Age of Buyers of Mosaic Records Sets

[jazzbo]

That Blakey set was my first one as well. I was 36 or 37.

Edited May 4, 2023 by jazzbo

[Quasimado]

On 4/2/2023 at 4:38 AM, Eric said:

... Simply a remarkable venture and again, incredibly grateful it has been with us nearly 40 years.

+1

[Justin V]

I am 41.  My first Mosaic purchase would have been around 2005 when I bought the Paul Chambers Select.  I'm now at around 35 full sets, 13 Selects, 6 Singles and 35 discs of partial sets, with a few more downloads from the Capitol Vaults series. 

Edited May 5, 2023 by Justin V

[scooter_phx]

Old enough to know better but I just can't stop buying them.  Let's just call it an addiction.

[Ken Dryden]

My first sets were probably the Mulligan/Baker, the Anmons/ Lewis and the Monk, probably purchased around 1984-5, when they were still in print, making me around 29-30 then. I think that I saved all of their catalogs, excepting one that I probably missed due to it not being forwarded after a move.

[Eric]

1 hour ago, Ken Dryden said:

My first sets were probably the Mulligan/Baker, the Anmons/ Lewis and the Monk, probably purchased around 1984-5, when they were still in print, making me around 29-30 then. I think that I saved all of their catalogs, excepting one that I probably missed due to it not being forwarded after a move.

I still have a few of the catalogs - not the very early ones, but from maybe five years on.  I loved receiving those things in the mail.  Pre-internet, that was how I learned of those things (plus Downbeat ads).  The labor of love dimension really shone through.

[Face of the Bass]

I bought my first set at the age of 27. It was the J.J. Johnson, which I still think is one of their better sets in terms of availability and quality of the music. I've bought a lot since then, but sold most of them when I realized they weren't essential. 

[Son-of-a-Weizen]

63.   First Mosaic purchase was the Mobley vinyl box back in 2001.  

[Chuck Nessa]

I was 39 when I bought my first Mosaics. I turn 79 on Saturday and am still buying them. Same anticipation for me. I live with regrets of the sets I missed when my label needed the funds.

[Larry Kart]

22 minutes ago, Chuck Nessa said:

I was 39 when I bought my first Mosaics. I turn 79 on Saturday and am still buying them. Same anticipation for me. I live with regrets of the sets I missed when my label needed the funds.

Figure I was 39 too. Just turned 81. I have a whole lot of Mosaic sets, beginning, I think with the Mullgan-Baker. Last one I got was the new Tristano. I wrote the notes for  the Tristano-Konitz-Marsh on Atlantic set. My favorite might be the Herbie Nichols. Where else could that have come from but Mosaic and with those great Roswell Rudd notes?

[romualdo]

In the early 90s a friend here in Brisbane showed me his Mosaics (DeFranco, Grant Green, Bechet) just as I was getting serious about jazz (had dabbled with Davis, Coltrane previously) - he also gave me a few Joe Henderson LPs (80s pressings). I was converted - first sets were the Mingus & Taylor Candids in 93 (I was 36)

[king ubu]

Started around 16, I think, so I've been buying them for close to 30 years soon. Read a review of the Tristano/Konitz/Marsh set and simply had to get that. First though I had to figure out how to deal with international money orders. I paid those at the post office and it took 1-2 months for them to arrive, then 1-2 months for the Mosaic parcel to arrive at my end ... I proceeded like that for several years, until I got my own credit card, probably had more than a dozen from 2-3 more orders by then (the Basie Roulette live, Jacquet, Hamilton, Guiffre, Morgan were others I remember buying early on).

[Dmitry]

35 minutes ago, king ubu said:

Started around 16, I think, so I've been buying them for close to 30 years soon. 

At 16 I was smoking cigarettes, drinking, thinking of sex a lot and listening to the likes of  Duran Duran. And no, reading that someone was buying Mosaic sets when I was doing all of that does not make me feel inferior. 😁

[Dub Modal]

I didn't get any Mosaics until about 8 years ago. They were kind of a crash course in learning about this music as they were all blind buys. From there I went online and purchased some of the last vinyl sets they had; Sun Ship, Emarcy Mulligan and Roland Kirk. 

[king ubu]

On 5/20/2023 at 2:18 PM, Dmitry said:

At 16 I was smoking cigarettes, drinking, thinking of sex a lot and listening to the likes of  Duran Duran. And no, reading that someone was buying Mosaic sets when I was doing all of that does not make me feel inferior. 😁

Haha ... I lent my latin teacher at high school the Coltrane Village Vanguard 1961 four disc set as well once 😂

Other than smoking and listening to jazz I was doing pretty much the same things as you at that age (not Duran Duran obviously ... more like RHCP, Prince, Portishead, Roni Size, Tricky ... others would be into Brit Pop at that time but with a few exceptions that never spoke to me).

[cortazarx]

On 5/18/2023 at 11:07 PM, Larry Kart said:

Figure I was 39 too. Just turned 81. I have a whole lot of Mosaic sets, beginning, I think with the Mullgan-Baker. Last one I got was the new Tristano. I wrote the notes for  the Tristano-Konitz-Marsh on Atlantic set. My favorite might be the Herbie Nichols. Where else could that have come from but Mosaic and with those great Roswell Rudd notes?

Probably my two favorite and most cherished Mosaic sets!!!

[Gheorghe]

On 5/20/2023 at 2:18 PM, Dmitry said:

At 16 I was smoking cigarettes, drinking, thinking of sex a lot and listening to the likes of  Duran Duran. And no, reading that someone was buying Mosaic sets when I was doing all of that does not make me feel inferior. 😁

Same here when I was 16, with the exception that I listened only to Jazz. At that age mostly to Miles and Mingus, I still had to learn about the rest. And, I was only THINKING about sex because women that would have appealed to me were unaproachable for me. They were for men who have more power and money, not for a smoking and drinking and jazzlistening shy kid....

[gvopedz]

2 hours ago, Gheorghe said:

 And, I was only THINKING about sex because women that would have appealed to me were unaproachable for me. They were for men who have more power and money, not for a smoking and drinking and jazzlistening shy kid....

The solution was to put Keith Jarrett's The Koln Concert on the turntable because, as others have pointed out for years, "the chicks dig it".

[sidewinder]

On 5/23/2023 at 8:20 PM, king ubu said:

Haha ... I lent my latin teacher at high school the Coltrane Village Vanguard 1961 four disc set as well once 😂

Other than smoking and listening to jazz I was doing pretty much the same things as you at that age (not Duran Duran obviously ... more like RHCP, Prince, Portishead, Roni Size, Tricky ... others would be into Brit Pop at that time but with a few exceptions that never spoke to me).

At 16 I was listening to Bird, Miles, Shorty Rogers, Gil, Blakey etc.

Been downhill ever since. 😂

[jazzbo]

That's pretty much my story too, 16 to 17 was a huge period of jazz discovery. I was listening to other genres as well til about 27 or so and then it was nearly all jazz all the time.

[ghost of miles]

29 when I purchased my first set, the Andrew Hill 1963-66 Blue Note box.

[Rooster_Ties]

3 minutes ago, ghost of miles said:

29 when I purchased my first set, the Andrew Hill 1963-66 Blue Note box.

Very nearly my story -- except I was 26 when I bought my first Mosaic (in 1995).  And I seem to remember wanting to get the Andrew Hill 63-69 box too (or maybe even as my very first, lone Mosaic purchase)... ...but I chickened out and decided on just the Don Cherry BN box instead (which was only 2 discs, and a LOT cheaper).  But I think(?) my very next purchase was the Andrew Hill, probably not more than 6 months later.  I still have all the paperwork from Mosaic in their boxes, so I could find out if I took a look -- maybe I will.

BTW, as much as a Hill nut as I am now (and have been for 20+ years) -- when I bought the big Hill box, I really only bought it on the strength of all the sidemen (so many names that were already important to me).  But Point of Departure was actually the only Hill leader-date I'd heard before when I took the plunge.

Took me 5 years to really get my ears around that box -- but that's what so great about Hill, is that the music is always so fresh and unpredictable every time I hear it, even to some extent today.  I was NOT a Hill convert from day #1 -- but I was intrigued from the git go, and kept listening.

[rostasi]

Even tho I started reading about them a couple of years before,
I couldn't possibly afford buying one until I was 26: Tina Brooks.

[Gheorghe]

16 hours ago, gvopedz said:

The solution was to put Keith Jarrett's The Koln Concert on the turntable because, as others have pointed out for years, "the chicks dig it".

Really ? ? 

I don´t know if the "chicks" I would have liked to date would have listened to Keith Jarrett´s Koln Concert. And I would not have had this kind of style. My only ECM was Dave Liebman´s "Drum Ode".  When I started to listen to Jazz the only thing from Keith that I knew was his damn good keyboard-organ stuff in some early electric Miles feature. I think it was the album "Live Evil". 

But chicks and jazz. Yeah back then in the 70´s there were also women who went to the clubs, but as much as I remember they didn´t look like what I would have looked at. I think it would have happened very rare to see a long haired, long legs chick with some "dangerous heels" and "shiny stockings" in a jazz joint then. So this was strictly music business for me. To learn to play, to meet the musicians. 

Back to Mosaic !

I didn´t know about Mosaic before I became a forum member. I have two Mosaic sets, which it seems I bought only for one album on each of it. 

1) Mingus Jazzworkshop: I bought it because somehow I never had the "My Favourite Quintet" from Minneapolis 1965, because I wanted to hear that ballad medley and that long version of "So Long Eric". 
I think I knew the rest: One CD is what was "Mingus at Town Hall" or something like that. One is what was "Music written for Monterey", and one or two was a concert in Netherlands with very much of the material of the "Great Concert" in Paris 1964, but not as good as the Paris material and not as well recorded. So if I listen to that Mosaic box, I only listen to the 1965 Minneapolis material. 

2) That Clifford Jordan box: The strange thing is I only bought it for the one disc that is not Cliff Jordan: That "Rhythm X" or how it is called, with Charles Brackeen-Don Cherry-Charlie Haden-Ed Blackwell, since this was a very very rare record in my youth that I only had on cassette from an elder avantgarde-freak. 
I love Cliff Jordan, but more his 50´s BNs, his participation on "Speak Brother Speak" and with Mingus , and then again after the mid seventies with the magic triangle live, or what followed. 
But on that Mosaic much of the music seemed to be a quite worn out attempt of playing straight ahead jazz in years like 1968, when there was hard times even for free jazz. And somehow the Glasspearl Game never really got me. A sacrilege sure , but I can´t help. 

Otherwise I think I´m not the ideal Mosaic Listener. I don´t have the patience to listen to 5 consecutive albums of one and the same artist or the same period. As a playing musician time for extended record listening is scarce and the listening mostly has a purpose if the leader who get´s me to play with him want´s certain themes where I maybe do some research before, to listen who it sounds on the original.....

When I was younger once I tried to listen to all albums of a certain musicain for let´s say a week. Let´s say I wanna listen to all Mingus I have. But could I ? Who knows what mood I´m in the next day ? How the vibrations are, what my feelings are next day, next couple of hours ? I can´t predict what I will listen to tomorrow or next day ?