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crisp

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Posts posted by crisp

  1. OurKindofTraitorCover.png

    Le Carré's latest.

    Bill - you're obviously a big fan. I am currently reading "Tinker Tailor" on the recommendation of my wife. I am bored with it - none of it makes sense to me. What am I doing wrong?

    You're doing nothing wrong. LeCarre was in his depths by then. His best are his earliest 5 or so novels, and he's written better ones (like The Night Manager) in later years.

    I couldn't follow Tinker either. Struggled to the end then got rid of the copies of The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley's People that I had been planning to read next. I consoled myself while reading Tinker with spotting instances of bad grammar and poor sentence construction. A pity, as I liked The Spy Who Came in From the Cold.

  2. I've got it and yearning for the time to start playing it! The discographical information is fairly basic, just recording dates, arrangers and occasionally some personnel, especially on jazzier dates. TBH the info on that discography I linked to above is probably more thorough. If you've any specific questions, I'll be happy to look them up for you.

  3. Fair enough, I like both of Jones's albums with Sinatra as well, but track by track rather than as albums, if that makes sense. On the Sinatra/Basie that Hefti did the material is also all over the place, but it sounds like an album. Jones's doesn't.

    I love She Shot Me Down. It has its faults, but it's so great that Sinatra did a traditional ballad album with Gordon Jenkins at this point in his career instead of another duff Old Blue Eyes is Back type of project.

  4. Quincy got his name on the album for the same reason Stan Kenton, Count Basie, Woody Herman & a bunch of other people got their names on album covers for doing little more than getting/keeping the players together and rehearsing/conducting/etc other people's charts. They didn't create any of the music, but they did provision it, and the record date got made under their province and would not have taken the form that it did otherwise.

    For me, the big difference between Jones and those other bandleaders is that the others maintain their own style and put performers together appropriately. Jones albums always sound like compilations: the arrangement style shifts from track to track and the artists rarely have much in common, other than that they are big names.

    He's also rotten at putting songs together: compare his Sinatra/Basie album with Neal Hefti's; Basie presumably sees to it that it sounds like the same band throughout (unlike Jones's other Sinatra album, LA is my Lady, which is a mess), but the songs have nothing in common other than that many are other people's hits.

    I think it was smart of him to become an executive. As a musician he's very mediocre but as a businessman he's brilliant.

  5. I'm no audiophile -- although I have roughly 8,000 CDs my stereo "set up" is a midi system my father-in-law gave me when he upgraded to separates. However, lossy mp3s are a step too far for me -- I can hear the difference and my ears protest after a while, especially using headphones.

    I've never tried lossless downloads, but it sounds like one way forward, if, as Shawn says, the majors would offer that option. Until they do, I'll stick with CDs for as long as they are available. Plus I love using my painstakingly compiled CD collection and would never dream of getting rid of it.

    PS: My iPod Shuffle is great for the gym. I have a regular iPod but never use it now. I don't need that much music on the move.

  6. You'd think that with a box set only available via the Pop Market website, they'd at least bother to give a more exact overview of its content somewhere.

    I emailed them on this issue and was told that the contents are "the original albums" so no need for track listings. I explained that there have been many reissues over the years and some have bonus tracks and some do not, and that it would be useful to have all the tracks listed in one place, but it fell on deaf ears.

  7. EMI has a new series of 4 CD boxed sets coming on November 21. Amazon UK has most of them for £10.56, but the Art Blakey is £8.99 and some of the pop titles in the series are even cheaper.

    Jazz titles on Amazon are:

    Chet Baker: Chet Baker Sings/Chet Baker Big Band/Chet Baker and Crew/The Most Important Jazz Album of 1964/1965

    Dexter Gordon: Doin' Alright/Dexter Calling/Go/Our Man in Paris

    Cannonball Adderley: Somethin' Else/Them Dirty Blues/Cannonball's Bossa Nova/Why am I Treated so Bad (although cover art subs Poll Winners for the latter

    Bobby McFerrin: Spontaneous Inventions/Simple Pleasures/Bang Zoom/Beyond Words

    Dianne Reeves: Quiet after the Storm/That Day/Bridges/The Calling

    Herbie Hancock: My Point of View/Empyrean Isles/Maiden Voyage/Speak Like a Child

    Joe Henderson: Page One/Our Thing/In'n'Out/Made for Joe

    Wayne Shorter: Night Dreamer/Juju/Speak no Evil/Adam's Apple

    Art Blakey: A Night in Tunisia/Moanin/The Big Beat/Buhaina's Delight

    Cassandra Wilson: Blue Light Till Dawn/New Moon Daughter/Travelling Miles/Belly of the Sun

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