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I'm sure it will be on YouTube eventually.

I am not enjoying Kalooki Nights much. It is about a Jewish cartoonist from Manchester who has a complicated relationship with Jews. His father was an atheist, and he appears to wrestle with faith. But most of the novel focuses on him and his ex-wives, who are not only Gentiles, but Jew-hating Gentiles (along with a side story about a childhood friend obsessed with the Holocaust who literally gassed his own parents to death). So there is a lot of anger and self-loathing, and basically just too much of the same thing over and over. I'd say the book is three times as long as it should be, given what I have gotten from it. I have a hundred pages to go and should just drop it. I guess I won't because I'm a bit of a masochist myself and feel obligated to finish books I have started. Probably the last novel I will read in Jan. is Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, which is about Biafra's fight for independence in Nigeria and the impact that has on the central characters. It has started well, and it seems to be getting largely positive reviews. If I end up disappointed with this as well (4 for 4), I think I will just stop reading contemporary fiction for a while and focus on other things.

That's a great one too! Have you seen the "Gone Daddy Gone" bug video? Not as good as the others, but still pretty twisted... So Gone Daddy Gone seems to be a pretty straight cover of the Violent Femmes version. Is that the case with any other tracks on St. Elsewhere?

A very interesting story, though how inspiring is unclear. I'd like to think I would have helped the person on the platform -- but jump down on the tracks -- definitely not. And particularly not with my two children standing there. I do have two very young children myself and just wouldn't take such a risk. But I am glad it all came out well.

Well, I suppose, but when you look at how markets actually move -- mostly through the transactions of truly enormous pension funds, university portfolios, mutual funds and hedge funds, there really isn't that much that concerned individuals can do to swing the market around, although one can invest responsibly at a personal level. Interestingly, there have in fact been lawsuits that ultimately forced all public universities to invest like "everybody else," rather than in a socially responsible way. I'd like to get figures on what the proportion of socially responsible mutual funds are compared to the entire market -- one recent estimate is it is about 3% of the value of the US market, but growing slightly. Here's a website to start you on your way: Socially responsible investing

For fans of Stan Tracey, three of the current jazz programs on BBC Radio 3 feature him. This is probably the best starting place:Stan Tracey on BBC 3 Jazz Legends and Jazz on 3 programs will be available through the "Listen again" feature through Friday (quite early Friday in the States though) and Jazz Line-Up through Sat.

I wrote to them a couple of weeks ago and they said late Jan. They wouldn't let me pre-order then, but maybe now? I'll be getting this soon as well.

Sal, I'm going to disagree with you here. What I've seen is that every week, the Defense has gotten worse, whether through injuries or peaking too early or what have you. I don't think they've played playoff-caliber football in four or five weeks, even when the games meant something. Sure, I hope Grossman bounces back, but I'm not counting on it. Now maybe he will get to be a bit more reliable in a couple of years, but it's been tough not knowing which quarterback is showing up to play.

It hurts, but I have to agree with you. The wheels have fallen off the Bear's little orange wagon. Can somebody find who body-snatched the team that played the first half of the season, because these guys are just imposters...

My wife stayed up to watch this (still on London time), but I believe she wishes she hadn't. I'm sure you were better off at home.

I think I still have that Smithsonian set on cassette. At this point, I would imagine I have just about everything in a more complete form. The first major box set, where I actually saved up for it, was the Monk on Riverside set. This was something I bought during my first "real," post-college job.

DMG now has it at $22. Must not have realised it was a double CD. Same price at Dusty Groove. Buying it direct from Nimbus West appears to be the best deal if you live in the US in order to get the free shipping.

A lot of the stuff I discovered in 2006 was actually from 2005, or I am just hearing advance tracks and the albums will hit in 2007. Perhaps my favorite non-jazz album was Ali Farka Toure's Savane, closely followed by Toumani Diabate's Boulevard de l'Independance. I also liked Rachid Taha's Diwan 2 and Tartit's Abacabok. I just picked up Echu Mingua by Angá Diaz, sparked by the cut "A Love Supreme" on the World Circuit Presents sampler. If the rest of the album is half as good, then I will be very happy indeed. I liked about half of the Gnarls Barkley album; the other half - meh. Personally I thought the Red Hot Chili Pepper's double CD was a big let-down. I've almost completely stopped listening to rock/pop that is more recent than 1998, so I just am not following any of it. That's ok -- it means more money to spend on jazz CDs.

Yes, but she will probably need an additional adapter just to plug into the wall sockets. They aren't that expensive, and she should be able to buy one in the airport on the way out. Making trans-Atlantic calls on a cell phone is incredibly expensive no matter what your plan, so keep those calls short!

Mostly world music this month -- Classic Titles - Les Ambassadeurs Classic Titles - Orchestra Baobab Diwan 2 - Rachid Taha (they also have Diwan and Live in Medina!) Tartit - Abacabok Tinariwen - Radio Tisdas Tinariwen - Amassakoul (hope they get the new release that is supposed to be out in March!) Oumou Sangaré - Moussolou Khaled - Sahra Aimee Mann - One More Drifter in the Snow (couple of the new songs) They have so much amazing stuff, particularly for world music labels. Unfortunately, World Circuit isn't on eMusic. In past months, I downloaded pretty much everything they had by Amadou et Mariam. One of these upcoming months, I'll just dl all the Fela CDs (I only have a handful currently). And I'll probably dl the new Tom Waits collection after that.

To me a fair price is $0.25 to $0.50 per track, given the quality and the lack of extras. EMusic falls in this category or is better depending on your subscription. The others don't, and I have been extremely reluctant to get anything from iTunes or Verve for that matter. It doesn't help that they generally withhold tracks from shorter albums, so that you have to pay $9.99 even if it is only 6 or 7 tracks. To me, that is unethical, although I suppose if they also routinely offered 18 track CDs for $9.99 (don't think they do but not sure) I might be a bit more ok with it.

Listened to Star Time Box Set Discs 2 and 3. What a performer. Cold Sweat is still mind-blowing, but I can't even imagine listening to it when it first broke. It must have been like nothing else on the charts.

I finished The Emperor's Children. I have mixed feelings. It was a fairly fast-paced novel about priviledged young people in Manhattan, and two outsiders who try to break in. But I definitely feel that it is getting such high reviews (in NYTimes and the Economist) because the reviewers know so many of these people and actually are these people. And I know a few of these people and was a bit of an outsider the two years I was living in Brooklyn, only rarely going to the parties where the beautiful people hang out. Some of the portraits are fairly cutting about how spoiled these people are, but still it does little to shake their overall conviction that Manhattan is the center of the world (of course, one could say that 9/11 confirmed this in a macabre way). The treatment of 9/11 is a little odd. Messud doesn't dwell on the actual events -- sort of sidesteps it aside from a few pages -- then shows how it affected the characters in a very short time (up to a month after the event) and shows how little it really changed them. Though we do see newly-weds (who never should have married) who will probably soon split up in part due to the strain of events. Maybe it is better than a novel (like McInerney's recent one) that roots around in it (or spends half its time glorifying firefighters), but there are still a few strained coincidences. It did prompt me to remember my experiences, so I guess that's something. So anyway, not a complete success for me. Maybe my expectations were just too high. I'm about to start Jacobson's Kalooki Nights, which is apparently about a Jewish cartoonist who focuses on the Holocaust. I wonder what Art Spiegelman would have to say about this.

I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere in the forums, but this is pretty funny. Rob Paravonian shows how basically half of today's music uses the chords behind Pachelbel's Canon (or Pachabel's Canon). It's worth watching to the end. Pachabel on Youtube

It's no good you saying "I criticise". What's the problem? (And please remember you're talking to a tech idjit.) MG Most MP3s are sampled at a lower rate than CDs. So even after burning them to a CD they won't regain anything lost in compression. This hardly matters for pop music, which has been overcompressed for radio play, but it generally will make a difference for jazz and classical, though how much it actually matters to you depends on the quality of your sound system and your own ears. It doesn't bother me too much, and I have been a faithful subscriber to emusic for quite a while. I'd rather have mp3s than nothing (and I don't think trying to hold out for better formats is terribly realistic). But check out this story: Rough trade MP3s Rough trade is trying to take away one of the few advantages of the digital era and create an artificial scarcity. Limited edition download, my ass. I think this activity is shameful and will definitely not support them.

I suppose it is easier to download the archived shows, but BBC Radio 2 is picking up the Dylan show. Link here: Dylan on BBC 2 They say these are only available to UK listeners, but sometimes there are ways around these things. I'll probably listen to them "live" just for the experience.

Well, from my significant other and the rest of the family, I got nuthin. We are preparing to move in a few more months and decided not to do gifts. Now I did get her a couple of CDs, but I really didn't get anything from her. I did get a few things for myself, sent to a friend, which I will retrieve after the move: Horace Tapscott - Dial B for Barbara Reptet - Do This Andrew Hill - solo Select Tati - Playtime So a fairly low-key Christmas, even by my standards.

You're right Felser. What they're doing is putting stuff out for download that they used to have as CDs. As far as I know, nothing's gone for download that hasn't already been issued as a CD. The companies don't seem to be remastering material in order to make it available as downloads. The possible benefit to the (US) consumer might be price (though I suspect not, in most cases I've seen prices of $9.99). And, as far as Universal is concerned, no benefit to European consumers, since we can't get them through emusic. MG There were/are some Impulse downloads not available as CDs, though I suppose they might have been mastered for Japanese CDs. I suppose one benefit would be if the downloads are never allowed to go OOP, though currently the price is too high for the quality and lack of liner notes, etc. But it does seem like the beginnings of a fairly major and permanent shift, unfortunately to a worse medium. While I am satisfied with current DVD technology, at least one senses that Blue-Ray and whatever the other new medium is are better technologies. But replacing CDs with mp3s does pretty much suck.

The other question is what company would fill this niche if they weren't around. I suppose someone would eventually acquire the rights to Bergman, Kurosawa, Fellini and a few others. But Powell & Pressburger, Tati, Naruse, etc., etc.? The demand for these films in the US is not so huge, and I think it is great they are around -- even if I don't buy that many from them.

I do generally prefer to rent rather than buy them (and the Chicago Public Library has been very good about stocking nearly every one of their in-print titles). But some of the multi-disc sets, particularly when there are great bonus features and long essays in the booklets, are definitely worth it. I'm thinking in particular of Brazil, Naked Lunch, Short Cuts, and the re-issued Playtime.