Stompin at the Savoy

I think you are right. Unfortunately the world we are bequeathing to subsequent generations is, to my mind, overcrowded. Climate change is already creating scary wildfire behavior out here in the west that we didn't know before. Immense fires that there is no question of putting out where entire towns go up - you try to move people to safety and redirect it at the edges...

73. Getting old isn't all bad. My friends consider me a poor person and yet somehow I seem to have almost everything I ever wanted: several excellent acoustic guitars, an extensive collection of jazz, a huge library of books, a nice collection of cookware, clothes, video, computers, a reliable car etc, etc. I've lost much of my vocal range but my guitar has ripened over 60 years of playing and I'm able to amuse myself for hours every day. I'm retired, collect social security, and my needs are pretty modest so I don't have to work. Just at the moment the ghosts of all those long ago sports injuries have begun to haunt me and joint pain has become a way of life, cannabis has become legal (sort of) and excellent dry herb vaporizers have come on the market. And LED lighting. I've had a hippie dream of living out in the country in Oregon since I was a teen and now I do.

We start out life in a highly organized state. After many years that organization to start to decay. Eventually organs and critical stuff break down and we can't maintain these structures any further, a big change of state occurs and entropy gets the last laugh. As I get into the final decades of life I seem to be resigning myself to this gradual loss of organization and slide into decrepitude but I also find my attitudes towards things in the world that I really care about changing, a recognition that my powers to affect change - whatever they once were - are fading fast and I seem to be letting go of tense internal struggles about not wanting to accept stuff; shifting to acceptance of what is and an appreciation for what matters in the time I have left.

These university presses and some specialty publishers I guess are the only ones willing to produce this sort of thing and the audience is not vast so the books are always really pricey. I found volume 2 for about 9 bucks and I've been reading the first volume on internet archive and decided I want a hard copy of volume 1. I came across what appears to be the second edition of both volumes on ebay for about $35 and plunked for it. So I may end up with an extra 2nd volume which I could pass along to you.

I took a look at that kindle sample of the book. I did not read the whole sample, just skimmed through a bit. It did not look that bad to me. I like Kenny Dorham and am interested in his story so I'll probably order the kindle edition one of these days if they ever drop the price.

I've been reading this. Are there any other bios of him? Haven't seen much. I'm a couple chapters in and finding this really excellent! It exactly answers my interests at this moment because I've been going through his recorded output but somehow Benny doesn't seem to have been documented that much in print - a few articles and liner notes that are mostly sketchy and lackluster - in spite of being marvelous and kind of important in the development of jazz. This book has a gratifying amount of detail, somewhat along the lines of Basie's autobiography, so there is a lot to take in. But the research and writing are top notch and the author seems to have been quite friendly with Benny and received a lot of support in the writing of the book from Benny and many of Benny's associates.

Another product to consider is Blu-ray capable external read/write devices. More expensive but they do more and you can store data on 100G disks. I've been shopping for one myself.

It doesn't look like you can burn a cd or dvd with that. If you really want help it's best to specify your entire setup: machine, operating system, what you plan to do with this, where it's going to be used, budget constraints, etc. Otherwise people answer and you go oh but I don't want ....

Yes. I used to sail and race 4.2 meter boats back in college sailing club. It's a fun thing to do!

Did you find the latest drivers for the product (company website probably) and install them? After you've done that, does the drive show up when you plug it in? For ex on a pc you should see it in File Explorer. I recently bought a Dell PC tower which did not have a built in cd player so I bought an external usb player from Dell for about $50. Works fine so far.

I've been slowly buying Benny Carter volumes on Chronological Classics. They tend to be kind of pricey, even used. Yesterday I came across an ebay seller who had the exact five disks in the series that I lack for sale at $10 each with combined shipping. So about 11 bux a disk total and my collection of Benny Carter Chronologicals is complete. So pretty pleased abut that and beginning a Benny Carter festival here this morning. I have a couple of euro-compilations with a dozen of Carter's later albums. There are a couple of 50's albums - Cosmopolite and Benny Carter Plays Pretty - which do not seem make it onto the compilations and I guess I can see why: they are kind of sweet, almost easy listening stuff where Benny solos over strings, Oscar Peterson trio, etc. Benny plays great as usual - such thick tone and supple phrasing - but it's all kind of tame stuff.

Haven't listened to this for years. Enjoying it!

Good points. That sounds like fraud. Spotify and youtube are a mixed blessing but I suspect they are still a blessing to the artist, because the services make their music available to the general public. If you want to check somebody out used to be you had to listen to the radio till their songs came up. Now you can go find works by the artist, listen, and if you like it, buy the album. True, millions of people are putting stuff up on youtube so it's harder to stand out than it once was. It's a different world and this is a pretty big part of how music is distributed nowadays.

Lately I have been reading The Complete Robot, a compilation of Isaac Asimov's robot series short stories. His Foundation series is engaging and popular but in many ways I think Asimov's Robot series and his 3 laws of robotics are more significant. I am particularly struck by the way Asimov's musings about autonomous control of society by large artificial intelligences become extremely relevant now in light of the advent of artificial intelligence capabilities way beyond what was possible when Asimov wrote his stories. Asimov wrote about the consequences of allowing an autonomous, artificial intelligence to control vehicles, machines, space ships, cities, governments, etc. and now we are seeing a lot of news about autonomous AI weapons systems, etc. "The Evitable Conflict" (1950) is a particularly good story in this regard. You can read it here: http://cdn.michaelgeist.ca/.../04/The-Evitable-Conflict.pdf