Buy a turntable

Go here.

That's mainly an instruction to myself, but I invite you to do it, too. My first Sony turntable from 1981 finally died once and for all in the mid-00's, and like a big jerk I did not replace it. Since then CDs and mp3s have become my main formats by default, with my crates of LPs sadly exiled to the basement. I didn't realize how impoverished I had made myself until I walked into a record store the other day and started handling records again.

I immediately noticed that:

- Used LPs are cheap. In 20 minutes in the store (Crossroads Music in Portland, a used record co-op) I found a couple of dozen easy purchases I have never seen online, for 3 to 5 bucks. A lot of classic recordings were reissued many times with different packaging, and tend to be dirt cheap. Some things have gone up in price- Miles Davis In Concert cost me $4 in the mid-90's, before people started liking 70's Miles again; today I saw it for $8. The most expensive things I would've considered buying were about the same price as a new CD.

- Computer music is formatted for casual listeners (or "amateurs"), which you are not. As a musician, albums of music are your medium- they are your large-scale works. You need to have a strong sense of the collection of tracks as a whole, played in a certain order (preferably with an A side and a B side) and a certain amount of time between tracks, strongly associated with a title, the artwork, the group of musicians who played on the record, the songwriters, and the recording date, studio, engineer, and producer.

- By the way, have you ever searched for Tony Williams on iTunes? They tell you only albums he recorded as leader. No indication whatsoever that he once played with a minor group known as the Miles Davis Quintet. Same with Elvin Jones- searching for him returns a big fat "Coltrane who?"

- The packaging is incredibly efficient. To get all of that info, you turn the cover over and look. Instead of the dozen-plus clicks it takes to open a file browser and rooting around for the info file, or googling the album title and clicking around within a couple of different sites before you maybe find the information you want. Or just succumbing to the inertia and never finding out.

More reasons/observations after the break:

Tune of the moment: Eiderdown

Eiderdown is a great tune  by Steve Swallow that deserves to be played a lot more, and has been coming up a bunch  lately in sessions and in my listening. The lead sheet is available free, along with a lot of other great stuff, from Swallow's publishing site, shared with with Carla Bley, wattxtrawatt.com. So there's no excuse for not having it in your book!

John Stowell likes to play this one a lot, but he hasn't recorded it yet, that I know of. The version I've been listening to is from Jack Dejohnette's 1975 record Cosmic Chicken. It's been out of print for years, and was never reissued on CD, so good luck finding it. It is available through some of the LP ripping blogs, if you google around for it.



One version that is legally available is from Pete LaRoca's Basra:



Get Basra | get Eiderdown

Out-of-print LP rips: some finds

Here are some exciting drummer-led things I found while paying a visit to the thriving community of record-collecting bloggers dedicated to ripping out-of-print LPs and making them available for download. Apparently no one wants to sell you this music any more, and this is the only way you can get it, short of dedicating your life to scouring the used bins and getting really lucky. This does raise some ethical questions, which I've addressed after the break.

Download links for the albums are usually located in the comments section; Mediafire links are quick and easy, Rapidshare links are a pain.

Bob Moses - Bittersuite in the Ozone
A famous record, and extremely rare- I've never seen it in close to 30 years of trolling the used bins. Features Billy Hart, Randy Brecker, Dave Liebman, Howard Johnson, Eddie Gomez, and more.

Roy Haynes Hip Ensemble
Haynes' "jazz-rock" band from the 70's. I've only seen one other record by this group, and I own the only copy of it I've ever seen in the wild. Recorded in Rome in 1975 for the Horo label. With Don Pate, Bill Saxton, John Mosley, and Mark Fiorillo.

Jack DeJohnette - Have You Heard?
I have not, in fact, ever heard of this great, very free Milestone release. Features Bennie Maupin, Gary Peacock, Hideo Ichikawa.

Elvin Jones - The Town Hall
Smoking John Coltrane memorial concert from 1971. One of the first Elvin LPs I bought, used, in '86 or so. With Frank Foster, Chick Corea, Joe Farrell.

Buddy Rich - A Different Drummer
Burning 70's big band.