Lord 8.0 is out

[Christiern]

Oh now I get it your ego's stand in the way. Because Lord didn't consult you (the know all's of jazz) it's a bad discography.......Ok I'll stop giving him my money now and donate some to you....

I hope you can do better than that.

[Larry Kart]

Oh now I get it your ego's stand in the way. Because Lord didn't consult you (the know all's of jazz) it's a bad discography.......Ok I'll stop giving him my money now and donate some to you....

As I understand it, Lord basically has not and does not "consult" anybody. He merely appropriates (as in "copies") and then collates other people's already published discographical work and is too lazy (or too "efficient") to do any research on his own. After all, time is money, and he's won the game he's playing.

Edited November 25, 2007 by Larry Kart

[Randy Twizzle]

I notice that Lord lists several dozen names including Ted O'Reilly and Jack Woker as "contributors". He also writes:

And of course a deep bow to general discographers who have come before; Hilton Schleman, Charles Delauney, Brian Rust, Jorgen Jepsen, Walter Bruyninckx and Erik Raben.

I'm curious if this mean anything in the scheme of things?

Edited November 25, 2007 by Randy Twizzle

[Christiern]

I think I'll write Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf" and offer him a "deep bow."

[Fer Urbina]

IMHO, the main problem with Lord is that his proofreading and fact-checking is substandard, especially for the money he charges.

F

[Ken Dryden]

I didn't buy Lord's new CD Rom last year and doubt that I will buy any more of them. As for paying $100 per year for the right to access his database---YGBFK!

[Chuck Nessa]

Oh now I get it your ego's stand in the way. Because Lord didn't consult you (the know all's of jazz) it's a bad discography.......Ok I'll stop giving him my money now and donate some to you....

Very sorry to see this message. Not about me or Chris. Original research is the thing. You pay him a large amount of money for other people's work. I guess the current "file sharing" methodology works for you but I hoped for a higher standard.

Edit to say the fact he rejects "primary sources" outright makes his work suspect at best. Chris and I are minor sources, but easily reachable.

Edited November 26, 2007 by Chuck Nessa

[Face of the Bass]

In general I think people in this society are too wedded to this idea of intellectual property. I'm all for originality, but we're talking about a discography here, which is basically a collaborative exercise anyway. How much money is he making off it? I can't imagine he sells too many copies of this behemoth, and he has to pay for the site and the servers to download and the materials and so forth. The profits must be pretty slim, but maybe I'm wrong.

[Christiern]

He makes a lot more than his predecessors, who spent years contacting people around the world and meticulously checking for accuracy. Of course, no one expects Lord to start from scratch, but if he cannot contribute anything new to the effort (and he hasn't), he should have left it in the capable hands of more experienced, more dedicated discographers. If, as you suggest, there is no money in it for Lord, and assuming that his interest in discographical work is genuine, he could have offered to help rather than put out of business those who were already supplying that need. Had Lord not moved in, Raben would have continued his excellent series until he reached Z. I don't know much about Bruyninckx other than that he relied heavily on Jepsen's work and seems to have a genuine interest in getting the correct data.

Karl Emil Knudsen (Storyville Records) published some excellent jazz books, including the Jepsen and Raben discographies. Unfortunately, he did not have proper distribution in the U.S. (Libraries, for example), so it was relatively easy for Lord to step in. There is a lot of resentment towards Lord for being the spoiler, as it were, and that resentment is compounded by the fact that he is doing such a sloppy job.

[JSngry]

In general I think people in this society are too wedded to this idea of intellectual property.

-YGBFK!

[brownie]

This brouhaha reminds me of the Charles Delaunay-Hugues Panassié dispute that erupted after the end of WWII.

Never liked the Bruyninckx discography which I acquired when it came out in dozens of books in various series (Modern Jazz, Traditional Jazz, Fusion, Modern Big Bands, Vocalists, etc...).

Thoroughly unpractical (Buddy Rich is listed in Modern Big Bands, Lalo Schifrin in Modern Jazz ).

And when the digital version came out I abstained without any regret.

O yes, Lord borrowed from others but all the discographers I know and have met (Delaunay, Francois Postif, Kurt Mohr - who died last month - Otto Fluckiger, Jorgen Grunnet Jepsen among others) did exactly the same thing.

Not that I am looking for it but where is the Bruyninckx discography these days?

If somebody is interested in acquiring the book versions (some 30 volumes) of the Bruyninckx Discography, I'll gladly get rid of the complete set I have.

I'll accept any reasonable offers

[Daniel A]

Brownie, I do not own the Bruyninckx myself, though I've long been thinking of getting it on CDR (or equivalent), but it is my understanding that the categorized books were developed at the request of Japanese collectors, and that an alphabetic A-Z version (in A4 format) was also manufactured all along.

Here's an old thread: Bruyninckx A-Z completed

In that thread Michael Fitzgerald posted a link for Norbert Ruecker's site which has the discography buried way down the pages. ( http://www.jazz-book.com/disc1.htm ) which I reposted in this thread as well (6th edition of Bruyninckx out). However, I'm not sure even that link is up to date anynmore, as it says that Edition 6 "will be out in July 2007".

[brownie]

Daniel A, I was not aware of the Japanese connection for the Bruyninckx categorized books!

Also thanks for reminding me of the previous Bruyninckx threads, but they only confirm that at the present time the Lord seems to be the only accessible online Discography.

[Bluerein]

I also have the Bruyninckx CD-rom (last edition) but the search possibilities are not upto the Lord's standards. It's Word based and that says it all I guess. Indeed was it delivered through Norbert.....

[Bluerein]

Clem: what's sonned?

[clifford_thornton]

As in, "son, you have no idea..."

[Larry Kart]

O yes, Lord borrowed from others but all the discographers I know and have met (Delaunay, Francois Postif, Kurt Mohr - who died last month - Otto Fluckiger, Jorgen Grunnet Jepsen among others) did exactly the same thing.

No, they did not do "exactly the same thing." They (typically) borrowed to some degree (discography does not require that one perpetually

re-invent the wheel) but (1) they tended to acknowledge their sources 2) they also did original discographical research, and 3) they tried to incorporate corrections when their errors and omissions were pointed out to them. Lord doesn't "borrow"; he copies wholesale from previously published discographies, usually without acknowledgment (though acknowledgment of wholesale copying of Lord's sort and scale wouldn't make it ethical), does no original research, and does not correct errors.

A snapshot of Lord at work from Edward Berger's previously mentioned review of Lord 3.3: "A typical example [of Lord's appropriation without attribution] is the note following his entry for an unissued Coltrane performance of August 1, 1965....: 'The "Untitled" has been mistaken for "A Love Supreme" and "Chasin' the Trane" but it rather has a similarity with "Vigil" although it moves along different patterns.' How did Lord know this? Did he listen to this item? And if he did, would he have recognized the underlying structure of the piece? It turns out he paraphrased (and none too accurately) a note from David Wild's 'The Recordings of John Coltrane: '[the untitled piece] has been identified as "A Love Supreme" and "Chasin' the Trane"; it is, however, an unidentified modal composition quite similar to "Vigil."' This is a particularly egregious case, since Wild's work is not even included in Lord's 'bibliography.'"

[Dan Gould]

O yes, Lord borrowed from others but all the discographers I know and have met (Delaunay, Francois Postif, Kurt Mohr - who died last month - Otto Fluckiger, Jorgen Grunnet Jepsen among others) did exactly the same thing.

No, they did not do "exactly the same thing." They (typically) borrowed to some degree (discography does not require that one perpetually

re-invent the wheel) but (1) they tended to acknowledge their sources 2) they also did original discographical research, and 3) they tried to incorporate corrections when their errors and omissions were pointed out to them. Lord doesn't "borrow"; he copies wholesale from previously published discographies, usually without acknowledgment (though acknowledgment of wholesale copying of Lord's sort and scale wouldn't make it ethical), does no original research, and does not correct errors.

And while shamelessly stealing from others, he threatens anyone who uses his work with copyright infringement!

[Face of the Bass]

O yes, Lord borrowed from others but all the discographers I know and have met (Delaunay, Francois Postif, Kurt Mohr - who died last month - Otto Fluckiger, Jorgen Grunnet Jepsen among others) did exactly the same thing.

No, they did not do "exactly the same thing." They (typically) borrowed to some degree (discography does not require that one perpetually

re-invent the wheel) but (1) they tended to acknowledge their sources 2) they also did original discographical research, and 3) they tried to incorporate corrections when their errors and omissions were pointed out to them. Lord doesn't "borrow"; he copies wholesale from previously published discographies, usually without acknowledgment (though acknowledgment of wholesale copying of Lord's sort and scale wouldn't make it ethical), does no original research, and does not correct errors.

And while shamelessly stealing from others, he threatens anyone who uses his work with copyright infringement!

Yeah, that qualifies him as an asshole, no doubt.

[Chuck Nessa]

Convenience trumping ethics is the current style.

[JSngry]

Him & Opal Nations, whose Pewburner outfit offers "CDs" of innumerable, priceless OOP Gospel material that the owners are unlikely to ever release on their own, so, ok, there is maybe a "heroic" angle to Pewburner except....

This motherfucker has the nerve to put Anti-copy protection on shit that he don't even own! He don't want you doing what he did. He wants you to pay him for doing what he did.

so fuck him, and fuck Tom Lord too.

[JSngry]

Oh, I know all kinds of shit. I got peoples, ya' know.

As for the Pewburner thing, a few years ago somebody I know bought some stuff, and brought it over to share. We're all good citizens and shit, ya' know, and have/would buy any legit issue of this material if/when it becomes available. But until then...

Yeahyeahyeah, we all know the drill.

So ayways, we get ready to burn copies of the Pewburner discs, and the PC starts wiggin' with error messages and shit. Copy protected like a mofo, this shit was. Fortunately, one of the team was one of those type of friends you always like to have, somebody who keeps up on the latest code to trump the next-to-latest code, so he sat down and in a few minutes, voila, Opal Nations was more like Opal Fiefdoms.

But I mean really, of all the nerve - you're selling blatantly booted shit at blatantly inflated prices because you got no real overhead to speak of and you know that naybody who really wants it will pony up on your terms, and then you got the nerve to "protect" "your" "work".

Granted, this was a few years ago, and we were all so soured on the experience that we've not yet done return bizness (at least not that I know of), so maybe the CP is gone. But if it's not (or even if it is), hey - Gimme a break, Offal, and fuck you up your momma's ass whith's your grandma's donkey's dick.

[brownie]

A snapshot of Lord at work from Edward Berger's previously mentioned review of Lord 3.3: "A typical example [of Lord's appropriation without attribution] is the note following his entry for an unissued Coltrane performance of August 1, 1965....: 'The "Untitled" has been mistaken for "A Love Supreme" and "Chasin' the Trane" but it rather has a similarity with "Vigil" although it moves along different patterns.' How did Lord know this? Did he listen to this item? And if he did, would he have recognized the underlying structure of the piece? It turns out he paraphrased (and none too accurately) a note from David Wild's 'The Recordings of John Coltrane: '[the untitled piece] has been identified as "A Love Supreme" and "Chasin' the Trane"; it is, however, an unidentified modal composition quite similar to "Vigil."' This is a particularly egregious case, since Wild's work is not even included in Lord's 'bibliography.'"

Tom Lord acknowledges Yasuhiro Fujioka's discography of John Coltrane as one of his sources, not the Wild discography.

David Wild's contributions are acknowledged at least twice in the John Coltrane listings: one for the November 1, 1961 Village Vanguard session and another for the October 14, 1965 (Kulu Se Mama) session.

Larry, I am not basically disagreeing with your (and others) points on 'borrowing', or the extent of it. But I am glad that the discography is on the net now. It does seem to be the only one available so far.

A snapshot of Lord contributors at work (courtesy of King Vidor):

[Big Beat Steve]

An amazing and insightful thread. The immense outlay for the Lord discographies (both when they were issued in book form and now in digitized form) made me immediately shy away, especially since the bulk of my own jazz & blues collection covers the era up to, say, the mid-60s.

Apart from the original Jepsen discographies as well as Rust's for the up to 1942 period (which I still regularly refer to for basic information) I have an older CD version of the Bruyninckx discography (old enough not to have any search facilities) and use that not only get more up to date session details but above all to look up info on more recently released information on airshots, transcriptions, live recordings, alt. take collations etc. that are not covered by Rust at all and not to any great extent by Jepsen either (because not many airshots and live recordings of earlier jazz had been issued at that time yet).

All in all these discographies usually cover the ground for me quite nicely (along with the Leadbitter/Pelletier as well as Goodrich/Dixon discographies for blues as well as a few specialist discogs such as the one on Swedish jazz available online FREE!).

Now my question to the specialists is this:

How up to date are more recent issues of BRUYNINCKX' discpgraphies with more search functions and does Lord offer ANY substantially new or enhanced info over Bruyninckx' if I were to search for, say, issues/reissues of airshots, transcriptions, outtakes etc mostly released for the general public on those countless small collector labels? (Which is what I might need more up to date discographies that go beyond listings of original 78rpm discographies such as the one by Rust)

[neveronfriday]

All these points just lead to the conclusion that there is definite need for an "open source" project to which people can contribute freely. If needed. that project group would also have to fight off copyright infringement cases brought to court by people who claim the have a copyright although they don't. I have no idea how easy/difficult that might be in one country/various countries.

Technically, it should be more than easy to pull off, but are there any people who have the stamina to do so? Probably not.

Edited November 27, 2007 by neveronfriday