“Musikstapler” by Nils Holger Moormann

Design has always been a passion of mine. I know that lots of people don’t afford that aspect a second glance, at least not consciously, and here in Germany people often forgo the design aspect to opt for the cheaper variants, but often things catch my eye and stay on my radar, no matter if they are furniture, glass, china, cutlery or any other item.

Some months ago I came across an item which I thought might be of interest to music collectors who are looking for space-saving solutions, and Nils Holger Moorman’s “Musikstapler“, which could be translated as “Music Pile(r)”, fits the bill perfectly. Continue Reading →

Shoo-Fly Pie and Apple Pan Dowdy

Note: This is a long post. If you are looking for a discussion of the song, scroll down 15 paragraphs … or so. ;)

I think it was William Blake who once said that “those who control their passions do so because their passions are weak enough to be controlled.” Right on, I would say, but when you have spent some time contemplating the idea of passion in relation to your own life, perhaps Robert Sternberg said it best when he narrowed everything down to a simple statement: “Passion is the quickest to develop, and the quickest to fade. Intimacy develops more slowly, and commitment more gradually still.” If you add Seneca’s age-old observation that “it is easier to exclude harmful passions than to rule them, and to deny them admittance than to control them after they have been admitted”, what you have is not only a much more complicated idea, but also a pretty solid framework to go by.

I could write about this endlessly, but suffice it to say that it’s easy to see that three golden rules can be derived from the quotes above:

01. Be strongly passionate about at least some things and don’t let others tell you that you shouldn’t be.
02. Passion is never enough if it doesn’t develop into more.
03. Don’t allow harmful passions into your life. Continue Reading →

The Siegel-Schwall Band

After having worked my rear end off these past weeks and after having gotten up too darn early today, on this year’s 23rd of December, to get some last minute rush jobs done, I have to say that the Christmas spirit has been about as far away from my own life as possible much of this past month.

Looking back at 2006, which I’ve been doing these past days as well, I have to say it wasn’t a good year, at all. I had some major problems, had to admit to myself that I had made one major mistake these past years, I lost a good friend, and many other things didn’t turn out at all.

Mind you, there were many good things as well, but they were few and far between and didn’t really come in larger numbers until the end of the year, and although things have started picking up again, to have to write off an entire year (probably even the ones before) and file it (them) under “Life sucks and then you die” (a motto which I used to jokingly refer to all the time) does not put one into any sort of Christmas spirit. Indeed, it kills just about any spirit.

Along came The Siegel-Schwall Band. Continue Reading →

Gratification System

I don’t know about you, but I’ve chosen a job for myself that has its own rewards, but usually they are far and long between and are certainly more of the ideal type. In my eyes, I earn enough to live comfortably, but any sort of luxury is hard to come by and usually demands keeping a rather strict budget, which I’m definitely not very good at. On top of that, my job – if done right – regularly provides me with insane working hours and long phases in which I’m basically busy between opening my eyes in the morning and trying to close them again at night. Every single minute inbetween, even those in which which the stomach demands some food, are taken up by work. I know that’s not a healthy way to live, but I also do thrive on it at times (yes, the definition of workaholic fits me perfectly).

Very early on then, when I was still at university, I devised a gratification system for myself to help me get through the most insane work phases. Because I also happen to be a procrastinator when I get the chance, I usually also end up with a seemingly unscalable mountain of work which then has to be completed in a substantially limited time frame. Stupid, I know, but in the past it also lead to the best results possible. One starts conditioning oneself to work that way if the results are good, only to notice once one gets older that it might not have been a good idea. Just like one of Pavlov’s dogs, my engine starts humming when the work starts piling up, not when it is in the process of slowly accumulating. It’s an automatic thing and very difficult to keep in check. Continue Reading →

Shelly Manne & His Men at The Black Hawk

Recommending CDs is always a difficult affair. As soon as you say that some CD is desert island material for you, someone gets on your case, taking you to task for having said that, stating that the relative merit of this or that recording diminishes when taking other, more relevant recordings into consideration. On top of that, in jazz circles, one is always prone to be drawn into endless discussions with fans complaining that one is ignoring East Coast jazz when recommending a superb example of West Coast jazz, as is the case here. In the end, usually, everyone’s none the wiser.

If you read my site regularly, you know that I recommend recordings based more on a mostly emotional response. I do list some negatives here and there, but if there aren’t any, in my little world, I won’t try to come up with any. I’m also not all that objective because there are enough reviews out there that try their very best to weigh the pros and cons to give you a seemingly accurate description of a recording. That approach usually leaves me somewhat cold, although it does have its merits, because I want to read about what a recording did for someone. Is it music that resonates with a person and, most importantly, why did it have that effect?

Having said all that, the five CDs that comprise the complete reissue series of “Shelly Manne & His Men at the Black Hawk” are what I would consider to be some the best live jazz ever recorded. Whenever I’m asked why I like jazz and what jazz means to me, I put on any or all of these CDs. Considering the many thousand CDs I have, I’m often surprised that it’s really that simple. Continue Reading →

Eugen Cicero

When it comes around to music criticism, not much bothers me. One cannot argue about taste and one should try to live with critical reviews when they’re bad, just off or just badly researched. There’ll always be that one review that gets things right, negating – perhaps – those that botched things in the past.

With Eugen Cicero, things were and are different. To me he was doubtlessly a musical genius, a man with incredible technical abilities coupled with a great and definitely unique musical sensibility, brought about by a musical education that very few people had the opportunity to enjoy and yet, he was summarily trashed or politely ignored because he fused classical music with jazz at a time when it was easy to get lobbed into one basket with the Swingle Singers, Jacques Loussier and some lesser exponents of a school of jazz that has often been relegated to the living rooms of those that supposedly didn’t and don’t know squat about jazz. Continue Reading →

Boltz CD Racks

One way of adding products to write about to my ever-growing list of items is to simply surf through the list of referrers (for those not in the know, those are the “footprints” on my site left by visitors and kept track of via a small excellent programme called “Mint“, courtesy of Shaun Inman) which then usually takes me to longer or shorter posts referencing my site or discussing one of my posts.

Just the other day I followed another one of those links and was reminded again that I haven’t written anything about Boltz yet. Mind you, it certainly wasn’t the first time I was sent over to their site. It has happened many times because whenever people discuss storage options at some forum or another, the Boltz CD racks invariably pop up, usually by the third post or so … at the latest.

So, let’s see what all the buzz and hype is about. Continue Reading →

Les Trésors du Jazz

OK,OK, I’ll admit it. I just dislike compilations, usually. Yes, sometimes a single artist’s best-of compilation is all you could possibly want of one single artist’s output (and even twelve to fifteen tunes are eleven too many), and yes, every once in a while a compilation of different tunes from some period in music or showcasing a style one is interested in might be a good place to start.

Usually though, I dislike them because they attempt to do my job for me. As a collector, I almost always disagree with the editorial selection and I’ve all too often discovered that many of the tunes included I already had floating around my collection. On top of that, when it comes to jazz, I’ve gotten so tired of the recent flood of remix compilations of classic tunes and the policy of some major labels that limit the output for any of their artists to a steady stream of market-”safe” reissue compilations (just try to find some decent Cal Tjader reissues from Verve and all you’ll really find are, yes, compilations) that I decided to unsubscribe from, for example, Verve’s and Blue Note’s newsletters that lately have been trying nothing more but pimp the crap out of those useless things.

Then you have those “theme” thingies, you know, “Jazz for Lovers”, “Bar Jazz”, Jazz for the Bathroom”, “Jazz Standards that Absolutely NOBODY Wants to Hear Anymore”, and whatever else those labels can come up with. Dreck. Nothing but dreck. Continue Reading →