ejp626

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.

Excellent. A long time ago (in my teens) I worked at a public library which got lots and lots of donations. I don't know if anyone looked through them or not, trying to separate the gold from the dross, but certainly the vast majority of material went straight to the book sale. Staff were allowed to go down on lunch break and pick out what they wanted well ahead of the sale (which only took place twice a year). Most of what I picked up was just basic literature, but I did get the full set of Burton's translation of 1001 Nights, which has a street value of around $50. I think the asking price was $1. All I'm saying is that if you are donating something with special value (like jazz CDs) to a library, you need to tip them off to it and ask them to consider adding it to the collection and not just sell it off.

Well, I have never donated CDs, but I did donate a large stack of literary magazines to the Chicago Public Library. I actually offered them to the Northwestern Library to help them fill a gap in their collection, but the dipshit behind the desk just rolled his eyes and said it wasn't worth the effort to catalog them (not the clerk, I went and talked to a permanent librarian). I know there's a huge decline in standards everywhere in our debased times, but it certainly seems that librarians in particular simply aren't doing the job they used to do -- now all they want to do is provide internet access. The librarians at the Chicago Public Library are a bit more old-school and still seek to expand their collections. It is always worth asking whether donations are actually going to be added to the collection or sold in a book sale (to provide funds to the library for acquistions or something else).

Honestly I have no idea. I always wonder if they have actually licensed material not in the P.D. -- and the late 1950s isn't quite in P.D. in Europe -- or have they moved blatantly into piracy. The Coleman Hawkins CD apparently has some bonus tracks from a 1957 Verve LP, and I simply cannot believe Verve would license it to Lonehill. I could be wrong, however, and hopefully I am. I generally feel slightly better about Lonehill material in this category (non-P.D.) since it should be licensed. Still, I haven't ever called up Lonehill to check.

I hope that the Felsted project does materialize. However, in the case of an extremely long or permanent delay, DustyGroove mentions four Lonehill CDs with Felsted material.

We probably could use a thread on the "worst" highest-rated album on AMG. I can't recall off hand but I bought one or two CDs (probably Steve Lacy solo ventures) that were highly rated but that I couldn't get into at all. [but back to the topic at hand, I agree with Rooster Ties, Monster is one of my very favorite REM albums because it was so different from the rest of their work.]

Mal Waldron and Jackie McLean Left Alone and Left Alone 86. Not a track for track remake but a number of songs from the original are revisited on the longer album recorded in 1986. It's been a long time since I listened to either.

I came very close to getting a box set of Brazilian music - probably the Wilson Simonal Na Odeon set, though I am also tempted by the Baden Powell set. I suppose I will eventually get both. However, I had a very unexpected expense due to problems at Heathrow, and I won't be getting either until the middle of 2006. It's probably just as well. I was being selfish. I settled for a much more reasonable order of 2 Paulo Moura CDs. Now I just need to get one or two more things for the wife, though she gave me a really short list this year.

Jaysus - I move away from Chicago and you guys come through three times! What a world. Anyway, great, great news. It should be a great crowd and it is a cool venue, almost always packed (and smoky but that's another story). The Green Mill used to be a Capone hang-out, and I think he had a controlling interest in it as well.

Has anyone heard anything more on the status of the Hutcherson Select? My impression was that it would cover most of the Hutcherson only released on LP (and maybe the ultra-rare Japan-only release). If that's the case, Cirrus, Waiting, etc. would probably not be RVG'ed. I sure hope that happens.

Ricky Gervais, the comic genius behind the Office and Extras (probably should be showing up in America pretty soon) is at it again. He is doing a free podcast with Steve Merchant and Karl Pilkington. It's available at the Guardian UK site here: Gervais podcast It's the three of them sitting around chewing the fat, with Steve and Ricky making fun of Karl most of the time. It probably sounds a lot like the commentary track on the Office DVD (I'm assuming it has one, but I've never actually rented the DVDs). It's already the number one podcast in the UK, and is in the top ten in the US. Jump on it quickly, since the shows are only archived for about four weeks.

Thanks for tipping us off. I'm listening now and starting to get into it. Any thoughts on whether the other material on Screwgun is worth the price of the download?

One more thing, as long as you're there in the future- does the trombone ever become a hip, in-demand instrument? Ever? Even a little bit? Yes, but sadly for us it is 42 years sideways in time - in a dimension where a trombone player got separated from his marching band and deflected the bullet meant for JFK.

Boy, I certainly don't miss shoveling. The very worst was this two month period where I had moved out of a building I owned, but then had to keep coming back to shovel the sidewalk before I sold it. Of course we had two major snowfalls that winter. No snow so far here.