Teasing the Korean

Toquinho & Vinicius - Um Pouco de Ilusao

What prompted the review in the first place? Has "Let's Get Lost" finally come out on DVD?

George Russell Sextet Live in KC - Decca (stereo)

It has a great intricate rhhme scheme worthy of Cole Porter, Lorenz Hart or Noel Coward.

An original mono copy. Happy 40!

Has anyone mentioned "Straight Ahead" on Capitol, with Mancini-esque arrangements by Bob Bain? The cover looks great on the wall next to Gerald Wilson's "Everywhere."

You know, this basically sums of most of Sir Paul's solo career for me. He has this incredible ability to write really inventive, interesting melodies and chord progressions; but for me, all of the great ideas and fragments rarely add up to a truly great song. His throwaway lyrics don't help matters either, although he has written some great lyrics. I gave up on him ages ago, and although I was surprised by a few tracks on his last few albums, I have no desire to spin them again.

I have two mono copies, a stereo, AND the CD (stereo). How embarrassing. I might spin my US Capitol mono copy tonight. It still has the cutout sheet intact and the psychedelic inner sleeve.

Check to see if it's mono, and if it is, give it a spin. The stereo version is lame in comparison.

Sgt. Pepper is a unique album in the Beatles catalog, in that it is the only one on which all four members sport facial hair simultaneously. And I don't need to tell you that bands whose members all sport facial hair are incapable of making great records.

I couldn't even get through all the sound samples. Some pleasant melodies, nothing I would buy.

I could never spin vinyl before work. I'd never leave the house.

What if it's played years later on the same machine, or say a restored similar model?

I'm more interested in the stuff the previous owners were too bone-headed to reissue all these years, and hoping it will finally come out.

Do these occur: Because there were phasing issues on the original mono recordings (assuming more than one mic was used); or Because full-track mono tapes were later remastered on stereo tape decks? I noticed this most recently on a CD reissue of Art Blakey's "A Night at Birdland" but I've heard it on other albums, the titles of which escape me at the moment. Inquiring minds want to know.

In Monday’s (5/28) New York Times, Jeff Leeds reports: “Despite costly efforts to build buzz around new talent and thwart piracy, CD sales have plunged more than 20 percent this year, far outweighing any gains made by digital sales at iTunes and similar services ... It’s been four years since the last big shuffle in ownership of the major record labels. But now, with the sales plunge dimming hopes for a recovery any time soon, there is a new game of corporate musical chairs afoot that could shake up the industry hierarchy. Under the deal that awaits shareholder approval, London-based EMI agreed last week to be purchased for more than $4.7 billion by a private equity investor, Terra Firma Capital Partners, whose diverse holdings include a European waste-conversion business.” Leeds adds: “More than half of all music acquired by fans last year came from unpaid sources including Internet file sharing and CD burning, according to the market research company NPD Group. The ‘social’ ripping and burning of CDs among friends -- which takes place offline and almost entirely out of reach of industry policing efforts -- accounted for 37 percent of all music consumption, more than file-sharing.” The buyers' ownership of a waste-conversion business will be especially helpful in running a record label.

They must have been party records back in the day. The stuff like "Poinciana" has a very hip cocktail vibe, and I mean that in a good way. Kind of strange in retrospect to think of how popular piano trios were during a time when jazz was moving far from the mainstream. Every label had a trio similar to AJ and Ramsey. I just checked my LPs and have way more AJ than I was aware, about 10 LPs. I also checked that discography and found that "Macanudo" was recorded right around the the time he'd switched personnel in his trio, so who plays on it is anyone's guess.

Appreciate all the replies, folks!

Do you mean the album on Vanguard with "The Epstein Variations?" A very skillfully done album that was far less gimmicky than what I expected.

One of his Argo albums I like a lot is a latin-tinged album called "Macanudo," with arrangements by Richard Evans. It's a large group, and I don't know if Crosby and Fournier are on it (no musicians are credited). Just when you think you've seen all the Ahmad Jamal Argo albums, another one invariably pops up. Sadly, they're usually beat to hell. I've managed to accumulate several in good shape, though, over the years.

Those Play Bach albums pop up in the US for short dough pretty often. I have 5 volumes. I like them though I don't spin them all that often.

Your take is interesting. I always had the impression that jazz was more respected in Europe than in the US and didn’t need to piggyback onto classical music for legitimization. As for Third Stream music, I like it in theory, though much of what was produced sounds very studied and precious. I think that a number of postwar film and TV composers did a much better job at integrating jazz and symphonic music.

Bach, and the baroque sound in general, was such a big part of the subliminal soundtrack of the 1960s – along with Bacharach and Bossa Nova. (What was it about the letter “B” and that decade?). Chief proponents of adapting Bach to other musical styles were the Swingle Singers and Jacques Loussier. This culminated, of course, with Walter Carlos and “Switched on Bach” near the close of the decade. The baroque jazz sound made its way into countless film soundtracks (I just heard it Michel Legrand’s score to “Polly Magoo”) and European library music. What was it about Bach’s music that resonated with that decade?