alocispepraluger102

So the solution to the problem of fast & easy money in the past is to make money fast & easy again? Cramer just didn't want to see his investment bank buddies lose their bonuses. Moose, I'm with ya! Teach compounding, and the importance of being on the right side of it. And don't just teach it once, give reminder/refreshers every year. Toss in a few important financial equations, and again give refreshers. And try to some probability too. Actually a little of all of this does get touched on, or was with me in high school. But too often one just learns this stuff for a test and forgets it. Better to try to give a refresher for a few days or a week each year from junior high thru high school. (Yeah I know, at the expense of what?) i agree completely, but cramer is at least acknowledging the scope of the problem.

wow! just thinking that the ghost might wish to borrow them for a priceless nightlights show.

Yasgur's farm up for sale Associated Press August 8, 2007 at 5:14 PM EDT BETHEL, N.Y. — The famous farm near the alfalfa field that drew 400,000 people to Woodstock for three days of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll is up for sale. The asking price: $8-million (U.S.). Roy Howard, the current owner, is packing it in after years of tangling with local officials over permits for reunion gatherings to mark the 1969, three-day Woodstock music festival that helped ignite a generation. Up for sale is the 2,000-square-foot house that belonged to dairy farmer Max Yasgur, along with a larger farmhouse, a barn and 103 bucolic acres about 125 kilometres north of New York City. A couple embrace on a muddy hillside in Bethel, N. Y. during the Woodstock Music and Art Fair in Aug., 1969. This image was featured in magazines, on posters and on thecover of the Woodstock concert album. CP Photo Archive A couple embrace on a muddy hillside in Bethel, N. Y. during the Woodstock Music and Art Fair in Aug., 1969. This image was featured in magazines, on posters and on thecover of the Woodstock concert album. (CP Photo Archive) The Globe and Mail Included are a gourmet kitchen with stainless steel appliances, double convection ovens, Viking stove, antique soapstone sink, 22-foot vaulted ceilings and expansive views of the Pocono Mountains. There's also a double whirlpool tub, steam shower and bidet. The nearby alfalfa field where the concert was held isn't included in the sale. It's owned by cable magnate Alan Gerry, who turned it into the 4,800-seat Bethel Woods Center last summer. Mr. Yasgur lent out the alfalfa field for the concert after promoters were rejected by officials in the nearby town of Woodstock. About 400,000 people packed the field Aug. 15-17 for the festival that drew the biggest names in music. Mr. Yasgur and his farm were celebrated in Joni Mitchell's song Woodstock, popularized by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young with the line: “I'm going on down to Yasgur's farm. I'm going to join in a rock 'n' roll band.”

http://www.artsjournal.com/rifftides/archi...e_arango_1.html January 2, 2006 Bill De Arango Bill De Arango, the guitarist who died at eighty-five the day after Christmas, might have become famous. While his colleagues Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie invited audiences into the new territory they had all opened together, he left New York in 1948 and went home to Cleveland. The next generation of guitarists, which included Jimmy Raney and Tal Farlow, gained followings that De Arango helped make possible. Even his contemporary Remo Palmier, who stayed on the New York scene longer, was better known. But considering his short time in the big leagues, De Arango appears on a surprising number of records. His playing was characterized by technical skill, digital speed and canny application of harmonic understanding to create memorable melodic inventions. With Parker and Gillespie, De Arango was a part of Sarah Vaughan’s first recordings under her own name, but did not solo on them. A few days later in the spring of 1945, he recorded with bassist Slam Stewart’s quintet, which included Red Norvo and Johnny Guarnieri. With daring intervals in his improvised lines, on the Stewart sides De Arango bridged the divide between swing and bebop, notably in ”On the Upside Looking Down.” After recording in the swing mainstream with saxophonists Charlie Kennedy and Ike Quebec—both in 1945—he joined Gillespie’s seven-piece band for recordings that accelerated the pace of bebop’s acceptance. De Arango’s choruses on “Anthropology,” “Ol’ Man Rebop” and particularly his luminous solo on the second take of “52nd Street Theme” demonstrated why Gillespie, Milt Jackson, Al Haig and Don Byas, the other soloists on that landmark RCA Victor date in early 1946, accepted him as a peer. De Arango appeared on four Trummy Young sides the trombonist cut in April, 1946. In May, two weeks apart, came two magnificent recording sessions that De Arango and the magisterial tenor saxophonist Ben Webster split as leaders. De Arango’s sextet session was a swing-to-bop transitional affair with Sid Catlett on drums, bassist John Simmons, clarinetist Tony Scott and trumpeter Idrees Sulieman, then still known as Leonard Graham. Argonne Thornton (aka Sadik Hakkim) was the pianist. Webster’s quartet date had the same rhythm section, except that Haig, another bop pioneer, took over the piano. De Arango and Webster made a glorious team and produced eight tracks that are among the best from a period when musicians of different styles and races mixed without a thought for the phony war some critics were promoting between bop and all other jazz. “I Got it Bad and That Ain’t Good” and “Blues Mister Brim” are sterling examples of the empathy between the two. Both sessions are reissued under Webster's name. De Arango next recorded with Eddie Davis, in the days before Davis appended the nickname “Lockjaw.” They did two blues and two “I Got Rhythm” variants, typical of quick record dates, with superior solos from De Arango. A favorite of tenor players, he was soon back in a studio with Webster, Scott, Haig, Simmons, Catlett and Sulieman for four septet sides under his own name on the Signature label. They seem never to have been reissued. In March, 1947, he joined Charlie Ventura in an all-star group with trumpeter Charlie Shavers, trombonist Bill Harris, pianist Ralph Burns, drummer Dave Tough, and bassist Chubby Jackson. They recorded four tracks, including “Stop and Go,” with De Arango’s electrifying solo the very definition of early bebop fleetness. A week later, the same group with Curley Russell on bass and Sid Catlett spelling Tough on one piece, played a concert at Carnegie Hall. It was recorded, but the only CD reissue seems to be in a gigantic Jazz At The Philharmonic box. By 1948, De Arango was back in Cleveland. He opened a music store. He gave lessons. He continued to play—brilliantly, by all accounts—until illness prevented it in his last few years, but he was out of the spotlight, rarely recording. In 1954 he made a ten-inch LP using Stan Getz’s rhythm section of pianist John Williams, bassist Teddy Kotick and drummer Art Mardigan. It has not been reissued. De Arango returned to New York for a short time in the late 1960s and early 1970s, playing what his Cleveland colleague tenor saxophonist Ernie Krivda described as “heavy metal jazz.” An album he recorded in 1993 with Joe Lovano as a sideman gives the flavor of his playing in that period. But it was his dazzling work of the mid-forties that made him a model for other guitarists. If you follow the links in this posting, you’ll find nearly everything De Arango recorded when his talent flowered during a vital phase of jazz history. Posted by dramsey at January 2, 2006 1:05 AM

those old sax parts even those beautiful arrangements from the late 20's require a damn good player on his game. hand them to a young cat.

as cramer was saying: AP Dow Plunges 387 on Subprime Concerns Thursday August 9, 4:46 pm ET By Tim Paradis, AP Business Writer Dow Plunges 387 on Following Renewed Subprime Mortgage Concerns NEW YORK (AP) -- Wall Street plunged again Thursday after a French bank said it was freezing three funds that invested in U.S. subprime mortgages because it was unable to properly value their assets. The Dow Jones industrials extended its series of triple-digit swings, this time falling more than 380 points. The announcement by BNP Paribas raised the specter of a widening impact of U.S. credit market problems. The idea that anyone -- institutions, investors, companies, individuals -- can't get money when they need it unnerved a stock market that has suffered through weeks of volatility triggered by concerns about tight credit and bad subprime mortgages. A move by the European Central Bank to provide more cash to money markets intensified Wall Street's angst. Although the bank's loan of more than $130 billion in overnight funds to banks at a low rate of 4 percent was intended to calm investors, Wall Street saw it as confirmation of the credit markets' problems. It was the ECB's biggest injection ever. The Federal Reserve added a larger-than-normal $24 billion in temporary reserves to the U.S. banking system. The concerns that arose in Europe and spilled onto Wall Street underscored the potential worldwide ramifications of an implosion of some subprime loans and perhaps also weakened arguments that strength in the global economy could help keep profit growth going in the U.S. among large companies that do business overseas. The ECB's injection of money into the system is an unprecedented move, said Joseph V. Battipaglia, chief investment officer at Ryan Beck & Co., adding that it shows that problems in subprime lending are, in fact, spilling into the general economy. "This is a mini-panic," he said. "All the things that had been denied up until this point are unraveling. On top of this, retail sales were mediocre, which shows that indeed, the housing collapse is affecting the consumer." Retailers released July sales figures Thursday that were overall disappointing. The Fed didn't soften its stance on inflation after leaving short-term interest rates unchanged Tuesday. However, the renewed credit market concerns spurred bond traders who bet on its next move to predict early in the session that the Fed will cut rates at its meeting next month. Before Thursday, traders had bet on a 1 in 4 chance of such a cut. According to preliminary calculations, the Dow fell 387.18, or 2.83 percent, to 13,270.68. Thursday's pullback continued an erratic pattern of triple-digit moves in the Dow since the index closed at a record 14,001.41 on July 19. Eleven of the 15 ensuing sessions have ended in a triple-digit gain or loss. Gains have been evaporating at the first mention of trouble in housing, subprime lending or the credit markets. With Thursday's decline, the Dow is about 730 points, or 5.2 percent, below its record close. Some experts have been calling for a textbook correction -- a pullback of at least 10 percent. At its lowest close since the market's high, Friday's finish of 13,181.91, the Dow was 5.85 percent below the record. Bonds rose sharply as investors again sought the relative safety of Treasurys, pushing down the yield on the benchmark 10-year note to 4.79 percent from 4.89 percent late Wednesday. The broader Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 44.40, or 2.96 percent, to 1,453.09. Before Thursday, the S&P had its best three-day winning streak in nearly five years. But the latest pullback was the biggest point drop and percentage loss for both the Dow and the S&P since a market pullback on Feb. 27., that owed in part to concerns about subprime loans. The Nasdaq composite index fell 56.49, or 2.16 percent, to 2,556.49. On Wednesday, it posted its biggest point gain in more than year. And while Thursday's loss was sharp, last Friday's was more severe. The pullback came after BNP Paribas Investment Partners said it was suspending three funds together worth about $3.79 billion and wouldn't make investor redemptions until it could determine net asset values. The funds invest in part in subprime mortgages through a process known as securitization. Investment banks bundle together mortgages -- including those from subprime borrowers -- and sell them off to investors such as hedge funds, mutual funds and other institutional investors. Buyers of such securities are seeking the steady flow of income from homeowners making their mortgage payments. Shares of financial companies, which investors have fled recently amid lending concerns, took another beating Thursday. Citigroup Inc. fell 5 percent, as did fellow Dow component JPMorgan Chase & Co. In another sign of credit market trouble, Home Depot Inc. warned that the sale of its wholesale business might bring in less than expected. The world's largest home improvement retailer, which also cut how much it intends to pay to repurchase stock, said volatility in the stock, debt and housing markets has led to the possible repricing. Home Depot fell $2.01, or 5.3 percent, to $35.79, and was the worst performer of the 30 Dow components. But American International Group Inc., one of the world's largest insurers, on Thursday reassured investors that it remains comfortable with its exposure to the subprime lending market as an investor, lender and mortgage insurer. AIG, which reported a 34 percent jump in second-quarter profit late Wednesday, said it has enough cash and liquidity and "does not need to liquidate any investment securities in a chaotic market." AIG fell $2.18, or 3.3 percent, to $64.30. The dollar was mixed against other major currencies, while gold prices fell. Light, sweet crude fell 56 cents to $71.59 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Declining issues outnumbered advancers by about 4 to 1 on the New York Stock Exchange, where volume came to 2.8 billion shares compared with 2.6 billion shares traded Wednesday. The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies fell 10.79, or 1.36 percent, to 784.87. The Chicago Board Options Exchange's volatility index, often called the "fear index," rose early Thursday to its highest level since April 2003. European stocks plunged. Britain's FTSE 100 lost 1.92 percent, Germany's DAX index fell 2.00 percent, and France's CAC-40 fell 2.17 percent after being down more than 3 percent. Japan's Nikkei stock average rose 0.83 percent. Hong Kong's Hang Seng index fell 0.43 percent. New York Stock Exchange: http://www.nyse.com Nasdaq Stock Market: http://www.nasdaq.com

Yeah, I've been to the old Bop Stop on W6th and the new one near W25th. I kind of like the old one because it had a pretty nice ambiance for jazz-the brick walls, being downtown and so forth, but the new location affords a larger audiance and the accoustics are an improvement. you missed the original where the really great cats hung out and jammed after their gigs in the early 1990's. it's a wonder they didnt blow the roof off. there was room for about 35 people and no room for a piano. it was at w41st and superior or carnegie, i think. some incredible musicians passed through those humble doors. krivda played the joint several times, and lovano, too. i took a couple dates there, and not being music majors they were not impressed. Oh, didn't know there was an even earlier location than that That was around the time I moved to Cleveland. you missed some awesome times and music. a couple of musicians, pianist chip stephens for one, mentioned those great sessions at that bopstop(same owners) in cd liner notes. a much younger aloc has been know to drive 80 miles on successive days, after working 10 hours in a hot sweaty factory, getting off work at 11pm, to catch one set, and doing it on successive days. it was that good.

Off the record by Robert Sandall In recent years, the economics of pop music have been upended. The market for CDs has collapsed, and not even the rise of legal downloading can offset the damage to record companies. Meanwhile, demand for live performances has rocketed Robert Sandall worked as director of communications for Virgin Records from 1996 to 2002 There is a story doing the rounds in the US that says a lot about the state of the music business. It concerns a young rock band who decided to stop selling their CDs at concerts. Selling CDs has, for many years, been a good way for an act to reclaim the margin that would otherwise have been snaffled by a retailer. But it made no sense to this band once they discovered that by selling CDs for $10 they were cannibalising sales of their $20 T-shirts. There are two points to note here. First, that a simple garment with a logo stamped across it, probably manufactured for pennies in a third-world sweatshop, now costs twice as much as an album of digitally pristine, highly wrought music recorded in a state of the art western studio. Second, most bands, however successful, now make their money from live work and the merchandising opportunities that go with it, rather than from recordings. The record companies know this, which is why when EMI re-signed Robbie Williams in 2002, the £80m deal guaranteed the label a share in the profits generated by Williams's tours. Such spinoffs are often now make or break issues in contractual negotiations. Gerd Leonhard, a music business consultant, predicts that by 2010, recorded music sales will make up only 30 per cent of a successful label's revenues. The rest will be generated by artists' extra-musical brand extensions. Like those $20 T-shirts. The artists are getting wise to this new value chain. One of the hottest new names to emerge recently, the rave metal band Enter Shikari, have refused to sign any of the deals they have been offered, instead releasing their debut album Take to the Skies on their own label, Ambush Reality, in March. In the past, these tiny, so-called "indie," labels have usually been funded by majors anxious to covertly purchase credibility for their products with a young audience. The celebrated label Creation, home to Oasis and other Britpop stars in the 1990s, was owned entirely by Sony. Had it not been, the marketing spend which turned Oasis into a huge international draw would not have been available. But this is not the case with Ambush Reality. The marketing of Take to the Skies was undertaken largely by the band themselves, who have played nearly 700 gigs since forming in St Albans in 2003. Word of mouth, coupled with the inevitable presence on MySpace, has done the rest. In November 2006, they became only the second unsigned band (after the Darkness) to sell out the 2,000-capacity Astoria in London. Five months later, Take to the Skies entered the British album chart at number four. In May, Enter Shikari started out on their first American tour. They have set an inspirational example, not least by their single-minded prioritising of their performances. Groups used to tour, often at a loss, to stimulate sales of their latest album. Now it's the other way around. Hence the widely reported decision earlier this year by the Crimea, a band previously signed to Warner Bros, to release their new album as a free download. The band explained this not as an anarcho-hippie gesture in support of the principle that music ought to be free, but as a sensible promotional tactic. Their hope is that by disseminating their music online, they will expand their fan base and increase their returns from touring. Having seen the small size of the cheques they got from Warner, they know where not to look for their future income. This view is shared by a far more famous former Warner artist: Prince. Anyone attending his shows at the London O2 arena in August will receive a free copy of his latest CD, Planet Earth, as did anyone who bought the Mail on Sunday on 15th July. Prince's new label, Sony/BMG, which did not know about the deal, has withdrawn the album from British shelves. "Record sales as we know them are in long-term decline," says music business analyst Keith Jopling. "Whereas the wider music market—live, merchandising, streaming video and music social networking—is in rude health. After seven years of gradual change, we are about to see a major shift. Record companies are, at last, in a hurry to transform themselves into proper consumer marketing companies." The catastrophic slide in the value of recorded music, and particularly in the price consumers are prepared to pay for it, has been felt hard on the high street. HMV announced in June that its profits had halved over the past year. Soon afterwards, the discount CD chain Fopp went out of business. The industry that for years appeared to possess a licence to print money is reeling. The "big four" labels—Sony/BMG, Warner Music, EMI and Universal—have in recent years embarked on cost-cutting operations leading to major culls of staff: EMI's recorded music division has shrunk by almost half since 2001, from 9,388 employees worldwide to 4,818 today. Meanwhile, a senior industry executive reports that of this year's breakthrough British acts, just one, Mika, will make money for his record company. This decline in fortunes has been noticed in the financial markets: EMI is being bought up by private equity group Terra Firma, for £3.2bn. Almost as soon as the offer was accepted, Terra Firma were reported to be in discussions with Warner to offload EMI's recorded music division. The side of EMI that interested Terra Firma was its song publishing arm, the world's largest and a profitable performer. It is regarded as a safer bet because the exploitation of song copyrights is not subject to the same feasts and famines as the hitmaking process. As well as receiving around 14 per cent of the profit on any CD sale, the publisher has its fingers in other pies, such as licensing fees for films, adverts or any of the other myriad outlets which now employ music. Once upon a time, EMI's publishing arm accounted for about a third of the market value of the whole group. Now it's the only part that's worth anything to the people who venture their capital. It is no coincidence that Terra Firma's offer valued EMI at about a third, in real terms, of what it nearly fetched ten years ago when a sale to its competitor Universal was mooted. That decline roughly mirrors what has happened over the same period to the retail price of new—as opposed to catalogue reissue—CDs. When EMI's subsidiary Virgin put out the Spice Girls debut album in 1996, it sold for around £13 in Britain, from which the company cleared more than £5 in profit. New CDs now seldom cost more than £9, from which the label can expect to make £2, if it is lucky. Although Britons still buy more CDs per head than anyone else—2.7 in 2006—the market for recorded music is in rapid decline. In the first quarter of 2007, the market for the top-selling 200 CDs in Britain shrank by 20 per cent compared to the same period in 2006. In the US, CD sales in 2007 are down by 15 per cent, in France 25 per cent, in Canada 35 per cent. The German market, once the largest in Europe, is now no bigger than that of the Netherlands. The market for digital downloads was worth around $981m in the US last year, around a tenth of the value of the CD market. Yet the labels' great hope is that the slump in demand for physical formats will be offset by growth in the download market. This looks wildly optimistic. The latest figures from the US reveal that while paid-for downloads are increasingly popular—up 74 per cent in 2006 on the previous year—the surge in demand is slowing. And while the total value of music sales across all formats remained more or less static in 2004 and 2005, it declined by more than 6 per cent in 2006. The trade body of the American record industry, the RIAA, optimistically predicts that by 2011, the global online music market will be worth $6.6bn; three times what it currently amounts to. This situation will, as the RIAA delicately puts it, "leave the industry better positioned to offset physical sales." Yet however it finds itself in 2011, the underlying truth is that recorded music, on or offline, has moved from being a high-margin, "high-end" product to a low-margin, low-prestige commodity. The album, for 35 years the basic, pricey unit of the industry—such a handy way of getting fans to shell out for ten songs when they might have wanted only three or four—increasingly seems, for young consumers, a clunky, old-fashioned and uneconomical way of building a music library on a portable MP3 player. Far better to download songs; at the iTunes music store, tracks retail for 99 cents in America and 79p here. In Britain, at the end of the 1990s, CD singles sold for £4. Of that, the artist received about 50p, while the record company took as much as £1. Under the new web-style arrangement, the artist is lucky to get 10p, and the company might gross 30p. This destruction of the value of individual recordings explains why, even if we were to carry on buying recorded music in the quantity we did at the end of the last century, the prospects for suppliers would still be bleak. However high the record companies worldwide pile their audio products in future, the only way they will be able to sell them is cheap. In Britain, the 10 per cent of singles still sold on CD now retail for just £1.49. Record company insiders are aghast at the demise of what was, for the last two decades of the 20th century, their golden goose. And some of them know that they were partly responsible for killing it. Arriving on the market in 1982, just after record sales began to revive following a three-year downturn, the compact disc ushered in the biggest boom in profits the record companies had known since 7" singles gave way to 12" LPs in the late 1960s. The CD persuaded many music fans to replace their vinyl collection with digital copies of music they had already paid for. And the rise of the CD permitted record companies to double the price of their basic product without incurring a huge uplift in costs. Even allowing for the royalty paid to the joint inventors of the CD—Philips and Sony—the discs were soon being manufactured for little more than it cost to crank out vinyl records on ancient presses. Initial anxieties that consumers might be resistant to the more expensive format proved unfounded. Research revealed that music fans were more worried about the cost of acquiring a CD player than by the price of the discs. Paying £12 (£30 in today's money) for an album that, nearly everybody agreed, sounded better and was easier to manipulate than a vinyl LP, didn't feel steep in the mid-1980s. In 1994, the CD supplanted the cassette as the most popular platform for recorded music in western markets. Yet in some ways the CD contained the seeds of its own destruction. One of the few industry moguls to raise his voice against the digital format in its early days was the late Maurice Oberstein, an American who was latterly head of the Polygram UK (later Universal) label. "Do you realise we are giving away our master tapes here?" he asked at an industry event. At the time, everybody was too busy counting the cash to listen. But as the advent of recordable CDs kickstarted a black economy in counterfeits in the 1990s, Oberstein was proved right. Anybody who owned a CD could indeed use it as record companies had traditionally used master tapes: to clone thousands more, and quickly, using kit available on any high street. And at home, CD burning hardware on computers made it simple to produce copies in seconds. Developing markets in South America and southeast Asia collapsed under the weight of cheap copies. More damaging was the loss of the German market. Within the space of five years, the 82m Germans turned into a nation of CD copiers, paying pfennigs for albums that once cost 40DM. Still, the market in the rest of the west, while not exactly booming, did hold up. The next development to shake up the music industry was the emergence in the late 1990s of illegal "file-sharing" websites, such as Napster. Online piracy, often identified by the media as the wrecker of the CD business, did seem a big threat at the time, although it was difficult to find hard data to support the claim that it damaged sales. Rather like the "Home Taping is Killing Music" campaign mounted by record companies in the 1980s, the arrival of illegal file-sharing coincided with an increase in legitimate sales of recorded music in the three largest markets: America, Japan and Britain. This supported the file-sharers' defence that their activities were no more harmful to music sales than the arrival of free radio airplay in the 1930s. Instead, it has been the iTunes era of the 21st century—the creation of a growing legitimate online trade in cheap music—that has coincided with the drop-off in CD sales. The burgeoning popularity of portable MP3 players, notably Apple's iPod, seems to be turning the compact disc into the 21st-century equivalent of shellac—the precursor to vinyl. Yet the music industry itself must take some of the blame for the decline of the CD. For the past 15 years, free covermounts on magazines and newspapers, licensed or even paid for by record companies, have diluted the perceived value of recorded music in general and CDs in particular. The practice of dumping free music CDs on the newsstands peaked in 2004, when 454 were licensed in Britain. It may seem odd that at the same time the industry was trying, and failing, to maintain a £10 price point for its premium CD products. But for years, record companies clung to the view that covermounts were a promotional benefit to them and their artists. Just as they allowed MTV to build its business by supplying it with free videos, they did newspaper and magazine publishers a huge favour on what turned out to be a hunch. They maintained this position even after their trade body, the BPI, showed that the only beneficiaries of such giveaways were the publications carrying them. In the mid-1990s, Mark Ellen, editor of Q, Britain's leading rock title, described a CD giveaway as "like pinning a £10 note to the cover." When the Sunday Times gave away a free CD of old Oasis songs in 2000, it registered its highest circulation ever. In the following weeks, the BPI noted, retail sales of Oasis albums actually declined. But now even newspapers and magazines seem to have lost their appetite for covermounts. Last year, Q discontinued them on the grounds that the cost of manufacturing the discs was no longer justified by a spike in circulation. No clearer sign exists that, at least for musically savvy Q readers, you can't give CDs away. Labels now tend only to use covermounts to showcase the music of new or developing acts. But old habits die hard. In April, EMI licensed Mike Oldfield's album Tubular Bells to the Mail on Sunday. The company charged Northcliffe Newspapers £200,000 for the right to dispense 2.3m CD covermounts of Britain's 11th bestselling album ever. The deal valued Oldfield's classic—the LP that launched Virgin as a successful record label in 1973—at a little over 8p a copy. This led the head of Woolworths, one of the largest of the dwindling band of CD retailers in Britain, to ask: "And how many copies of Tubular Bells do you think we will sell this week?" It is difficult to prove that the rising popularity and price of live music has been directly affected by the superfluity and cheapness of the recorded stuff. But it seems more than a coincidence that just as fans are spending less on the tunes they listen to at home, they will pay unprecedented sums to hear them in concert. Ticket prices, especially for A-list artists, have soared. Back in the 1980s, a seat at a concert by a superstar cost about the same as one CD album. By contrast, last summer you could have bought Madonna's entire catalogue for less than half of what it cost to see her perform at Wembley Arena. The best seats in Madge's house went for £160. With the Rolling Stones at Twickenham last August, a decent view would have set you back £150, or £350 for a seat on the side of the stage. To put this in historical perspective, when the Stones played Wembley in 1990, they took some stick for charging £25, top whack. Now that demand for live music is on the up, nobody bothers to complain about what it costs any more. Euphoria at the news earlier this year that the Police had reformed obliterated all concerns that it would cost £90 to see them play at Twickenham in September. This is not a local phenomenon. The $690 (£345) it cost to watch Elton John at Las Vegas in May set a new record for an American rock show. In Hong Kong last year, Robbie Williams charged £180. Even the less prosperous citizens of Chile were asked to pay £80 to watch Coldplay in Santiago's Espacio Riesco, a considerable sum in a city where the average monthly salary is around £250. Ticket inflation with smaller bands is less intense. But even a relative unknown like the American singer-songwriter Laura Veirs charged £15 for her London show at Bush Hall this July. More telling is the ubiquitous presence of touts outside low-key venues where no secondary market for tickets existed ten years ago. Attendance at arena rock shows grew by 11 per cent in Britain last year, and looks set to rise again in 2007. The bigger the concerts, the more we seem to like them. Hence the explosion in the festival trade. In 2007, there are 450 such large-scale gatherings scheduled, ranging from the recent Glastonbury festival to the one-day Underage festival in Hackney on 10th August, which claims to be the first to be aimed exclusively at 14 to 18 year olds. A rediscovery, or a renewed appreciation, of the communal source of music-making—and listening— must lie near the root of this upending of the music business. As personal stereos and MP3 players have grown in popularity, so has an appreciation that music isn't just something that goes on between your ears. The guitarist of the American hardcore band Anthrax expressed this rather neatly: "Our album is the menu," he explained. "The concert is the meal." In his book e-Topia, William Mitchell relates the increasing value of shared experience to the isolating nature of electronic or online virtual worlds. "In conducting our daily transactions, we will find ourselves constantly considering the benefits of the different grades of presence that are now available to us, and weighing these against the costs," he writes. Being in the same place at the same time as a live performance, music fans appear to have decided, is the rarest and most precious presence of all.

starting the drinking day with a very ordinary chinese lager called harbin, which tastes like, but not quite as good as a heineken.

Yeah, I've been to the old Bop Stop on W6th and the new one near W25th. I kind of like the old one because it had a pretty nice ambiance for jazz-the brick walls, being downtown and so forth, but the new location affords a larger audiance and the accoustics are an improvement. you missed the original where the really great cats hung out and jammed after their gigs in the early 1990's. it's a wonder they didnt blow the roof off. there was room for about 35 people and no room for a piano. it was at w41st and superior or carnegie, i think. some incredible musicians passed through those humble doors. krivda played the joint several times, and lovano, too. i took a couple dates there, and not being music majors they were not impressed.

thanks for those memories.

while absolutely loving miss schneiders lovely eforts, aloc finds satoko fujii's japanese and american orchestras infinitely more musically stimulating and satisfying. below is a link to her official website http://www.mindyourownmusic.co.uk/satoko-fujii.htm# Satoko Fujii Pianist,Composer,Arranger "Satoko Fujii is one of the more arresting new voices in jazz." - Stuart Broomer, Coda "Unpredictable, wildly creative, and uncompromising...Fujii is an absolutely essential listen for anyone interested in the future of jazz." - Dan McClenaghan, All About Jazz "100 Years...100 Alumni" - Profiling New England Conservatory's Most Successful Alumni .Critics and fans alike hail pianist and composer SATOKO FUJII as one of the most original voices in jazz. A truly global artist, she splits her time between New York City and Japan and tours internationally leading several different ensembles. Just as her career spans international borders, her music spans many genres, blending jazz, contemporary classical music, and traditional Japanese folk music into an innovative synthesis instantly recognizable as hers alone. “I would like to try many things with my compositions,” she told Don Williamson in a jazzreview.com interview. “I believe anything can be music … sound colors are as important to me as the melody.” Fujii’s compositions are full of surprises with sudden shifts in direction and mood that challenge player and listener alike. Yet the extremes are always part of a larger conceptual whole - never mere exercises in contrast - and the emotional demands are as great as the technical ones. Pulling many disparate threads together, she uses melodies that are as simple and straightforward as folk song, the sophisticated harmonic language of great jazz, and the extended forms of symphonic composers. As an improviser Fujii is equally wide-ranging and virtuosic. In her solos, explosive free jazz energy mingles with delicate melodicism to create a broad palette of timbre and textures. Her phrasing is clean and clear and delivered with a bright, nuanced touch that’s equally indebted to her classical training and her jazz experience. She has showcased her astonishing range and ability on 40 CDs as leader or co-leader since 1996. Born in 1958, Fujii began playing piano at age four and received classical training until age twenty. Realizing that the improvisation that had come so easily to her as a child was now very difficult, she decided to stop playing piano and began a band in which the members would sing and clap their hands to explore the origins of music. One year later, she changed her focus to jazz improvisation, returning to the piano. She was inspired by her teacher, Koji Taku, a classical pianist and composer who at 60 quit his job as chairman of the piano department at Tokyo College of Art and Music to play jazz. Fujii began private studies with another of her inspirations, the Japanese jazz pianist Fumio Itabashi, who performed with Elvin Jones and Ray Anderson. In order to pursue her own interest in jazz, Fujii left home because her parents wanted her to continue her classical studies at college. Once on her own, she struggled with the expense of renting a piano room and supporting herself. Fujii first came to the United States in 1985 on a scholarship to Boston’s Berklee College of Music, where her teachers included Herb Pomeroy and Bill Pierce. After graduating in 1987 magna cum laude with a Diploma of Professional Music, she returned to Japan where her experiences included everything from performing at leading jazz clubs in Tokyo and Yokohama and teaching at the Yamaha Popular Music School to a seven-year stint playing keyboards for television and recording music for the JI software company. Among the Japanese groups she worked with are Tobifudo, and Teruaki Todo. She also worked with the AACM’s Joseph Jarman & Douglas Ewart Ensemble. Fujii is featured on a 1990 release with Tobifudo. In 1993 she returned to Boston on a scholarship to the New England Conservatory of Music, where her teachers included jazz greats George Russell, Cecil McBee and Paul Bley. After receiving her Graduate Diploma in Jazz Performance in 1996, Fujii's career really took off. Her NEC professor, free jazz innovator Paul Bley, was featured on her debut CD Something About Water (Libra; 1996), a recording of improvised piano duets that "Combines two piano voices in subtle, quiet interplay. The music has a crystalline spareness about it, the two players so intertwined it sounds almost like one voice. There is a floating lyricism to the music...like a delicate dance...sheer beauty.” ? Michael Rosenstein in Cadence. Her 1997 solo album Indication (Libra) was praised as a “brilliant collection of solo piano pieces," by Michael J. Williams of American Reporter Also in 1997 Fujii and her husband, trumpeter Natsuki Tamura, released the duo CD How Many? (Leo Lab). She and Tamura had met in 1984 when Fujii was the house pianist in a cabaret big band in Tokyo. They recognized each other as kindred spirits. “Our means of expression are very different,” she said in a jazzreview.com interview, ”but our musical values are the same. Natsuki and I both think we can derive inspiration from anything when we want to make music. For example, I play inside the piano as well as on the keyboard. Texture, color, timbre, pulse, rhythm, and harmony are equally picked up as elements forming the whole.” Chris Kelsey of Cadence magazine wrote of their duet, "Together Tamura and Fujii construct perfect little structures; their collaboration is balanced, astute, and very musical. A lovely album." In 1998, Fujii released albums by two of her most significant ongoing projects?a classic piano trio (Satoko Fujii Trio) featuring New York stalwarts bassist Mark Dresser and drummer Jim Black, and her New York big band (Satoko Fujii Orchestra New York), which she founded in 1997. “Playing in a big band and playing in a piano trio are very different experiences. I don’t want to put myself in a fixed position. That causes me to create a lot of formats.” Her piano trio recording Looking Out of the Window (Nippon Crown) earned wide acclaim and was chosen as a Top 10 CD of the Year by both Coda and Jazziz magazines. The big band’s debut, South Wind (Leo Lab), was equally praised as "an enormously successful orchestral debut... For those of you on the lookout for a state-of-the-art, end-of-the-millennium big band, it has arrived." ? Michael Davis, Option. “What makes her special is her developing gift for blending composition and improvisation, as well as a progressive vision that sees no boundaries within tonality and no restrictions within the avant-garde." ? Drew Wheeler, Jazz Central Station. Her 1999 Tzadik release, Kitsune-bi served as a kind of summary of her small group composing and performing up to that point, showcasing her in duo with her long-time associate alto saxophonist Sachi Hayasaka, with her New York trio, and her critically acclaimed solo playing. "Satoko Fujii negotiates the path between Cecil Taylor's hyper-kinetic dissonance and more meditative styles of piano players like Randy Weston and Abdullah Ibrahim... Fujii transforms jazz into something architectural, full of designed shapes that jut and jab at the silence of an enclosed space...an intimate album, full of interior explorations and adventures." ? Michael Kramer, New York Times. In addition, Past Life (Libra) featured Fujii’s composing for a sextet of cutting edge Japanese jazz players. The year 2000 brought the release of two orchestra CDs, JO (Buzz) featuring her NY big band performing her “melodiously left-of-center compositions and those of her husband, Natsuki Tamura, with real verve...the lyrical edge of the players and the leaders' focused production make 'JO' consistently involving." ? Billboard. Then the Japanese label East Works released Double Take featuring Satoko's New York big band on one CD and her Japanese big band on another in a fascinating juxtaposition. “I’ve had big bands in New York and Tokyo for more than five years,” Fujii said in her jazzreview.com interview, “and I have learned to appreciate how they are different. For example, my Japanese orchestra players are mostly free jazz players, and my New York orchestra players are mostly Downtown musicians. I think the Japanese free jazz players are strongly influenced by the ’60s free jazz scene in America. They have a lot of energy, and when they play, they like to show that. Many times, their expression is very aggressive, in a good way. New York Downtown musicians have strong influences from many kinds of music, like contemporary music, world music, and jazz. Their expression is very diverse. They also have great energy in a different way.” “’Double Take’ seems like a musical future that's here already." ? Stuart Broomer, Coda. She continued exploring the potential of her explosive New York trio with their second album, Toward, To West (Enja) "Her most substantial and musically rewarding small group outing to date...Besides all of the purposeful soloing, sinuous flow and hard-edged musings, Ms. Fujii injects a potpourri of underlying themes and fluctuating cross-currents into her music...and perhaps the best is yet to come, as we watch her star rapidly ascend above the horizon! Highly recommended. ***** (out of 5)" ? Glenn Astarita, All About Jazz. The trio’s fourth release, Junction (EWE records), was one of three 2001 albums that also saw the restlessly creative Fujii branching out in arresting new directions. April Shower (EWE Records), a duet with violinist Mark Feldman “…marks another first-rate addition to the young pianist’s growing discography…. striking a natural balance between tradition and experimentation, expectation and surprise” ? Sam Prestiani, Jazziz. Then in the fall, the radically different Vulcan (Libra Records) appeared, an avant-rock/free jazz fusion album introducing the Satoko Fujii Quartet. (Takeharu Hayakawa, bass/Tatsuya Yoshida, drums/ Natsuki Tamura.) Vulcan received wide, enthusiastic approval. "The sensibility here is aggressive to the point of primitive, with a raw, larger-than-life recorded presence for the drums and bass. The otherworldly vocal wailing that introduces ‘The Sun in a Moonlight Night’ is both a warning and an invitation to the intriguing asymmetrical structures and virtuoso playing on this set." ? Bill Bennett, JazzTimes. “Vulcan is choice work, a great showcase for the genius of jazz pianist Satoko Fujii… a masterpiece of jazz expression.” Fujii's second duo album with Tamura, Clouds (Libra), which earned widespread praise as well as spots on Coda's Top 10 CDs of the Year list, was among four acclaimed CDs released in 2002. Bell the Cat (Tokuma Japan), the fifth release by her New York trio "…is a beautifully played, sumptuously recorded tour-de-force filled with stunningly mature music making… As we approach the year 2003, this very much seems to encompass the shape of jazz to come.” ? David Prince, CD Now. It was #5 in Swing Journal's 2002 Japanese Jazz Awards, Best of 2002 in Jazz Weekly, Best Piano Trio CD by Derk Richardson in the San Francisco Gate, and one of Masahiko Yu’s Top 5 CDs of 2002 in CD Journal. Also released in 2002 was Toh-kichi (VICTO), a duo album with Fujii and Ruins drummer Tatsuya Yoshida recorded live at the Victoriaville Festival. "If you relish the prospect of an intense duo dialogue engaged with the sound of surprise, this concert performance is well worth checking out.” ? David Lewis, Cadence. Minerva (Libra/Jazzprint) another electrifying album by her quartet was selected as one of the Top 15 CDs of the year by Thomas Schulte, Outsight and hailed as "An awesome recording," by Andy Hamilton in The Wire. In addition to those CDs, 2002 was a busy year for touring, as well. Fujii toured the US with her quartet in April and May, performed with Tatsuya Yoshida at the Victoriaville Festival in May, performed with the Satoko Fujii Orchestra Tokyo at the Yamaha Hamamatsu Jazz Festival in June, toured Japan with the Satoko Fujii Four (Mark Dresser, Jim Black and Tamura), was composer-in-residence and performer at the Rova Saxophone Quartet's 25th anniversary celebration ‘Rovate 2002’ in San Francisco, and toured Europe with her quartet. 2003 saw a similar range of activity, with the release of The Future of the Past (Enja), another CD with her NY Orchestra which has been called "awe-inspiring." ? Ariake Tanabe, musee. Before the Dawn (Polystar) with the Satoko Fujii Orchestra Tokyo earned similar acclaim: "Each listen reveals new details in these pieces, though the energy and creativity of the playing grabs you from the outset. It's extremely vigorous and forward-thinking music at once. Don't miss out." ? Jason Bivins, Cadence. Zephyros (Polystar/Not Two) came out at the end of 2003 and was named a Top 10 CD in the Village Voice and was also selected as one of 2003's Top 5 Jazz CDs by Music Magazine. In addition, Fujii performed with Tamura at the Vancouver Jazz Festival, and toured Europe with the Satoko Fujii Quartet. 2004 began with the release of Erans (Tzadik), another duo CD with drummer Tatsuya Yoshida, and a tour of the US in April that included a solo piano performance at the San Francisco Jazz Festival. She also toured Europe with OrkestraRova to support their CD An Alligator in your Wallet (EWE) on which she is featured, and Fujii received a Japanese Arts Council Grant for her Japanese performance with OrkestraRova and members of her Tokyo orchestra. Her first solo album in eight years, Sketches (Polystar) earned Top 10 status and was deemed a “masterfully crafted album” ? New Music Box. Her NY Trio’s Illusion Suite (Libra) “…is filled with thrill and joy of creation." ? Hiraku Aoki, Asahi newspaper. 2004 also saw the release of two big band CDs: Nagoyanian (BAKAMO) with the Nagoya Orchestra, and Blueprint (Polystar) with her NY Orchestra: “A fearless blend of postmodern influences that range from contemporary classical music to free jazz... Fujii’s writing liberates soloists…” ? Mark Holston, Jazziz. In 2004 Fujii was also featured on CDs by the Itaru Oki Unit: Itaru Oki Unit Live (Polystar); Natsuki Tamura Quartet: Exit (Libra); and Gebhard Ullmann: The Big Band Project (Soul Note). The spring and summer of 2005 again saw Fujii touring Europe, the US, and Canada. Some highlights included a double duo concert at the Bimhuis in Amsterdam featuring Fujii and Tamura with renowned Dutch musicians pianist Misha Mengelberg and trumpeter Angelo Verploegen, as well as a performance at John Zorn’s club The Stone in April. The incredibly prolific pianist/composer was featured on five critically acclaimed CDs in 2005: In The Tank (Libra) with Tamura, Elliot Sharp and Takayuki Kato; Live in Japan 2004, featuring the Satoko Fujii Four in concert at the Egg Farm in Tokyo; Strange Village, the first release of Tamura’s acoustic quartet Gato Libre, in which Fujii plays the accordion; Angelona, the fourth Fujii Quartet release, and Yamabuki, a trio date featuring accordionist Ted Reichman and vocalist Koh Yamabuki. Live in Japan 2004 was proclaimed by Jim Macnie in The Village Voice to be “…a good example of how instruments can operate outside their prescribed roles… The free-jazz interplay finds the leader/pianist pushing like a drummer, bassist Mark Dresser thumping out subtexted melodies, and percussionist Jim Black coating the action in a silvery scrim. As for trumpeter Natsuki Tamura ? call him a sky-writer.” This album was voted onto Top 10 CDs of 2005 lists by Coda, All About Jazz New York, and Swing Journal. Angelona elicited much excitement from critics. Michael Gallant in Keyboard Magazine exclaimed, “This album is f***ing wild. Part free jazz a la Zorn, part experimental rock, Satoko's improvisatory collection is wonderfully chaotic, percussive and dissonant… raw, transcendent, and wonderful,” while Daniel Spicer in Jazzwise stated, “There’s enough energy on this CD to power a small town…” In 2006 Fujii stunned the music world with the simultaneous release of four big band albums, all on separate labels, with one accompanied by a DVD. Dan Ouellette of Billboard put out the word: “There’s a raft of jazz CDs streeting September 12, but by far the most noteworthy launch is free-spirited Satoko Fujii’s unprecedented delivery of four orchestral CDs: Undulation (on NatSat) with Orchestra New York; Live!! (Libra) with Orchestra Tokyo; Maru (Bakamo) with Orchestra Nagoya; and Kobe Yee!! (Crab Apple) with Orchestra Kobe…” In addition, Marc Ch?nard in Coda proclaimed: “With the simultaneous release of four albums by four different orchestras under her direction, the Japanese pianist and composer has reinvigorated the big-band concept for the new century ? and placed herself at the forefront of the style at the same time.” Each Orchestra offers something different for this indefatigable composer and bandleader, making each disc remarkably distinctive. As an exciting bonus, the Tokyo release, which was recorded live at the Pit Inn in Tokyo, includes a DVD of the performance. Live!! Earned a place on Coda’s Top Tens of 2006 and was among the 2006 Albums of the Year in Jazzwise. Fran?ois Couture in All Music Guide stated: “Simply put, Live!! is pure candy, a treat in every aspect… fans of her highly personal, lyrical yet high-energy composition style will be in seventh heaven with this very strong release… highly recommended and a 2006 must-have.” Undulation was also placed on Coda’s Top Tens of 2006, and Duncan Heining in Jazzwise opined, “The New York Orchestra is as sharp as a box of switchblades.” Maru received an Honorable Mention in The Village Voice Jazz Consumer Guide from critic Tom Hull and was voted one of “My Best 5 CDs” in Japan’s CD Journal by Masahiko Yuh. Jim Santella described this incredible group aptly in All About Jazz: “Improvising ensembles come in all shapes and sizes. Here’s one that begins with the standard big band instrumentation, adds a powerful rock-inspired twist to each selection, folds folkloric themes from around the world into its book, and then launches a hard-swinging free jazz journey…” Kobe Yee!!, made by the newest of Fujii’s orchestras, also won critical acclaim, making it onto Coda’s Top Tens of 2006 and named Jazz Tokyo 2006 Best CD by Masahiko Yuh. Duncan Heining of Jazzwise called it “Bold music,” while Dan McClenaghan proclaimed in All About Jazz: “In a big band setting, Fujii’s sound can have the feeling of a back alley brawl: contentious reeds squabbling with brash brass sections in front of pugnacious rhythms, interspersed with her succinctly “out there” piano interludes. All of that rumbles out of the speakers on Kobe Yee!! ...Fujii’s a consummate artist; she’s never careful in her offerings; the musicians she chooses aren’t careful; they?and she?lay it all out there, no holds barred.” In addition, Fujii released three other albums as a leader in 2006 and collaborated with Tamura on his second Gato Libre release, Nomad. The Satoko Fujii Four’s When We Were There was pronounced by Tom Hull in Static Multimedia “The high point of an impressive year,” while Scott Yanow in All Music hailed it as “… a continually intriguing set of modern jazz.” Fragment introduced “Junkbox,” a trio featuring Tamura and percussionist John Hollenbeck. She also introduced the idea of “com-impro” on this album, in which the music is notated in graphic form rather than with traditional musical notation. Julian Crowley noted in The Wire that “…a sense of bristling energy demanding release is never far away.” In Krakow, In November, Fujii and Tamura’s third duo release, offers riveting and intimate reworkings of numerous compositions by the couple which were composed for their various ensembles. “The approach may be of the less-is-more vein, but the music turns out to be heavy with feeling. In Krakow, In November is a natural follow-up purchase for those who have been seduced by Gato Libre.” ? Fran?ois Couture, All Music Guide Fujii’s 2006 touring highlights included appearances at Toyko’s Pit Inn as part of "The 22nd Tokyo Summer Festival 2006" with two of her big bands, Orchestra Tokyo and Orchestra Nagoya, as well as a show at The Stone in New York City with the Satoko Fujii Orchestra New York, which was chosen as one of the “Best Performances of 2006” by All About Jazz New York. Her Min-Yoh Ensemble was heard at FIMAV (Victoriaville Festival, Canada) while the Satoko Fujii Four appeared throughout Japan as well as at "Lisbon's 2006 Jazz em Agosto" with Electric Ascension. The Satoko Fujii Quartet toured throughout Europe, with stops in Germany, Austria, Poland, Italy, Slovenia, and Croatia. In 2007-08 Fujii will release at least five new releases including Crossword Puzzle by Double Duo (Angelo Verploegen, trumpet; Misha Mengelberg, piano; Natsuki Tamura, trumpet; Satoko Fujii), a live recording with violinist Carla Kihlstedt, Bacchus (Satoko Fujii Quartet), Trace A River (Satoko Fujii Trio with Mark Dresser and Jim Black), and a second release from the trio Junk Box. Fujii tirelessly continues to explore the possibilities and expand the parameters of the many groups she’s established over the past eleven years; there is certainly more provocative and exciting listening in store as she pursues her ultimate goal: “… to allow myself to do whatever I like without preconceptions. I would love to make music that no one has heard before.” 6/07

thanks.

I'll be more than a little confused if you like this album (in particular tracks 1 and 4) while still hating Metheny. Feelin ya on this one, Joe. I was actually comparing Maria with Pat in a conversation with a friend of mine who's a Metheniac. There's a beauty and poignancy in the composition styles of the two which (to my ears) is indisputable. still playing pat's 'new chatauqua' vinyl from a long time ago, and it is the work of a very sensitive, and yet, commercially savvy, master. that was a fine observation.

i cant remember anything here getting all favorable reviews. is this a first?

thanks.

heard an interview with him in 1981 where he was considering just then amplifying his bass. relisten to ascension. the recording grows more beautiful with each hearing, and art davis' bass is a huge part of it.

aloc plans to attend. the new bopstop is a magnificent place for live jazz. been there?

Aha - 'Psychadelic Pi' any pieces of music or performers known as 'pi'?

the aloc would like some help with this one:

SATURDAY, AUGUST 18, 2007 Ernie Krivda Jazz Ernie Krivda Jazz will feature the original compositions of EK with the assistance of Dominick Farinacci on trumpet, Bob Fraser on guitar, Mike Murray on piano Kip Reed on bass, and Carmen Intorre on drums. 8:30PM Adm: $10

Competing plans for San Fran skyscraper Tue Aug 7, 4:15 PM ET Architects unveiled three competing plans for a new downtown skyscraper and transit hub that would be the West Coast's tallest building. "Today is an historic day," Mayor Gavin Newsom said as he pulled away a black cloth covering the three elaborate models at a City Hall ceremony Monday. The three designs range in height from 1,200 feet to 1,375 feet — each much taller than the 853-foot Transamerica Pyramid, currently San Francisco's tallest building. At 1,018 feet, the U.S. Bank Tower in downtown Los Angeles is now the West Coast's tallest building. Each tower design tops a transit terminal that would become the Bay Area's regional transportation hub, with plans calling for bus service, commuter rail, and eventually high-speed rail. The designs also emphasize environmental sustainability, with such design elements as rooftop wind turbines that would generate power for the complex. A jury that includes architects, engineers and a transportation expert will recommend a winning design later this month to the Transbay Joint Powers Authority, a regional agency created in 2001 to oversee the construction of the new transit terminal. The authority is expected to name a winner in September and the transit station is slated to open by 2014. ___ Information from: San Francisco Chronicle, http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle

if unfortunately he makes no more recordings, his last recording was a beautiful masterpiece. this bleeping sucks.

thanks for helping understand this album.

Do we really need to insure our citizens against stupidity? Dealing with "reality", we will insure them if "Wall St" will be damaged. What a bag of crap. decent mandatory basic economics courses for high school students (and high school teachers) would be a good place to start.