Comments on: Happy Birthday? Well, Maybe Next Year

By: Mattyman

Mattyman — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 10:07:32 +0000

Well, Dottore, that is a great piece of history right there. Love these personal anecdotes! 😉

By: dottorjazz

dottorjazz — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 22:04:11 +0000

How I began.
in the mid sixties I grew up with the Beatles and listened to pop/rock music all day long until I decided to approach something different.I said:gotta listen to one jazz record.Done:I went down to my local shop and saw a record in the window.A black man I never heard of with two white young kids aside.In my mind jazz should be black.I liked the cover and brought it home,happy for owning my first jazz record.
first track:an incredibly distorted guitar sound ! couldn’t be jazz,and it wasn’t.that was my first encounter with Mr.Jimi Hendrix,back in 1967.liked the record but wasn’t satisfied with my ignorance.
got back to the shop and,shy as I was,asked the lady for a musical tip (first and last time in my life).
Any idea ? she asked me:no,I only know it must be black (ignorance once more).so she said:”I love this cat,get a couple of his records,bring ’em home and let me know”.I was a good customer then.
Impulse A-50 and A-94.
I was knocked out,can’t use other words.
my life changed in a moment:I discovered and fell in eternal love with jazz.The same thing did happen only once more,decades later,but it’s my personal life and you won’t be interested.
A-50:J Coltrane live at Birdland
A-94:new thing at Newport (Trane and Shepp).

By: Shaft

Shaft — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 14:11:12 +0000

Thanks everyone for all the insightful comments 😉

I’ve given a lot of thought also on the topic if the CD will disappear or live on?

Most people obviously think that mp3 or even high rez download will eventually make the CD disappear and it won’t be worth crap. Audio guys are ripping their CDs into harddrives and play from there. Convenient and nice sound quality too.

I’m not so sure however that there will be no market for used CDs. Of course the cds will never be originals. But rare remastered pressing will in my opinion increase. Many times they offer the best sound quality of a jazz work and can be useful in high quality sound systems when ripped. There is however a competition with not so legal file sharing options. But many people actually want to own what you listen to. I’m one of them for sure 😉

Look at the Mosaic records used market and you will get the idea. High quality masters, limited supply and lots of nice and useful information about the music makes them very collectible and expensive.

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 02:10:10 +0000

Real cool Nick. Thanks for the story, looking forward to tomorrow.

Mattyman & LC, you are right about music being done nowadays in the digital domain. I just have faith that eventually there will be someone in the record industry that will catch on and start putting out quality. Maybe it will be from smaller Indy labels and this will catch on. Maybe not but I hope as while most of what I listen to is from 50s-70s i enjoy plenty from nowadays tool. Some of it is recorded well, but then again its not popular stuff nor is it usually major label stuff. I think there are people out there if given the opportunity appreciate quality recordings of acoustic music. I just have to show them.

By: Nick (Tales Of The Hunt)

Nick (Tales Of The Hunt) — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 00:56:50 +0000

Hello All – Tales Of The Hunt.
I was in a record store around 1964 just talking to the owner about some records I had found in a junk store most of them were instrumentals nobody ever heard of and I told him I wish I had a clean copy of one particular record! Somebody said why dont you see if you can find the owner of the company… Yeah right what am I a detective (lol)… 1966 I went into the service got out in 1970 still had that beatup record and I remembered I should look for the owner.. But how? I went to the library but what am I looking for? I asked the libarian she told me we dont have a big music section, she than let me hit the LOTTO !!!! She said why dont you go to The Lincoln Center Music Library NYC.. Which I did still not knowing what I was looking for. I took the record with me The Group was The Chiefs on a label called Greenwich. Again I asked the librarian at Lincoln Center she told me to look on a particular shelf for Billboard Magazines. As I was walking towards the shelf a man approached me Hello with a deep voice, he told me I heard your converation with the young lady come with me he pulled from a shelf a looseleaf folder that contained around 800 pages, he said can I see the record I gave it to him he looked at it, flipped thru the book and said the owner was on the 3rd Floor 1650 Broadway if he still there. He told me each record made is registered with either BMI, ASCAP or SESAC. But most are BMI! on the record it was BMI. WOW I said, I asked him is name and how did he know so much. His name was Clark Terry and he told me he used the center for his research on music and that he played Jazz. At that time I never really had any of his records and I said Thank You and left. Tomorrow the trip to 1650 Broadway

By: Mattyman

Mattyman — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 21:56:48 +0000

Kids growing up these days indeed hear nothing but over compressed music, delivered in MP3s. It reminds me of a quote from Numair Faraz: “The record companies do not try to foster a creative environment which rewards musicians who serve their respective niche, but create an environment which attempts to market a small amount of music to the largest audience possible.” And he is right. But in my favourite record store I see something very encouraging: young people in their late teens, early twenties, buying VINYL. A lot of small independent record labels nowadays still sell their releases on vinyl and whether it’s a hype or not, just like me there will be plenty of youngsters that eventually will get bitten by the vinyl bug and end up on Jazzcollector or eBay just like me. Difference with me is that I already collected vinyl for years before I moved from seventies funk to Jazz, but then still: if there are kids collecting stamps in the year 2011, then there will also be kids collecting vinyl eventually. Last but not least one last remark to confirm what London Calling said: most modern top40 crap is fully created in the digital domain and mastered as loudly as possible. Over compressed and hard limited as well. Open an audio file like that on your computer screen and you’ll see a “brick”. The actual wave with all its dynamics is nowhere to be found. If you play a mint record on your system for them to listen to, the first thing they say is to turn up the volume…

By: London Calling

London Calling — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 19:19:45 +0000

Mike, I am convinced part of the equation is that we are talking jazz played almost entirely on acoustic intruments and vinyl analogue as a medium. The two things are absolutely made for each other.

90% of what “da kids” is listenin’ to is created out of digital electronics and sampling. I have some modern vinyl with modern music and it doesn’t work -often worse than CD.

Jazz is happily locked in a previous culture. Few people will spend the time it takes to master a real instrument today, and they won’t master improvisation by playing live every night. Instead, we have millions of would be “singers” everywhere. And serial downloaders with their addiction to constant novelty for free means no money for any but a few big artists. Depressing.

Fortunately help is at hand. Jazz Collector, ebay, and a good hifi.

By: Mike

Mike — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 15:38:28 +0000

GW, I think you are very right about people accepting the quality of there downloads. That’s why I evangelize quality every chance I get. I try and get people to listen to my system. I also give people demos on headphones of the difference between mp3 and lossless audio codecs. Even with head phones that don’t properly reproduce the bass(pretty much all of them) most people can still tell a nice difference. I haven’t had a ton of success but some, mostly people acknowledge the difference but don’t care. But every little bit of success counts.

By: GW

GW — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 14:48:08 +0000

Al, sorry to be late: Happy birthday!

By: GW

GW — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 14:39:48 +0000

I tend to agree with Maarten’s 78rpm idea. If I look at the teenagers around me absolutely nobody of them at all buys music on a storage medium (Vinyl / and even CD). They all download mp3 files for free. I doubt that the major part of them will change their mind in the future. Sure the sound of these digital files is horrible – but they dont seem to care. Again sure some of them will change their habits but I think the market will shrink at some point in the future….at least I hope to win some nice records for better prices then…:-)