ejp626

I knew it wasn't much longer, but was still surprised to walk by Dr. Wax in Evanston and saw they were going out of business. I really hadn't planned to go in, but at 70% off (and all vinyl at $2) it was too much to pass up. Very few gems, though I did get Cab Calloway with Chu Berry and a couple of Tom Harrell CDs. I did better with the classical CDs where there wasn't as much competition. They had a $1 rack of pop CDs, and I picked one up. I guess I hadn't considered that someone would have bothered to steal the CDs out of a $1 sale, but in fact neither I nor the clerk looked inside the case. A pretty minor loss though still annoying. My worst sale-related loss was when Crow's Nest in the Loop closed. They had this system I always hated where you couldn't see the cash register ring anything up. Well, sure enough on the day that box sets went 50% off, they charged me twice for the same set, which I didn't discover until looking over the receipt a bit later, but it was too late to dispute the charge. (I had bought some other things so it wasn't immediately obvious what the total should be, and I was running late so I didn't check carefully on the way out when I still could have done something about it.) In this case, I am pretty sure the asshole clerk did it on purpose (and pocketed the difference). I guess I don't know what it is about the music business that encourages so much bad behavior all the way around -- performers, agents, record execs, store clerks and free-loading, downloading fans. The kicker about the Dr. Wax closing is that they are going out of business Christmas Eve. That's cold (for the couple of employees still left there).

Agreed. If you suffer from insomnia, this is the perfect disc to help you on the way... I think you're both nuts. Why? Because it makes me yawn? To each their own... I don't remember much about this one one way or the other, but I do have the Brubeck/Desmond duets CD (has some slightly different title). While there is some fine music on there, it makes me soooo sleepy. I also used it successfully to put my son to sleep when he was cranky at age 3.

Well, maybe though the subtitle is John Hammond discusses the box set promo. So if it is only a promo disc (a little like the Hank Mobley 45 that Dan got a while back), well not such a great deal. And then when the Definitive version of the Holiday Columbia recordings came out, Amazon was selling it for $25 or so for the first week. So these things do happen. But yes, when I've sold OOP box sets on eBay I do put a reserve price on, even though the automatic prompts try to discourage you from doing so.

I was a teacher a long time ago in Newark, NJ. I was brought in as a math teacher to teach to the NJ Basic Skills test for high schoolers. I'm not being facetious. Our job description was to teach enough basic skills that the high schoolers could pass the math portion (yes, the high school had the whole range of math classes including advanced math, but I wasn't involved with any of that). I was not a particularly good teacher, but my first set of students wasn't so bad. Then they decided to play by the rules and pull me out and observe another class, so it became apparent I was an apprentice teacher. That undermined my authority when I finally came back to the classroom, but ultimately I had run ins with another teacher, who would put up one set of problems on the board (for the entire day!) and insist I use the blackboard at the back of the room if I wanted to write anything. After a month more of this, I threatened to quit, and was re-assigned to the no-hopers (9th graders who had failed reading, writing, math and had behavioral problems in middle school). I somehow stuck it out, though the children frequently ran over me. I came back for one more year (while applying for grad school). I had a more normal range of students. 3 classes were actually not too bad. One was always different, sometimes ok, sometimes bad (this one was filled with several students I had previously, who knew I was a pushover). Then I had one bad class, where I had a senior, who was completely disruptive, and also happened to be the son of the chief security guard. Not much to do about that class but wait it out. There were a handful of decent moments, but I don't miss it at all.

I've had a handful of Pevear/Volokhonsky translations and went and got several more this past week. I think I have most of their Dostoevsky's now and Anna Karenina. Still haven't gotten War and Peace but probably soon. As to when I will read them, that is a different issue.

No, I think generally it is from the recording date. Again these things vary by country, and you never know when the politicians will try to change the law.

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).