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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →