bolivarblues

Looking through an old Concord catalog the other day, I realized that they have quite a number of older box sets that are out-of-date as far as remastering goes and mostly large and quite pricey, such as Monk and Evans' Riverside boxes, Trane's Prestige box, Eric Dolphy Prestige, Sonny Rollins, Prestige, etc. I'm really hoping that what we've seen with Trane (Fearless Leader plus two upcoming boxes) and Miles (Legendary Prestige Sessions, plus upcoming early Prestige box) will be just the tip of the iceberg in reconfiguring these box sets into smaller chunks, with better remastering and lower prices.

I have a 160 GB collection in my iTunes library. My entire collection is ripped to my hard drive as compressed, AAC files (encoded at 160 kbps) for every day use. I typically rip a new CD and never play it again, except for the occasion that I listen to CDs on my main stereo system in my living room (most listening is done on my computer in my bedroom). I use each file's "comments" tag to store information such as musicians involved in the session, recording location and date (usually copied and pasted from a discography, such as jazzdisco.org). I use the "grouping" field (who knows what it's really for) for record label, and of course other tags store composer, year, album title and artist. This system gives me an amazing amount of control over what I listen to. Using iTunes' "smart playlist," I can quickly create a custom playlist based on any of these fields, or practically any combination thereof. I can, for example, within seconds create a playlist of all recordings on the Blue Note label recorded between the years 1954-1952 with Horace Silver on piano playing Thelonious Monk compositions. Or I can listen randomly based on artist, year recorded, genre or even my whole libary. That kind of flexibility is basically impossible otherwise. It's totally revolutionized how I listen to music, and it protects my CD from scratches and such. Using my laptop and iTunes, I can wirelessly stream my library from my bedroom upstairs to my main home stereo downstairs. The only drawback is the fact that the files are compressed, but they sound fine to me for everyday use - I can always break out the actual disc for more critical listening. If I had an unlimited amount of hard drive space, I would solve this by encoding the files with the Apple Lossless codec, which takes approximately half as much hard drive space as a .wav or .aiff file, or about five times the space as a compressed MP3 or AAC file at 128 kbps.

The Monk DVD is under my Christmas tree right now, one of several jazz-oriented gifts that I have my wonderful fiancée to thank for (as well as a couple that I know of under my parents' tree). I'll have a review in the next week or two.

I've never been one to place too much stock in CD reviews, considering that in most cases, the reviewer hasn't had enough time to properly sit with a recording. So many of my favorite records took a while for me; at first, I might have been indifferent or even off-put, but for whatever reason I decided not to give up on it. At some point in the future, maybe weeks, maybe months, or even years, that recording suddenly makes sense to you and manages to hit you in that place where all the great records affect you. I, too, was eagerly awaiting the release of New Monastery, and rushed out to get my copy when it was released. I immediately loved it, and even posted a glowing review on my LiveJournal page. I'm happy to report that nearly three months later, my enthusiasm for this record has not waned one bit. My initial feeling was that this particular recording is special; destined to be a classic. I say all this with cautiously guarded optimism, knowing that a true classic has to hold up and prove itself over an extended period of time. But I believe that New Monastery is well on track.

In jazz, if the musicians liked a suit, then chances are they were good cats; the Erteguns were among the best. The ideal of an honest big label exec with a genuine passion for the music seems an anomally in modern times, but Ahmet Ertegun personified those qualities. What a great American story, too - two Turkish immigrants whose version of the American Dream involved helping change the face of America's original art form, jazz. Before we get all up in arms about immigrants and start building fences at the border and such, we should remember that our nation was founded on the backs of hard-working immigrants like the Ertegun brothers. It's what this country is about. As a related aside, today I watched the DVD Tom Dowd: The Language of Music. The brothers Ertegun make numerous appearances in this fascinating look at a remarkable individual, one who helped pioneer modern recording techniques. Among the many fascinating anecdotes is Dowd's recount of his involvement in the session that resulted in Ornette Coleman's Free Jazz. Apparently, Dowd and company were not prepared for the length of the double quartet's experimentation, and upon realizing that the tape was running out, he had to hurriedly prepare a 2-track machine in order to keep tape rolling. The end result is actually a splice of three tapes, going from 4-track, to 2-track, and once the 2-track ran out, back to 4-track. Dowd recalls telling Coleman and Dolphy what had happened during the recording; both had a "whatever it takes" attitude, and were in agreement that they "nailed" the take and that it likely could not be easily reproduced. One thing becomes quite clear about the man, and that is he knew and respected that it was his job to make sure the tape is running whenever "that moment" occured, even if it meant that meant having to engineer a midnight Charles Mingus session after spending all day working with The Coasters. He had a true respect for the muse and its fleeting nature. Oh, and by the way, I'm new here. Hello.

I'm obviously coming into this thread with a belated initial post, but I'm wondering if anyone has heard of any plans to finally release Basra in the US? I was among those expecting to purchase the CD on its scheduled date of release; it's taken a while for me to get over being pissed about all that nonsense, but I finally broke down yesterday and ordered the British import. Knowing my luck, it will finally release in the US now that I've done that. Reading through this thread, I realize that the Basra horse has been duly flogged, but I just wanted to add that it has been my impression all along that the party at fault was none other than Mr. Sims (née LaRoca) himself. After all, he was Sims, then LaRoca, then Sims again, so his track record with picking a name and staying with it is none too impressive.