Claude

Zweitausendeins also has some extremely cheap but very high quality classical box sets from Brilliant Classics. The sets cost ca $1.5 per disc. They mostly consist of licensed recordings from the 80's and 90's, produced by smaller labels such as Denon, BIS or ASV. A great bargain are the Complete Mahler Symphonies by Eliahu Inbal (15CDs, 26 Euro). This Denon production was one of the top Mahler sets available ten years ago, and sold at full price. It's the best recorded Mahler on CD, the sound is state of the art. Don't confuse it with the other complete Mahler set, which is not bad either, but an uneven mix of different orchestras. There are too many good sets to list. The Prokofiev/Scriabin Complete Piano sonatas box is very interesting too. The Brilliant Classics homepage has complete listings of the boxes content with artists and original label, but it's not very easy to navigate

I think that's the philosophy of this Verve "LP Reproduction" series. LP covers (smaller though), LP tracklist (but playable on one side only ) Bonus tracks would have done no harm, if put at the end as it is customary today.

I hope this is obscure enough I discovered it thanks to the Penguin guide. Franklin Kiermyer - Solomon's Daughter Sound samples It's the drummer Franklin Kiermyer's album, but it will be most interesting for Pharoah Sanders fans. This session has Sanders' most powerful and engaging playing in recent years. All other albums he recorded after his Impulse! period pale in comparision. This is high-energy music, comparable to some of Coltrane's later albums ("Sun ship"). Sanders imaginative and boundless playing and Kiermyers equally ecstatic drumming keep the listener's attention throughout this hourlong disc, which (fortunately) also has a couple of slower pieces. The recording too has a raw quality, being very closely miked and unprocessed. I don't listen to this album very often, but when I do I it has an almost purifying effect on my mind. More on Franklin Kiermyer here

Do you know when the Mosaic sidebar will be available, couw? I love this Opera feature. It would make my daily orders much faster

It looks rather cheap in my view (the layout, the font of the links text), not very classy compared to the products they sell. Could be from the CD-Rom "Create a webshop in 5 minutes, from a choice of 10 templates" One quarter of the screen on the right side is empty on my 17" monitor (standard 1024x768 resolution), while I need to scroll down to see the complete list of available sets. It seems to be optimized for 640x480 resolution. The musical categories are a good idea. It made me aware of the fact that "Kenton Presents Cooper, Holman & Rosolino" (#185) is a small band set. I always thought it to be a Stan Kenton big band set. This makes it more interesting.

There is a detailed review on AMG: http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&u...l=Akrk9ikchbb89

Update: WOW!! The TOCJ-marked discs are absolute winners sound-wise. I took me just a few seconds on every disc to recognize the clean full-range and undistorted sound that is a trademark of these japanese remasterings from the early to mid 90's. It would be nice to have a complete list of the spanish TOCJs. Confirmed so far: - Lee Morgan - The Cooker - Curtis Fuller - Vol.3 - Horace Parlan - Up and down - Tina Brooks - True Blue - Pete LaRoca - Basra - Hank Mobley - Poppin'

How much do you want to spend? There are good phono stages by NAD (PP1 and PP2), Creek (OBH8) and Pro-ject (Phonobox), that cost between $100-200. You can also find $25 adaptors that merely do the job, but if you intend to listen seriously to your LPs it is worth spending more (probably the only phono preamp you will ever buy)

I wasn't buying a lot of music for some time in 1998-2000 (maybe 2 or 3 CDs a month), because I had been bulding a classical music collection the previous years (much less expensive than jazz BTW) and I though I knew all the important jazz albums. But then I discovered the Blue Note bulletin board and got addicted to hard bop, which was underrepresented in my collection at that time. My wishlist grew so much faster than my purchases. I haven't stopped buying at least 20CDs per month since that time. I have a financial limit that I impose myself. I travel a lot for my job and get a fixed amount of travel cost reimbursements, which covers more than the actual cost if one finds cheap hotels and dinners. I finance my CD purchases from the money that remains after I paid my costs. This also allowed me to lose 10 kg overweight during the last year

I received my package of 8 spanish Blue Notes today. As I am in my office, I cannot check the sound. I will post my experience on sound quality later. This is what the covers say on the remastering: "Domestic" remastering: - Art Blakey - Like Someone in Love (Ron McMaster) - Charles Mingus - Complete town Hall (Malcom Addey) - Ellington & Armstrong - Chick Corea - Early Circle (Addey) No remastering engineer mentioned, but TOCJ number may indicate japanese remastering: - Lee Morgan - The Cooker - Curtis Fuller - Vol.3 - Horace Parlan - Up and down - Tina Brooks - True Blue Given that True Blue usually sells for $25-40 on ebay, this 5.75 Eur CD is a great bargain, if you can stand the awful blueish covers. I have the two Blue Note cover books in LP format, so I don't care about the CD covers.

Good luck, have fun and see you, Daniel

Has anyone actually seen these LPs? Amazon France lists the titles as CDs (probably an error, because of the title"Collection 25 cm") and as "not available". http://www.amazon.fr/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000...3917739-4605717

Mnytime, I found them on the Mundo website, which may not be up-to-date. An alternative resource is the wellknown Mr Tanno

As the $ exchange rate is very favorable for Europeans right now, I consider ordering some japanese imports directly in Japan (Mundo has it's prices in $). Most are albums not available on the domestic market, but a few would be upgrades of old CD reissues from the 80's. Can someone comment on the sound of these japanese reissues, compared to the domestic release? 1) Miles Davis - Ascenseur Pour L'échafaud (Fontana PHCE-4181, 24bit 96kHz Spectrum) $19 2) Gil Evans - The Individualism of Gil Evans (Verve POCJ-2460, 24bit remastering) $19 3) Michel Legrand meets Miles Davis / Ben Webster/ Hank Jones / Donald Byrd / Paul Chambers / John Coltrane (Philips PHCE-3074, 24bit 96KHz remaster) $19 (seems to be the same material as on "Legrand Jazz") 4) Cecil Taylor - Live At The Cafe Montmartre 2CD (debut TKCB-71261, limited LP style paper sleeve edition) $36 5) Cecil Taylor - The World Of Cecil Taylor (Candid TECW-20594, limited LP style paper sleeve edition, Hi-Bit-Hyper mastering) $23 ... and the Candid reissues in general (Cecil Taylor, Mingus) 6) Cecil Taylor - Looking Ahead! (Contemporary VICJ-2168, 20bit K2 mastering) $21 Thank you

In jazz, the US still have a big advantage in education, as there are jazz bands at school and university, something that is almost non-existent in Europe. Music education is exclusively classical, young musicians play jazz on their own initiative.

I found a mint LP of Julian Priester - Love, Love (a rare ECM collector's item, not reissued on CD) last week at a local store. It's been there for the last 20 years at least, in a box hidden behind the counter. I got it for 5 Euro.

There is also a small risk that Jimi Hendrix plays on a track and that the box has to be withdrawn for legal reasons

Miles Davis in Hollywood 1957. Scanned from a calendar with William Claxton photos.

Many Audio Asylum posters find that Sony SACDs are generally among the worst sounding, meaning that they don't sound better than the corresponding remastered CDs: Let's shake the SACD tree and nominate our WORST SOUNDING SACDs

I have no Monk book to recommend. I have a german book from Thomas Fitterling Oreos which has a good commented discography but only a decent biography. But you absolutely need the Straight No Chaser movie, which has amazing footage of Monk performing in the studio and live. Not too many interviews. It's a documentary that can be watched several times. The DVD is preferable because of the optional subtitles. I wasn't able to understand Monk's mumblings without them.

If shipping costs and Euro rate are not an issue, check the two shopping links on this page: http://www.rondomagazin.de/jazz/v/vache/wv02.htm

Is this a "sex sells" stategy or just an embarrassing error? JAZZ AT THE PORNSHOP 2LP SET (NICE)

Tom Waits' grandfather?

Maybe I wouldn't be a jazz fan today without the Penguin guide that I bought in 1992. I also had the Rolling Stone Jazz Record Guide from 1985. There was no internet at that time of course, and both guides were the only introduction into jazz for me. Magazines cover mostly current musicians and releases, so they don't help as much in discovering the music's past as books do. When I was living in Brussels as a student I regularly went to the public library (Mediathèque de la Communauté Francaise) which has a gigantic selection of CDs, including japan imports. I limited myself to borrow 5 CDs per week (at $1/CD), and without a guide I would have been completely lost in the choice and I would have missed many essential discs. And even today I discover many interesting musicians in the Penguin guide that are not present by other media. The european jazz scene is very well covered. It's true that the authors favour free and avantgarde jazz and neglect some straight-ahead styles, but I personnally have no problem with that as it corresponds to my preferences.

I saw a complete 25CD (or more) box set of these spanish Blue Note reissues in german stores some 5 years ago. The discs were also sold seperately. So these are not new reissues but probably old stocks that will dissappear fast at that price.