Do you make backups?

If you are into collecting music as I am, there comes a time when you notice that some editions you managed to snatch up somewhere along the line have either disappeared or have reached a price that is simply unacceptable. If you regularly scout around the Internet looking for the rarer editions available in either limited form or for a limited time only, it won’t take long until you notice that the hobby you chose is probably the one to take you to your grave a lot faster than others, motor-racing not withstanding.

The two first Count Basie Roulette Live and Studio Boxes released by Mosaic Records have completely disappeared and are commanding anything from $400 to over $1000 on eBay. The wonderful seven-volume (21 CDs) reissue series “The Complete Dinah Washington on Mercury” by Verve, is fetching Amazon marketplace prices – depending on the volume you want and the country your searching in – from anywhere around $40 to $800! Some obscure single CDs might easily set you back several hundred dollars and if you try to get that elusive Blue Note original LP release, you might as well sell a kidney first.

Makes you think, doesn’t it? Continue Reading →

Invest into decent gear!

As I’ve mentioned a million times around here, I frequent quite a lot of music forums and sites, trying to stay up-to-date as much as I can. These sites don’t only deal with content – the music bought, collected and played – but also with the presentation of it – the gear used to actually transfer those bits and bytes (or grooves) into listenable music. On these forums I’m always surprised about those people who love music and often comment on sound quality and then at some point state that their main listening device is some 90s boombox they have standing on some vibrating glass surface in the office or dining room. Don’t get me wrong: I think the music should be in the foreground, and it doesn’t really matter how it is reproduced, but if you are into it as much as I am, it is a shame to play great stuff on less than mediocre equipment.

In the past, I didn’t really have a bad stereo. It just wasn’t really good either. Besides the shelf speakers, which I had invested a comparatively large sum of money in, I had a cheap 1st generation plastic Philips CD-player and an Onkyo receiver. On top of that, I had this old German Grundig turntable which didn’t really deserve to be called turntable. The platter turned, but that was about it. Continue Reading →

Collect LPs …

I don’t know about you, but I got rid of a very large part of my LP collection. Not only have I reduced it by about 80%, I’m still currently planning to go even further and to only keep a fraction of what I once had in my possession. Basically, I have decided to keep those recordings that are not available at all in digital format or those that are only available in grossly inferior quality. I still can’t sleep all to well because of past and present decisions, but as a discerning consumer, I think one is able to really collect CDs of excellent quality. It takes time, it takes patience and you need quite the thick hide, but it’s possible.

Interestingly enough, I have – as a teacher – noticed that a larger group of my students is beginning to enter the analog domain that I have pretty much decided to leave. For a while, this had me baffled, but I soon realized that the collecting of “old-fashioned” LPs was not so much an investment into superior quality (which ii often was and is), but more of a lifestyle if not also political statement. And it seems as if there is someone who has gone out there to prove that this assumption is correct. Continue Reading →

Status Quo

Most people outside of Europe don’t get it and now that I think of it, most people in Europe don’t get it either, but those who do probably feel like members of some sort of secret society or cult, forced into the underground by ignoramuses that jump at every chance to trash one of my favorite bands, Status Quo.

I’ve learned not to excuse my loyality towards a band that’s definitely had its ups and downs, I’ve stopped trying to explain the merits of their no-nonsense heads down 12-bar boogie to people who just don’t know how to boogie, and I’ve given up entirely on Americans who don’t even understand the concept of status quo … not to speak of the one in music. Continue Reading →

Guilty Pleasures: I

Being a frequent visitor of various music forums, especially those of the jazz kind, I know it’s best to keep one’s mouth shut when it comes to guilty pleasures. It won’t take long until people virtually leap at you once you have admitted to liking one or t’other band that does not fit the forum’s guidelines for good taste, human decency or simple emotive intelligence.

I have mouthed off, telling the people who did leap to take one themselves, at the moon, but after a while I learned to just keep my mouth shut and get on with it, not disturbing the atmosphere or the equilibrium that is jazz or music boards. Continue Reading →

6th Place in Website Shootout

I have just been told that livingwithmusic.com has taken 6th place in the pMachine Website Shootout (“personal” category). Thank you very much to the judges, especially those who helped put it there.

To be quite frank, I was a bit surprised, simply because the competition was very strong and I had only entered it on second thought. I thought the pMachine Website Shootout might turn out to be a sure stop for people either using or planning on using EE and I wanted to show them that also with minimal effort one could put out a nice EE site. Continue Reading →

Where Are the Beatles?

Of course, since I wrote this post, the excellent Beatles stereo and mono masters have been released. I have added the original press release announcing those two box sets at the end of this post.

It’s become a standard method of irritating all the members on your average music forums and a way of getting April Fools’ Day in early: Mentioning, announcing or just bringing up new Beatles remasters in a subclause is guaranteed to illicit a reaction, be it mild or venomous.

The problem is simple. Aside from a compilation of #1 hits and a bunch of single remasters and the odd boxed set, the Beatles back catalog has been lying dormant far too long. What is completely missing is a concerted effort of remastering some of the best music of the 20th century (actually, any century). Continue Reading →

Vismara’s Revolving Towers

Yes, I do have to admit to being anally retrentive when it comes around to keeping order in my stuff. After all, I am the person who has all of his books, films and CDs sorted alphabetically (and I mean each and every one of them), I used to write and rewrite notes on A5 cards until I got them right, I love designing calendars and forms with Indesign, and I like things aligned and neat-looking, no matter what they are. I have been known to unconsciously straighten out other people’s framed posters and photographs (it is beyond me how someone can slap a great photo of, say, Duke Ellington on the wall, only to have it hang crookedly next to another great photo) and I even have my pens stand at attention in a pen holder which holds each pen or pencil separately. Jeez, doesn’t everyone?

I’m not even going to get into Freud’s definition of this state of being; I will just adhere to the more modern metaphorical usage describing someone overly worried about small details. And, in that sense, Vismara’s “Revolving Tower” (site uses frames; see links at the end of this post) is an anally retentive’s wet dream. Continue Reading →