Phil Meloy

Veteran rocker Cyndi Lauper was left red-faced during a concert in Massachusetts recently - when a bird excreted in her mouth. The "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" singer, now aged 50, was performing at the concert - sponsored by radio station KISS-108 - on Saturday when the horrible incident occurred. It seems a bird flying overhead went to the toilet just as Lauper was hitting a high note, leading to a horrifying moment for the singer.

Parade - Hoboken, New Jersey - Robert Frank

For the past six months we have been reporting all CD Baby albums to Google's new shopping service called FROOGLE: http://froogle.google.com If any of your fans are searching for your CD there, they'll be sure to find it.

"It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing" - Ella Fitzgerald & Duke Ellington Orchestra live at the Cote d'Azur - Juan-les-Pins, France 1966.

That's a great song that I saw Mr. Tyner play live (nice and loud) a number of times, with Gary Bartz/John Blake/John Lee/Wilbey Fletcher and with Avery Sharpe/Louis Hayes. Hi kh1958 - I envy you - I'm afraid I've not heard Mr Tyner play it live but I've got it with him performing it live with Avery Sharpe and Louis Hayes on the opening track of a second hand CD I found recently "McCoy Tyner - Live at the Musicians Exchange Cafe, Fort Lauderdale, USA" (1987). You weren't there were you?

Senor Carlos - McCoy Tyner

Hi Jad - I noticed you're selling your CD on CD Baby for $8.00. Have you thought about putting a limited number in the $5.00 sale for a period of time. You can do it online and pull the CD out of the sale any time you want also. You'll actually only get $1.00 less per CD in return. You'll definitely get a load more hits and possibly sell a few to people who have never even heard of you. Good luck.

Hi EKE BBB - I'm afraid I don't speak Spanish but I would imagine they are refering to royalties paid to the composer(s)/publisher(s) of the music on the CD i.e. the publishing royalties as opposed to royalties paid to the musicians who actually perform on the album.

they didn't sell, so he ate them all. Stuffed 'em in even after he was more than fed up. Kaboom! Here's a photo of Rick just prior to his explosion...

Hell I don't know about you guys but I've just rushed out and got me a copy of Rick's latest album...

I'd say send him over AAJ and let FitzGenius deal with him. I know this may seem cruel but...

I can certainly recommend Ahmad Jamal and the Assai Quartet which I bought from CD Baby a few weeks ago - especially as since then it has been included in the $5 sale. As well as the string quartet pieces the CD includes a suite of solo piano improvisations recorded in Ahmad Jamal's living room.

Can certainly recommend The Modern Dance & Dub Housing.

There has been a late line-up change for the Jazzhearts April performances at Ronnie's with Brian Abrahams replacing Greg Leppard on drums. The full line-up now is Louise Elliott (tenor sax & flute), Mervyn Africa (piano), Chris Thorn (guitar), Mark Bassey (trombone), Claude Deppa (trumpet), Richard Ajileye (percussion), Steve Lamb (bass), Brian Abrahams (drums).

CD Baby has just past the 7 million dollar mark in payments to independent musicians.

JC seems to be up and running now.

One CD that's worth checking out is Ahmed Jamal: Ahmad Jamal with the Assai Quartet. It's in the $5 sale. I actually bought this only a week and a half ago from CD Baby for the full price of $12.

The Boston Herald has just published the following article on CD Baby... Music business gets real at online store By Larry Katz - BOSTON HERALD Friday, March 5, 2004 Five years ago, Derek Sivers was working as a part-time ringmaster of a children's circus in Western Massachusetts. Now he's the head of a booming business Esquire magazine tagged "the record store of the future'' when it featured Sivers in its "Best & Brightest" issue. Sivers, 33, is the founder of CD Baby, an online record store that sells music made by independent artists and follows an idealistic business model. It's a formula that's clicked with unsigned musicians and their fans. While the major record labels and traditional record retailers squawk about declining CD sales, illegal downloading, piracy and the death of the music industry as we know it, cdbaby.com has seen its sales double every year since its inception in 1998, when sales totaled just $9,000. After taking in $2.5 million in 2002, cdbaby.com grossed $4.65 million in 2003. Total sales have now climbed past $10 million. Pretty good for a business that Sivers started with a home computer and an empty closet. "The birth of CD Baby goes back to the early days of the Internet. Around 1995 the Internet was completely noncommerical. There was a great vibe on the Internet. If there was something that you knew, you shared it. That kind of vibe led to CD Baby. "I had this band called Hit Me," says Sivers, a former Berklee College of Music guitarist. "We had a CD that had sold 1,500 copies at shows, but none of the online stores that were around back then would take it. They all said, 'Where's your distributor?' I thought, 'This is messed up. I don't want to get my CD into shopping malls. I just want to sell it directly to people who want it.' "So I got my own credit-card merchant account. I meant to sell CDs for me and a few friends, but I started getting calls. 'Hey, dude, my friend Dave said you could sell my CD.' I was like, 'Sure, bring it on.' I kept getting more calls. In 1998 I said it was time to give this thing a name, put up its own Web page and set up a little store." Sivers soon had a closet filled with CDs in his Woodstock, NY, home. Then a second closet. Then a garage. After two years, Sivers decided he wanted to live in a warmer climate and moved to Portland. Now CD Baby has 35 employees and two airplane hangar-sized warehouses filled with CDs. More than 45,000 independent artists sell their CDs through its amusing, user-friendly Web site, including 1,457 from the Boston area. "The biggest ingredient to its success," Sivers says, "is that I've resisted all the temptations to turn it into a greedier service. I've turned down all investors and all advertisers. I wanted this thing to have ideals, so I insisted on four important points. "First, the musicians would get paid every week. Second, the musicians would always get to know the names and addresses of the people buying their music. Third, they would never get kicked out of the system for not selling enough. So even if you sell one CD every five years, CD Baby will never kick you out. And fourth, the site would never sell out and allow paid placement or ads so artists with big bucks could bury those without. We've kept CD Baby true to that mission." Any artist with a CD can join CD Baby for a onetime $35 fee. CD Baby keeps $4 from every CD sold. The artist, who sets the list price, usually $10-15, keeps the rest. It's a much better return than that offered by the major labels, who pay most performers less than $1 per unit sold. Just ask singer-songwriter Melissa Ferrick. The Newburyport resident has gone from a major label deal with Atlantic Records to the small What Are Records? label to selling her own CDs through CD Baby. "I love CD Baby," Ferrick says. "It's an integral part of how I make money and survive as an artist. After watching Ani (DiFranco) and Aimee (Mann) run their own labels, I figured I could make a lot more money putting CDs out on my own and reinvesting in my own career. I needed a way to sell hard copies via the Internet, and CD Baby was it. "I charge $15 for a CD and CD Baby takes four. It costs me about $2 to press a CD and a little bit for shipping, so I make about $8.50 a record, which is really good. I'm selling 10,000 or 15,000 units. Do the math. And now thanks to Derek and CD Baby, my records are available as downloads at iTunes." Melissa Ferrick, along with Jack Johnson, Dan Zanes, O.A.R. and Alexi Murdoch, is one of CD Baby's best-selling and best-known artists. But the vast majority of CDs come from unknowns struggling for recognition. For them, CD Baby offers more hope than cash. "I think I've sold 10 CDs or something," says jazz pianist Daniela Schachter, who came to Boston from her native Sicily to study at Berklee. "But that's because I need to promote myself more. "I'm very happy with CD Baby. It's not only about selling CDs. You make connections. People from Japan have bought the CDs. People listen to my music though the Web site. I get phone calls from people who found out about my music on CD Baby. That's what is most important. Letting people know what I'm doing with my music." With a Web page designed to be a playground for music lovers, cdbaby.com is at heart a place to discover new music by new artists. Ferrick says she found her current opening act, Edie Carey, when Carey's name popped up as a search result for "If you like Melissa Ferrick, you might like..." Customers can browse virtual CD stacks organized by genre, geography or whimsical categories such as "Sick of All Normal Music," "Smash! Burn! Destroy! Rage!" and "Naked on CD Cover." "The whole downturn of the music industry we keep hearing about hasn't touched us or the artists we work with at all," Sivers says. "At CD Baby, we live in this little utopian bubble."

Here in the UK it was nicknamed "Jazz the Obituary"

After much protest by AAJ members regarding the policy on mentioning other boards, a new thread has been created on AAJ to accommodate matters dealing with other boards. Mike's policy for AAJ posters as regards mentioning of other boards has been amended to... pasted from AAJ... It boils down to these two rules: * don't blatantly promote another jazz board (especially if you're not an active AAJ member) * if the board you frequent is down (Organissimo or Jazz Corner), either notify Jim or Lois (the board owners). They can then contact you re: the board’s status. * * * * * Bev suggested that we use the GET THE WORD OUT forum as the spot to post "outage" announcements. In the future, use the "Other Jazz Websites and Jazz Resources" thread if you must...

For any of you guys selling your CDs through CD Baby Derek Sivers has just announced this in the News section of their site... If you have too many boxes of CDs in your garage, or you care more about getting your CDs into people's hands than how much $-per-CD you make, check out this new CD Baby idea: I'm going to make a special section of cdbaby.com called "$5 SPECIALS" - a gallery of CDs on sale for only $5. The wonderful catch is that customers must buy a MINIMUM OF 3 DIFFERENT "$5 SPECIAL" CDs in order to get the discount! (In other words: "3 for $15" or actually "buy 3 or more for $5 each".) It will put it into their shopping cart at full price, but tell them if they add two other CDs from the "$5 SPECIALS" area, that all of those special CDs in their cart will drop to $5. This will encourage customers to browse around, choosing at least three different "$5 Special" albums before leaving. There will be no limit. I'm sure many customers will buy 20 CDs for $100! (Again: the sale will be for getting at least three *different* CDs, not three of the same CD.) THIS IS TOTALLY OPTIONAL, so if you want your CD to be in there, you have to: #1 - log in your CD Baby account at https://members.cdbaby.com #2 - click EDIT ALBUM INFO next to the CD #3 - edit the "OPTIONAL" section at the bottom of the list. #4 - choose "YES" from the menu at the bottom that asks if you want to be in the "$5 SPECIAL SALE" area. #5 - once you click the [those are my options] button at the bottom, you're in. For CDs sold in the $5 Special, you get $3, we get $2. No variations or special favors allowed. Not $6. Not $4. Just $5. Everyone in it gets the same deal. NOTE: you can come back at any time to remove it from the sale, or switch it as often as you'd like. (Example: you could do an every-Tuesday sale, by putting it in every Monday night, and taking it out every Tuesday night.) The ONLY difference between this and a normal sale: * - You get $3 we get $2. * - The $5 special will override any other quantity-discounts you are doing * - CDs sold for $5 will not pay the $1-per-CD referral fee to our linking partners-affiliate program. (But that doesn't affect musicians anyway. That's only for external companies like garageband.com, iuma.com, and zines/portals.) Everything else is the same if you do this, FOR EXAMPLE: * - it will not affect your normal CD Baby page * - it will not affect your normal selling price * - it will not affect Tower Records' price (this is a cdbaby.com sale only) * - $5 CDs sold will count towards our top-seller charts and sales reporting. * - everything else not mentioned Sign up now, if interested. I'll be launching it on the website in March, and emailing customers about it, so you'll probably want to sign up in advance if you want to be there at the start. Now be careful, don't just change your selling price. Make sure to follow those #1, 2, 3, 4, 5 directions, above.

Hi chuck - any particular reason why your only running twelve hours a day at the moment?

Absolutely! PS. I see what you guys mean by accessing the JC Speakeasy secton from rhe JC home page. The link seems to be knocked out. I normally access the Speakeasy directly from a link in my favourites list so I have not had a problem but I just tried it the other way and couldn't get in. I suggest you try typing http://www.jazzcorner.com/speakeasy/ into the address box on your browser and hit Go. I think this will do it. In fact if you're in a real hurry just hit on the link in this post.

My kindest thoughts to you and your family Tom.

Hi guys - The CD player started skipping again on Saturday so I went down to a hi-fi components place about a mile away in Clapham Junction (London). I'm fortunate in that nearby there's a proper hi-fi shop which is a family business and has been there for decades - a real Aladdin's cave of new and used hi-fi equipment and parts. They also do repairs on site. They suggested I first try a cleaning disc because the problem could be a deposit build-up on the laser lens but if that didn't work then the laser was probably on the way out and would either require repair or replacement of the machine. I purchased a TDK cleaning disc for £7.50 (the most expensive out of a choice of three) and took it home and ran it through the machine (the cleaning process takes a few seconds) with the result that the CD hasn't skipped since (I've played about 20 CDs since) - in fact I think there's actually been a bit of improvement in sound quality too. Hopefully this is the end of the problem for some time to come but I'll let you know if it has a relapse. The instructions with the disc recommend running the cleaning disc in the player every month but the need for this would obviously depend on usage level. The cleaning disc is supposed to be good for 50 cleans. Thanks to everyone for your input and advice. B)