king ubu

I just survived the current waves of lay-offs... it's just a part-time job (in a big company touched badly by the financial crisis and some strawberry diet coke consumer has his fingers in there...) and I'm no longer emotionally attached, after they let us wait for almost half a year, in complete ignorance of what's going on behind the scenes. Anyway, at the current point in life, it would have still been a major drag if I'd been among those who were fired. And I feel it was a very close shave, actually in light of the persons hit, I'm still astonished I wasn't part of it. It's been a horrible day, we were all sitting there paralyzed, waiting for them to come again and pick up the next person... they didn't even tell us it was over until about an hour later. But then I guess that's how it goes in those big corporations.

I'm discovering Mose (again)... had that "Greatest Hits" (now as "Mose Allison Sings" in the Prestige RVG Remasters) and "You Mind Is On Vacation" (Atlantic digipack) for a long time, as well as some sideman recordings (for instance the ones with Al & Zoot mentioned above), but now I found "High Jinks", the Columbia/Epic 3CD set, and it's brilliant! And in one of those ZYX liquidation sales also got the marvellous "Back Country Suite". It was the stuff on "High Jinks" though, that completely won me over now... Have the Collectables 6 albums on 4CDs set on order right now! I'll look for "Sage of Tippo" as well, that one has 4 albums on 2CDs, and as far as I understand, only one is duplicated with the Collectables set (which I gather is just a filmsy cardboard box wrapped around four normal Collectables releases).

Yes, good music! The quartet is marvellous! Those "Plays" albums (by Charlie, Stu Williamson, Max Bennett...) should have been given the same treatment as the "Kenton Presents" sessions got... but Bethlehem is beyond reach for Mosaic, alas.

There are (were, I guess?) two fine Fantasy twofers by Hopkins: Claude Hopkins - Swing Time (+ Let's Jam) Buddy Tate / Claude Hopkins - Buddy & Claude (Yes Indeed! by Hopkins w/Tate + Tate a Tate by Tate, no Hopkins there) Four very nice Swingville albums with a bunch of nice sidemen, Emmett Berry, Clark Terry, Tommy Flanagan, Vic Dickenson, Budd Johnson, Joe Thomas (trumpet) and others.

who/what is Hiromi - more than marketing?

Here it is: http://www.organissimo.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=50551 But I'd rather ask the moderators to merge the topics than to delete this one!

Yes, incidentally I just got a reply from Scott telling me the same! Great, great news!

No problem! Still glad to have been of possible help! And there's always more stuff around then I can actually play - I'll come to the Merrill whenever it'll be done

Oh shit, this is sad! I thought he'd just go on and on and on and make great music forever! I'll spin "Deep in a Dream" tonight, the great disc on Enja.

True - I thought about that just after I'd hit the "add reply" button... but I think I'll stand by that judgement, just give a spin to "Live/Autumn Leaves" (Universal/Verve/Gitanes, whatever that actually was) and at least for a moment I guess you'll agree! (And then I'll spin some with Weiss and I guess for a moment I'll disagree with my own judgement again...)

Was the Solal help of any use, will any of it be included? And did you ever get to the second "package"?

There's a thread somewhere else, I think by brownie. Sounds like a great exhibition, if I were in Paris, I'd not want to miss it, enjoy!

Interesting video, interpolating a rehearsal and a concert performance of "15/8", with a band including Ron Horton, Marty Ehrlich and Billy Drummond: http://www.boosey.com/podcast/Andrew-Hill-15-8/12584

My set is on its way already! Ordered yesterday, shipped today... but I obvously took the 20 Can$ shipping option, so it might as well take... 12-16 or what does it say again, months?

Disc one is the Griffin/Taylor "In Copenhagen" (great messy live recording), disc two is the Griffin/Davis "In Copenhagen" (a recent reissue - lame to re-pack that again already....), and disc three is "Catharsis!", the only one that escapes me so far. I wonder how much there is on the DVD... from Amazon.com's product description: So I guess it's three titles with Mathews (maybe the best quartet Griff ever led as a working unit?), and then two more w/Lock...

Good news! Like you I've got a fair few of these euromosaics - I find the non-Mosaic number on the spine jarring, since it is all I can see of these sets most of the time! So I ordered one of these from an Amazon seller and the box came shrink-wrapped, but the jewel cases inside were not. Everything else is as king ubu said, with the possible exception of a tearing scrape (like somebody dragged a staple point) across 2" of the title on the front of the box cover. Funny thing is the damage was done underneath the shrink-wrap, as if it was deliberate by the factory. Does anybody know if this is the standard way of marking these euromosaics as not full fledged versions, similar to scratching out a UPC code? Other than that, there's no difference between this and the set that costs twice as much directly from Mosaic. Anybody could fill in the serial number and no one would be the wiser. I never saw any such damage on a Euro Mosaic - certainly isn't standard. CDs in Europe often aren't shrink-wrapped, I can't even remember if the Euro Mosaic usually contained shrinkwrapped CDs, however it would be a waste if the box is shrinkwrapped anyway, wouldn't it? I guess we're a bit less afraid of germs or whatever... in stores, you can usually open and listen to any disc (with the exception of expensive multi-sets or specially packed things that might get damaged, but those would contain a special "please don't open" sticker), hence it's normal to buy new CDs that aren't shrinkwrapped. Also if there are special sales, most often those CDs aren't shrinkwrapped, either. Of course that means that sometimes you'll want to check a disc a bit closer for ugly fingerprints on the booklet or even those "half moons" that you get when not putting back the booklet correctly... but that has maybe kept me from buying four or five discs only in all the years I've been buying CDs (fiftenn years?)

found this in the sales bins yesterday: also picked up some more Dylan (Another Side, & the Dead) and some Doors (the "deluxe" editions or whatever they are), the first one, "Waiting for the Sun" and "Morrison Hotel", all very cheap.

well, I guess it's as you say, "never before on CD", nothing more: (bold by yours truly)

Great! If anyone finds a good offer for shipping to yurp, please post here!

Agreed. Fantasy was doing great stuff at the time of the sale, and Concord put out what was in the pipeline, but then pulled the plug and went to slop. A pity we never got the third Coltrane Prestige box to finish the set. AH! I was wondering what happened to the third box! I could have sworn I read there was to be a third...and then the trail went cold. Real cold...I couldn't even find where I thought I read about it. I was beginning to think it was something I imagined. By the way...what was to be in it? Fearless Leader was his solo lead sessions, Interplay his sideman role...what else is there? Interplay was the co-led dates, the third would have been the sideman dates (Red Garland, Mal Waldron, Elmo Hope, Gene Ammons...). I'd have loved to see it happen, too!

anyone? Great fun...though breaks no new ground. He's keen on Monteverdi as a source! I like it. That sounds good enough!

This is sad news - baritone saxophonist Jack Nimitz seems to have died (no news items on the web yet). This comes from saxophonist Kim Richmond, mailed to me by a friend: I'll spin this beauty over the weekend:

Kim Clarke! Joe Henderson once had a ladies band backing him, I think it was JoAnne Brackeen, Marlene Rosenberg and Sylvia Cuenca. Not quite jazz, but... the duo of Ikue Mori and Zeena Parkins is quite cool! Also there's Andrea Parkins, best known from Ellery Eskelin's trio (with Jim Black)

Happy Birthday!

Recently got Mose Allison's "High Jinks" and finally sat down and played the first two discs yesterday - fantastic! Got to get more Mose!