The Complete Billie Holiday on Columbia

God, I don’t know how often I hit the various online shops to check for prices … until I managed to snatch up a copy for 60 Euro on Amazon.fr. In December of 2004, Christmas came two weeks early to this household when “Lady Day: The Complete Billie Holiday on Columbia (1933-1944)”, a ten-disc collection the size of a 78 album sleeve, arrived here in pristine-perfect mint condition.

Before I unpacked this stunning box, I opened one of the better wines I had left (a difficult-to-find 1992 “Puyfromage” from one of the smaller vineyards in southern France) and sat there sipping my wine while looking at the as-yet unopened Amazon package. Continue Reading →

Absolute Distribution / Blue Sounds

The problem with Jazz is that it’s old and because of that, many of the recordings are hard to come by or, at worst, simply unavailable. Add to that the absolutely shoddy reissue policy of major labels as well as the sometimes unbelievable prices for limited releases by labels such as Mosaic and out-of-print copies on eBay, and you are left with trying to find alternatives to get your fix.

In Europe – and this is something that bothers serious collectors – copyright laws are a bit different from the ones in the US, and recordings enter the public domain after 50 years. The problem is not that the music is available – after all, we’re tyring to feed our addiction – but that labels such as Fresh Sounds and Definitive Records don’t pay anyone anything for the reissues they put out. It’s pure profit for them. If you then think about the many jazz artists who lived or died in absolute poverty or the estates trying to preserve their legacy, things begin to look a bit more gloomy. Continue Reading →

Shorty Rogers Meets Tarzan

I can’t remember who it was on which forum, but there was this guy prancing around asking everyone if they had heard “Art Pepper Meets Tarzan”. To cut a long story short, everyone’s instinct was right when they told this person to look for other places to hang. Art Pepper would never … but Shorty Rogers would. If you know your Art Pepper, you know that he wasn’t the Hollywood guy, but Shorty Rogers was, almost exclusively from about 1962 onward. Continue Reading →

Dusty Groove America

Online music forums of all types are full of whining people. With that I don’t mean the usual online trolls and freaks, but those that constantly complain that their wallet cannot sustain their addiction to collecting music. One online mail order dealer that usually pops up in these “whiny” posts is Dusty Groove America. They’ve been called “bastards” (followed by a winking smiley) or “Dusty Grave” (followed by five thumbs up), but people have become as addicted to this shop as they have to collecting music. Continue Reading →

Cuba: I Am Time

Trying to jam-pack roughly 100 years of a nation’s music history onto 4 CDs is never an easy task, and, as far as I know, has never been done successfully either. Of course, “Cuba – I Am Time” cannot succeed either, but for the more casual listener it is an excellent overview that only falls short in the liner notes department.

Packed in a cigar case (it even has a cloth thingy you can pull on to get the CDs and the booklet out without having to turn the box upside down) and supplemented with a 112-page booklet outlining the history of and influences on Cuban music from the very early times until 1997, this boxed set is a real beauty and treasure. Continue Reading →

Jewelboxing

I don’t remember when I stumbled over these, but it must have been when someone sent me a privately-produced promotional CD. To be quite honest, I didn’t much care for the CD’s content, but the packaging was stunning. For me it was an epiphany of sorts: CD and DVD packaging did not have to be so incredibly uniform and boring.

The Jewelboxing system is not cheap, but if you really want to shine with your packaging and design, this is more affordable than any equally stunning home-produced case or packaging you can cook up. Continue Reading →

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Organissimo Forums

When the Blue Note forums folded in on themselves, the refugees spread to all four winds. The hard core (I hope they don’t mind me calling them that) found refuge with Organissimo, a damn good organ trio that provided enough server space and power to run forums which in a rather short period of time have grown to close to half a million posts by over 1000 members. Continue Reading →

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The Steve Hoffman Forums

One of the best online resources for people interested not only in music but also pristine sound are the Steve Hoffman forums. If you ever spent days, weeks or months looking for some obscure tune, members here will likely find it for you in an instant. If you want to find out which edition to buy of a CD, it has most likely been discussed here or will be if you post a new thread. If you’d like to find out what’s happening in the audiophile circles, you’ve come to the right place. Continue Reading →