Tag Archives: features

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Boxed-In

The Complete Norman Granz Jam Sessions (Verve, 2004)

I’ve said it often enough around here and I’ll state it again: We collectors are nutcases.

There was a time when I collected books, “contemporary horror fiction” to be precise. It all started when I got my first limited edition of some book and it continued with lots of other limited, numbered, lettered and whatnot editions, plus a trillion other “normal” books which were – at the time – virtually impossible to get in ol’ Germany. I can’t quite recall how I chanced upon him, but Robert Weinberg, who had a thriving mail-order business way back when, sent out these highly-tempting monthly catalogs from which I invariably bought more than I could afford. For years. Continue Reading →

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Observations 03-2009

Not enough space.

(01) Rising Curtain: “The Straw That Broke the Camel’s Back”

Yesterday I added my “recent” purchases to my CD shelf system. A load of classical albums including Paul Lewis’ Beethoven piano sonata cycle (brilliant), a couple of Ahmad Jamal double and single CDs (early stuff and equally brilliant), the Oscar Peterson Clef/Mercury Box (I had most single issues but … well, it was Mosaic), a few soundtracks I picked up for next to nothing (“Les Choristes” and “Gladiator“, only the former of which I really like), the Andreas Vollenweider live double-CD (yeah, shoot me), a number of Ruby Braff (shabby compilations but hey, the only place the stuff is available) CDs reissued by these Spanish scam artists, some J.J. Cale and John  Mayall discs I had picked up to more or less complete my respective artist collections, a bunch of Teddy Wilson CDs (mostly Storyville reissues) and probably another ten or twenty CDs (some of which were Deep Purple releases before people started remastering stuff, some ECM classical and jazz releases, etc.). Continue Reading →