king ubu

tonight: Ellery Eskelin / Sylvie Courvoisier / Vincent Courtois looking forward a lot!

Finally winter here! (Not that I like it, for purely egoistic reasons I'm quite a fan of global warming...) It's effing cold, and the whole city is quiet in the snow - quite rarely happens that there actually is snow on the streets in the city, but if it continues to stay so cold, the snow will stay, too. I prefer that over the melting ugly grey wet streets...

Alright, I'm getting closer... I went to the UMG homepage, went for UM Switzerland: http://www.universalmusic.ch/FRAMESET.HTML If you hit the "Jazz" button on top left, you get to a German page (nothing to wonder, Switzerland is too small even for UMG to have an actual Swiss website about jazz...): http://www.jazzecho.de/ The page is in German, but here's some sort of listing: http://www.jazzecho.de/searchresult_detail...ord&type=cd 307 hits for "Concord" in the CD catalogue, most of them new releases, starting February 21, 2006, going up to March 9, 2007... The choice of titles more of less confirms my impression from above: it seems the crowd-pleasers and the classics are there... but for instance that Webster Young disc (which I bought, so that one's out in a new version *for sure*) is not listed in their search machine, obviously. That likely means that site is not complete? I don't know... anyway, the fact that you can see these 2006 and 2007 new releases is a tiny bit encouraging, after all, no?

And on second thought, the fact that Concord are involved with Vivendi's music business which has gone down the drain it seems (if the non-existing Verve reissues are an indication), is not that encouraging...

And here's the license agreement announcement: http://www.universalmusicgroup.com/News.aspx?NewsId=358

Here's the announcement of the distribution agreement: http://www.universalmusic.com/News.aspx?NewsId=221

Lon, yes, as Goldberg points out, we've had nothing of the blow-out sale, alas! I bought 100 or so from the zweitausendeins sale of ZYX Fantasy titles, which were sold cheaply as ZYX lost their distribution/license deal. Anyway, I remmeber reading here somewhere that Universal took over distribution for Concord, thus I assume the discs I see in that sale are new ones. Titles include, just off the top of my head: - almost any Gene Ammons ever released on Fantasy - all the Farmer and Jazztet stuff from the 80s (Contemporary) - Duke's Pablo releases - tons of Basie and Ella on Pablo - most of the JATP on Pablo - many titles by Adderley - many titles by Montgomery - many titles by Miles - many titles by COltrane - many titles by Bill Evans - all the Hawk (Prestige, Riverside etc.) I know this is not very specific, but these don't look like endangered titles to me, at all, so I really think these are the new titles that Concord is carrying now. But that's all just my assumption... Sorry to say I have no idea if there's any list available anywhere... and weird enough Amazon (German, where I do quite some of my buying of mainstream stuff) does still not list these discs (they were lousy or expensive before already). Also, for instance, there were no Clifford Jordan, Gigi Gryce or other "lesser known" names present - I have no idea if that reflects what the store clerks order or what Concord has in stock... So to me, right now, it looks like things seem not to be as bad as we (I included) were afraid of, but I am having doubts if the more obscure things will indeed remain in print, too... The limited editions I remember seing are not that many, actually (but my memory's blurry): - Webster Young: for Lady - Lacy w/Cherry: Evidence - Cannonball Alabama Concerto possibly/likely they were more, but again, their absence may just be due to the clerks' ignorance...

what a great record store that must be... not really... just their sales - their stock sucks and grows smaller and smaller, even new discs they just have once, most often, and when they're sold, that was it. But it's by far the best one in Zurich.

How's the Gene Ammons? (One of the most horrible covers ever!)

also I think it's much more than 300-400 titles I saw - I can't vouch for that, though.

That's no blowout sale as far as I understand - they're all NEWLY PRINTED CDs (with the Universal logo), NEWLY PRINTED booklets (with the Universal logo) and NEWLY PRINTED TRAYCARDS (you guessed it, with the Universal logo). They are different from the "old" OJCs we could buy over here, and they're all brand new! Now if they print tons of discs just for a blowout sale, they're silly... (I guess this is the kind of story like that with me and the LPRs when they went jewel case and no one believed it...)

Hey, I have mentioned it before, but to me the whole thing seems to be much less bad than we all expected. Sure, I don't know about the catalogue purge (how many titles and which ones have been deleted - if anyone has a list that would be great to have), but tons of "new" (Universal Logo added on the traycard, none of the ZYX and ten other logos the old Euro editions had) "OJCs" (they're not OJCs any longer, even though they were too lazy to change the front covers and get rid of the logo) are around here in a sale that's been going on since December. Prizes (15 CHF, roughly 11 or 12 $) are cheapo for over here. Anyway, all the Miles, Trane, Monk, Adderley etc. is still there, and to my own astonishment, quite a few of the "Limited" OJCs are readily available, too (I just picked up the Webster Young "For Lady" disc yesterday, for instance). And of course all the Pablo crowd-pleasing stuff's there, too (Basie, Ella, JATP, Peterson).

how lucky them dinosaurs didn't accidentally swallow their saviour, then!

There are two CDs (plus half of the CD "Bebop") on Fantasy, sampling material from the Paudras recordings. Some of it may also be on Black Lion, I think.

Oh, and I thought the storm would spread the bird flu or something

my mob's sheeping now! looking forward to it, I was totally unaware there were any Lee Wiley cuts on it before checking the discography out when this thread was started... I love Lee Wiley!

Wow. Just like Blue Note. Whatya mean? They have Norah Jones, Suzanne Vega, and all your other favorite jazz artists! Anita Baker, Al Green... I still wait for the day they'll sign that giant, Kenny G!

Doesn't the old "Best of Chet Baker Sings" contain all his vocal cuts (save one that was on the Baker/Freeman West Coast "Connoisseur" with otherwise instrumental only 1953 material)? I always thought I had it all... Baker-wise, I still own all the old BNs and none of the new ones, but eventually I'll have to import them (the euro version are copycrap).

yup, I realized and posted over there, sorry again!

ah, ok, apologies, then your post sort of followed Sangrey's post following my Carr question, so I thought you were reacting to my post, too... I guess I was a bit too tired when starting to work this morning (hell, it was only a quarter too ten, much too early to not be in bed anymore! )

Sorry, I was a bit touchy - because of your a-bit-too-youngt-to-be-such-a-purist-comment in the Herbie Mann thread...

hey, you're not allowed to post in here, unless you grew a beard in the meantime!

using my superior searching abilities i came up with this bit which i would not consider particularly offensive: Well yes, but my own search for "Continental" (since "Few" is unsearchable) and "Bobby" in recoomendations and for any date did not bring that up... I dimly remembered it, though, and it seems my memory was about right. Anyway, on to more interesting topics again now!

It's a bit strange what the mommy posts about me, of late... I can't remember ever bad-mouthing Few as a flowery ornament... a search didn't yield anything, either. Anyway, I have his "Continental Jazz Express" and it's pretty intense. Of course I'm a big fan of Lacy and there's plenty of Few there, about which I don't think I ever complained or made any outspoken negative comments. *********************** Chuck, that's good news about your reissue projects! Looking forward a lot!

Yes, "Memphis Underground" is a fun one! edit: wait, I'm too much of a purist for that statement to be true, I assume...