The Now Spinning/Recent Purchases Thread

I still wish there was a way to buy a CD in a 12" LP size pack. I miss the feeling of cracking open a new LP. CD is sort of close, but just not quite as impactful, and downloads...well there's just nothing special about that.
 
I have to admit that buying new LPs, or sealed "new old stock" LPs, is still the thrill it used to be. :) With many newer LPs, though, they are not in tight shrink-wrap, but in looser plastic bags so the album does not warp as the shrink wrap can shrink even further in the right conditions. But still...yeah, that whole tactile thing is part of the listening process.

CDs used to be almost as much fun, but back in the day, it was exciting to find old favorites or long-lost albums finally get released on CD. It's the tiny print on the CD booklets that really changed things, though. It wasn't like holding the 12" packaging, reading the jacket, reading the innersleeve, etc. And I don't know of anyone who hangs CD booklets in frames on the walls, whereas I usually grab a couple more LP frames each time I hit IKEA. I have nine so far--I still have to hang up 1999, which I put in a frame last year in April but never got around to hanging. :sigh:

Downloads are boring in comparison, but I have to say that many of the high-res downloads I've gotten sound so good that it's a different kind of thrill to see them listed in my media player's directory. And of course, to listen to them.

As for a CD in an LP-sized package, the only times I have come across that is when a vinyl release had a CD inside. Two Pat Metheny releases had them in the jacket in their own mini-LP jacket (Orchestrion and Kin (<-->)), and Brian Setzer's Songs from Lonely Avenue LP actually had the CD printed with the moon on it, and a foam hub in the gatefold jacket held the CD up in the sky as part of the cover art. (It's sad that the LP sounded so terrible, though--it was poorly mastered and sounded like it was recorded with the treble turned all the way down. The CD is actually too bright. Can't win!)
 
Good rainy night listen is Painted From Memory. I'm awaiting the Mobile Fidelity vinyl release, which I don't have a concrete date for (nobody but Amazon lists a release date, and Amazon's dates on MoFi releases often is incorrect). The test pressing I heard at AXPONA was stunning. It's limited to 3,000 pressings--it is almost tempting to order two of them, or get the vinyl plus the SACD.
The first run of vinyl sold out already--it's awaiting a repress. (I think MoFi only presses 1,000 at a time to gauge interest.) I may still get the SACD of this one. Fremer gave the vinyl a good write-up at Analog Planet a couple of weeks ago.
 
Right now listening to the 2 CD set of The Raspberries "Pop Art Live" (At The House Of Blues In Cleveland, Ohio on Friday, November 26, 2004, their first concert in over 29 years). Matt Clark Sanford, MI
 
I have to admit that buying new LPs, or sealed "new old stock" LPs, is still the thrill it used to be. :) With many newer LPs, though, they are not in tight shrink-wrap, but in looser plastic bags so the album does not warp as the shrink wrap can shrink even further in the right conditions. But still...yeah, that whole tactile thing is part of the listening process.

CDs used to be almost as much fun, but back in the day, it was exciting to find old favorites or long-lost albums finally get released on CD. It's the tiny print on the CD booklets that really changed things, though. It wasn't like holding the 12" packaging, reading the jacket, reading the innersleeve, etc. And I don't know of anyone who hangs CD booklets in frames on the walls, whereas I usually grab a couple more LP frames each time I hit IKEA. I have nine so far--I still have to hang up 1999, which I put in a frame last year in April but never got around to hanging. :sigh:

Downloads are boring in comparison, but I have to say that many of the high-res downloads I've gotten sound so good that it's a different kind of thrill to see them listed in my media player's directory. And of course, to listen to them.

As for a CD in an LP-sized package, the only times I have come across that is when a vinyl release had a CD inside. Two Pat Metheny releases had them in the jacket in their own mini-LP jacket (Orchestrion and Kin (<-->)), and Brian Setzer's Songs from Lonely Avenue LP actually had the CD printed with the moon on it, and a foam hub in the gatefold jacket held the CD up in the sky as part of the cover art. (It's sad that the LP sounded so terrible, though--it was poorly mastered and sounded like it was recorded with the treble turned all the way down. The CD is actually too bright. Can't win!)
I agree except I don't have a turntable these days but for me buying CDS and downloads have a different kind of thrill attached to them for me it's having the music in the cleanest and best sound quality possible for me CDS in a sense have a sort of almost equality with lps in that they are similar in the tangibility and the artwork and liner notes albeit in smaller print but it's not true for All Cds but fortunately my cds 99% of them have the same wonderful effect as vinyl did before back in the day it's hard for me to explain in detail but I hope my point will be understood.
 
I did get the thrill of opening this new vinyl pressing this past Friday:

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Superb AAA (all analog) pressing. Incredible detail here. Had those goosebump moments like when I first heard this as a test pressing at AXPONA this past April. Good stuff!

I also gave my 2-LP 45 RPM set of the first Santana album a spin. I probably mentioned earlier--I am not a big Santana fan, but there is something fresh and spontaneous about this recording, and the sound quality on this set is amazing. Puts you right in the studio between the percussion and the guitar amps. :wink:
 
Being a sensory person - there's nothing like the smell of a new LP. (CDs don't have any smell that I can detect.) :D
That Costello/Bacharach album sounds interesting.
 
That Costello/Bacharach album sounds interesting.
It's definitely a high water mark for both of them. I'm not even that big of a Costello fan (yet...he's growing on me, and his catalog is vast and varied), but his lyrics here are very thought provoking with some clever wordplay. Burt is doing here what Burt has done for decades. You would think that sound went out of style in the 60s, but it sounds just as fresh today as it did back then. His arrangements recall his work with Dionne in the 60s (and I could hear her singing some of these tracks quite easily), with many touches I recognize. I could see why Bacharach would have been drawn towards Costello's lyrics--his work on this record is right up there with the work Burt did with Hal David.

I'll admit it took me quite a few listens to really get into this one. Maybe it was just information overload on my tiny brain. :laugh:
 
it was just information overload on my tiny brain. :laugh:

There's a lot of that going around! :nut: By the way, that would make an excellent line in a song. Right up there with two of my favorites: "My uncle took the message and he wrote it on the wall" and "Cause I don't have no use for what you loosely call the truth." :D
 
Played Aja earlier yesterday, a bit of a tribute to Walter Becker.

Last night, spinning Styx: The Mission. Styx "The Mission" June 16 Surprisingly better than I thought. It's good enough that I may get the vinyl of this, seeing it is an analog recording. :)

What is not spinning?

:sigh:

U2 was in town last night for the Joshua Tree 30th anniversary tour, and I totally forgot to look for tickets. Likewise, I missed Depeche Mode's local gig last weekend! DP has been a strong favorite of mine over the past few years, but The Joshua Tree is one of those desert island discs for me.

BTW, I was within an hour or two of this a few weeks ago:

Google Maps

The location of the album cover shoot.
 
Been gettin' down with my bad self, direct from the Mothership:

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Funkadelic -- Uncle Jam Wants You

Most notable for the nearly side-long 15+ minute unrelenting funk workout of "(Not Just) Knee Deep" that was a #1 R&B hit, penned by George Clinton and Phillippe Wynne (formerly of The Spinners), which lit up many a dance floor back in 1979. I also had to give One Nation Under A Groove a spin, especially for the hit title track.

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Takes me back quite a few years. :D
 
And on another path, I sort of "rediscovered" this album this past week. We had a few of Belafonte's albums in the house when I was a young 'un. Calypso of course was the monster hit album. We also had An Evening with Harry Belafonte and This is Belafonte, and the following:

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As young as I was, this album was one I probably played a couple of times and didn't pay much attention since it is very downtempo. Ours was a mono LP, although this was the first album Belafonte recorded in stereo.

Musically it has a very late-night smoky feel to it. There are three here penned by Ray Charles, and one is a tune originally covered by Billie Holiday. Two of the tunes are traditional blues ("Cotton Fields" and "In The Evenin' Mama"), and there is even a cover of a tune that Sinatra made famous: "One for my Baby." The supporting musicians are a who's who of jazz--Jimmy Rowles, Jack Sperling, Plas Johnson, Ben Webster, Milt Bernhart, Don Fagerquist, and a handful of other well-known names. Belafonte has said that this was his favorite of the albums he has recorded.

The sound on this album is demo quality. The Impex 45RPM 2-LP set, cut from the original analog tapes, sounds fantastic.
 
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Spinning CD's of Ray Lamontagne "Supernova" & "Outoboros" as well as Pete Yorn "Arranging Time". Matt Clark Sanford, MI
 
And on another path, I sort of "rediscovered" this album this past week. We had a few of Belafonte's albums in the house when I was a young 'un. Calypso of course was the monster hit album. We also had An Evening with Harry Belafonte and This is Belafonte, and the following:

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As young as I was, this album was one I probably played a couple of times and didn't pay much attention since it is very downtempo. Ours was a mono LP, although this was the first album Belafonte recorded in stereo.

Musically it has a very late-night smoky feel to it. There are three here penned by Ray Charles, and one is a tune originally covered by Billie Holiday. Two of the tunes are traditional blues ("Cotton Fields" and "In The Evenin' Mama"), and there is even a cover of a tune that Sinatra made famous: "One for my Baby." The supporting musicians are a who's who of jazz--Jimmy Rowles, Jack Sperling, Plas Johnson, Ben Webster, Milt Bernhart, Don Fagerquist, and a handful of other well-known names. Belafonte has said that this was his favorite of the albums he has recorded.

The sound on this album is demo quality. The Impex 45RPM 2-LP set, cut from the original analog tapes, sounds fantastic.
My Dad liked Belafonte he had his album Midnight special it was hardly ever played and sadly I never got a chance to listen to it but to me is a curiosity I liked the Calypso Album tremendously still do Belafonte is still a true legendary vocalist
 
This is one of my favorite of Connick's recordings:

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Lofty's Roach Soufflé is a pure trio album--piano, bass, drums, featuring all Connick-penned compositions. It was a near simultaneous release with his vocal/big band album Blue Light, Red Light (which is a decent effort, also featuring his compositions except for two standards).

This is one to skip on vinyl, however--the sound isn't bad, but in order to fit nearly 35 minutes (!) onto one side of the record, they mastered it at a very low level, so there ends up being a lot of background noise. I've had the CD since it was first released.

I have also been revisiting Ralph Towner's Solstice, which is a different sound and approach than what he takes with the group Oregon.

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Late last night, and this afternoon while working:

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Pat Metheny/Ornette Coleman: Song X 20th Anniversary Edition.

Metheny had to cut several tracks to fit this on LP originally, so this new edition (newly remixed and remastered for 2005) adds half a dozen tracks, but, to the beginning of the album. "Police People" and "The Good Life" are especially good, and have appeared on later Metheny recordings. ("The Good Life" shows up on the live Parallel Realities video, which featured Jack DeJohnette, Dave Holland and Herbie Hancock.) It's still way off the wall compared to his other recordings, though...it's not for the faint of heart. :laugh:

Another one I've been playing lately:

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Terrible ECM cover art aside, it's pretty good. I've had it for years but never really ventured much beyond the first couple of tracks.
 
I've been listening to some rare 80s contemporary jazz from an outfit called Ric Swanson and Urban Surrender who recorded 2 albums for Chip Davis's American gramophone label and one for the defunct optimism label the albums of which I own are the debut self titled lp from 1986 which has my favorite song perpetual bridge. Also the 2nd album Windsock from 87 another excellent album and the 3rd and last album Renewal from 1989 they disappeared after that sadly but this is the kind of instrumental music I was digging on at that time and radio stations were playing ( mostly public radio and Easy listening stations) but thankfully I still have these in my library because they have been long out of print and mostly have been forgotten by many
 
I heard a smooth jazz song from around the 70's decade when I heard it on AM 760 WJR Detroit back then while the Detroit Tigers game was heard. The song has a "bing, bing, bing, bing...." & then a flute player (maybe Tim Weisburg) plays the part of the song & holds the flute note at the end of the song. Another song that I heard back in 1993 or 1994 was on Cozy FM 104.3 FM in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan (which was also a Smooth Jazz format station) & there was an electric organ that is playing & then the flutes are playing & at the middle it sounds like Nick Ingram playing the guitar. I wish that I knew what the title of the song & the artist that play it back then. I also know there was a instrumental new age group out of Colorado called Wind Machine (which I have the 1990 CD "Portraits Of Christmas"). The song from 1985 called "Song For The Children" (from an out of print CD) is a beautiful song which reminds me of David Gray doing an instrumental called "January Rain" from the "Serendipity" movie soundtrack from 2001 which starred Kate Beckinsale & John Cusack. By the way, David Gray is best known for the 2000 song "Babylon". Could a smooth jazz expert help me out on the first 2 songs please?? Matt Clark Sanford, MI
 
Back then on The Weather Channel from late 1989 & early 1990 when they gave out the upcoming forecast, The Dixie Dregs did a instrumental song called 'Refried Funky Chicken" (which I do have from the "20th Century Masters" CD). I thought that it was Jean Luc Ponty doing the song. Matt Clark Sanford, MI
 
I heard a smooth jazz song from around the 70's decade when I heard it on AM 760 WJR Detroit back then while the Detroit Tigers game was heard. The song has a "bing, bing, bing, bing...." & then a flute player (maybe Tim Weisburg) plays the part of the song & holds the flute note at the end of the song. Another song that I heard back in 1993 or 1994 was on Cozy FM 104.3 FM in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan (which was also a Smooth Jazz format station) & there was an electric organ that is playing & then the flutes are playing & at the middle it sounds like Nick Ingram playing the guitar. I wish that I knew what the title of the song & the artist that play it back then. I also know there was a instrumental new age group out of Colorado called Wind Machine (which I have the 1990 CD "Portraits Of Christmas"). The song from 1985 called "Song For The Children" (from an out of print CD) is a beautiful song which reminds me of David Gray doing an instrumental called "January Rain" from the "Serendipity" movie soundtrack from 2001 which starred Kate Beckinsale & John Cusack. By the way, David Gray is best known for the 2000 song "Babylon". Could a smooth jazz expert help me out on the first 2 songs please?? Matt Clark Sanford, MI
I remember Wind Machine but I only have their albums the road to freedom and their follow up which I don't remember at the moment but I do own several Tim Weisberg albums so I know where you are coming from but unfortunately I lost track of the smooth jazz genre for the most part in the late 90s early 2000s
 
Jury's still out on these. I admire Haitink's conducting and have a few favorites, yet Brahms isn't exactly my cup o' tea. Nicely conducted and performed, but I'm still exploring to see what I've been missing.

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There are a few large Haitink sets out there. One, The Philips Years, is a 20-CD Decca set covering his releases on the Philips label. I've listened to large portions of it via Tidal (yet it doesn't cost all that much, $55-ish, which is less than $3 per disc). There is also The Symphony Edition at 36 CDs on Decca. He has conducted long-term with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony, and the LSO.
 
OK, as a Kevin Eubanks fan, this one took me by surprise:

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I hadn't paid as much attention to the personnel of his Blue Note albums Turning Point and Spirit Talk, but Dave Holland played on those, along with Marvin "Smitty" Smith. This 1989 recording Extensions was the first teaming of Eubanks with Holland. Smitty would of course go on to the drum chair in the Tonight Show band, backing Eubanks for those 15 years he spent with the talk show.

This being a Dave Holland date as opposed to Eubanks, there is a really good opportunity here to listen to Eubanks in a supporting role, in addition to "burning it" on the guitar solo when given an opening. The lead-off track "Nemesis" borrows the bass line and 11/4 time from the Eubanks tune "The Navigator," which he recorded on his 1985 album Opening Night on GRP (one of his finest). It is a groove-oriented album, and Steve Coleman (sax) puts in good performances throughout. The clean ECM Records sound is also a major asset of this fine recording.

Personnel:
Dave Holland, bass
Steve Coleman, alto saxophone
Kevin Eubanks, guitar
Marvin “Smitty” Smith, drums
 
I own one Kevin Eubanks cd His GRP album title Promise of tomorrow. His GRP releases as well as many others are Very rare today of course as I mentioned before I have my personal favorites from them.
 
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