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 →

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 →

Dear Blue Note, Sony, and EMI

After many years of annoyance, today I have finally decided to stop buying your CDs. This decision didn’t come lightly and I can assure you that I thought long and hard about it, but the decision is final. I will neither buy, promote nor talk about your CD releases anymore.

Let me explain.

I am a music collector. In the past 20 years, I have bought thousands of CDs. In fact, now that I reorganized my entire collection, sold some items and got rid of some doubles, my collection spans roughly 38 meters of CDs (yes, I’m too lazy to count them). Each and every one is legal and was paid for, more often than not also at a considerable price. And I’m not even going to mention the positively large LP collection and the thousands of digital files I was stupid enough to purchase from you. If we lined those up, we could probably double the meters. Continue Reading →

Trials and Tribulations (III)

I already vented in part I and part II of this ongoing series on collecting insanity, but I’m far from finished. Continue Reading →

Trials and Tribulations (II)

In our first look at the many things that can drive a collector bonkers, we discussed terrible box sets, maddening stickers, irritating packaging, generic covers and stupid or incomplete liner notes, small print, and the hidden track of doom. If you thought that was all, think again …(11) Freak Programming: Not all collectors agree, but I prefer chronological sequencing on boxed sets collecting all the recordings by any one artist. Jumping between sessions or from 1952 to 1973 and back to 1964 just gives me headaches. Add to that the sometimes very in consistent volume between tracks and you have a maddening ride that feels more like an excursion on the Titanic than gliding along in a sailboat. Continue Reading →

Trials and Tribulations (I)

If you are a collector, you are constantly confronted with insanity right and left, not only when meeting other collectors, who could sometimes single-handedly feed the entire profession of psychologists, but especially when confronted with irritating to completely moronic label behavior, product design, or else. There’s just so much to get irked about that I thought I’d dedicate a page, or two, three or four to it. So, in no particular order … Continue Reading →