Dave Garrett

I found a UK-based seller on GEMM that had multiple copies of the Patton set listed at $49.54 (and the amount was explicitly stated to be in USD, not GBP). No S&H amount was stated, but looking at their website, the per-disc rates that were quoted, although a bit more than BMG, were still reasonable considering the low price of the set itself and typical overseas postage rates, so I took the plunge. Got a confirmation email a day or so later indicating the set had shipped. Then I got an email from GEMM informing me that my credit card had been charged for $123 and change. I immediately emailed the seller and told them there was no way I was going to pay $70+ for shipping, and that I'd file a chargeback with my CC company if I had to. No reply, and the set hasn't shown up yet, although it's still a little early. I haven't decided whether to refuse delivery outright and go the chargeback route, or try to get them to adjust the shipping charge, but given that they haven't replied to my email, I'm leaning toward the former course of action. Caveat emptor.

I had a very similar reaction. The Stooges were near the top of my personal pantheon when I was growing up. At least they got to reform with Mike Watt on bass and tour extensively over the past several years, something I never expected to happen. Too bad I never got to see them play live.

I think all of the early Mothers albums are essential, and you've already got two of them, so my vote's for Absolutely Free and Ruben and the Jets. Unfortunately, the only version of Ruben currently available is an abomination, with the bass and drums rerecorded when Zappa was in full George Lucas revisionist mode in the 80s. If you have a vinyl rig, track down an original LP of Ruben. He did the same thing with We're Only In It For The Money, but at least there is an unmolested version of that one available. The rest of the titles you have are all great choices. Might want to pick up Apostrophe, Zoot Allures, Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar, and Lather next. And then you'll be well on the way to realizing that when it comes to Zappa, too much is never enough.

I would love to see scanned issues of SI during that "Golden Era" made available on DVDs, as has been done with the complete runs of both the New Yorker and Rolling Stone. The company that was doing these, Bondi Digital, unfortunately seems to have slowed down their output dramatically, with nothing further since the 50s run of Playboy a couple of years ago.

I learned to read somewhere around the time I was 3 1/2 - 4 years old, from the Dr. Seuss books that our next-door neighbor gave me after their older kids had outgrown them, and I've rarely been without my head buried in a book or periodical since then. One of my earliest childhood memories is being taken to the elementary school near our house to be tested for aptitude before I was old enough to be admitted to kindergarten, where I joined in on a reading exercise in one of the second-grade classrooms and was able to keep up with the rest of the class easily. Favorite childhood reading in addition to Dr. Seuss: the Bantam Doc Savage reprints, Hardy Boys, Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators, Conan, all sorts of random sci-fi, lots of comic books, Richard Halliburton's armchair travel books. About the latter, I've met more than a few avid travelers in the intervening years who claim that their love of travel had its origins in Halliburton's tales of adventure in faraway, exotic places.

I was somewhat astonished to discover that it's not just the old, single-disc 2000 Warner DVD of GWTW that's out of print, but also the more recent 4-disc and 2-disc special editions as well. Regardless of one's opinion of the film's merits, or lack thereof, it's one of the flagship titles of old Hollywood, and I can't recall another time since home video has become big business that it's been out of print. It's especially unfortunate because the recent SEs utilized Warner's "Ultra-Resolution" process, which sounds like HD-era hype but in reality was a big deal for presentation of classic three-strip Technicolor films on DVD - it essentially used computer horsepower to digitally recombine the original separation masters with far more accurate registration between them than could ever be achieved previously (more details here). Anyway, Dan, I have a sealed copy of the 2000 Warner DVD - PM me if you're still looking for it.

I have it, and it's fantastic. Its price reflects the fact that it's a limited edition set, but I predict a lot of people will be sorry they passed on it once it's OOP and even spendier than it is now. That said, I'll agree that it's probably not the set you want to start with if you don't already have the Atlantic R&B set (which pretty much defines "essential"). Rhino Handmade also has released two other related sets, Atlantic Blues and Atlantic Vocal Groups, that are similarly focused more on rarities and obscure tracks than on the better-known hits.

PM sent on WHEN THE SUN GOES DOWN.

Now that gives a whole new meaning to "you're either on the bus or off the bus".

PM sent.

I believe this is being reissued, but I haven't seen a release date anywhere yet.

Given your comment about "the UK or Europe", I assume Tesco won't ship to the US?

I agree it was odd, Dan, especially in light of the "CERTAIN DEATH" warnings that were being issued for people (even those in 2 story homes) on Galveston Island. But that's what the Houston folks were told to do. From CBS's website, back on Thursday: "We are still saying: Please shelter in place, or to use the Texas expression, hunker down," said Harris County Judge Ed Emmett, the county's chief administrator. "For the vast majority of people who live in our area, stay where you are. The winds will blow and they'll howl and we'll get a lot of rain, but if you lose power and need to leave, you can do that later." Authorities hoped to avoid the panic of three years ago, when evacuations ordered in advance of Hurricane Rita sent millions scurrying in fright and caused a monumental traffic jam so big that cars ran out of gas or overheated. Ultimately, the evacuation proved deadlier than the storm itself. A total of 110 people died during the exodus, including 23 nursing home patients whose bus burst into flames while stuck in traffic. This time, traffic was bumper-to-bumper on the freeway leading away from Galveston immediately after the evacuation order, but by late afternoon, many evacuees had made it past Houston, to the north. And just in time: Waves were already inundating the beach on one end of Galveston Island. Houston Mayor Bill White said one of the lessons of Rita mess was that too many people fled who didn't need to. Instead, he asked residents to protect their homes. The problem is that there is no way to evacuate the entire metro region of Houston in the timeframe generally available before a hurricane strikes, as was proven three years ago when everyone tried to flee in advance of Rita. The highways simply don't have the capacity to get several million people out of the area quickly. The people that really need to evacuate are the ones at risk of storm surge, and that generally means the coastal counties (although for a cat 5, the evacuation zone reaches into the eastern boundaries of Houston along the Ship Channel). A 10' storm surge can kill you, but even 100 mph winds won't if you have a reasonably well-built home. Hence the advice for most Houstonians to stay at home and take the usual hurricane precautions such as securing loose objects outdoors, stocking up on canned food and bottled water, and preparing to be without power for an extended period of time. I distinctly remember the last hurricane that scored a direct hit on Houston, Alicia in 1983. Ike was definitely worse. There were sustained winds between 75-95 mph in metro Houston, with gusts at significantly higher speeds, for several hours. My house was unharmed, but my parents' house flooded and there are a lot of places in the city that look like a bomb went off, although cleanup is moving along nicely considering the massive scope of the damage. Somewhere between 50-60% of the city is still without power - it's really strange to be driving in familiar areas at night and not see a single light anywhere. 25 years between hurricanes, and I really hope it's at least another 25 years before we get hit by the next one.

Set up a saved search for "Art Pepper Complete Galaxy" at eBay to email you whenever one gets listed. You can save up to 100 searches this way. It took me about three years of getting outbid, but I finally got a near-mint copy of the Pepper set there recently for about $85 including shipping. There was some guy that appeared to have an endless supply of this set on eBay a while back, as he continually listed one copy after another for months on end. I figured it was too good to be true, but although his feedback was mixed (many happy buyers, but also quite a few people saying "lost in the mail but seller issued refund"), he did have multiple feedback entries from various bidders who appeared to have actually received copies. I finally bid on one and won it at a pretty reasonable price, but after two months and no Art in sight, sure enough the seller claimed it was lost in the mail and refunded my money.

No, I forgot to mention that one. I've been reading it since the first issue (and am pretty sure I still have all of them as well).

New Yorker (seems to be the most popular choice here) AutoWeek (been a subscriber since the mid-80s) Road & Track (ditto) The Rodder's Journal Atomic Ranch (mid-century modern residential architecture) Video Watchdog Shock Cinema Cinema Retro Film Comment (not nearly as good as in days of yore, but still subscribe out of habit) Invention & Technology Giant Robot Juxtapoz Wax Poetics (since #3 - still hunting for 1 & 2 at something approaching a reasonable price) Make (check out makezine.com)

Good choice. Yeah it is! That was my introduction to Ben. A terrific collection! Ben arrived in today's mail. Thanks again, Dan!

Funny--same thing happened to me yesterday. But when I uninstalled and reinstalled, it worked. Go figure. Damn! I could have avoided all that trouble, just by taking my PC to France! I'm a longtime user of AVG, both free and pay versions (I have the pay version on 2 desktop workstations, and the free version on my wife's laptop). Whenever anything like this happens, my first instinct is to do nothing and see if the problem is resolved on the next update. Which it appears to have been. I believe AVG's default setting is to check for updates daily, and to my mind it's a very minimal risk of getting infected because an update failed or was delayed. As always, YMMV, depending on your tolerance for risk - all of my machines are behind a NAT router, and I might very well feel differently were they not. It's also worth checking the AVG forums when you experience a problem to see if anyone else is having the same issues. What did try my patience seriously was when AVG mysteriously started requiring the PC to be restarted after every single daily update. Only one of my machines experienced this, but it was unfortunately one that runs 24/7, and it was a supreme pain in the ass to have to reboot every day when it normally goes months between reboots. Lots of other people reported the same problem, and various solutions were proposed but I'm not aware of one that conclusively fixed it. It finally went away as suddenly as it started; now that I've mentioned it, it'll probably start happening again.

Season one came out on DVD several weeks ago.

PM sent on Ben Webster, The Soul of Ben Webster (Verve) two discs - $14

For what it's worth, in various places online I've run across the multitracks to ANMHE, no one's ever claimed that they were anything except the original multitracks. Of course, it's possible they could've been reverse-engineered, but someone in this thread on another forum claims the tracks were licensed by Digidesign for the express purpose of demo-ing Pro Tools functionality.

Speaking of the Revenant box, has anyone had a defective disc 6 replaced as detailed here? I got the box a while back, but never got around to listening to disc 6 until recently, and sure enough, the "sizzling" problem that's described is clearly present on mine. I emailed Revenant using the form on the website, but that was probably a month or two ago, and I've yet to receive either a response or a replacement disc. Just curious how long it took others to get one, assuming there are even any replacement discs left since the set's almost OOP.

Got mine Monday - it was a shitty day at work, so it was nice to get home and find a package bearing the distinctive "Big O Records" label waiting for me. I'm on my second spin now as I type this, and I can already tell this is going to be in heavy rotation in my CD player for a while. Great stuff, guys! Now to get up to speed with the earlier two discs...

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