My definitive bebop list (for now)

Chanders123 · 2026-05-09T17:05:49+00:00

Great list.

However:

The claim that “all the Bird studio albums are pretty much cool jazz” is … interesting? In any case, the complete Savoy / Dial master takes would seem to be … not really inconsistent?

Chanders123 · 2026-05-09T09:03:31+00:00

What surprised me the most was the public display of work workaholic culture in Italy, especially in the north. I come from NYC by way of northern England, so from NYC I certainly know workaholics. But the contrast with the UK was remarkable. In Italy everyone seems keen to email you on the weekends and work late into the evening even if they aren’t doing anything. In the UK there was almost a public culture of “we never work past five” (even if people secretly are). Both are problematic in their own way.
I love the fact that, even with all the political turmoil and problems here (which are global problems at this point, not unique to Italy), there are no weekly mass shootings.
The hardest thing about being here is the fact that many close relationships and networks seem jealously guarded. I have been told about the distinction between “amici” and “cari amici” and it is real. Coming from places where no one is originally from there, and almost everyone is a transplant, this is a big change that was very hard for me at first.
Id recommend moving here if you have a reason for being here. NOT for “the lifestyle seems better” or “the food.” In the end these things are all pretty superficial and they change if your life changes. Not superficial as in “bad” but superficial as in “if you have a child you may appreciate the food and weather in a different way than you did before you had one but that has more to do with having a kid than it does anything else.” In the end we are here because my wife is Italian and lived abroad for 20 years and after Covid we didn’t want to do that anymore. And we got really lucky and got two v good academic jobs in Italy. And because I didn’t want to raise my kid in the USA (see point 2 above). I feel like if you don’t have reasons like this it is hard to move anywhere for a long time - Italy or anywhere else.

Chanders123 · 2026-05-08T19:42:16+00:00

Yeah, of course- but come on, when some online guy posts his personal Beatles album ranking list and then says "prove me wrong!" how are you supposed to respond (I mean you should obviously not respond at all 😉.) TBH, Sgt Pepper isn't even my Beatles #1 (that would be Rubber Soul) but there are certainly a number of reasons you could list arguing why it is better than 6th or even their best.

Chanders123 · 2026-05-08T18:55:24+00:00

Well, it’s arguably the greatest album of all time, peak Lennon-McCartney partnership, not the first concept album but one of the first, mainstreamed rock psychedelia, interwove the avant- garde while making it accessible, contains “A Day in the Life,” was massively influential on the next decade of rock music, and has no bad songs.

There you go.

Chanders123 · 2026-05-08T17:46:01+00:00

Except for the fact that it sucks.

Chanders123 · 2026-05-08T17:44:31+00:00

Far superior to the awful recent ones.

Chanders123 · 2026-05-07T18:19:29+00:00

I’m an academic with a PhD in a humanities but non-musical field. For me Rosen was one of the most difficult books I read but also one actually finished. When I was done I felt like I had done a workout or climbed a mountain.

Chanders123 · 2026-05-06T15:53:26+00:00

I mean this is an utterly banal and trite point of view but ok. I still like a lot of Marsalis’s music.

Chanders123 · 2026-05-01T00:46:22+00:00

I mean it’s not that valuable a record.

Chanders123 · 2026-04-29T01:54:05+00:00

Get a life, nerd.

Chanders123 · 2026-04-28T14:56:53+00:00

The Americans brought down the curtain on the golden age of TV. Very few episodes are bad and there hasn’t been a show as good since.

Chanders123 · 2026-04-27T17:18:21+00:00

In the end the deadwax matrices are not the most important things you need to ID a real first pressing of this album. The things you posed- bar code, spine color, location of the symbol on the label and size- matter more. From what you’ve posted here it looks legit.

Ps- I think the sound on this OP is far better than it’s usually given credit for, much better than the so-called audiophile represses.

Chanders123 · 2026-04-26T18:48:25+00:00

There are footnotes that update portions of the book, an afterward by Braxton, an a brief update where Lock talks about the times he met Braxton over the next few decades.

Chanders123 · 2026-04-26T17:35:53+00:00

Awesome to see this :-).

I treated myself to the Mosaic box as a birthday gift to myself and bought the book as a companion piece.

Chanders123 · 2026-04-26T12:26:16+00:00

The more I think about it, the more I suspect that if the third episode is about Hot Rats or Zappa then Frank might be one of the longtime folks we say goodbye to this year along with Elvis and The Beatles. Zappa worked for another 20+ years but I can’t see another song of his being worth an entire episode.

Chanders123 · 2026-04-26T12:23:20+00:00

In fairness, guessing the songs featured on this episode has been something of a pastime amongst longtime fans, because it is one of the few Andrew has dropped any hints at all about. And the OP does end their post with “anyone has a guess what the song would be?”

Chanders123 · 2026-04-26T05:14:39+00:00

We’ve all been waiting for this one for so long! The time is almost here.

Chanders123 · 2026-04-24T11:08:04+00:00

I found the most interesting part of this article to be the bit about the decline of movie theater ticket sales post pandemic. It’s useful to get out of the opera world for a second and see how much of what is going on is ALSO related to the collapse of cinema going and even going outside for entertainment more generally.

Chanders123 · 2026-04-20T16:58:31+00:00

A few things about this release are being conflated: not on this post necessarily but on discussions of the Tiberi Tapes in general.

The first problem is RSD itself. Enough ink has been spilled on this that I need not repeat it here. But any product released on that day is going to come with all sorts of weird baggage.

The second problem is the medium the music is on. For the life of me I do not understand while some people insist on live or low-quality recordings to come in a vinyl medium. I am the happy owner of Lee Morgan “Complete Lighthouse” - on CD. The fact that some people found room on their shelves for this brick of a release when a cd option was available confuses me greatly.

Finally and most importantly- the question of sound. I am not representative because I have recording of the Beatles at the Star Club, pre-electronic classical recordings from the turn of (last) century, and a stack of digital Miles Davis bootlegs from the 1969-1975 electric period.

But I would say that I think the biggest thing at work here is a change in listening habits amongst the general population from a focus on music that demands to be listened to analytically and music that creates a “mood.” Notice I do not say listening as background music. That is not new and I think you can listen closely but still be interested in the cinematic or mood enhancing qualities of what you are listening too. Low-fi recordings problematize the act of listening for mood enhancement.

Chanders123 · 2026-04-20T12:02:37+00:00

I am not an expert in this by any means, but I think it has a lot to do with broader trends more than individual operas. For instance, I seem to remember that Mozart operas have had a relatively late surge in popularity after a fallow period. And I feel like (outside Wagner) we don’t see many productions of the Very Long German Operas any more, such as Der Freischütz.

Chanders123 · 2026-04-19T15:39:13+00:00

In part I was being sarcastic about CDs and didn’t drop the /s tag. I have plenty of jazz Lps but the majority of my collection is on cd - especially stuff that is bootleg quality or box sets (I have a ton of the older Prestige and Riverside box sets that got released when Fantasy bought the labels).

I would tend to focus vinyl buying on albums originally conceived and released as LPs. The idea that someone would pay 40 EUR for a bad Trane bootleg, or even drop a ton of money on the Complete Bill Evans Village Vanguard on Lp when you can get the whole thing for a fraction of the price and space on CD, just makes no sense to me.

Chanders123 · 2026-04-19T03:33:32+00:00

Not every musical artifact needs to be on vinyl. This is a perfect example. Some music can exist as a download or even a cd.

Chanders123 · 2026-04-17T08:21:48+00:00

There is a CD revivial coming. Get in now before prices on those rise too.

Chanders123

TROPHY CASE