The Perfect Dinner CD: “For You” by Frank Chastenier

I know that from the few regular readers I have around here, I might get some severe flack. And from all others who have probably written this site off as another one of those useless and uniformed vanity projects, I’ll probably get a “told you so”. Still, I’m not going to back down.

I don’t know about you, but if you have a larger collection of music, you might well have an imaginary section or two entitled “Perfect Dinner Music” or “Soft as Soft Can”. I do.

And I’m about to tell you a few things about a CD that has been so severely criticized by just about every mainstream and dedicated critic that it’s almost become a point to ridicule said effort. It is certainly in the vain of the kind of criticism that I abhor; you know, the kind that simply can’t get off its high horse, the one that aims the most poisonous of arrows at someone who might have had simple passion driving him- or herself, even with commercial interest at heart. Continue Reading →

Daiquiri: My Sound of Venezuela

When my parents moved to Caracas, Venezuela, in the early 1980s, I tried to visit as often as my time and our traveling budget allowed. It was the time of the Sony Walkman and, soon thereafter, the Sony Discman, and I usually had more than enough music along for the many trips to last me several weeks. Still, in the long run, I would run out and simply tune into any of the many radio stations available.

Besides the usual US fare being played up and down the airwaves, Venezuelan radio was infused with salsa, from right to left, from top to bottom, and 24/7. For someone unacquainted with it, most of the tunes played sounded all alike, but it didn’t take me long to get with the program. So, when my second or third visit rolled along, I found myself automatically tuning into a salsa station to accompany the soothing night sounds of frogs and chicadas and whatever else came creepy crawling out at night. By the way, whenever I returned to Europe, I immediately missed that soundtrack I had then enjoyed for anywhere from 4 weeks to nearly three months. Actually, Europe was, if you didn’t live downtown, sonically dead as a door nail.

One day, a single tune made me prick up my ears, run over to the radio and turn it up as loud as possible without gliding into distortion territory. It had an incredibly modern rhythm, a polished 80s production sound, and one hell of a catchy hook, including a wonderful finale. It was a fascinating fusion of traditional dance music with modern instruments and production values.

That song was “Chamito Candela“. Continue Reading →

Claude Williamson: ‘Round Midnight (1956)

It’s funny to see how much mail I get via this website from people who hope that I can help them out with this or that. Funny, because I’ve never considered myself to be someone who knows all that much about music in general and various artists and bands in particular. I am a listener, first and foremost, albeit a passionate one, and what I write about here and what is published on this website usually helps me to get a broader understanding of what I’m listening to. That it also interests one or two others is more like collateral damage (or a fringe benefit, whichever you prefer). The following is then perhaps a good example for what I’ve just been trying to state. Continue Reading →

Elusive Reissues I: Dinah Washington and Siegel-Schwall

As a collector, one develops all kinds of techniques to keep track of things one believes one still needs. Of course, if you bring the world and the universe into the equation, hardly any of these purchases can be adequately justified, but we all have that constant itch that there is something missing, a disk here or a boxed set there that we simply must have, or simply a gaping hole in an ongoing series that we still need to fill because we didn’t have the cash when the time was right to jump on that missing item. Continue Reading →

Fusion and Stuff

Arranging a larger music collection can be a pretty daunting task, especially if it spans a larger number of genres and styles. Add to this the fact that you can file many CDs under different categories, that classical music adds a whole other dimension to the problems you are bound to encounter after a few years and what you get is … chaos. Mind you, not in my house, but I’ve seen collections that not only spanned I don’t know how many categories but were also placed in just about as many rooms and/or various assorted piles and heaps around that collector’s hallowed halls. Continue Reading →

Oscar Peterson Plays Porgy & Bess

Epitomizing.

You know it when you see it (to quote the infamous Justice Potter) and you get a lot of it around here. If I like something, I tell you so, and I don’t hold back on the verbiage to get my point across. So, should we give it another go?

Oscar Peterson, who in his lifetime had all too often been shunned by jazz critics and fans alike because of his supposed technical showmanship and supposed repetitive use of “set pieces” or clichés (take your pick), has an impressive oeuvre to his name. I have been known to strongly disagree with his detractors time and again and I’ve written the Internet thin, under various monikers, up in arms against this groundswell that has so far proven to be insurmountable in certain circles, and I don’t really care if I was successful. I just think it is important to raise my voice here and there to at least make my point of view known. Continue Reading →

Ted Nugent: Double Live Gonzo!

How’s that for a change of pace around here? A post about the “Motor City Madman” by the only German that doesn’t even have a driver’s license?

As is always the case around here, the memory tag is securely attached to this double-LP, which I invested a whole summer’s earnings into.

But.

If you have at all been reading along here on a regular basis, you know that the story is never as simple as that. It’s not one of shelling out hard-earned shillings for a double-LP.

It’s a lot more than that.
Try to bear with me. Continue Reading →

Terabyte Blues

“A Terabyte Ain’t Enough!
Notes from the Sidelines of Digitization Hell”

There is still life in these old bones and while they were plunked down in front of a shiny new 1 terabyte PC, they regularly reached over to the keyboard to keep the digitizing of their CD collection alive while trying – at the same time – to keep their day job running as well.

Fact is, I have to spend a shitload of time in front of my PC or next to it and although I have already transferred a sizable number of CDs to my PC, I’ve started in earnest to make sure that while I can’t listen to my music as much on my stereo in the living room as I’d like, I can do so in my office … or elsewhere.

I’ve often stated that we collectors are plain nuts, and we are, but sometimes I get the feeling that I’m an extreme case of that rather rare subspecies. If you add to that the fact that we Germans are often considered to be anally retentive in regard to keeping order in our stuff and arranging things at right angles on our desks, what we have here is the worst case scenario: A German digitizing his CD collection. Continue Reading →