ejp626

Thanks for the input. I do like the Early Recordings box that EMI just put out. In addition to standard fare like Mozart and Beethoven, you get some unusual works like Tippett's Piano Concerto (with John Ogdon) and Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex!

Thanks. Hard to keep up. Of course, some things that have gone out of print are unaccountably still OOP (quite a bit of Perlman actually and I wonder if some of his early recordings are ready for one of these slimline boxes). I don't really need any of these, but I might go for the Yo-Yo Ma and possibly the Stern-Mozart box. I think I have enough Sibelius that I will pass on the Colin Davis-Sibelius set unless it gets incredible raves and I can get it incredibly cheaply.

This clock is up here in Vancouver in Gastown.

A few nights ago I saw Vicky Chow (pianist with Bang on a Can) do a solo version of Reich's Piano Counterpoint. It was pretty mesmerizing. She also did a solo piano version of The Rite of Spring (I guess the Push Festival director requested this, but it seemed like a dumb idea to me and wasn't all that successful). There was supposed to be a piece by Andriessen, but this was scrapped for some reason. Piano Counterpoint did make the evening worthwhile. Then today I saw the Emerson Quartet. Apparently, the cellist is hanging up his spurs after this season (end of May). He's been in the quartet since 1979! His replacement is Paul Watkins, which will hopefully be a good fit. I managed to see this line-up twice, and I will certaily see if I can see them with Watkins at some point down the road. They did Mozart Hoffmeister Quartet (K.499), Alban Berg's Lyric Suite, and Antonin Dvorak, Quartet in D minor, Opus 34. I enjoyed the Mozart and thought the Dvorak was outstanding. The Berg didn't do much for me, though I can tell they played it well. Anyway, a nice diversion from the Superbowl...

Well, one could argue that in terms of saving NYC from bankruptcy, Abe Beame truly made/accepted the hard decisions and took the political hit and Koch benefitted from that.

I've had this for about a year -- some really great stuff. I also like the Sir John Barbirolli set, though it costs a bit more per disc. Amazon UK or Amazon.com (some good reseller prices, however).

Yes, I saw that. Tempting, though interesting it is already available as MP3 download at Amazon and iTunes. It is probably also on eMusic, but can't check that until tonight. (In my case, I also have to find out if eMusic in Canada has the rights, as it isn't always the same .) They do have it on eMusic, which is a nice surprise. I'll see if I can dig out my copy of Moshi to refamiliarize myself with the material.

Ed Koch RIP Seems no one has posted this. Obit from the Washington Post. Was only a New Yorker a brief time, and Koch was no longer mayor by that point, so no really strong feelings about him. Probably too wedded to the real estate interests, but that is the case for most New York mayors. Saw him once at a screening of Pelham 1-2-3 at Film Forum, where he introduced the film and talked about how the mayor in that film had a (coincidental) resemblance to himself.

Agreed (to Noj's poster -- too long to quote). How running around trying to get someone else banned can be thought of as mature behaviour is beyond me. The ignore member/user function is a beautiful thing. More people here should practice it, for their own piece of mind really. I wish more places where you can comment (like the Guardian newspaper Comment is Free* area) would embrace it. * Recent changes have made the Guardian's little playpen space even worse, but I guess that's good in the sense I spend less time there now.

How is this? It seems most of the reviews are positive, but always nice to have another opinion. I am on the home stretch of Rushdie's Midnight's Children. It definitely has its moments, but it feels over-written to me now (on rereading), much too aware of being a "literary" novel, largely in the tradition of John Barth (whom I no longer enjoy either). Looking forward to rereading Greene's Travels with My Aunt, which I thought was great when younger. Hope that isn't another book that doesn't satisfy as much now that I am somewhat grizzled...

Probably going to pass on this, but here is more info on the set: Vivarte. Looks like it ships in March, and probably prices will stabilize around then.

I read about this as well, and how the main attraction is that DNA isn't going to degrade in 500 years like paper or certainly our mountains of CD-Rs. But I still don't understand where this DNA could be stored where it wouldn't degrade. And how you would still be able to find a decoder that would work if we are talking about centuries in the future (or know the encoding process to decode the information). We basically can't find digital readers for the floppy diskettes from 10 years ago, so I think they are fooling themselves thinking this is going to be a viable storage medium. But it still is a cool idea.

I think it was referenced (in a joking way) on another thread. Don't have any interest personally. Never been moved much by the piece and this seems like ridiculous overkill.

I actually had forgotten I pulled the trigger on this set. It's gone up an additional $5 on Amazon.ca but is holding steady at $30 on Amazon.com. (Edit, now $35 on Amazon. ) It is indeed 15 CDs. Set list is very heavy on Russian composers (Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Rimsky-Korsokov), a smidgin of Brahms (Hungarian Dances), Dvorak Symphonies 7-9 (two versions of the 9th!) and a couple of CDs with a bit more of a French flavor: Berlioz, Saint-Saens and Paul Dukas. Mostly everything in the standard repertoire, though some of the Russian symphonies are less known. Still, it looks like a really promising set that steers away from the Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms emphasis of so many of the other EMI sets. Not that there is anything wrong with that, just that I have enough Beethoven sets to last me the rest of my life...

Somewhere on Espn Kobe is quoted as saying it is time for more post-up basketball and to slow down the pace. Not a big Kobe fan, but it will be interesting if His Poutiness gets D'Antoni fired. For sure it was a horrible decision to hire him in the first place, which basically every person who knows anything about basketball knew at the time. Just a stupid, get-a-name-coach-at-any-price kind of decision that the Knicks are better known for. Doesn't even make sense, since no one goes to games or buys team merchandise based on the coach.

I wonder if Julius Hemphill heard it? MG Don't know about that, but I am currently listening to Abdulah Ibrahim's The Journey with a frontline of Hamiet Bluiett and Don Cherry (true, this would best be classified as African jazz music). That's kind of interesting. Don Cherry and Hamiet Bluiett are American. But so is Roy Ayers and, if he can make an LP with Fela Kuti and it's African, they can surely make one with Ibrahim and it's African, too. I guess the crucial point is who's in charge and what are they trying to do? All the Ibrahim I've got, whether it was recorded in South Africa, America or Europe (have I any from Europe? not sure) sounds to me like a somewhat sophisticated version of the township jive material that's been heard from fifties kwela bands to Robbie Jansen now (and that music has been getting more sopphisticated without becoming disconnected from its roots in the townships). So I reckon it's African. More African than Blues, soul or jazz, say. But to deny that Ibrahim plays jazz is silly. And the same is true for Jansen, Masekela, Rachabane, Masilela, Zacks Nkosi and the Elite Swingsters. Calling it African jazz music doesn't get it for me, because Super Biton, Bembeya Jazz, Mystere Jazz de Tombouctou, Momo 'Wandel' Soumah play very different kinds of music that can also be described, and some of it has been described (not terribly inaccurately if not terribly helpfully), as African jazz music. So I don't know what the answer is, but it's interesting. MG I'm certainly not an expert on Ibrahim. I would say that his earlier work, perhaps through late 60s is a bit of Highlife mixed with Duke Ellington, and then from the 70s onward it has been more traditional jazz (and plenty of suites in the Ellington tradition). The middle track on The Journey (recorded in 1978 in NYC incidentally) are largely free jazz whereas the last track Hajj feels more like a fusion of jazz and African rhythm (and is certainly the track I like best). The first track (Sister Rosie) actually does have just a bit of Highlife flavor to it that I missed on first listen (distracted by the middle track I guess). Out of curiosity, I wonder if Ibrahim and Randy Weston recorded any duets. That might be interesting -- or too much of a good thing. As far as I can tell from a quick search, they have not. I should have mentioned that in addition to a bunch of other musicians on the CD, Johnny Dyani is on bass (and Roy Brooks on drums). I've been trying to track down the recording he (Dyani) did with Mal Waldron and think I finally have a source that will ship to Canada.

Judging by the skateboarders I've known, it isn't an entirely clean sport. On the other hand, I don't think marijuana is considered a performance enhancer... Okay, curling. Is curling clean? Brewskis aren't a problem, eh?

I wonder if Julius Hemphill heard it? MG Don't know about that, but I am currently listening to Abdulah Ibrahim's The Journey with a frontline of Hamiet Bluiett and Don Cherry (true, this would best be classified as African jazz music).

Completed Madame Bovary. What a downer. Not that I expected things to turn out well for her (that's pretty much a given), but her husband really was such a simpleton. So many people in the novel make such bad choices, though I suppose it really is the Bovarys that end up the worst by the end. Still, I kind of felt Flaubert really piled it on in the last few pages. I guess his point is that there are some people you can't save from themselves, and this includes M. Bovary. I have some shorter pieces to read, including Mahfouz's Karnak Cafe, and then will try to wrap up Midnight's Children.

And tried his very best to destroy the lives and careers of all those who told the truth about he was up to. Don't think that "all of his peers" did that. Yes, but that was not cheating, that was something else. Only the winner would ever have had to do that. Why be more angry about Armstrong's cheating than about that of every rider who took a podium place, or indeed of anyone who placed 50th? The answer is not in the cheating. That was already there in the sport, there are hundreds of names implicated. The teams and cycling authorities knew all about it. So yes people dislike Lance humanly, but without him some other cheat - sanctioned implicitly by the team and by the race and by the UCI - would have won. Hate Lance, yes if you like, but why not hate everyone else? If Armstrong were not so arrogant in his denials, if he didn't sue and otherwise try to ruin people who told the truth about his doping, if he had merely denied the doping and then admitted it I might be OK with that as an admission of guilt. But he didn't. Let's not forget that he sued a UK newspaper for libel for hinting he was doping -- and won! That takes real chutzpah when you know you are lying -- and again puts him in a category quite different from his peers. You can better believe they are going to ask for some higher court to overturn that judgement and ask for costs etc., and probably get them. Some folks are saying that Lance is not actually in legal jeopardy in the US for this reason or that. I'm not so sure about that. But I do think he probably perjured himself in the UK libel case and that may cause him serious problems in the future. Couldn't happen to a nicer dirtbag. (Not that I don't think the UK libel law is a shambles that deserves to be completely uprooted, but that is a different post for a different day.)

It's a tough call. I have somewhere between 60-75% of this, so I'm probably not in the market for it, but maybe there will be enough newly released material to cause me to change my mind. If the packaging is really well done, it might sway me a bit as well, since I have a lot of the Vogue material on fairly ugly cut-outs.

True, though it wouldn't have been much of a shop if he hoarded the best LPs. I don't know about the UK, but the US changed the way inventory was treated for accounting purposes, and this was one factor in the decline of brick-and-mortar stores.

No, I think he was worst than most in being a heavy pusher -- and someone who tried to and often did destroy the careers of those who blew the whistle on him. That puts him in a special category well beyond his peers.

It is a CD. I believe they will press more than the number pre-ordered and sell through normal channels. But the label is trying to pre-sell enough to make sure they can pay the musicians and cover costs. No system is perfect, that's for sure.

You could always try to email the sponsor and see what they say. Of course sometimes all the info goes away after the project closes. I believe I still have contact info, since I am one of the backers. No rush now, given that the CD should be shipping in the summer...