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I am enjoying this, though I still feel the first track would be better if slowed down just a bit. Track 4 on the other hand has a nice propulsive groove, with a driving bass, but it doesn't feel as if the flautist is trying to prove how fast he can play. Indeed, the flautist drops out on a lot of the track (not to defend DG but this project doesn't put him front and center all the time, better from a musical standpoint, not as desirable from a marketing standpoint). And if I am not mistaken, there's some cowbell in the percussion section. What can I say other than MORE COWBELL, BABY!

Wonder where ropadope is based (some offshore site?). I do think it is very cool that it is leaking out this way, and I'm downloading now in case the stuff is taken off the site. My initial impression is that the first track is too fast and feels very rushed. Thankfully most of the tracks are at a more reasonable tempo. If people dig this, they may want to check out Stephane Furic's Crossing Brooklyn Ferry on Soul Note, which is a reinterpretation of Copland's Appalachian Spring.

Definitely worth checking out the details link, where they also try to calculate the actual speed of car chases in Blues Brothers and the French Connection. The verdict -- fast but not as fast as claimed by the directors. I remember an interview with the director of Blues Brothers where he had to reshoot some car chases with stunt men on the sidewalk or it just didn't look like the car was moving very fast.

I guess I'm not sure if this is in the current Fantasy catalog or not but I stumbled across Johnny Griffin's Way Out on Riverside. It does not appear to be on eMusic for some reason, one of the few I'm aware of from Riverside/Prestige/etc. Anyway, it is Griffin, Kenny Drew, Wilbur Ware and Philly Joe Jones playing 6 tracks. Nice, probably not essential.

This appears to be a line-up that was playing in Italian jazz festivals in 2000, so presumably was recorded then. Sounds promising. I'll download a track or two to see about the sound quality.

Well, I have a number of the albums from that list, but nowhere near enough. I think I picked most of them up when DMG was running a sale. I have one, not mentioned so far, which I enjoy but wouldn't call essential -- Stephane Furic's Crossing Brooklyn Ferry. It is a hybrid jazz/classical (more classical than jazz) which is a reworking of/response to Copland's Appalachian Spring (and drawing on Whitman too of course).

This album recently popped up on eMusic. I have no idea if it is a new release or something grey market. It does look kind of short for a new release, and on an Italian label no less. Anyway, any information (or reviews) would be much appreciated. Tracks are: 1. The Masquerade Is Over 10:26 2. Take The "A" Train 6:02 3. In Love Again 8:27 4. Play, A Little One 3:45 5. One More Mem'ry 6:15 6. Nightslide 7:21 7. Come Back Jamaica 6:34 From a different site I found the musicians, but still no real credits: Benny Golson - sax Massimo Farao - piano Aldo Zunino - double bass Bobby Durham - drums

True, there will always be bruised feelings on both sides when religion comes up. I think Jim is suggesting a slightly different interpretation of the current detente cordiale, i.e. that music that has a specifically religious nature or religious connotions (A Love Supreme, Ellington's Sacred Concerts, Mary Lou Williams' Mass) should be discussed under music, rather than Non-music, Political. I would support him in that. This is still primarily a music board, even if there is a lot of non-political posting. Anyway, I can certainly get behind being thankful for A Love Supreme, as well as the existence of this board, which has turned me onto all kinds of music. (Maybe my wallet isn't quite as thankful.) Thanks to everyone!

How's the Raney/Brookmeyer? That one looks appealing to me, ever since the Jazz in Paris series turned me on to Raney.

Bernard, If it is not on the list, it should be safe. It also is not on the Sony exchange program (I just double checked), so it should be clean. A few people noted that due to the length of the Shaw CD, it didn't have copy protection on it. If you did put it in the computer, and it asks you to approve of a media update or to load on some program, you would immediately cancel and complain to Sony. Again, I'm 96% it is clean. Eric

Bev, I just ordered the F-IRE Works #2 for a good price, and am looking forward to checking that out. I appreciate that the reviews of Last Chance Disco are mixed. I was just so taken with the second track, Om Konz, that I thought I would spread the word a bit. It is quite possible that I would like Polar Bear better overall. Eric

Very excited about Naxos being added. Also, mentioned on a different thread a rising UK band called Acoustic Ladyland (and related group Polar Bear) just showed up. And Meshell Ndegeocello has a jazz album called Dance of the Infidel, which looks promising. Finally, I just stumbled across the 2002 James Priester album Deep End Dance, after being inspired to look him up by the love shown to the rerelease of Love Love (which sadly is not on emusic).

Just as a follow-up, very surprisingly (to me), it appears all the Acoustic Ladyland and Polar Bear records are available on emusic, which is a low-cost way to find out about this group (compared to nearly a $30 import).

I was wondering if anyone, aside from Bev, had heard of Acoustic Ladyland (or Polar Bear which is pretty much the same group) and this new CD in particular. I've just started listening to radio again, and even there basically internet radio or podcasts. But BBC Radio 3 has been terrific about broadcasting big chunks of the 2005 London Jazz Fest, so I'm listening to that. Anyway, during a break, they played a cut off Last Chance Disco, which was hard driving fusion. Terrific. I'm going to have to get this CD, and try to see them live. Anyone else have opinions? They don't seem to have made it into the US with only imports on Amazon.

I tell you, they make Proper look like a bunch of pikers. Can't comment on the other boxes, since I don't have them and don't plan on getting them, but the Piazzolla sounds pretty good for a rip-off label.

I ran across this very unusual item in a store the other day. I have only listened to a bit of Piazzolla (mostly Zero Hour) but thought it was pretty cool. I simply couldn't resist when I saw the price was only 7 pounds. It's on a dodgy German label (Membran Music) that is now putting out large box sets of material that have gone into the public domain. Strangly enough, nearly all these tracks are from the 1970s or 1980s, so not in public domain. On the other hand, they are mostly live, so may well be taken off the radio or some other grey market source. Still, very entertaining stuff. The track listings are generally fairly complete in terms of musicians on each track, though no indication if anything is taken from an official album (I'm assuming not). Worth looking for if you like his approach to the tango. So far, I've only seen it on European websites, but I suspect Dusty Groove would carry it once they've been hipped to it.

Yeah, I don't mean to imply the choice of material is musically weak or anything. Certainly not. It's just strange that they didn't choose the material never out on CD before. Though there was some talk that there would be further joint ventures between Mosaic and Strata East. Maybe this is just testing the waters, drawing on some of the strongest material to see the sales potential when linked up with the Mosaic merchadising arm.

The Harold Land looks great. Any reviews? Amazon says it will be released Dec. 5, so I may wait and order a few Mighty Quinn CDs at the same time.

I guess I am just really torn on this set, since I have a fairly new issue of Slugs v. 1 (this version has 5 of the six tracks on disc 1 of the Select - and the timings are slightly longer, though mostly this appears to be the triming of crowd noise, some extra introductions, etc. (I think)). And I have Live in Japan. However, I don't have any of the unreleased material on Disc 3. I suppose if I was able to unload the other two discs there wouldn't be a problem. I'm still not clear why this was the material chosen for the Select, particularly as it had just come back on the market through Strata East, i.e. it wasn't exactly easy to get but it wasn't truly OOP as most Select material has been. Ah well, mysterious ways and all that. Anyway, it's towards the bottom of my list of Selects to buy, given the large overlap with stuff I already own. Same with the Tyner, which I don't plan on getting at all, since I have all the material either on CD or LP.

Except that in this case the folks involved (Cuscuna, Belden, etc.) strike me as being more-than-sensitive to such wishes, and (in my reading, anyway) it seems clear that there are some underlying issues with the "aggrieved" party. Why did Wilburn wait this long (five years) to suddenly scotch the release? It's one thing if he were saying, "Miles would never want this released, he told me so," etc.... but we're getting borderline-insane nitpicking instead. ← Both good points. I suspect that as fans, we care more about getting the music than anything else, or Lonehill, Proper and others wouldn't be quite so successful. As a secondary consideration, most of us feel that musicians should be compensated fairly. And a few far-sighted souls remember that the music companies need some financial incentives to keep this going. What is so upsetting from a fan's perspective is an estate that goes off the rails and doesn't seem to really be representing the interests of the departed musician (and cutting off their own nose financially). Surely Miles wouldn't have waited 5 years to throw a spanner into this project. Either he would have approved it and gotten things to his satisfaction or he would have cancelled it. I suppose we only really hear about the horror stories. Most estates appear to be far more reasonable (and even helpful) about getting unissued music out. Motivations are always different, and some estates perhaps err more on the side of he/she would have wanted this music out there and some are more on the side that the record label/the world didn't treat him/her with respect and now I'm going to insist on doing things my way. And unless it is an extremely valuable assett, record companies quickly pass on doing business with the difficult estates. From my limited perspective, I certainly prefer the Monk/Coltrane type of estates where they make a concerted effort to get the music out, but clearly I don't know the inside story on any of this. I do know that I wish for long and prosperous careers for our remaining jazz masters, and that estates don't come into the picture until much later.

I guess it's worth checking I didn't get charged twice.

Yeah, I noticed the other day they charged my credit card, so it should be on its way! Not sure why it is a 2-disc rather than 3-disc set, but if everything fits and it includes the Coltrane material, it's ok by me. My one suggestion to improve the release would be to indicate where each track was taped. It would be quite cool if one of the tracks was recorded in Chicago! Anyway, it looks like they will be touring again in the spring and coming to London in April, so I will definitely try to make it.

This is the latest list of Sony CDs with XCP protection (should be only US titles or CDs imported from the US. Slightly over 50, and some that were probably big sellers. Still no word on how the recall will work, particularly for those who bought over the internet or used. I imagine this will hurt them in the long run. It has certainly changed my buying habits.

I'm currently trying to access the FAQ about the CD recall, but there must be tens of thousands of people trying to access it all at once. (Sony BMG - ever heard of a mirror site - these guys need to stick to entertainment and get out of the technology business!). If I ever get it, I'll post it here. Update: The current FAQ on the XCP is useless - don't bother. They haven't yet updated the site to deal with the recall, other than to say it will happen. Probably won't be updated for some time. I bet there are a lot of Sony execs staying up late, trying to figure this out. And somebody had better lose their job over this, since they just cost Sony a few millions dollars.

I suspect Switzerland and other countries show up because people ("music terrorists") get impatient and import XCRs from the US. Same way people try to circumvent DVD regional coding. Interestingly the new blue-ray DVDs or whatever they are calling them are supposed to be locked down much tighter with some reports claiming that the players themselves will have a backdoor to let companies know if you try to change regional coding. Not surprising that Sony is involved in this as well. Definitely something I will avoid and I may simply stop buying DVDs a few years down the road if this comes to pass. At this point, I probably have enough DVDs to rest me the rest of my life anyway. On a side note, I did see one blog mention that Sony BMG UK is defiantly going to stick with XCR technology, but I just can't believe this is anything but bluster. The UK/EU laws for fucking with people's computers are much stronger than in the US and some poorly written EULA just is not going to cover them. So I hope the blogger was misinformed.