“Forgive me if I don’t have the words. Maybe I can sing it and you’ll understand.” (Ella Fitzgerald)
Don’t Make Me Bleed!
When the age of the remastered CD dawned, I immediately jumped to attention and started replacing some of my favourite CDs with the new versions, no questions asked. You know, the ones with all those stickers attached to them announcing that what you once had sucked and what you now bought offered superior sound (usually, with some bit number attached as a sales argument), new liner notes, orginal track sequence, alternate tracks, studio chatter and unreleased material, original artwork and whatnot.
What they don’t tell you is that many of those CDs you just sold via eBay, at your local second hand thrift shop or elsewhere, those that you thought had to be inferior because they were from the 80s or 90s, actually sound a lot better than the new remasters. As surprising as that sounds, it is also something a majority of listeners hasn’t realized yet, having been brought up on ultra-compressed radio and Internet streams. Continue Reading →
Herman Leonard’s Jazz Memories
There are those moments in life in which a consumer like myself just wishes he hadn’t blown his money on other goodies. One just stumbles across something which has been around for a while, hidden deep within the dark recesses of the Internet, in places one just didn’t think of looking before, only for it to jump out and slam into you like an 18-wheeler speeding down the highway. Boom.
Here’s how it happened: I was actually surfing around looking for something to slap up onto my living room wall and thought of Herman Leonard, the world-famous photographer who is primarilay known for his wonderful jazz portraits. I had been looking for his work before, mostly in poster shops and art galleries around the globe, but somehow (double-duh) I never thought of checking if the man had a website. Well, he does, and that’s where I found IT. All 495 dollars worth of IT. Continue Reading →
The Tord Gustavsen Trio
The Tord Gustavsen Trio from Norway has only released two CDs so far, but those two shot to the top of my list within seconds upon release – not a bad feat if you consider that the list is several thousand CDs long – and they have remained at the top of the list ever since they got there. You could say that I have become addicted to them and that what we have here is one of those extremely rare occurences: 2 CDs I don’t seem to be getting tired of, at all. Continue Reading →
Rosendahl CD-25 Chrome
I think that it is a good idea to have a smaller CD-holder close to your stereo so that you don’t have to act the long-distance runner every time you want to put on a new CD, jogging back and forth between remote CD shelf units and your hardware.
The problem is that many of the smaller CD-holders start acting up when you try to load them up with anything but single jewelcases. If you have a whole lot of digipacks that do not adhere to standard jewelcase measurements or double-CDs in those fat, ugly and impractical jewelcases, you end up having to pile up the CDs next to the stero – not really the solution you were looking for. Continue Reading →
Trials and Tribulations (IV)
I didn’t really want to touch this series (I, II, III) for a while, but recent developments have just pushed me over the edge again, so I think it’s time for part IV.I think I started ordering abroad in 1982, or thereabouts. At that time I ordered from a wonderful man named Robert Weinberg, who ran perhaps the best mail order shop for horror, fantasy and science fiction material. A considerable amount of my rather thin income went straight into his bank account and with the depletion of my funds came the advent of mail order hell.
I live in Germany. I know that’s my own fault, but living in this country automatically means that you not only have to deal with a whole load of monkeys in various mail order outlets around the globe, but also with the 300-pound gorillas working in the various customs and post offices around Germany. Dealing with one of the two breeds would probably kill the best of us, but dealing with a whole horde of them just gets you a lot of kicks in the rear end before you get to study life from below. Continue Reading →
Chris Rea: “Blue Guitars”
I have to admit that I have never held a project in my hands like this one. I do have boxed sets collecting an artist’s entire output that can’t match this one, I have label compilations that don’t reach the number of tunes on this collection and I have some lavishly-produced boxes that somehow don’t impress as much as this one does.
Hell, the entire background to this boxed set is about as unique as they come. Continue Reading →
CD Sleeves
As a collector it doesn’t take all that long to reach the point at which your marriage is in danger and your social life falls apart, and all of that just because you are running out of space or, to say it differently, because your spouse has to retreat to the kitchen or your guests are caught out in the hallway. In short, your place is full of music, top to bottom, left to right … and inbetween.
The first solution seems to be the easiest for people not in the know. Invariably they’ll tell you that you don’t need 5000 or however many CDs you have, simply because in their minds, you can’t really have listened to all of them and will never be able to. Of course, we know better and being real collectors, we have serious problems parting with anything we have, even the crummy jazz reissue from some defunct budget label, the old scratched up one-hit-wonder recording we played all too often and now can’t stand anymore, the original CD release of some 80s band that has since been reissued three times (of course we have all three issues, just to compare), or the 60s hits collection which we actually have covered by three other 60s hits collections. So, another solution is needed. Continue Reading →