ejp626

I'm sure much of the frustration evident in this thread emerges from the fact that jazz is a niche market, and there only appears to be room for one or two "public faces of jazz" at any one time. Who gets to represent jazz. (Actually this is related to, but a slightly different issue of who does the public immediately think of when you say "name a jazz musician". This topic is closer to the original query, I think.) It's particularly frustrating when that public face was Wynton. For a brief nanosecond, it looked like it was going to be Joshua Redman for a while. I honestly don't know who it would be now. The one small mercy is that smooth jazz has hived off, and many people understand that Mr. G is not the spokesman for jazz. I think we shouldn't underestimate marketing. You can in fact lead the public to almost anything once. People will buy KOB, and it is a good album and they will often seek out more. Columbia has these fliers that list every possible Miles CD and compilation that goes into every copy of KOB. I don't see that extended marketing push for any other jazz musician on Columbia. Impulse does make a similar push with Coltrane, however. I don't begrudge Miles his status, but I do think there are a handful of other artists who could have fit the bill with a similar marketing effort -- to me the most likely candidates would have been Art Blakey or Lee Morgan. (Mingus and Monk being too unstable to be elevated to the "ultimate jazz icon" status.) Obviously it would have been easier to do this if Miles hadn't been around. Maybe they wouldn't have been the whole package -- the cool and the hot together, the take-no-prisoners attitude, the multiple styles and genre hopping. But I think another jazz icon would have emerged. But maybe not.

My only real problem with the poll is that I find it heavy-handed. Ok, there may be a handful of people in #1 and #3 but not too many. Almost all of us fall into #2 and rationalize it (or not) in various ways. I'd be more interested in finding out something about people's boundaries (yes to PD labels but no to Napster, yes to borrowing a copy from a friend, no to ripping every CD in the public library, yes to OOP material unless it is from Mosaic, etc.). Not interested enough however to set up one more poll about it. I'm almost interested enough to ask if people would still use yourmusic/BMG and/or emusic/iTunes if musicians (or estates) didn't get royalties. However, I think this topic is played out for another few months (for me at any rate).

Some great deals, but they don't ship outside US/Canada.

I reject your questions and substitute my own. That way we can both be satisfied. But I agree with Rooster Ties that this poll is defined so narrowly that probably no one can honestly answer #1. I can't. I'm just saying that if yourmusic doesn't actually turn into royalties for the artists, then it's unfortunate and maybe we ought to be aware of it. How about when you pay but not enough for music, like at the dodgy AllofMp3 site or other Russian MP3 sites? They appear to be just barely legal under Russian law, and there are conflicting opinions on whether you can "import" these MP3s into other countries. Probably illegal under US or UK law. Probably legal under Canadian law. A lot of people go frothing off at the mouth about the EU PD labels, because the artists and original labels get ripped off. But they're perfectly legal in the EU and now that I live here, it's legal for me to own the stuff, and I certainly pay for it.

Maybe things have changed, but I remember reading that many musicians' contracts for the major labels from the 1980s and 1990s explicitly said that review and promo copies were to be excluded for the purposes of calculating royalties. Maybe reasonable, until the fine print said that all CDs sold through music clubs such as BMG and I would assume yourmusic were counted as promo copies. So that is a hefty chunk of change that wasn't going to the artists. Again, maybe things have improved, but I kind of doubt it. So impossible could very well be correct that musicians are getting screwed everytime we buy from yourmusic. What kind of royalties does the average musician in a typical contract with the majors get from iTunes or emusic downloads? I don't know. I don't even know that it would change my buying patterns, but it is something to consider before getting on one's high horse about how legal your own practices are. It's possible to be legal and still be contributing to unethical practices. Or conversely one might well believe that the current extensions of copyright in the US are unethical towards consumers, since they were retroactively imposed for the benefit of a very few. Personally, I see the world as a very grey place.

Only a few weeks ago I became aware of Jacques Loussier, who does jazz (or jazz-inspired) renditions of Bach and other classical composers. Unfortunately, due to a screw up on BBC radio, the last 10 minutes of his Brandenburg Concerto 5 was cut off. I don't know if this London concert was released, but it may be the same as the version on a DVD of his just released. Anyway, I am thinking of picking up some of his CDs. I think the natural thing would be if there was a box set of his Play Bach 1-5, but this does not exist. www.zweitausendeins.de has the next best thing - a 3 CD set that draws on this and some other recordings (unfortunately I wasn't aware of this when I ordered from them recently and don't have anything else to combine with the order). I am a bit amazed that this doesn't appear to be available in the US or UK, where the best of sets are only two CDs. I haven't checked amazon.fr yet. So I'm wondering if people have any of his recordings and would recommend any particular starting point. Thanks!

I actually go to this museum every couple of months. It wasn't me though. It's a damn shame, but really what a stupid place to put priceless vases. The Guardian has a pretty good blog on whether you the reader has broken anything priceless. It gets kind of stupid 3/4 of the way through, but until then some priceless and sad stories of average folks with the fumblies. Guardian Blog I have broken a few things through the years, but the only valuable things were my own and not someone else's which makes it a little better.

My next one will be Alice In Jazzland, his big band recording from the late Sixties, originally remastered for Blue Note International but left in a vault until now. Can you say more about this? It sounds promising indeed.

Alexander: I feel for you, but my experiences in two years of inner city teaching can easily top that. I came in with no experience and was put into classes immediately, instead of having a mentor. Not so good, but I had gotten used to it. Then a few weeks into the year, they pulled me out of my classes, gave them to a sub, so I could watch my "mentor," who was among the most useless teachers in the whole school and was only doing this to get the extra bonus money. So that totally undercut my authority with the kids. After a few more weeks of this, I got my students back, then got into a row with the teacher I shared a room with. She put up problems on the board for the entire day and refused to let me erase the blackboard! After complaining about this, I was transferred to the Special Needs classes. Not one, not two, but five periods of teaching remedial math to 9th grade students who had failed math and english in middle school, and were also felt to be discipline problems. It really was little more than baby sitting. I handed out suspensions frequently but was always seen as a weak teacher they could get over on. Many of the students were waiting to turn 16 to drop out, and I think I lost about five or six to that and two girls got pregnant and left. The second year was marginally better, and I think I reached two of my five classes. One class was horrible with a completely out of control student that I couldn't do anything about (he was related to the school security guard). Oh did I mention the school was considerably mobbed up, with the teachers with the best assignments having ties with the Mob? And a fire drill pulled by the students at least twice, often three or four times a week? And one of my drop-out students from the previous year killed in a shooting, which then started a chain of gang related violence inside the school? And a handful of the very worst teachers either encouraging cheating on the standardized exams or actually selling drugs in the school? Unlike most of my students, I had other options, and I soon exercised them. I did stop by a few years later to see how many of my students graduated, and more did than I would have expected. Now whether that H.S. diploma really means anything is another story.

My experience is that as eBay has "matured," the number of con artists and sleazy operators has increased considerably. I've had a few experiences with the eBay stores where the sellers offer a good price but then it turns out they are selling something not in stock (to be special ordered), and it takes months. I'm about to cancel one of these transactions, which has dragged on forever. (I suppose this is not that different from gemm, where probably 2/3 of the stores listing material I search on is not actually in stock.) I just find the overall eBay experience a lot worse than it was a few years ago, so I pretty much stick with Amazon sellers and zStores.

It's gotten to the point I virtually never check eBay anymore. In part, I've filled in most of the major gaps in my collection, but overall it's gotten to be such a hassle (and rising amounts of fraud) that I don't want to bother. It's just not fun anymore. I currently can't use half.com (can't pay with non-US credit card or Paypal for some ridiculous reason) so only use Amazon or gemm.

Well, I'm still not crazy about the Bad Plus, but I think it is very cool that they have a pretty deep understanding of where jazz came from and where it went it the 1960s and 1970s. The fact that they would tip their fans off to Nessa Records is also cool, though it means anyone on the fence for the AEC box had better move.

Eric Kloss - several Prestige 2-fers are available on eMusic. I've never heard of this cat, but Scott Yanow (I know) gives him props and says he could hold his own when he was a youngster. Anyway, I just found out that one of Booker Ervin's last recordings was on Kloss's In the Land of Giants, which is available on eMusic. Anyone have any thoughts on this or the other Kloss albums? I'll probably download it next week.

My order showed up this week (I was away, so it greeted me upon my return!). Anyway, it was the full size Wes Montgomery and Bill Evans Riverside boxes -- booklet and all. Really such a steal at those prices.

J.J Johnson Small Groups

Recent story listed on Sports Illustrated The last sentence sounds a lot like the set-up to either a farce or a tragedy. For a movie with more than a bit of both, Krzysztof Kieslowski's Decalogue Part 10 deals with two brothers who have to decide how to split up their father's priceless stamp collection. At least once in your life, you need to see the entire series.

I see they have added two albums by Fieldwork (or maybe Field Work), which is a trio Vijay Iyer is a member of. I don't know too much about this group, but I like Iyer a lot, so will download both albums when my downloads refresh.

I disagree that the situation is really that different. From an economic (not moral) point of view, you need to consider past sales as sunk costs or sunk benefits. The fact that it was a legitimate purchase is irrelevant to the fact that there won't be any future revenue from a person who buys a used CD.

In the U.S. libraries are covered in the copyright law. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/usc...08----000-.html There's a short list of exemptions, like reproduction for the blind, exemptions for classroom teachers, fair use, etc. On the question of whether authors are harmed by library lending, they are harmed more when libraries deem their works unworthy of being collected and preserved for public use. My broader point is had RIAA and others been around, libraries would never have gotten established in the first place and thus won a place (or exemption) in copyright law.

Honestly if the RIAA, etc. were around in the 1800s and as influential as they are today, there would be no libraries and the very concept would be derided as communistic. It's only the fact that they have such a long history that keeps them safe.

I only did it one time, but I did complete a super Su Doku that was 4 x 4 squares building up to a 16 x 16 puzzle. It can be done, but it took a lot of time and didn't feel all that satisfying (I was bored with it long before I actually finished). I find one a week is just enough.

I was talking about moving iTunes special format over to MP3. Anyway, emusic downloads are regular MP3s. They generally are saved into a folder on your desktop. Once you find them, you can move them anywhere else you like and play them in regular players like WinAmp and do whatever you want with the playlists.

There are two general approaches -- which I blend a bit. You start in some square that has a few numbers filled in. You can either pick the first missing number (2) and say, hmm, which of the empty squares can hold 2. Or you can go through all the empty squares and fill in all the possible available numbers. I usually start with the first approach and move towards the second as I fill in things. This helps keep the puzzle slightly less cluttered. I write the possible numbers really small in the corners, then cross them off as they become unavailable. But I usually don't write down numbers if there are more than three possibilities for a square. I either move to a different 3 x 3 or work on a different number within that 3 x 3. The important thing is to start recognizing patterns and to look across the entire puzzle. Maybe it helps to think as in chess. A number blocks that same number from appearing in that same row and column, like a rook (sort of). The other thing is that as bits of the puzzle get filled in, you can use incomplete information to fill in elsewhere. So for instance, lets say the grid is like this: A B C D E F G H I If you can narrow a number down to A or D (because there is something that blocks all the way across G-H-I and there are some other numbers that get in the way), this may be enough to tell you where the same number is placed in the square above or below. Anyway, it's basically a winnowing process.

When I first moved over, I did them every day. Now I just do one a week (Saturday). There really is no math involved, but you do need to be good at working with patterns.

Hey, that's really good news!!! I hope you manage to get all the shows off. I had the mechanical failure, you speak of once. Who knows, maybe the tiny motor blew out. It would have been a near impossible job to transfer the physical components to some other drive just to get it to the point where I could run data recovery software. In the end, it wasn't worth it.