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Maybe it is/was legit in Miles' eyes but still broke some copyright rules or not everyone on the recording was compensated. Or the Dragon release only covered one publication of the material and these subsequent releases aren't kosher. Or the radio company really has the rights but only for the Netherlands and not the rest of the EU. It could be anything, including perfectly legit. I don't know, nor do I worry too much about it. I do think a huge number of recordings, particularly live ones, have a question mark hanging over them, and in most cases the purchaser really doesn't know if it 100% legit or not. I've stopped worrying overmuch about it.

If the radio stations don't own the rights of their Miles Davis recordings and don't have the right to license them, then why didn't the actual owners for instance stop the Dragon set, which was released way before the old 50-year EU copyright limit? As Kevin posted above they did so with other releases. Furthermore, as was discussed on this board (Lon's first link above), Miles got royalty payments from Dragon and thanked them for it; I don't think that would have happened if the release had been illegit. Why don't copyright holders stop Amazon from selling PD material that shouldn't be brought into the US? Sometimes the fight isn't worth it. Just because they haven't stopped this release doesn't prove it's legit, esp. if it just slipped under the wire for PD status in the EU.

I do find it rather droll that in virtually any discussion that turns to the avoidance of bootlegs or grey market because the artist doesn't get a penny from them, in nearly all cases once you start digging the artist and/or estate still wouldn't get the money for one reason or another and it "should" be going to the label. If we were truly concerned about artists not being fairly compensated and boycotted all the morally grey cases, we would be restricted to a very small number of recordings indeed.

I really only went for the Elgar, and it did make the concert worthwhile. I believe this is the 2nd time I've seen it performed. Well, there are always exceptions, but honestly, I don't care for Bruckner or Mahler and generally prefer the Shostakovich pieces that are under an hour. Not even that taken by Beethoven's 9th. All of them could have been edited down and improved. It's obviously a personal preference, but I think anything that needs to be said and expressed in a piece of music can be conveyed in that amount of time. I find that even among the relative elite lay folk that attend concerts, 45 minutes is the limit beyond which you can't even recall how the piece started. Furthermore, an awful lot of recent pop and jazz albums would be better and certainly tighter if they stuck to 45-50 minutes.

Saw the VSO doing Delius's Brigg Fair, Britten's Violin Concerto, and Elgar's Enigma Variations. The Delius was ok and I quite enjoyed the Elgar. I did not care for the Britten, neither the performance nor the piece itself. It had all these interminable false endings, like I was watching Jackson's Lord of the Rings. I just wanted the f'ing performance to be over and it went on and on. With only a few exceptions, I really think concertos should bow out at 20-25 minutes max and symphonies should strive for 45 minutes. This was at least 30 minutes, moving into 35 minute territory. And I just thought all the super high pitched playing didn't do much or go anywhere interesting. It didn't help that this was right in the middle of the Passacaglia. A few modern composers have been able to get away with this high pitched playing, like Messiaen or Shostakovich in the early String Quartets, but usually only as the very ending of the piece. It is too hard to retreat from this and then keep the piece moving forward. There was one amusing moment, however, where the violin player takes the melody, such as it was, up into the rafters, and then it was taken over by the piccolo. A bit more of that, and I might have been a bit more open to the piece. Anyway, this is definitely a composition I will avoid in the future.

Really wasn't trying to nit-pick. The Interpretations of Monk is a really interesting grouping of sets.

While this is certainly an interesting project, I don't think it really qualifies, given that each set is from a different group and you don't have any sense of the group settling down into a medium-length residency at a club. At least I thought that was what was being discussed. Certainly some of these sets don't really qualify. Not precisely the same but the Goodman Madhattan Room Broadcasts might be of interest. Not sure there is a legit source for them at the moment (as a box set that is).

Never heard of them either, but IMO better than many recent musical guests on SNL. I happened to be reading about a musician horribly miscast in the Off-Broadway musical, Love, Janis (about Janis Joplin). If the Alabama Shakes don't work out, she might consider auditioning the next time this show is mounted. Only, half-kidding by the way.

you better! I was tempted to add, not as terrible as you might think, but my "cred" is low enough as it is. At least a few people might be interested in Chick Corea and Origin in concert, which covers Thurs-Sun concerts (Friday night appears to be missing):

I'll get my coat ...

Still per track in Canada as well. Sometimes you get a great deal, but for anthologies of early jazz it is a lousy deal.

I know there is a thread on eMusic, but it is dormant. I'm pretty unhappy with the changes they've made over the past 5 years, and I unsubscribed for a while. I recently rejoined and have maybe 6 months' worth of albums to go through still, and then I will quit again. The pricing structure never made much sense to me (per track rather than per byte), making it absurdly expensive to buy older material with songs under 3 minutes. Same with classical music where a 40 minute piece might be 4 tracks or 25 tracks. There are vast swaths of the catalog unavailable to one country or another (in which case it shouldn't be left in there as a tease). And the search function is so crap that it is easier to start searching for whether eMusic has n album in Google rather than from the eMusic site itself.

That's awfully nice, even if it doesn't appear to have the Bebop in Paris sessions. I may consider it more seriously, even though I do have much of this already (75% or so).

If you are lucky, two of the Zsellers or whatever they are called now will have it in stock, and you kind of watch the automatic price adjustment at work. (Granted this is more common on Amazon.com than the other Amazons.) The De Larrocha set went down 2 or 3 dollars over a week (a few pennies at a time) until it was back where I was willing to buy it. But you do need some patience, and if one of them sells out, the price shoots back up...

I'm fairly sure how is not correct, but I'm not sure I can give a precise reason, only some examples. You have two linked clauses, and sometimes if you reverse the order you can spot the problem. You can imagine saying "We did it last time like this" You might even say "We did it last time as such and such" (a bit snooty). But you would never say "We did it last time how you wanted it." (Well, I wouldn't say this. It sounds very ignorant.) How just shouldn't be used to link a subordinate clause in this way.

Finished Atwood's Lady Oracle. Definitely more entertaining than I was expecting, though goodness knows the main character made a bunch of strange and sometimes outright foolish decisions. There are some interesting parallels to Cat's Eye. Another Canadian novel for the time being Powning's The Sea Captain's Wife (and then Malone's Handling Sin after that):

Well, I guess it is all of a piece then and they went into the Grammys with their eyes wide open. It is a bit droll and more than a little sad but not unexpected that in the reviews of this "new product" (it's newness being far more important than the content), reviewers explictly single out all the material in the box set recorded since 2000 as being pretty crap. I guess in order to save the village, they had to flatten the village, as it were.

I didn't think that worked at all -- their backing The Black Keys. Not that the song was horrible but what they played was generic horn comping and not at all representative of what they are about. Yeah, that's true about what they played, but they are very good players indeed. I'm sure they are, but who would know that? It was a total waste of their time and talent. And anyone watching would say, hmm, PHJB -- almost as good as the DapTones but nowhere near as good as Tower of Power. Maybe I'll go check out one of their albums... In that super unlikely scenario, this unknowing viewer is probably going to be disappointed indeed when they hear their actual music. Which is why I really don't see how they benefit at all from backing The Black Keys.

I didn't think that worked at all -- their backing The Black Keys. Not that the song was horrible but what they played was generic horn comping and not at all representative of what they are about.

I agree with this, but there can still be acts that make me go -- uggh. I actually didn't have any problem with Dr. John backing The Black Keys, but then to turn the New Orleans Preservation Hall Jazz Band into a backing horn line? Absolutely stupid and having no sense at all of what they are all about. I would have been a lot happier if Sharon Jones backing band (The Daptones?) had been performing with The Black Keys -- it would have been a much better fit. Again, no real surprise, but I didn't think it made any sense for the Preservation Hall musicians to agree to participate. Having one's name out there more widely isn't that helpful if you become known for something you absolutely aren't...

This is a little different - Boult from Bach to Wagner. All non-English fare on EMI. The Amazon price is kind of steep, but there are plenty of market sellers selling for under $20. I can't tell how essential any of this is, but I am curious to hear him doing the Brandenberg Concertos. Also, some reviewers highly praise his Brahms. There is another Boult set coming out of him conducting Vaughan Williams, but unless you are a completist, it is hard to justify. I felt more than sated with a cheaper box of Boult conducting the symphonies and then a stand-alone CD with some of the major orchestral pieces (Lark, Greensleeves, Serenade, etc.).

A few weeks back I managed to get to several museums in NYC and DC. Picasso in Black and White was the main exhibit at the Guggenheim -- it was sort of bifurcated -- a lot of early work and a lot of late work, which was slightly less familiar. I spent just under 2 hours at the Guggenheim and 4+ at the Met. The Met had quite a nice exhibit on George Bellows, as well as a Matisse highlight exhibit. This is also the first time I've been back since they reopened the Islamic art area (it was shut down for close to 10 years), and I think they enlarged and rearranged the paintings in the American wing. On the down side, it was impossible to reach most of the European masters because of some reconstruction. The Vermeers and Rembrandts were reachable but not the Titians and El Grecos. Still, a very good visit all in all. (The Bellows exhibit will be in London at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, March 16–June 9, 2013. I don't think the others are traveling, but I could be wrong.) I tried to get into DC fairly early on Sunday, since there was an exhibit at the National Gallery of Art that was coming down on Monday -- Roy Lichtenstein. It was quite crowded, since a lot of people had decided to come for the last look. I have to admit, I was about halfway through when I suddenly recalled that this was the same exhibit that I had seen in Chicago at the Art Institute. It is really interesting how the shape of a gallery and the staging/presentation really affects your perception. Honestly, the show was more effective in Chicago, though I was glad to see (again) some of the larger pieces where he was riffing on modern art. I spent another 4 hours checking out the other parts of the gallery, mostly in the building with the older art. I obviously had a lot of conference going the other days, but I did manage to sneak away and saw some of the other parts of the Smithsonian. Probably the most memorable was at the Hirshhorn where they had a massive retrospective on Ai Weiwei. Some of his art is really amazing, and some you just go -- hmmm (esp. the covering up of Han Dynasty vases with house paint). He would be a low-level provocateur in the west, and there is no question his stature is magnified because of his dissident status in China. That doesn't take away from his bravery, but it does make me wonder if the quality of the art suffers because everything he does now automatically gains admiration from Western art critics. I was kind of surprised to learn that he had lived in New York for a while. I wonder occasionally if China considers exiling him back to New York. I probably would in their shoes. Curiously, I was at the Tate Modern the very first weekend his exhibit opened there -- it was something like 1 million porcelain sunflower seeds. You had to take off your shoes to wander through. A number of people had taken a few, and I was very tempted to steal one or two. Had I known that a week later they more or less shut down the exhibit for "health and safety reasons" (supposedly the dust from the seeds being disturbed was aggravating the asthma of some of the guards!) I definitely would have taken them. No sunflower seeds at this retrospective, but there was a huge pile of clay crabs and some other mass produced art objects. Anyway, one of the more droll aspects was that Ai Weiwei apparently insisted on a low cost ($5) mass-produced catalog magazine in addition to the fancier hard cover edition, and for $5 I was definitely willing to spring for one. The Weiwei exhibit will be traveling on -- Indianapolis, Toronto, Miami and ending in Brooklyn (spring-summer of 2014).

RIP. Listening to Byrd in Flight right now (Byrd and Mobley and Pearson -- nice). Will listen to a few other CDs tonight and over the weekend.

PM sent on the Mingus.

Finally wrapped up Midnight's Children. Just didn't do that much for me this time around -- too many digressions and simply too long. I doubt I'll read it a third time. I am somewhat curious how the movie turned out (that was at least part of the reason for tackling this again). I have been struggling through Amado's The War of the Saints. Finally made it to the halfway mark and he is introducing even more plot complications. But I find that I am completely uninterested in any of the characters and their problems. Time to bail on this. I really don't understand as I liked most of his other novels, but this was a very late novel and perhaps he was trying to hard to do something "literary." But I did enjoy Greene's Travels with my Aunt. The narrator, Henry, is the straightest of straight men observing the madcap adventures of his 75-year old aunt. Ripped through this in 3-4 days (just so glad to be back to something fun). About to tackle Atwood's Lady Oracle. Certainly not expecting it to be as fun as the Greene but hopefully not as dire as some of the other books I have read recently. It too appears to be a bit too long for its own good.