Site Report: 7/17/07


Howdy once again, virtual citizens. Production has been on and off in the past six months, as I don’t feel the pressing need to get as much content online as last year. I will continue to add reviews, but not at a fast and furious pace. The Rock page is pretty much done, having already covered the artists I found most interesting to write about. They don’t represent the extent of my rock collection (or memory), but there’s little I could write about other, more popular artists that hasn’t been written a hundred times over.

Back in May and June, I re-edited the entire site (again). I made the mistake of skimming some pages I didn’t like, so that prompted a full sweep of the premises. I promise not to do it any more. Until the next time. I also removed a few essays, including some of the whimsical sports blatherings.

(For all you who’ve read my little touchdown celebration rant, I’ll tell you something else: due to the extremely disturbing extracurricular interests of at least one player, and what I consider insufficient reaction from other players, the team, and the league, I’ve had it with the NFL. Sometimes the bad apples are really, really bad.)

Music news at large: I haven’t said much about the growing download trend because I don’t have many positive feelings about it yet. On the contrary, I wonder what effect an eventual rarity of physical media will have on the artistic measures and goals of recorded music, and how general listeners’ expectations might be affected. (Big record companies have been lowering expectations for years, anyway.) I haven’t brewed all my germinal thoughts into a concrete thesis yet. In the meantime, I just know what the big shift means to me – fewer CD reissues, more questions about sound quality, and a greater tendency for real copies of a title to go out of print, possibly for good. Eventually, I may be forced to change my tune, but I’ll still have my CD collection, and it will be just as convenient and portable then as it is now.

Speaking of disappearing CDs, I’ve mentioned the K2 20-bit remasters in various jazz reviews, particularly with titles on the Prestige, Riverside, or Contemporary labels. Well, far as I can tell, the K2 series is no more. What we get now from the Fantasy/Concord quarters are a new line of Rudy Van Gelder remasters, and also something called the “Keepnews Collection,” named after the producer and self-aware raconteur. I’ve sampled titles from both of these series and they sound fine, but I’ve also heard about problems people have had with certain discs. Anyway, you might want to keep your eyes out for the K2 editions, especially a couple of Rollins titles - Saxophone Colossus and Way Out West. By the way, reports of neglected archives notwithstanding, Concord has done some nice work in re-presenting the ‘50s Prestige recordings of Coltrane and Miles, and I hope they continue to preserve the legacies of other artists in a respectful manner.

Enough babble. I wish everybody a happy and productive rest of the year.


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