Jazzjet

Thanks for the birthday wishes. I suppose I should repeat my reply from last year but I'm not sure I'm any wiser!

Interesting playlist. Thanks.

There seems to have been an art installation based around the old Dobell's Jazz Record shop. Lots of images here, including archive photos (the staff, Elvin Jones, Horace Silver, Errol Garner etc) : Dobells

Here's a very comprehensive gallery of photos of HMV in Oxford Street : HMV Oxford Street

Isn't Greenland a store where they sell stuff from Iceland that's gone off?

Pretty much matches my favourite TV, although I haven't watched Happy Valley I yet and don't 'get' Peaky Blinders. I would only add River and the ITV crime series Unforgotten. I've spent quite a lot of time working through series on Netflix such as Homeland, Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. PS Isn't 'Trapped' set in Iceland rather than Greenland?

Well it's alright for some. Here in West Cornwall there was no sun all day, on and off drizzle and then, in the evening, a torrential downpour with thunder, lightning etc. This storm was repeated at 3am this morning, only worse. Good job I'm moving to the balmy paradise of Devon next week.

BBC4 effectively replaced BBC2 as home of art and culture some time ago so this is welcome news. My worry is that when ratings hit the floor, as they may well do, this will be seen as justification to revert to the lacklustre, repeat-heavy version of BBC2.

Yes, all important events but how many of them had an impact on society as a whole. I remember my parents taking in a couple of Hungarian refugees and me learning to play table tennis (and enjoy goulash) but I'm not sure it changed the way society behaved. The same with Suez, although it might have hastened the process of public mistrust of politicians. The impact of 'Look Back In Anger' was probably limited to the liberal elite. There's more of an argument for 'Rock Around The Clock' which did have a real impact on popular culture, as did skiffle. It probably did a lot to raise the profile of the teenage, although not in a positive way.

I've got the Jon Savage book but it's on my ever-growing 'to read' pile. I'm not sure that there's much of a case for 1956 being the 'year that changed Britain'. It certainly saw the early stages of the birth of the teenager (skiffle, Elvis, Lonnie Donegan etc) but it was all fairly self-contained. I'm surprised that more isn't made of the claims for 1963 with the explosion of Merseybeat, pirate radio, the Profumo scandal (and the breakdown of deference), the Lady Chatterley trial, the Great Train Robbery etc. But maybe there was a book and I missed it. Perhaps the truth is that every year changed Britain in some way.

I would strongly recommend 'Mr Robot'. Also, 'Halt and Catch Fire' is pretty good. The subject matter - the early 80s computer industry - may sound unpromising but it's hooked me so far. On the comedy front there's 'Transparent' if you're in the market for a modern transgender sitcom.

It probably depends on the navigation capability of your streamer. My Oppo is connected to my home cinema setup so I can easily control and navigate my music via the screen. I have some memory sticks full of favourite tracks where I use the shuffle option. I have others where the integrity of individual albums is maintained and I can navigate and play in exactly the same way as a CD. For example, I have one memory stick dedicated to all my vinyl LPs which I have digitised losslessly and these are maintained in original album format. The approach does provide pretty good flexibility.

I don't know whether the Naim streamer has this facility but with my Oppo streamer I use USB memory sticks a lot of the time. They come in quite high capacities now - I have some 128 Gb ones - so you can easily store a lot of lossless music on them. The sound is great and navigation is easy.

I would definitely support Bev's recommendation of John Wickes' book 'Innovations in British Jazz'. It's a little chaotic in organisation and poorly bound (maybe because it's been well thumbed) but full of great detail. It's been mentioned before but Pete Frame's 'The Restless Generation' is very good on the post war development of trad and modern jazz, although its main thrust is rock and pop.

And if you have Spotify you might want to listen to David Hepworth's 'Never A Dull Moment' playlist :