ejp626

McCoy Tyner Septet at CSO. I think it should be a good show.

Yes, free. I was scanning the Chicago Reader and came across this: So I immediately emailed Stop Smiling and was put on the guest list for Tues. How cool is that? Best of all, this venue is walking distance to Dusty Groove, so it looks like I am set for Tues. Unfortunately work is going to prevent me from going to the Wed. show at the Velvet Lounge. Let me know if you plan on going on Tues. Eric

Don't have too much to add, other than in Jan (I think) I stopped in the Pompidou Centre and they had a exhibit devoted to Herge and Tintin. It was sort of interesting, though I didn't have the patience to try to mentally translate the text. I find the style of Tintin a little bland to my taste, but maybe if I read a whole story, I would like it more.

That's so funny. I saw her feature song and was utterly, utterly bored by it. I couldn't wait for her to stop singing. But I hate country in all its manifestations. I thought Taylor's performance was far more interesting, even though I was not a big fan of his on last season.

Mark, if I only visited one location, which would you recommend (looking for vinyl, specifically)? If you are only going to one place to check out vinyl, I would probably say Jazz Record Mart, not least because Dusty Groove is pretty good about keeping their inventory on-line.

Was at the Bastids over the weekend. I was hoping to get the last 3 JiP to complete the set, but they were out. Instead, I got and . The second one {Grand Bahama Goombay} is very different than I expected. I was expecting a bit more of a world groove, but it really is essentially James Brown visiting the Bahamas. A funk groove and some particularly strange covers, including Mustang Sally practically turned inside out and a very fast take on Take Five. While I find Take Five kind of compelling, I suspect after a few more listens I will be tired of it. It doesn't seem to have as much staying power as other songs on the disc. I think my favorite two tracks are "Words to my Song" by Dry Bread and "Don't Touch That Thing" by Sylvia Hall. The later one is basically a song warning young women that if they touch "that thing," their belly will grow ...

They're just mad because the last U.S. news bureau in Canada closed, so we will get even less news about our northern neighbors from now on. This is just a (desparate) call for attention.

Yeah, it's a stack about 2 feet high. I sort of think, you really ought to listen to all of them at least once. Then I remind myself that 1) I don't really listen to that much r & b, 2) I've got almost all the core Motown and Atlantic singles on CD already, 3) I'm a little worried about setting up the record player again while my son is still at the stage where he would pull it over and 4) most look like they have a bit of wear and tear. Anyway, I am keeping the best, including a bunch of James Brown and the Famous Flames 45s, some Sly and Family Stone (and even this is stupid since I just got the remastered box) and anything that was remotely jazz (including a Jack McDuff Blue Note 45). But I hope someone will take the rest. Otherwise it will be Goodwill in June.

My father-in-law was a DJ in various clubs in Chicago since the 1970s I guess. Anyway, he is starting to pare down his stuff and is getting rid of his 45s. These are things you would have seen in bar jukeboxes in the 1960s and 70s -- a lot of Motown, some Atlantic, some Stax, some Brunswick, etc. For the moment, I am keeping about 1/3 of them until I have a chance to listen to them and maybe digitize the best of them, but am giving away the rest, the vast majority of which are soul and R & B. I'd say there are still 100-200 45s I would be giving away right now. The catch is I am not shipping them anywhere, so it probably only makes sense if you are in Chicagoland and want to try to arrange a pick-up. I would prefer to get rid of them by the end of May, but could do early June. I'd rather anyone interested just take the whole box rather than pick through them. Finally, I make no guarantees about the condition of the records. A lot of them are kind of roughed up, as you might expect from a lounge DJ and they are just in stacks (no paper sleeves). I'd say the nostalgia is a big part of the appeal for me, as 80-90% of this is on CD. So let me know if interested. Eric

I'm sure they are mentioned earlier in the thread, but Magnetic Fields have some terrific pop songs. About once a month, I listen to a selection I culled from 69 Love Songs.

Discussed on another thread, I find Invader Zim really interesting, but my son is nowhere near old enough for that. I am thinking about renting Fraggle Rock in another year or so. I thought that was a pretty inventive show that meets most of my specifications. Anyone else remember this? I did watch it when it came out the first time, even though I was a bit old for it then.

I've been thinking about posting this for a month or so after I walked in on my son watching Sesame Street. I'm definitely one of the Elmo-haters and think the show has gone downhill for a long time, so I am quite biased. Anyway, the episode was one with Elmo and Amy Sedaris! and a bunch of muppets who were all yakking away on cell phones. There was a lot I didn't like about the episode but mostly it was absolutely hyper-kinetic, almost MTV speed and just full of noise. I turned it off immediately. Now maybe this was atypical, but my sense is that Sesame Street is just overwhelming and not at all good for kids anymore. Which would be tragic. I think there are a lot of alternatives that show you don't have to be busy all the time to get kids to pay attention, though a number of other shows still go down this route. I should preface this by saying we do let him watch more TV than is really healthy but he does a lot of other things during the day, particularly play ball and draw. This is drawn from observations of various shows over several months. One show my son loves is Thomas the Tank Engine. Thomas is a strange show, with a very British undertone. Virtually every episode involves one of the engines getting a big head about something or getting upset at something, not paying attention and crashing (even Thomas does this). Probably it is an accurate representation of British rail from what I remember. They learn the lesson, but seem to immediately forget it by the next episode. So I don't care for it and will try to wean him off it. But of course most young boys love trains. I'm also not a fan of Fifi and the Flowertots because of the way they introduce a lot of man-against-man conflict into the shows targeted for a young audience. Again, this seems to be a British sensibility, and we stopped watching this when we moved back from the UK. The shows I like are generally more gentle and most important allow a little space and sometimes even silence. Some are sort of educational. The best in terms of calm tv is probably Little Bear. Maurice Sendak is involved in the show at some level, or at least he originated the characters. The downside is that some of the episodes are so slow that my son may wander off (not in itself a bad thing of course). For the quasi-educational shows, there are Blues Clues, Dora the Explorer, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and Handy Manny (a Mexican repairman who goes around with a box of talking tools). These seem ok. Blues Clues and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse seem to have the most organized interactive aspects -- asking the children questions and pausing while they respond. Hardly a substitute for parental involvement but fairly innocuous. I would say my favorite is the Backyardigans, which my son also likes a lot. This is a series based on 5 animals who have all kinds of imaginary adventures -- they are pirates or searching for gold or are cowboys. Each episode features a different kind of music -- swing, polka, reggae, etc. It's a little busier than the other shows but the songs are not bad and they "teach" about friendship and creativity and manners and so on. It's one of the few things I would watch all the way through. Not exactly children's tv, but I would recommend many of the Scholastic DVDs where they have animated many classic children's books. I think there are about 30 titles in the series now, and we've rented most of them. There are a lot of good ones in this series, and I particularly like Goodnight Gorilla (and other stories) as a prelude to bedtime. Finally, I suppose the most guilty pleasure is Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends, which I find compelling but is too busy and hyper for my son right now. So I would welcome any thoughts on children's tv that you like or can't stand.

I'm a bit on the completist side, but I'll take your word it's a mess. I am thankful that you are putting this out, as well as some of the other great releases, and I plan to pick it up a bit later in the month. Good luck.

It's over $3 in Chicago. I've heard probably $4 in parts of the US this summer. Glad I don't drive (much).

My wife and I scored free tickets to a showing of South Park The Movie in Chicago. We sat about two rows in front of Mancow Muller (a local radio personality) and his entourage. They clearly enjoyed the show, as did we. They actually behaved themselves pretty well once the movie started. This is one for political junkies only. Back when she was a state senator, I emailed Lisa Madigan (the IL Attorney General) about some issue, probably the passage of a transportation bill. She actually phoned me back and since I was out, left a 2 or 3 minute message on my machine, outlining her position. I thought this was pretty cool and raised my opinion of her. This was back when answering machines still used tapes. I saved that message for quite a while, but I am sure the tape is lost now.

The Interpretation of Cultures by Clifford Geertz. I am sort of marking the recent death of Geertz by rereading some of his classic essays. I read about 1/3 of this book in grad school and decided to read all of it. I have to admit it is more of a slog now than it was then. I am sure this is partly because reading it on the train is hardly ideal for concentration, but I am just in a different place now and am not nearly as interested in grand or even middle-range social theory compared to where I was 5 or so years ago. I'm down to the last two chapters. Fortunately, these are some of the best in the book, dealing with thick description of Balinese customs. I'll be glad to get back to some light entertainment after this.

Itunes has gotten wise to this and usually you can't download all the tracks if the album is shorter than 10 tracks. I imagine it will be the same here. I think it sucks -- one of many reasons I do almost no business with Itunes and do all my downloading with eMusic. I haven't found that on iTunes, and can think of numerous examples where records with less than 10 cuts cost 99 per cut (though you might have to get the whole record). However they often don't allow the download of long cuts unless you buy the whole record. (Though I just bought Prez's longest recorded solo for 99 cents-- all nine minutes of it. ) It may not always happen, but it definitely does happen, esp. with the Verve Vault recordings, where you have to buy the whole album at $9.99 or whatever, but it only has 4 tracks.

Itunes has gotten wise to this and usually you can't download all the tracks if the album is shorter than 10 tracks. I imagine it will be the same here. I think it sucks -- one of many reasons I do almost no business with Itunes and do all my downloading with eMusic.

A History of American Life ed. by Arthur Schlesinger This was a 13 volume set, recently abridged to 1440 pages, ending with the New Deal and WWII, so it won't get you all the way to the present, but it is a decent overview.

Decided on the Gillespie and got my order in. I'm sure I won't regret it.

So I was at Dusty Groove, trying to fill in the last of the JiP series (only missing 4 or so of the last installment), and I saw they were pushing this pretty hard. In fact, they had dozens of them. Well, I was mezmerised by the sales pitch and bought one. It turns out that DG is getting into the music label business as well. Anyway, it is a really trippy, sort of hippy-ish CD. I'd say two tracks are fairly interesting, the rest is ok. I'll probably spin it again in a week and see what I think then.

PM sent on the Edmond Hall

The Minton's material (or most of it) was already on the Proper Charlie Christian box. They do generally avoid overlapping material between the boxes.

Of course. someone then jumped in and said it is precisely because too many of these pitchers lift weights too much that they can't deal with high pitch counts. Something about the muscle mass being in the wrong shape for all the repetitive motion. And someone else said that some people's arms just handle the stress better -- and that in the days before all this surgery -- the pitchers predisposed to having these problems would have been weeded out sooner. I have no idea myself, but it is a damn shame that both Woods and Prior's arms are about to fall off. The general feeling in Chicago is that they both should be taken out behind the barn and shot.

I wouldn't be so sure about that. Guy I could elaborate a bit. I'd probably say it is 60-40 that the Pistons will win. But if the Piston's don't take one from Chicago in Chicago and the series does go 6 or 7 games, then the Bulls look a lot fresher than most other teams, and that gives them a bit of an edge but may not be the deciding factor. I stand by my statement that this should be a good series. I'm glad to see this become a respectable rivalry again after some really terrible Bulls teams. I actually grew up in Michigan so I have somewhat torn loyalties, and both teams seem to play great team basketball (and defense) without any huge supersize egos running roughshod over the rest of the team. That said, I have to root for the Bulls or my wife would kill me. (And I don't like Rasheed Wallace -- never have -- so that would also sway my opinion.)