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The Gilles Peterson is still not a bad deal, with just one track gone. Now that I have investigated more carefully, Jazzman is being kind of lame, putting up these Quantic albums but then leaving off 4-5 tracks! For Florida Funk, they left off 7 tracks. If you want people to buy your CDs, then keep them off eMusic; otherwise, put all the tracks up there. This totally lame strategy of giving people a big taste with downloads, but then expecting them to buy the full CD makes me less likely to buy the downloads and their CDs. Anyway, I did get Vol. 2 of World's Rarest Funk from DG, but that will probably be the last thing I buy on the Jazzman label while they follow this stupid strategy.

Stan Tracey - The Return of Captain Adventure David Fathead Newman - Captain Buckles

I was kinda wondering what a 10-15 minute organ trio jam of Kashmir would sound like ...

I thought that alcohol was its own enhancer. The more you drink, the better the quality later in the evening.

I have heard Take 5 in 4/4, but it was just for novelty's sake. The only problem I see is if you have a great idea, like a Baby Face Willette tribute album, and they do all those songs, you will be out some serious scratch. But overall, it sounds like a good idea, and I can see ponying up for a couple of songs.

True, and I probably will dl Cityscape. However, I'm trying to get Life, which was a Jan 07 release on High Note.

Absolutely. I think I paid $15 for several used, and that was a pretty good bargain. EMusic also has Quantic Presents The World's Rarest Funk 45s Vol 1 and Vol 2. I'm torn on this. I bought Vol. 1 from DG and enjoyed it, but I paid a fair bit for a CD that is less than 40 minutes long. From that perspective the eMusic is a much better bargain. However, the liner notes are really informative and interesting, and you still aren't getting that from downloads (when are the labels going to catch up?). So I am leaning towards buying Vol. 2 from DG as well. I did download an on-line exclusive of the Best of Jazzman (or some similar title). Other recent downloads: Gilles Peterson Digs America v. 1 and 2. (One track missing out of 30, which is annoying but not fatal) Robert Mazurek (Chicago Underground Orchestra) Playground Ted Sirota Breeding Resistance Chris Potter Follow the Red Line Frank Rosolino Free for All Chick Corea-Bela Fleck The Enchantment (for my dad) Grdina-Motian-Peacock Think Like the Waves Red Garland Soul Burnin' I'm really bummed that they are not updating High Note consistently. The Eric Alexander albums are being added, but there are two fairly recent David Fathead Newman albums that have not shown up. I'm going to try to ask them what's going on with that.

What about Jimmy Smith's Monster? Or Philly Joe Jones Blues for Dracula? Blues for Dracula

He'll be bringing the show to Chicago in about two weeks, and I have tickets to see it. It sounds fairly interesting.

I think I spent $25 or so for some of the OOP Hutcherson BN albums on CD. Some have not yet been reissued, though some were. I think I went up to $20 for an Andrew Hill CD when it was out of print. Then I started hanging here and got a better sense of what was going to be reissued (from BN anyway) and have generally refrained from going over $20.

They will have cloned Bird, Bean, Prez and Hawk from random DNA samples (easier to find preserved DNA in reeds than from a trumpet mouthpiece or piano keys, so no Monk or Diz ). They will have cutting contests every noon in Central Park Zoo, which is where they live (as non-citizens of the state). This will be beamed directly into the cortex of DownBeat subscribers.

It's typically based on appraised value, and sq. footage is only one factor (number of bedrooms, baths, garage size). Appraised value tends to be roughly half market value. Property tax rates vary widely in the US, with some communities paying nearly nothing and poorer ones paying a much high proportion of the house value. It's very hard to compare council taxes, though I feel as if I paid more council tax in Cambridge than property tax in Chicago, certainly when you look at the value of the houses and what I got in return. One thing that is completely different in the US is that renters do not pay property taxes (not directly anyway) the way that they often pay council tax in the UK. And property owners get a much better deal in the US because they can offset property taxes against income taxes. I bitterly resented the fact that I kept falling between the tax regimes (UK and US) and got screwed each way. I would actually have been better off if the council tax was an income tax, since I could have applied it against US taxes. Instead I got nada, I didn't own the property, and Cambridge kept cutting back the services I did use, esp. refuse collection.

If the copyright police existed from time immemorial and pushed for the kinds of copyright law we see today, we would have roughly 10% of the great works of literature and classical music that do exist. All the great works borrow themes from other great works figuratively and literally, and in many cases it would be considered outright lifting of others work and litigable (from today's perspective). Of course, it is one thing to borrow from PD work to create new works and another to simply copy and resell it. Nonetheless, the founders believed in a much larger public sphere and that common ownership of art was part of that. I frankly think they were far wiser than we are today with our very narrow notions of property rights and the idea that everything can be locked down under patent and copyright.

Here is the blurb on Friday's Jazz Library program on BBC Radio 3. (I hope Chuck wasn't planning on announcing this himself.) Anyway, it looks like it should be a great show, and I am particularly curious to hear the archive interviews. By Friday afternoon, it will be available on Listen Again for a week here: BBC Jazz Library (Currently, it is still the Jelly Roll Morton show.)

Didn't watch the game, but it sounds like it was a classic, with both pitchers doing a great job but with Schilling getting the edge and a bit more support from his team. It does look pretty dire for the Rockies.

I was at this concert in Chicago: I was in the 4th row center, which is actually a bit too close but the view of the stage was great. They opened with an early Mozart symphony, which was ok but not particularly stirring. I give them props for programming a brand new work, the Turnage piece, but I didn't really care for it. I guess expecting lyrical is out of the question for a contemporary composer, but it wasn't particularly melodic. It did have a lot of rythmic and percussive aspects to it, but it still felt pretty gimmicky. The violins plucked their instruments for about 3/4 of the piece. Frankly it seemed kind of a waste of the CSO. It would have been just as good by the Kronos Quartet and a couple of woodwinds and a percussionist. But Brahm's 2nd Piano Concerto was terrific. I was right in front of Ax and watched him at work. But as I said, it was a bit too close. I couldn't really see the first cello (who also has a major part) and thus it didn't register that deeply with me. Ax does vocalize just a bit in certain sections, but nothing on the scale of Gould or Jarrett. The interplay of Ax and Haitink was good, esp. at the start of the 3rd movement when Ax tore through the opening bars and forced the CSO to keep up. A very impressive performance that made the whole concert. They have started releasing live recordings of the CSO, and if this pops up, I would probably go ahead and buy it.

Yep. Two doors down. It goes from 7 am ? to 11 pm. It chimes the hours and then just one ring on the half-hour. Personally, I think 10 pm would be a more reasonable stop time. It also goes crazy at some odd times -- 10:30 am on Sunday (for service, which I understand) but also on Saturdays, so I don't know what that's about.

When in the right frame of mind, I like the soundtrack to Pi, which is mostly electronica with some snippets of dialogue from the movie. Very edgy and dark. The soundtrack to the remake of Solaris is interesting, mostly steel drums and maribas. Not as good as Naked Lunch of course.

While letting the little one play on the computer, I generally open up WordPad and make it full screen so he can type away. This doesn't completely eliminate the possibility that he will restart the computer, but it keeps problems somewhat under control. He has learned a couple of interesting tricks, such as starting the Windows Magnifier (Windows button + U). Anyway, somehow he managed to get the Drawing Pad open inside WordPad. This was actually pretty cool and certainly nothing I've ever seen before. This led me on a merry chase to try to replicate it, but most sites talk about starting the Drawing Pad from inside MS Word not WordPad. In any case, it must be some combination of keystrokes that has opened up the Drawing Pad. If anyone has any info into this, it would be appreciated, since I would like to try Drawing Pad again. In the meantime, I am now letting him work inside Paint and making that full screen, which he seems to like even more.

The others, ok. But this has some of the worst funk music I've ever heard in a movie. In addition, for me, it fails utterly as a film, though the backstory of how it was made is pretty interesting.

These things do tend to go in cycles. On weeks when there are particularly interesting new releases or reissues, we'll discuss those. I do think the album of the week gets some deeper posts -- more than just hey a new release/reissue -- cool. Unfortunately, a lot of my analysis doesn't go a lot deeper. The other kind of post tends to be asking for information about a somewhat obscure jazz figure and that will go on for a couple of days before petering out. Even though I played music in high school, my relationship with music is essentially that of a consumer. My insights, such as they are, are deeper in the realm of social science and literature, so that is where I would post more, as well as in current events where we are all on a more level playing field. I will say that I am a bit tired of only being a consumer of art, and am beginning to write creatively again and hopefully that will lead somewhere.

For goodness' sake. Children live in the real world. They know full well that unmarried people have sex, including, for a great number of them, their parents, their grandparents, their siblings, their uncles and aunts and cousins. So literature should pretend that this is not so? There's a word for an approach like that, GA: dishonesty. You would have children be introduced to literature through literature that denies reality--a fine way to lead them to distrust and disregard literature from the very start. To get fancy, we can classify the Potter novels as a massive bildungroman, where she deliberates ages the characters and does have them experience hormonal urges and so on. By the end the novels are much darker (and really only appropriate for say 13+). So this does introduce a dilemma for future parents who read the books well ahead of their kids. When would you start the Potter series for new readers, since it isn't going to be spaced out and the audience aging with the characters the way it was the first time around. The idea that you could have your child read one a year is kind of laughable. If they start when they are 8 or 9, they will not be ready for the bad things that happen in books 6 or 7. I suppose if you tried to start them at age 11 or 12, they probably will have already discovered them on their own (or will be bored by a character much younger than they are). I guess I'll find out myself, since my children are now 3 and 1 and not quite ready to read on their own.

Thank you. That was my reaction to the answer as well. Whether this is totally accurate is unclear, but this is the exchange as posted in the Guardian UK: A 19-year-old from Colorado asked about the avuncular headmaster of Hogwarts School: 'Did Dumbledore, who believed in the prevailing power of love, ever fall in love himself?' The author replied: 'My truthful answer to you...I always thought of Dumbledore as gay.' The audience reportedly fell silent - then erupted into prolonged applause. Rowling, 42, continued: 'Dumbledore fell in love with Grindelwald [a bad wizard he defeated long ago], and that added to his horror when Grindelwald showed himself to be what he was. To an extent, do we say it excused Dumbledore a little more because falling in love can blind us to an extent, but he met someone as brilliant as he was and, rather like Bellatrix, he was very drawn to this brilliant person and horribly, terribly let down by him.' So he is asking a somewhat more general question about Dumbledore in love, and she is filling in some details of the backstory. Seems plausible and reasonable to me, but I am not going to burn my copy of the books -- or rush out to buy more -- now that we know the Truth.

I absolutely 100% agree. Agree with Alex as well, but after reading this story, my first question was "What was the point of THAT?" Well, she was asked at a reading about some of the backstory, and she responded. I don't see any problem with that. Second, she is making the claim that his misplaced love for Gellert Grindelwald did in fact have importance for the plot. So I don't see what the problem is. British literature is full of hidden and not-so-hidden discussions of schoolboy crushes and this is firmly in that tradition.

Last night was at the Green Mill to catch Rudresh Mananthappa and Vijay Iyer. Rudresh was leading this time, and they mostly played from Codebook. Really great of course. Of the young (younger than me) musicians, these are probably my favorite two. I went up and talked very briefly to them and got them both to sign the Raw Material artwork. I did ask Vijay how it went in Ann Arbor the night before, and he said it was great. I mentioned that some board members had made it, and he was vaguely aware of the Board, so that was cool. I missed about ten minutes of the first set but I did manage to join a couple at a table, so I didn't stand all night, which was key. I stayed through the first two sets and left before the third. I kind of wish I had stayed midway through the third, since the Ween concert down the street let out at the same time, and the train home was jam packed. Anyway, the music was pretty much what we expect from the pair -- somewhat angular playing from Vijay, long lyrical, somewhat repetitive lines from Rudresh, followed by sheets of sound. The bass player (Francois Moutin) was good, and took a number of solos, kind of risky in a place like the Green Mill but you could actually hear him. Probably the next time I go to the Green Mill, it will be smoke free, which will be good for me, but it will be a big break with tradition. I will say that there weren't clouds of cigarette smoke there as usual, so maybe even there people have started to cut back.