What are you listening to and WHY might anyone be interested? (Vol. XI)

Buddy Rich and His Buddies: Playtime 1961 stereo recording.

As one expect from any Buddy Rich album, this is a high energy high octane set. 

Mixture of swing and bop covers of classics such as Lulu is back in town, Making Whoopie, Misty, Fasinatin' Rhythm ( unbelievable drum solo! ).

Recorded at Ter-Mar studio, this original Argo stereo pressing has a quite a lot of self noise but the recording is excellent ala Mercury style.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...CBvfrLyHRzl8Cj8sxVla

Mel Torme/Buddy Rich: Together Again for the First Time 

Then fashionable Direct to Disc vinyl. 1978 recording.

By far the best number is the very last track on the B side: 'Lady be Good' Torme's Fitzgerald's How High the Moon like scat backed up by energetic Buddy and his band.

Going back to the Water Music.

Rippingtons: Welcome to St. James' Club

Featuring The king of easy jazz. Russ Freeman

Very 90s sound. Mastered by Bernie Grundman.

Streaming | FLAC Download

(1977)

I have played the drums when I was younger. Buddy's solis have been so incredibly good and so impossible for me to even try to copy ....that I always admired him...

John Mellencamp. Rough Harvest. On HDCD from 1999. Alternate acoustic takes of many of his familiar rock songs. Largely fiddle driven with powerful female vocal accompaniments from Janas Hoyt. For me, a primer of what I expect to hear at Mellencamp's concert on Sunday.

Yeah.

LIke me trying to play like Bill Evans 'Waltz for Debbie'. It looks so incredibly simple...

Furgettaboutit!

It's nice to be born with natural gift.

Here's Buddy at 12 in 1929.

Was forgotten hoe beautiful this was...

Sounding mighty fine this Sunday morning.

Streaming | Deezer Elite

(1981)

Simply because i have not heard this for many years (2009 remaster).

Supreme vitality on the part of James Levine and his counterpart musicians.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiD39rvX9gk

Streaming | CD FLAC rip

(1973)

Continuing in the Krautrock vein with this one.

This topic is something that weighs heavily on me and it is a subject I do not like to talk about either because for those outside of this type of addiction there is no way to explain or justify excessive size of a music collection.  I just did the math for myself and it is quite sobering.  

I tried to justify to myself that spread over my lifetime that it looks not so bad.  If I say that I have been collecting music for 40 years my average turns out to be about 25 cds or vinyl albums per month.  Not quite 1 new recording per day.  

In the beginning my aspirations were smaller.  It started with a focus on my favourite composers.  At one point I dreamed of being able to have recordings of every piece of music be a composer.  First was Chopin and then the list grew obviously.  One works on this while also trying to explore new things.  

The thing is that in hindsight I could easily have said that I would stop at one version of everything and then I would have been complete maybe 25 years ago.  If I listened to the Beatles, the Stones, Zeppelin, Dylan etc. while excepting a few cover versions there is generally only one version of each song recorded by the artists themselves.

Classical music (and jazz) is not necessarily this way.  Everything is open to interpretation and therefore the complication is that there is an unlimited number of ways to perform something.  Many do (and can) settle on just one interpretation but to do this you really are just closing your eyes (and ears) and switching off the brain. 

The fascinating thing for me is that you will never know what you are missing if you stop searching.  Yes, in hindsight I could probably eliminate 50% of my collection (keeping my favourites) and not be affected but this is only in hindsight.  I didn't know this going forward.

Even if my own personal hit rate is 1 keeper for every 10 or 20 albums it is that hitting pay dirt on this one that makes the cost seem irrelevant.  So I don't listen to many albums for years or decades but certain recordings that I connect to get listened to dozens of times and maybe certain pieces hundreds of times.  This is the only real pay back for me and you cannot put a value on this.  It also doesn't happen by chance.  It is a lot of work and like investing you win sometimes and lose more often than not.

The negatives (for me) are:

1) the cost

2) the time to organize everything

3) the amount of room to house a growing library (not applicable so much these days to many but I'm old school - I like the tangible benefits of owning something and holding it in my hands)

4) the sheer size makes it difficult to remember everything.  Yes, I remember a lot but some gems get lost and forgotten easily***

5) the sheer size makes it impossible to listen intently to everything properly

6) new formats and improvements in technology mean you are stuck with what you have unless you keep updating and replacing the old format.

The positives (for me) are:

***But when you do happen to find a cd or vinyl album decades later it is instantaneous what joy you had with it.  Isn't it funny how you can remember even other details of what you where doing at that time?  Music is a very powerful connection to life.

Music is the air I breath.  Nothing (well I'm speaking philosophically here) gives me as much pleasure.  When I find some music that makes me happy (happy for me means that it is so powerful that it can make you cry or even that you can't stop thinking about it) then what is more valuable in our short lives here on earth than something that gives this much pleasure?  Music has never let me down (even though it can be a struggle and involves lots of works that will never end).  The more you put in to it the more you get back.  

Compare this to people.  Even the nicest person on the surface has some underlying evil to them (whether hidden or overt).  If not today then some time in the future.  It is not if, just a matter of when.  I have yet to be proven wrong on this and the older I get the clearer this becomes to me. 

My music collection has yet to do wrong to me.  My piano has yet to do wrong to me.  My camera has yet to do wrong to me.  On and on I could go.  These types of hobbies lead to individual growth and pleasure with 0% chance of getting hit with a negative hurtful outcome.

I still have most of the earliest music I bought as a kid.  The memories associated with this and pleasure I have received over the years is priceless.  The pleasure I receive from finding something new or hearing something differently to give me a new perspective is priceless.    

Apologies for my weak and silly arguments here.  There is no real sane argument for what I do or have done.  Completely crazy, I know and I had no idea I would say any of this when I began typing this but one thing leads to another and I said it.  May not have felt this way in the past nor forever in the future but somehow today this is what I feel.  Please take no offence from this.  It is only my own dysfunctional opinion.

Sir, you need apologise for nothing. An interesting and absorbing read.

I consider my self a new music junkie and don't wish to be cured. Discovering new music, spreading the word on a piece others might enjoy is a great buzz.

As for collection size, I consider myself to be the curator of a personal library, some items to be treasured as objects but rarely played, others played to death, a few collecting dust, physically in the racks, mentally in my head.

Ripping my collection of CDs (currently on The Future Sound Of London with an estimated 3,500 - 4,000 to go) has illuminated the latter  category in particular and has offered an opportunity to listen with fresh ears. The bottom line is I see no reason to get rid of any stragglers - what I liked 20 years ago I may not like today, but in 10 years time who knows? Just hope I'm still around to find the answer.

I consider myself fortunate that my addiction has never spread (bar one or two exceptions) to different performances of Classical works otherwise I'd live in a warehouse!

I think it's clear that I am addicted to collecting music. And I am not always proud about that as most of what you have doesn't get a frequent run. And out of collection boxes I even have music which I never played. But at the same time the collection I have gives me great joy on an ongoing base. As I am alone in the house I spent a lot of time to listen to music. And I am always hearing something I enjoy independent of the mood (I have something for every mood). The streaming topic would't change it as I want to own it to play it in the highest quality and also to be able to exchange it with my mobile device. Streaming is for me a way of collecting new music.....

So conclusion, not totally happy about especially if I look at the stats, but at the same point in time also a great source of joy.

One additional point. I very often have pleasant surprises due to my huge collection. For example this morning I was having this piano music of Poulenc. In my memory it was ok, but not exciting...., but then I put it on, and I had a ongoing pleasant experience. With a big collection, this every now and then happens.

Streaming | Bandcamp

(2012)

More fine Berlin School from EFSS. I'm hoping they are going to release some new music as its been a while since their Ouddorp trilogy.