobic. The used CD area is generally a big mess. The staff are far less approachable than before (maybe because they sense more hard times for the store -- hard to know). It's probably still the best dedicated jazz store in Chicago, but I find it so much less pleasant that I don't want to go in anymore.

The whole thing is pretty weird, but who better than Amazon to know which OOP CDs are constantly searched for and what prices they will fetch. I wonder if that means that someday any OOP CD (that isn't available as a legal download) that also fetches $25 and upwards will be licensed by Amazon. Very intriguing.

Backyardigans (it's a kids' show that my son loves, but I think I may like it even more than he does and am always disappointed when he says How about Little Bear instead, Dad?) New Wave music from the 80s (I like almost all of it)** Not into too many dumb teen comedies, but I really liked Eurotrip for some reason. ** I know this uncritical affection mostly comes from what surrounded you when you were a teenager. I had a colleague who was 10 years younger and also into music. I tried to share some New Wave music, and she wanted no part of it. She was much more into Tool and Perfect Circle, which I could appreciate on one level, but not really dig. We met a bit in the middle on grunge.

Not to be too nosy, but if you aren't keen on jazz violin, why would you spring for the Stuff Smith Mosaic?

Well, this could be its own thread of strangest record shop, but I'll leave it here. I was cutting through an alley in Lakeview (a Chicago neighborhood) a few years back and came across a garage that was stuffed full of LPs and CDs. I have no idea about the legality of the store, but it had some pretty nice stuff. It was open odd hours, mostly on the weekend. I went back twice and got a sealed copy of the Andrew Hill 2-fer One for One (think that was the title) for a fair, not great price. Then one other BN 2-fer (either the McLean or the Hill/Rivers). Of course, more recently I combed the neighborhood looking for it. Not only does the store appear to have vanished, but the garage too! Still have the Hill, so it wasn't just a dream!

I have some "interesting origin" ECM mini-lp's (Jarrett, several Garbarek's) and some other jazz mini-lp's (Cohn-Sims, Corea Tones for Joan's Bones) that I got in trade from a guy in Russia. Well, that's interesting. I wonder if they pirate them primarily for the Japanese market, and then a few end up here.

Yeah, Auster kind of gave metafiction a bad name for a while. But he's still at it, adding layer upon layer. I do like the New York Trilogy (or at least the first 2/3rds of it) but he's really a one-trick pony with another 4 or 5 books that are basically just reformulations of his earlier work. Somewhere I actually have a list of all the books I read from roughly 18 to 25. Some days I wish I had continued it, though I probably could more or less reconstruct it. One year I came awfully close to 100 books (a mix of novels and poetry), though normally it is in the 30-50 book range.

That's pretty interesting that so many stores are viable in KS. Perhaps the rent hikes/gentrification hasn't hit like in other cities. I can think of 10 or so record stores (well, they were mostly used CD stores) that closed in Chicago within the last 4-5 years. There are still a handful hanging on, though it looks like Dr. Wax will be going under pretty soon. Jazz Record Mart is still hanging in, but I find it just a shadow of its former self and nearly never go in. I still like going into Dusty Groove and browsing, but that's pretty much it. Otherwise, I usually pre-shop at Reckless Records and have them ship the CDs I want to their newish Loop store, go there after work, quickly flip through the Just Arrived bin, buy my CDs and leave. Maybe a total of 0.5 hour CD shopping in stores every two weeks versus 1-2 hours each weekend 4-5 years ago. It's a whole new era now that all the stores I used to shop at closed down.

By 3rd grade, I was reading Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Tom Swift. I had that mostly out of my system by 4th grade or so, when I switched to science fiction (lots and lots of it). I continued reading this through high school, though by about 8th grade I had started to supplement with more serious literature (Mark Twain, Kafka, Dostoevsky, Burton's translation of 1001 Nights, Garcia Marquez, Borges, Shakespeare, some Dickens). I definitely remember identifying with the tragic hero in Turgenev's Fathers and Sons in high school -- yeah, I was one of those mopes. One reason I had access to all this stuff was that I worked at the public library, and we had first crack at the donated books for the semi-annual book sale (yes, we did have to pay for these books), so my home library was huge. The last book I read before heading off to college (at 17 so I was still a kid) was Joyce's Ulysses. Even though I was pretty well read, I had some weird gaps. I don't think I encountered Calvino until college, for instance. Same thing with Rushdie (though until Satanic Verses he wasn't that well known in the US -- a much bigger deal in the UK because of his Booker Prize for Midnight's Children).

I imagine they'll be a lot more locked down in terms of regional coding. While I don't have a lot, I probably have 20 or so DVDs that are region 2 or 3. So I'll be hanging onto my DVD player for the immediate future. Fortunately, it is an external model that should fit into most systems. I don't have any burning desire to get a Blu-Ray (nor do I have a TV that would justify Blu-Ray), but maybe someday down the line I'll do it (maybe if Playtime was remastered into something closer to 70 mm).

My experience in record shops of pretty limited interaction - everyone is burrowing away looking for their own choice of CDs, no different than people hunting down their provisions in a supermarket. Yes, I've known shops where I've got to know the owner and had a nice chat - but it's hardly the norm for most buyers. You are also forgetting that by purchasing online rather han trawling the record stores we might be reducing isolation and increasing social interaction. The time liberated from hunting for records can be used reconnecting with family and friends. I don't spend a fraction of the time searching for CDs online than I used to spend on a trip to town on a purchasing hunt. I wonder if it is a big city thing. I have very marginal interaction with the record store clerks, partly because everytime I am in there, it is someone different. And Reckless for instance is almost as busy as a McDonalds, high turnover and no time to chat. Of all the staff at Dusty Groove, I think I have had meaningful interaction with one. The one place where there is time to talk to the staff is Dr. Wax up in Evanston (because it is a failing shop with little foot traffic), but the last time I was there, the clerk was on his cell phone screaming at his ex and then trying to rope me into it. After that, I'll take on-line shopping every day.

That's the big difference. On-line is great for finding something you specifically want, but not necessarily for stumbling across things you never heard of. Well, that's true enough, though I haven't had the time in ages to go through all the LPs/CDs at Reckless. I usually just have time to hit the "Just In" bins. And now, they allow you to browse those on-line! Similarly, I like checking out Dusty Groove every few days, since the home page has new things that may be of interest. It is a different way of shopping, much more directed. With Amazon, you do at least get a cluster of related items or items that other purchasers of that CD have bought. That's not bad. But honestly, I find my interest in new music (not a new CD by an artist I already am well aware of) is only flagged when it is mentioned here or in a downbeat review.

Another cultural aspect that may be somewhat unique to the UK is that the charity shops seem to get a far larger chunk of used LPs/CDs than they do in the US. I eventually will donate CDs to my local charity shop, but only after they've been on-line for a while and then taken round to the used shops. This may be even more true for used books, and in many smaller cities in the UK, used book stores are being driven out of business by Oxfam and other similar shops.

PM sent on the Popes

It really was a different society in the early & mid fifties. ... MG Ain't that the truth, but today is even a different world from the 70s. I was telling my wife how I walked my younger brother to school. I was in 3rd grade and he was in 1st grade (so roughly 8 and 6 y.o.)! There was only one busy street we had to cross, and we knew enough not to mess with the crossing guard. And at 8 I could ride my bike to visit friends and generally just had to be back by dinner time during the summer. I can't begin to imagine what restrictions my kids will have on their activities, although if we move to a more residential neighborhood, it might be a little looser. But I was also thinking about riding in the trunk section of station wagons and in vans (the soccer coach took us to games that way). None of this would be allowed now. Clearly some things were way too dangerous, but the nanny state is in full force and has taken away a lot of the fun of life. My childhood did have video games, but they were a pretty small part of my life and we were outside a lot more. I don't know this will be the case for my children, growing up in the era when everyone is plugged in and wired at all times (Gameboy, iPod, iPhone). To borrow from Donna Haraway, in the US, we really have become a culture of cyborgs -- and in a relative short timeframe too.

Have an unusual query. I'm trying to track down a poem, sort of a long rambling poem with the following lines towards the end: JESUS SAVES JESUS SAVES JESUS SAVES GREEN STAMPS I thought the most likely candidates were early Amiri Baraka or Paul Blackburn, but I've been pretty carefully through their work and I can't find it. It might be some obscure New York poet in a chapbook I read somewhere, which makes it a needle in a haystack. The last google search didn't turn up anything, so I am wondering if this rings any bells. Thanks. Eric Just shows how senile I am. Did another google search and I asked this on the board back in 2004! Maren gave me a lead but it didn't pan out. The only hits are for bumper stickers and t-shirts, but I am 85% sure this was a poem. I have this weird visual memory, where I can usually remember where interesting quotes are in a book, i.e. top, middle or bottom of a page and left or right page. That's as far as it goes, so it isn't as useful as a photographic memory, but it does come in handy sometimes while browsing books. Anyway I can basically see the layout, but not the author or title. Oh well. One day...