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I consider myself a fan of Dexter, though I do like the BN and Prestige periods better than Steeplechase. I'm sure in large part this is because his supporting cast is better on these recordings, with the major exception of NHOP on most of the Steeplechase dates. The only album I have had trouble getting into is the material on the Select, oddly enough. I'll listen to it again in a while and see what I think then.

That's absolutely what the Lakers need - two more talented but troubled and selfish players (perhaps Artest isn't as selfish on the court as Jalen). I think every game would be a potential meltdown.

Wise move. It just never pays to argue with cops, unless you want to end up on COPS. By the way, anyone ever seen Mr. Show, where there is a recurring character (Ronnie Dayne or something like that) who becomes famous after 15 or 20 appearances on COPS? They end up writing a musical about his life. And of course, life imitating fiction imitating life, Jerry Springer - the Musical turned up not long after this.

I really enjoyed The Thought Gang, though it goes off the rail in a few places. I don't think Tibor's other books have been nearly as good. Anyway, I will probably regret it, in terms of sheer time commitment, but I have started Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time, which is a 12 novel sequence, tracing the lives of a few upper middle class Englishmen as they grow up from the 1930s to the late 1960s. There is some psychological insight, though not nearly as saturated as Proust, say. Powell's work looks very much in the same vein as Trollope and Galsworthy, which are fundamentally about interacting in and getting ahead in society.

I got my first and only speeding ticket when I was 17, many years ago. It was particularly annoying because it was a bit of a speed trap where the posted speed dropped by 10 mph, and of course that's where they parked the squad car. That's not to say I didn't deserve tickets for bad driving on other occasions, but I felt this one was particularly undeserved. After college, I've basically lived in big cities where I either didn't own a car or very rarely used one, and consequently never was ticketed or pulled over again.

I have to admit, I'm not all that excited about the next few Selects. The Tyner is great, but I have all of it on LP. I have big chunks of the Mulligan and Williams Selects, so I'm not going to rush to get those. The Hutcherson Select, however, will be great. I will definitely get the Nelson and the Gillespie, though when I get them is a bit up in the air.

I d/l a few of the Sunnysides this month. I think Steve Kuhn Trio's Quiereme Mucho is brand new (to emusic). Dave Holland's Overtime has been on emusic a bit longer. There are a handful of Sunnyside's still not up on emusic that really grabbed me. Hopefully they will be added in Jan/Feb, or I will drop them a note asking about them.

Studio material after the Olatunji concert? (It must be heavy, heavy stuff.) Was this discussed on the board? Is it really coming out? Inquiring minds need to know.

Hmm according to AMG, Blue Mongol is far more adventurous than The Roswell Incident. The sound clips of Blue Mongol I heard didn't really grab me, but I can try to listen to more to make an informed opinion. I do see that the Glen Hall CD Hallucinations, which also features Rudd, is on emusic. This CD does grab me the most, but it is one track over my limit for the month.

I recently downloaded Roswell Rudd's Malicool, which is on emusic. As discussed elsewhere it is an intriguing mix of trombone and West African instruments. Emusic also has the Roswell Incident, which I will probably download, and Blue Mongol, which I will probably take a pass on.

The general situation seems to be that you will eventually find some application you "need" that goes over whatever your current computer can handle, but certainly for MS Word/Excel I agree that you can start out with Celeron. Same goes with memory. I managed to max out a 250 Gig external hard drive in a matter of months.

I don't know when they are going to add it to the Future Projects page, but the Hutcherson Select is coming closer to reality. I emailed a few days ago: and got this reply: I still would like more details about the Hutcherson (please let Inner Glow be on there), but I can rest a bit more easily. If anyone else wants to suggest to MG that they reissue Bernard Peiffer, please feel free. The more the merrier.

A WTO ruling making copyright protection extension necessary in Europe? Do you have more details about that? (Art. 14.5 of the TRIPs agreement only sets a minimum of 50 years: http://www.wto.org/english/docs_e/legal_e/...ips_04_e.htm#1) No I don't have any insight into it. I just think that the EU will bow to pressure from its domestic record labels and find some undemocratic way of changing copyright law, then blame the WTO.

I know the Elvis and Sun Studios material is already coming out in the EU. I meant that UK companies were going to start losing some of their best material into PD and are freaking out about it and starting to press for changes in the law, though I don't think they will get it, unless the powers that be decide to slip in into some obscure WTO ruling (quite likely unfortunately).

Well, I suspect we are heading for a showdown between the corporations who so often get their way in the US and get indefinitely and infinitely retroactively extensions of copyright and the consumers who see that the Europeans are getting a "better deal." So far the detente seems to be a lot of studiously ignoring how much European product is imported into the U.S. Watch the sparks fly when the Beatles catalog starts coming into European PD.

On the one hand, it's ridiculous overkill. On the other hand, it's ridiculous overkill. On the third hand, maybe it is a way to fill in major gaps in a collection, such as early New Orleans jazz and Swing that I simply don't own or really seek out. I suspect it is the Nothing but the Blues set, the Cradle of Jazz set and From Swing to Bebop set (all 40 CDs each) stuck together with the duplication removed and half the Big Band set and 10-15 CDs of Bop material from the early 1950s. Their new "Original Longplay Albums" series generally does not look to be included. It is hard to know how it sounds, probably been CEDARed. But I do have the Membran Astor Piazzolla set and that sounds fine, granted the material in the box is as much as forty to fifty years earlier. Of course, I've never been an audiofile either. I'm not tempted now, but it's something I might get at some point.

Finally something good coming to Region 2 -- Mel Brooks set: Twelve Chairs / History Of The World Part 1 / Life Stinks / Silent Movie / To Be Or Not To Be / High Anxiety / Young Frankenstein £37.49 at amazon.co.uk It's a bit hit or miss, but Silent Movie and High Anxiety and to a lesser extent Twelve Chairs are all worth seeing, and are currently not available in Region 1. (Frankenstein is the best of the batch, but is available in Region 1.) I have a couple of these already, and the set doesn't include Blazing Saddles, which is essential for a top-notch Mel Brooks set. Thus, I won't order this, but when they start selling this off in singles, I'll snatch up High Anxiety, which is a classic. By the way, has anyone ordered the Harold Lloyd set? As good as advertised?

That's unfortunate, but it's still worth it in most cases. I might not get the Tolliver at that break point, however.

I've got a ThinkPad that was top of the line about two years ago. It is very nice and outperforms most desktops. However, ThinkPad is probably outside your price range, unless there is a great post-Christmas sale. Never tried Toshiba. I've stopped dealing with Dell after some bad experiences.

On the plus side, I flew my mother-in-law here to spend time with my wife and son, so that's good. It was a fairly relaxed Christmas and I got an Edmond Hall CD and Manny Albam's New York Jazz. So that's good. On the down side, we lost phone service a few days ago - maybe even on Thursday, but we didn't discover this until after working hours on Saturday (we really don't call much). The phone company here had literally no one working on Christmas and a skeleton crew on Boxing Day. They tell me a switch is out, taking out much of Cambridge, and they'll investigate and get back to me in two days! So I won't be able to call anyone on Christmas or Boxing Day. They seem so fucking nonchalant about it as well. Things like this making living in England a real fucking drag.

Wow! That's awful! I have no problem with donated items being resold, but I think that the staff "getting first crack" at the donated items is ethically wrong and just plain lame. I will now plan on more carefully researching the situation before I donate anything of value in the future. I'm certainly not criticizing you, Alexander, just the policy of the library allowing staff to do that. It's one thing for employees in a used record store to do that, but a donation intended for the public is another matter IMHO. It depends a lot on the policies. If the material is all to be sold (frankly a kind of sucky policy) and the library staff pay for it (unlear in this case, but was the case where I worked), then the net effect on the public is zero.

The samples are quite nice. I think I'll order a copy for my father-in-law.

I've really stopped listening to and buying new rock/pop, so I can't answer this adequately. I agree with Big Al that McCartney's new album is good (also that Driving Rain is a good song). I thought the new Depeche Mode album was pretty good. Probably my favorite 2005 "release" was a mash-up of Green Day's American Idiot called American Edit. However, it was highly unauthorized and can't be downloaded legitimately. As far as singles go, I liked Madonna's Hung Up and the Rolling Stones' Rain Fall Down. My biggest guilty pleasure of 2005 is the Sugababes' Push the Button. Not a good song, except for the fact it is insanely catchy.

Yeah, there was an article on the car situation. I guess there was a lot of cheating going on, so now instead of the Green Book value (which would seem to be fair) they are going this auction route. Well, the numbers of people donating cars is completely drying up, so expect to see the rules re-written eventually. That said, donating a car to a charity rather than cash (unless the car/van is definitely going to be used by the charity) is not a particularly efficient method of giving. Probably it was the spread between a book value write-off and the true resale value that attracted people to this in the first place.

I received these today. The Coleman is nice, but I think the Jean-Claude Fohrenbach is much more interesting, in large part because so little of it ever saw the light of day. If I am reading it correctly, Fohrenbach only released two LPs under his name (and a 2001 CD called Francofeel). The first CD is fairly straight-forward jazz. Fohrenbach doesn't sound like Guy Lafitte, but people that like the Lafitte JiP recordings should also like this. The first 8 tracks are from Fohrenbach French Sound, recorded in 1954. The next four tracks are side A of Mais qu'avez-vous donc fait de la face cachee de la lune, docteur Fohrenbach. These tracks were recorded in 1978 with Georges Arvantis (p) and Jacky Sampson (g). CD 2 starts with 5 tracks from the B side of this record, where Jean-Claude plays all the instruments (generally tenor or piano) and double, triple, quadruple tracks the music to sound like a large band. Really quite interesting, particularly his version of Four Brothers. Everything else on CD 2 is unreleased and was recorded in 1963 or 1966 (I'm noticing a few hiccups in the recordings -- probably in the source tapes -- but overall not bad quality). I do like the Sexfide (sextet) he put together in 1966 and it is a shame that he didn't meet with more success. Truly an obscure artist. I wonder how many more sets are going to be released in this new series.