chris

It's only a steal if they are encoding the music better than they used to-- artifacts and distortion in a lot of the tracks were commonplace when I last used emusic (not long before they changed their rate structure), and made the MP3s largely unsuitable for listening with either good headphones or burned to CDs on a good stereo. Are they better now? Does anyone know what they are encoding with and/or what bitrate, etc. they are using?

As a counterbalance to the ebay madness threads, does anyone ever get a great deal, a real steal from ebay? I sure don't seem to it happening!

vajerzy - maybe you'll find that Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Mosaic

I'm reading a biography of Bill Evans whose name escapes me at the moment, a pretty damn good translation of Thus Spake Zarathustra, and the letters of Flannery O'Connor...

I probably suffer from hard bop myopia. I try to keep my ears open, but that is the direction I naturally gravitate. It is also easier for the newbie to figure out worthwhile purchases with a filter of 20-30 or more years or critical discussion rather than jumping out and trying to figure out what to buy amongst current releases. If anything, my taste is working backwards from a beginning of late Coltrane and others to where I much more greatly appreciate early jazz, big band, etc... I'm sure that will change over time. Right now, that's just where my ears are at.

No, but he might get fingered...

I'm surprised more people don't-- what else?-- listen to jazz when they are in bed/going to sleep. I always load up the changer and have it play through when I am in bed. It is a great concentrated listening time or, if I am reading, a pleasant coccoon of art and sound. And who knows, maybe I'm learning something musical in my sleep! I was reading something recently about research showing how most of us are actually sleep-deprived nowadays, even if we have learned somewhat to adjust to it-- that most people really do need 8-10 hours of sleep to perform optimally....

When I was 17 I watched four friends get into a car at a party (none of us were drinking, just hanging out) and head off into the dark to drop one of my best buddies off. I saw the taillights and than a set of headlights coming and then this dull crunch. A drunk classmate had plowed into them head on. Killed three right there. A big deal anywhere, but particularly in the little town I grew up in-- those three would have been 15% of my high school graduating class. Last winter my ex (whose brother has been paraplegic since he was a teen due to an accident) and both kids got in a serious accident when an SUV lost control and hit them head on-- fortunately they were only bruised and battered (friends who saw the accident called, I ran out the door and came to see what happened.. by the time I got there, they were all gone in the ambulance, but I will never forget that moment that I saw their car and was SURE they were all dead). My theory now is-- you have your health, and so does the person you hit. All the rest is just paperwork. A hassle, for sure, but accidents happen to the best drivers-- thank goodness you are insured and unhurt!

I'm with you. I'm trying to figure out how to let myself be convinced (by myself and my avatar) that-- given the two month CD buying binge I have been on-- I have to have the Mobley. Maybe as a reward for not strangling my boss next week. Or last week Then the JJ Johnson set and the Horace Parlan. Where's that hands-off, Sugar mama I've been waiting for when I need her?

I must chime in and agree... the Blue Mitchell set really is fantastic. I found it interesting that one of the session was unreleased because Alfred Lion didn't like the sound of Leo Wright's sax (that is the suspicion anyway)... I sure don't hear any problem!! In fact some of those tracks are among my favorites. The session in question from the set: (A) Mitchell, (tp), Joe Henderson (ts), Leo Wright (as), Herbie Hancock (p), Gene Taylor (B), Roy Brooks (d). August 13, 1963 tk 4 Andrea LT-1092 tk11 Cry Me A River - tk14 Mamacita - tk15 Sweet And Lovely - tk22 Step Lightly - tk24 Bluesville -

I've got the Chris Lightcap with Tony Malaby -- it's a keeper!

I bet Stanley was a little mad about it too....

Yes, I'm guilty of finding the Colts more fun to watch than the Pats-- I guess I appreciate a pass over 7 yards to those things called "wide receivers" on other teams . If Manning plays as well as he has been and they can keep some semblance of a defensive line, then Colts win. But it will be cold, and more importantly, you can't discount big game experience which the Patriots have. I just hope the Patriots start to buy into their own mystique about playing at home in the cold-- that might be their psychological downfall. Carolina/Philly is tougher to call. Deep in his Chunky soup eating heart, McNabb knows the Packers lost the last game, Philly didn't win it. And given his own performance (which was pretty good, all things considered) he will be driven to try to do as much as possible himself since the rest of his team isn't helping a lot, which could be their ruination. But they will be motivated not to lose three in a row and possibly get shot on the street in Philadelphia. On the other hand, Carolina has the feel-good story of the year going... but they are very vulnerable with Delhomme, who might just wake up and start playing like-- well-- Delhomme. I'm going to stick with my wishful thinking picks, but it wouldn't surprise me if it went either way in either game. Then I'll go back to watching the NBA and college men's madness while Conn admires the clean fundamentals of college women battling to gritty, 44-42 wins

Just for Conn, here are my patented "wishful thinking picks": Indianapolis beats the boring as paint-drying Patriots 27-24 and sissy-girl Brady's eyeblack runs with his tears like a cheap lap dancer at the end of a slow night. Carolina continues their miracle run by beating the dancing BEagles 20-10 by employing a new conceptual strategy the Packers will be interested in. Carolina is calling this innovastive technique "defense" -- it apparently comes in really handy on 4th down.

The Tractatus rocks, baby ... I agree with you... the fallback to relativism is too often a cop-out, and that is my concern also-- well, that and all this talk about KY and finger examinations, which also has me a little edgy

My Blue Mitchell mosaic came in today... it's #3529 Here in the next week or so I am sure my avatar will give in and buy the Mobley set -- will have to be the first time in history that an avatar has forced a purchase

Only relativists ADMIT that it is irresolvable, the rest lapse into approaches I already mentioned I'm not arguing against discussing the music-- that's why I come here! But it is no surprise that such discussion almost inevitably at some point come to a difference of opinion that can't be negotiated. As I said earlier, the idea is to talk about it a more intelligent and precise way. WNMC nails it in his last post, though I'm not entirely sure he meant it the way this relatavist would interpret it "Evaluatism" is just another sort of anti-foundationalism. This idea is, of course, at the heart of aesthetics, and precisely what I was alluding to when I spoke of "community" -- being a relativist, however you want to cast it, doesn't throw out the concept of value (unless carried to absurd extremes) because we live in a negotatiated world in which we have to ascribe (and ascribe to) value systems. But short of constant arguing about "the truth as I know it" one has to know when to fold them and know when to run. Educated, experienced, good listeners can disagree about the value of a particular musician's work or a particular song or solo and many times those disagreements will not be subject to change by learning more (an implicit foundational assumption) as if such learning is uncovering some truth that is the same for all of us. That's what makes the debate fun. I was only semi-objecting to the apparent notion that if we just talked more INTELLIGENTLY, then we wouldn't have such disagreements... I like being in a community where someone can say Bill Evans' piano playing is cold and sterile (not me, I might hasten to add) and they don't get smacked upside the head or banned. And due to confluences of circumstance, community, and user-created norms, such a listener might never change their mind no matter how much they hear or learn about him.

My bank account makes a sound mockery of my education every day, thank you very much

That would be cool if you were willing-- I'd be happy to redistribute-- it looks like there might be a few other on the US/Canada/Mexico side of the pond who would like copies? PM me if you'd like to follow up on this...

Hey, I've gotta do somethin' with that durn book larnin...

Aesthetics is one of those interesting areas of philosophy in which the epistemology ultimately boils down to a personal position within an only slightly larger personal community based on myriad factors that are often beyond individual analysis. Aesthetics, as a philosophical pursuit, is a wolf in wolf's clothing-- beneath the guise of good, clean fisticuffs it is really an irresolvable debate about foundationalism vs, relativism (irresolvable at least in the practical sense, though linguistically such issues can be resolved ve redefinition and expansion of what we consider "real" ala Russell's set paradox and Cantorian set theory) and the bugaboo of closed systems of "proof." So in the end, aesthetic discussion really *is* all about clashing beliefs based on personal response, and while there are more intelligent and precise ways of saying "listen to the music" there is often very little chance that it will make any practical difference... finally any position is indefensible on absolute grounds unless you are going to argue from some religious, divine, or metaphysical grounds of communion with either some higher power, form, or the spirit of art itself.

Incidentally, there are a number of great programs for doing your own a/b testing with MP3 tracks yourself that take all the work out of it and allow you to test yourself reliably. It is interesting to test yourself on what you think you know and how "golden" your ears really are. I am doing a bunch of testing of my own ears with various Lame MP3 encoding settings and the results are interesting/distressing so far I've gotten to the point where I don't listen much to people's opinions unless they have ab tested-- it's amazing how much we THINK we hear! I'm using foobar2000, which is also a player for just about every format on the planet. But there are also some dedicated programs. They all basically allow you to select some tracks and then the computer plays them for you randomly as many times as you wish and record which one is "better" or "matches" the source, keeping statistics for you and eliminating the placebo effect and other bias. http://www.pcabx.com/

I'm a writer not a musician, but I have the same kind of problem trying to "come down." It's a strange kind of positive agitation. A lot of artists drink... I tinker with my CD collection database (not good because I end up wanting to spend money), cook (literally cook, as in food), or you could head straight to the politics forum here on Organissimo, which should take your mind off just about anything

How is Curtis anything less than an A? Is this compared to all other musicians (I still don't get it, but OK) or to other trombone players (in which case, them's fightin' words buster

I should add, Moose, that I'm not clear what the word "approach" is referring to in your message. Which may mean my whole response was moot. At any rate, I was definitely NOT taking a position such as you characterized.