Claude

I heard some of the previously unreleased material recently. This set seems more like a "Making of" documentary. Not as essential as the "Silent Way" or "Bitches Brew" boxes.

Here's a trace of that VHS tape: Live at the Village Vanguard - Vol. 4 (released 1989) http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/LiveattheV...546/preview.php

It's a very intense electric session, one of my favourite jazz albums of the 90's. Two similar Gary Thomas albums I like alot are "Seventh Quadrant" (Enja) and "Till we have faces" (with Pat Metheny, JMT, OOP) Gary Thomas (All Music Guide

I received the Sep. 2 RVG batch - except the Bud Powell disc - today from CD Universe ($8.39 promo) and compared them to the old 80's Blue Note CDs. The sound is greatly improved (especially the drums), and is very well balanced. Not overly bright, and no reduction of the stereo spread as some previous RVGs (Go, Unity). "Mode for Joe" has the same distortion on ensemble passages as the tracks that are in the Henderson 4CD box. It's probably on the master tape.

It is an MPS recording (Musik Production Schwarzwald, from Germany). The MPS catalogue now belongs to Universal and is sold under the Verve label. But it´s not a Verve session, so it's not included in the Verve box. http://www.fmi.uni-passau.de/~schneide/dis.../saba/saba.html

This album is now available in the Grachan Moncur Mosaic Select 3CD set. The first pressings of this set had a wrong track on CD1 http://www.mosaicrecords.com/DisplaySelect...electionID=1037 According to the Mosaic booklet, the timing of the alternate track of "Saturday and Sunday" is 9:23, "Frankenstein" is 7:28.

Do not buy the Fantasy LPs (made by Mikulsky/ZYX), even at the very low price (5 Euro). I bought a dozen albums and only a few of them sound OK. They are all made from the 80´s digital masters used for CD production and mostly sound thin and bright. Some are worse than the 128kbs MP3s from the same albums I downloaded from emusic.com

Sorry to all those who don't understand german, but here is this great satirical text on the future of the music industry that has been circulating on german message boards in the recent weeks:

New worm tries to bring down Downing Street website

Apart from the foot-tapping there is also tape distortion on louder passages, on the CD I have heard (japan release from the 80's). A mediocre recording, but one of the best Mingus concerts on record.

I work in the public administration of my country, where hundreds of computers had recently been infected by the Welchia worm (similar to Blaster). Most internal networks were unusable for a day. All workstations run Windows 2000 and Norton Antivirus, and the internet communication is filtered by a firewall, but somebody connecting his infected notebook to the network could have been responsible for spreading the virus amongst thousands of computers. Contrary to previous worms which could only be activated by opening an email containing the virus or browsing a malicious website (both infections can be prevented by firewalls and Antivirus software), the Blaster and Welchia worms infect every Windows 2000 or XP PC logged into the internal network. I started my PC in the morning of that day and saw the Antivirus software reporting the infection, but it was too late. It could only be repaired with a special removal software and further infections prevented with the Microsoft patch. The Windows bug that made those worm attacks possible had been known for a month and a patch was available, but the administration had not thought about installing it systematically. I usually care myself about my workstation, but I did not think a worm like this could spread as easily. Two of my friends also had their home PCs infected. Fortunately, neither of these two worms had a function to destroy data, their objective was only to show Windows vulnerability. This would have been a disaster.

From Jazzmatazz: Buddy Rich & Harry "Sweets" Edison - Buddy and Sweets (Verve LPR) Sept 9 Hugh Masakela - Grrr (Verve LPR) Sept 9 Al Grey - Snap Your Fingers (Verve/Argo LPR) Sept 9 ? with Bobby Hutcherson and Herbie Hancock J.J. Johnson - J.J.'s Broadway (Verve LPR) Sept 9 Jack Teagarden - Mis'ry and the Blues (Verve LPR) Sept 9

Obviously, Jurek hasn't noticed that it has been released on SACD too. The decision to release the new Blue Train remaster simultanously on CD and hybrid SACD (compatible with CD players) seems to be only a pricing issue, since the RVG CD is sold at mid price and the SACD at full price. Other labels have recently decided to reissue albums as hybrid SACDs only (Rolling Stones ABKO, The Police, Peter Gabriel), sold at attractive prices. But some people say this was a SACD promotion financed with help by Sony, because the same albums are now released again on CD only, at least in Europe. Hybrid SACDs are much more costly to produce.

The Compact Disc logo was used during the years when CD technology was protected by patents and had to be licensed from Philips/Sony. It was part of the licensing deal. The patents have now expired, but the logo is still protected by trademark rights. Philips indeed refuses that copyprotected CDs carry the CD logo. But this does not mean that every CD that has no Compact Disc logo is copyprotected.

I wouldn't call that a victory. It should be an absolute minimum requirement that protected (limited) CDs are marked as such on the jewel case and that CDs can be returned if there are compatibility problems with regular CD/DVD-Players that the buyer uses. Amazon Germany has a strange policy in this respect: Copyprotected CD can be returned, but only if they are unopened. That's ok for someone who notices the Copycontrol logo only after receiving the CD (it can be checked on their website too). But it does not help those buyers who find that they cannot play the CD on a device that it is supposed to play in. The condition that copyable media must be returned unopened seems reasonable, but those CDs are supposed to be uncopyable (at least digitally)! So Amazon can refuse to take back problematic copyprotected CD if they are opened, saying "You have been warned by the logo that they may be unplayable on your CD/DVD player". Because thats what the logo says (from my memory): "Playable on CD/DVD/SACD players and Windows and Apple computers. There may be problems with some devices" http://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/tg/browse...4169412-3466450

I prefer the MFSL CD, which is now OOP but shows up on Ebay regularly. It sounds less agressive and at the same time more dynamic than the RVG (SACD and CD layer).

Source: Yahoo News Universal Music to Cut CD Prices to Under $13 By Derek Caney NEW YORK (Reuters) - Universal Music Group, the world's largest record company, on Wednesday said it will cut list prices on compact discs by as much as 30 percent in an effort to boost sales that have been stymied by free online music-sharing services such as Kazaa. Starting in October, Universal, the home to such artists as Mary J. Blige, U2 and Elton John, will trim its prices on most of its CDs to $12.98 from its current $16.98-$18.98 range of prices. "Our research shows that the sweet spot is to sell our records below $12.98,' said Universal Music president Zach Horowitz. "We're confident that when we implement this we will get a dramatic and sustained increase." Historically, large retailers have sold new CDs at considerably less than the so-called "manufacturer suggested retail price." "We expect this will invigorate the music market in North America," said Doug Morris, the label's chief executive. "This will allow retailers (to sell) for $10 or less if they so choose." The price cut comes as the company has endured the enormous popularity of free music sharing services, which the labels blame for music piracy. Universal, which is owned by Vivendi Universal, sees the price cuts as part of a larger strategy to discourage people from downloading music from the free services. The record industry has already begun suing individual users of these services for copyright infringement. The labels have also begun offering their music to online music services that charge for each song downloaded, one of the most popular of which is Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes. "As people will begin to migrate from illegitimate services, they're going to be exploring a host of options -- some online and some through retail," Horowitz said. "We felt that the most important thing we can do to encourage people to go back into stores is to reduce our prices dramatically." Wholesale prices for CDs would decline to $9.09 from $12.02. For a handful of bigger name artists, wholesale prices would be $10.10 for a short period of time. Universal also said it would stop "cooperative" advertising, in which the label subsidized advertising by retailers in local markets and instead advertise directly to consumers. It will also withdraw other discounts to retailers. "(Our buyers) haven't had a chance to talk with Universal at this point to get details on how it might affect the business," said a spokesman from Circuit City Stores Inc. . A spokeswoman from Best Buy Co. Inc. declined to comment. Amazon.com Inc., Tower Records and Trans World Entertainment Corp. did not immediately return phone calls requesting comment. The other major labels -- AOL Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Music, Bertelsmann AG's BMG, EMI Group Plc and Sony Music Group -- declined to comment. Some music executives questioned how much impact the price cuts will have. "This doesn't have as much impact as it looks," one record executive said. "The labels were offering some discount programs to the retailers that would now end. So it's not entirely clear how much of a change there is for retailers' margins." Another executive noted that larger retailers like Wal-Mart Stores Inc, Best Buy and Circuit City already sell CDs at around $13 anyway to get people into the stores to buy bigger ticket items. "It remains to be seen what this means for the specialized retailer of CDs," he said. (Additional reporting by Jackie Sindrich)

I haven't seen any evidence of degraded sound quality with the protection scheme used by EMI (Cactus Datashield 200). But I won't buy a european RVG to test it.

That´s nice. The jazz DVD market is very small, it would be very optimistic to expect a big 4 DVD collectors set. This does not sell like Star Wars

I just saw the Solal CD in a local store, it has the Copycontrol logo. Maybe you've got an import or prerelease CD.

Thanks a lot!! I have the Penguin Guide, but this Excel file will fit into my pocket (Palm organizer) Edit: No, it's too large, my synchronization software only accepts 700 rows in an Excel file But it works with the txt file.

Who cares, the Penguin guide is better anyway. Just kidding ... I hope they will not lock the complete site but leave the discographies and tracklist available for free, and just charge for accessing the reviews.

"Sahara" is one of McCoy Tyner's best Milestone sessions. I like his Koto playing But the one I love the most, for its energy, is Enlightenment, recorded live in 1973.

Yes Hans. $13 for a RVG is not interesting. I just edited my previous post (adding the last sentence) while you were posting. I thought True Blue was having a RVG sale, but in fact it is Blue Note.

Thanks for the tip. I noticed that too on my only order I have made at True Blue, but thought it was an error. Unfortunately, True Blue's RVG prices are not very competitive ($13).