jazzbo

To my knowledge, no.

You're undoubtedly right. It's hard for me (born summer '55) to see and feel the impact of that lp. I was too young at the time to really feel its then impact. And I was living in a neighborhood where soul music was on the turntables and radios around me. When the Bestles DID enter my life it was through the BBC that we could pick up on shortwave radios while living in Ethiopia and Swaziland. In '68 I somehow got a then not-contemporary EP with "Girl" and "Baby You Can Drive my Car" to play on the Grundig. The next year my Dad had to go back to DC from Swaziland for a week and he brought me back "Sgt. Pepper's" and "Magical Mystery Tour" which I had heard in the dorms at boarding school. My most vivid Beatles memory was hearing the whole or much of "Abbey Road" broadcast over the radio in the dorm after lights out. It was dangerous as we shouldn't have had the radios on, but it was a real "event." My experience with the Beatles was later, and I liked them, but by the same token I was listening to Cream and Hendrix as well and they fascinated me more.

Cool. Thanks Rod.

Fascinating release, as are most all that were released in this series.

Probably for many people a few years older than I. I confess I never really connected deeply with the Beatles til Sgt. Pepper's came along. And right about the time I really got into them, I got even further into Hendrix, Cream et al. Is that a really important album in your life?

It is special to me, I think mainly because it connected me to people who were important to me at that time, and beyond. Music is an amazing thing, more than just art, it's language and memory and meaning. And it can form strong bonds.

Thanks Cary. Any album "a milestone" for you in this way?

HALLELUJAH! Reported today: Fringe is renewed for at least thirteen episodes next year. Fringe Renewed ow ratings be damned — cult favorite Fringe will finish its multi-universe journey with a 13-episode final season. As expected, Fox has closed a deal to renew the sci-fi drama for a fifth season. While a dismal ratings performer in live viewing, Fringe has been a big DVR gainer and a favorite of critics as well as Fox brass. “Fringe has been a point of pride for me, I share the fans’ passion for the show,” Fox entertainment president Kevin Reilly said in January at TCA, where he also made it clear that a renewal hinged on renegotiating the deal with producing studio Warner Bros TV and J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot at a lower license fee. “We lose a lot of money on the show,” Reilly said. “We are not in the business of losing money, so we’re trying to figure out if there a number at which we can continue with the series.” After lengthy negotiations over the past couple of months, the two sides came to an agreement, giving the show and its fans a proper ending. “We are thrilled and beyond grateful that Fox – and our fans – have made the impossible possible: Fringe will continue into a fifth season that will allow the series to conclude in a wild and thrilling way,” series co-creator/executive producer JJ Abrams said.

So that's when you were middle class? I sort of wish I hadn't ever caught the tv bug, but I sure did.

Very smooth move on Woody III/Sony's part.

"Hey, if I want your opinion of me, I'll give it to you!" ---Ronnie Scott, channeled through jazzbo.

Interesting. I never heard the Stone Roses til the 21st. Century.

Roxy Music I never managed to get into.

Ha! No, that just made me a weirdo. I didn't develop the habit of tv until far later; an adolescence spent in Africa without tv just had kept me from getting the bug. It wasn't really until later in the 'eighties that I began to follow tv. I found that it was a very handy way to have subject matter to combat shyness and actually talk to people in the workplace and to chat up young women. . . .

Astonishingly good. Great stereo sound. Fascinating performance.

Well, I was working class by background, and something else or nothing else at the time from my life experience of inner city Philadelphia, Addis Ababa and then M'Babane. Somehow the androgyny was never really an issue for me. I actually didn't read the music mags or watch tv so it was only the album covers that had any visual impact. Bowie first came to my attention with "Hunky Dory" and I think it was the story-telling aspect of his work, and the theatrical creation of personas that grabbed my attention; at that time I was reading my Dad's "Complete Work of Shakespeare" a lot. The singer-songwriters, the soft rock, didn't hit for me til later in the 'seventies. Joni reached me with "Court and Spark" and "Miles of Aisles"--when Joni got jazzy, I was there. Neil and others I got into mid-seventies too as I embraced aspects of the "counter-culture" as it existed in my neck of the woods. There's something special about Ziggy that reached me then and kept me fascinated. I think it was the "weird outsider" stance of the Ziggy persona, I felt like a weird outsider myself. And there's lots of interesting music there, I still enjoy the album to this day.

I'll be drinking water listening to mine. Looking forward to it!

Some clunky acting in this show and the direction can often be unintentionally confusing, but it explores some great themes and ideas. The episode I'm watching right now is a re-working of concepts in Philip K. Dick's "UBIK."

This June will mark forty years since the release of "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders of Mars," the wild and wooly album by David Bowie. I noticed this month there will be a "40th Anniversary" edition or two and thought to myself 'Forty years--Wow!" I remember this as a polarizing album among the new friends I had cultivated in Burton, Ohio after returning to the states from three incredible years in a boarding school in M'Babane, Swaziland. I immediately latched onto its zaniness, and the variety of musical arrangements and textures and instrumentation. One friend was quite captured by it as well and we played it in my basement room quite a bit and alternately laughed and listened in silent attention. It seemed to have mysteries to present, it seemed to be a form of sophisticated communication that was floating in the air outside our grasp. Ronson's operatic guitar, the saxophones, the strings, the weird folksy and cabaret bits and the out and out slamming rockers. . . this album was hard to peg and digest. For those very reasons it was forbidden to be played among other friends who somehow could handle the contemporary "Close to the Edge" from Yes, but not this one from Bowie. And in large part it was the weird theatrical persona that Bowie put before us: to many a rural Ohioan he was from Mars. Cleveland radio had done a successful job of bringing the recordings of many English bands onto the airwaves and turntables of young Ohioans, but many other bands were more easily accepted. And there were all those macho American bands and singers too, so different than Bowie. But I was a bit of a stranger in a strange land, and this album intrigued me. I was discovering electric Miles and moving on to Louis Armstrong and other jazz too at this time, and in the next few years at college I began really collecting records of several genres with zeal, and followed the next half a dozen by Bowie. But Ziggy was the one that had really connected with me, and I again had a friend to spin this with often in my dorm, who would also always sneak it into the rotation at parties. I remember dancing to several songs from the album a handful of times at parties with the gal I was crazy about, Helen Elizabeth Haggerty, who lived on the dorm floor above me. I felt confident enough with my dancing to this music to ask her to dance, and these dances led to a friendship that took a long and winding road to the most important relationship in my life fifteen years later. I hear the album now and I can more clearly see the craft and guile that went into its creation, and see how rich it was for its time, the many layers that I circled over and over at 33 and a third rpm for years. And I listen and smile and move myself and think "forty years--wow!" So much time has passed, so many different stages of life, but one spin and I'm able to reach back to those friends and that dance floor with the lovely Helen. Anyone else have a history with this album? Or a similar history with another?

Another beautiful (non BBC) set is "The Story of India." I love it. Well-researched, well-filmed, entertaining and educational and just plain gorgeous.

The Washington is very good. . .but it's been reissued twice in Japan, and I have a copy of each reissue, as do quite a few jazz fans. If it were coupled with the best tracks from the "unissued session" (commonly called the "Trainwreck") that would make a great reissue, but I really seriously doubt that would be possible. . . .

To make money from people who buy collectible lps.

I think the "low-key" feel is part of what I love about it so. It unfolds like a flower or a beautiful evening.

Re-read part of Burton's journey to Mecca yesterday. Fascinating stuff.

I think Extensions is a great record, I've been familiar with the recording, and teh reissue is top-notch in every way. Love the sound. Another great reissue. . . three in a row, no filler!