Recent Acquisitions (October 2011)

Back from my much-needed extended holiday way down south, as close to the Sahara as one can get short of floating in the water just a few miles offshore. Twenty-five to thirty-something degrees Celsius each and every day, nary a cloud. Great places to see, a breathtaking landscape and lots of insiders’ tips in my back pocket.

Recent Acquisitions

“Recent Acquisitions” has been something I’ve had around for quite a while on this site, in one form or another. And looking back on past posts or drafts that never came to fruition, there’s one single aspect that stands out immediately. The shopping sprees of the past are long gone. It could be that I have reached a saturation point somewhat, although I do doubt that. It’s just that I have so much to listen to that whenever I stumble over more “Want-Need-Will Have” items, I’m reluctant to shell out the dough, mostly because my bad conscience (left shoulder, far right) parades those CDs in front of my inner eye that I haven’t really listened to intensively yet. Continue Reading →

Observations 04-2009

Mosaic, Benny Goodman, Ian Gillan and …

My musical life has been picking up quite a bit lately after having been in a bit of a limbo for all too long. As you might recall, I wrote about not having bought anything for quite a while – and I’m planning on keeping that up – but these past few weeks, especially because I had some money left over and this or that opportunity presented itself, I “lashed out” and hit the “Buy Me Now, Idiot!” button all too often.

On top of that, I had the chance of spending much more time with my music again, listening intensively and giving liner notes, books and catalogs much more than a cursory glance. Continue Reading →

Observations 03-2009

(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 →

Jump Jive And Wail

Continue Reading →

Royal Mail Issues Beatles Stamps

For all of you that can’t collect enough music and memorabilia, I’m sure it is good news that Royal Mail will today issue 6 Beatles stamps. Continue Reading →

Anita O’Day (1919-2006)

God, I don’t know where to start. If you drop by here regularly, you know that I always approach what I write about from a (very) personal and instinctive vantage point. It either has to be very close to my heart or I have to hate it. Both aspects bring out the most passionate responses. Often I have to root around parts in my head that I don’t always like to root around in to drag up or sometimes even unearth things that I buried a long time ago. To make a long story short, this one is going to be one of the more difficult posts to write. Try to bear with me … I’ll get to the point (relatively) soon.

When jazz greats die, there are always tons of people posting their R.I.P. lines on the various jazz forums around, writing up a few lines about how good this or that musician or singer was, what albums they loved and how important said artist was (or wasn’t). This time, when I joined the line of mourners, I tried to write something and could only post a line of sad smileys. That was it.

Why?
You need some patience for the answer. Continue Reading →

Anita O’Day (1919-2006)

I usually write endless lines of text, but today I don’t feel like it.

Anita Belle Colton O’Day, one of the greatest jazz singers of all time, died today.

She was right up there with Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan.

A true legend.
And still, too many people don’t even know her name.

What a sad, sad day and what a terrible loss.

I’ll need lots of time to write up how much enjoyment I got out of her music and how important she was to me when it comes to discovering jazz. I’ll try to be finished by Christmas.

May she rest in peace.

6th Place in Website Shootout

I have just been told that livingwithmusic.com has taken 6th place in the pMachine Website Shootout (“personal” category). Thank you very much to the judges, especially those who helped put it there.

To be quite frank, I was a bit surprised, simply because the competition was very strong and I had only entered it on second thought. I thought the pMachine Website Shootout might turn out to be a sure stop for people either using or planning on using EE and I wanted to show them that also with minimal effort one could put out a nice EE site. Continue Reading →