Keith Jarrett - Roma (ECM 2026)

 

Roma Keith Jarrett piano ECM 2880

Completing this rich Italian portrait, ECM’s New Series will also present a singular recording of the Tallis Scholars under Peter Phillips from the Basilica di San Marco in Venice, recorded in July 2017. An audio-visual experience, the concert will be released as a 1-CD/1-BluRay package, presenting listeners and viewers with this rare event from inside this historic Italian basilica on the occasion of the 450th anniversary of Claudio Monteverdi’s birth. Included in the programme are works by Monteverdi, Palestrina, Lotti, Allegri, Komitas and Pärt.

Made in England

 

RIP for Francesco Guccini 💫

 

A man of integrity who I had the privilege to know and appreciate in person.

Thanking him and his music, when in my early teens, I picked up a guitar, a love for life.

I’ll be always grateful to him for this and other reasons.

~~~~

“ When my last day comes after my last look at the world

I don't want a stone on this body of mine, because it will feel heavy

Look for a young and strong tree, that will be my place

I want to return even after death under that sky they call God's

And so, together, we will live forever here on earth, the tree and I.”

Francesco Guccini

~~~~

Condolences to his family and close friends.

💔

Thanks, America

 

Home of the brave…

Peacemaking at work.

Hiroshima August 6th, 1945

🤯

Oldest record shop in USA

 

Tucked away in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, around 70 miles east of Pittsburgh, is a place that every record collector should know about. George’s Song Shop has been selling records since 1932, making it the oldest continuously operating record shop in the United States.

The story starts during the Great Depression, when brothers Eugene and Bernie George decided to open a record shop inside Glosser Brothers Department Store. It was a bold move at a time when jobs were scarce, but their gamble paid off. As big band records flew off the shelves, the shop quickly found its audience.

Like the city itself, George’s has had to overcome more than its fair share of setbacks. It survived the devastating Johnstown floods of 1936 and 1977, multiple relocations, and even a fire that badly damaged the shop. Every time, it reopened and carried on.

In 1941, Bernie left to pursue a career as a musician in New York, leaving Eugene to run the business. After Eugene’s death in 1962, his 19 year old son John George took over. More than sixty years later, John is still part of the shop, making it one of the longest family-run record stores anywhere in the country.

What really sets George’s apart is the sheer scale of the place. There are over a million 45s, more than 75,000 LPs, around 20,000 CDs, plus countless cassettes and 8-tracks. It’s the kind of shop where you can spend hours digging and still feel like you’ve barely scratched the surface.

Unlike stores that focus on one scene or genre, George’s has always catered to everyone. Jazz, soul, blues, country, rock, classical, pop, if it was released on vinyl, there’s a good chance it’s sitting somewhere on those shelves waiting to be discovered.

Their slogan says it all: “If We Don’t Have It, Nobody Does.” After more than 90 years in business, it’s hard to argue with that.

AI is eating old books!

 

Yes, chewing them!

It is genuinely alarming as AI companies are buying thousands upon thousands of books from secondhand and even antique shops. Booksellers who until recently sold 20 copies a week now claim to be receiving online or phone orders from the US and China for hundreds or thousands of copies. They're buying them in bulk, for one specific purpose: to destroy them. Artificial intelligence needs training, and to do so, it must acquire as many texts as possible. 

Preferably published before 2023, because that way, it can be sure they were written entirely by humans. To get AI to read a sufficient number of texts, however, it's impossible to scan them in the normal way, page after page: it's too slow. "Destructive Scanning" is needed, a method that involves cutting off the book's cover and spine, reducing it to loose pages that can be scanned at enormous speed, and then thrown away. The machine learns. 

Books are destroyed, digested, lost. Thousands, millions of them. It's essential nourishment for AI, but it comes at the price of destroying even rare and irretrievable texts. 

A sacrifice. In honor of what?

45

 

Lovely 7” spindle adapters.

💫

Pink Floyd’s “Relics” on Odeon (Japan 1973)

 

Gorgeous!

Cəcksucker Blues?

 

… or Cicksucker or Cücksocker… or…

I truly, sincerely hate the level of bigotry and falsehood on the part of social media, politicians, the church, and ordinary people, where wars, massacres, and a general barbarization of civilization are permitted and tolerated… but: woe betide anyone who mentions anything sexually relevant or related!

 I feel disgusted and ashamed by this short circuit!

🤯

Blind Faith in bigotry 🫣😇🫣

 

That’s a result of politicallly correct: the purge of a classic cover-artwork in the name of… pure bigotry, since no sane person would find any Lolita-ish perversion in this splendid album and its cover! 

The truth is in the eye of the beholder.

(At least here above, the censored cover is justified by the limited edition CD layout, always like this also with other titles)

While here, a straight censored strip was used…

💫

If in London…

 

Benno 💫

 

I recently found four pre-owned IKEA’s Benno CDs shelves at the price of a new one…

I appreciated the difference in manufacturing, materials and weight vs. the currently available Gnedby.

One of the four was still in carton box, to be assembled… this explains why the left-most Benno shows some difference in color, as the others tanned at the sunlight.

Benno was discontinued many years ago, so it’s not easy finding four of them nicely preserved, not abused for a few euros. 

💫

Hic et nunc or…

 

We live in the age of everything now.

A message arrives in a second.

A photo is seen immediately.

An answer is always within reach.

Yet, just as everything speeds up, more and more people are choosing to slow down.

Film is back.

Analog cameras are back.

Disposable cameras are back.

Not because they're better, but because they remind us of the value of waiting.

The thrill of not knowing immediately how a photo turned out.

The beauty of an imperfect shot.

The pleasure of living a moment before sharing it.

Maybe we're not looking for better images.

Maybe we're simply looking for something we'd forgotten.

In a world that moves ever faster, sometimes the most special thing is to slow down. ❤️

The Nasty Tapehead 🫣🤣☺️🫣🤭

 

My wife captured a truly nasty me - look at the killer-like grin - while the trusty Studer B67VU was spinning…

It’s funny how someone could look so… so… different under some conditions.

I truly look - to my chagrin - like someone farted next to me!

Nonetheless, it’s a lesson in staying humble: I’m just an average, bald and fatty middle-aged tapehead.

“Thanks” to my wife for the opportunity to consider and meditate about the above or, like my pal Francesco suggested: if you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss will gaze into you.

😳😇🥳😳

The Grateful Dead’s Live/Dead Japanese pressing 💫🖖💫

 

💫

Linda Perhacs 🍀

 

She’s safe and that’s important.

Read here.

💫

Bauhaus

 

Martin OM-42 (2007) 💫

 

I yesterday gifted myself a “new” guitar, actually a second-hand, pre-owned Martin OM-42 made in 2007 and carefully played by previous owner - whom I thank for so nicely “opening” its tone - and which I played at least three times in the shop where it was put on sale, some months ago.

As I wrote, I visited the shop three times and played and played it ‘til getting itchy fingerstips … and every time I felt inexplicably uncomfortable leaving it at the shop, until I suddenly decided to bring it home.

It’s the most recently made guitar I own and it makes me wet as it plays like a vintage, well matured instrument with lots of overtones and sustain.

The female jack/strap and strap button are already off… the red dot sticker will remain until my luthier will properly fix it.

Happy for the purchase… also if I didn’t really need another guitar.

💫

Morton Feldman - New Directions in Music

 

Morton Feldman's first album, "New Directions in Music 2", returns for the first time since Columbia Masterworks issued it in 1959 - eight early works for strings and pianos, recorded when almost none of this music had been committed to record. David Tudor at the piano, a drawing by Philip Guston on the sleeve, liner notes by Frank O'Hara. The original artwork and the original running order, both discarded by the only previous reissue. A foundational document of the New York School, back in the world in the year of Feldman's centenary.

Morton Feldman "New Directions in Music 2" (LP)

The number in the title has nothing to do with Feldman. It refers to Columbia Masterworks' short-lived series, whose first volume paired Stockhausen's Zeitmaße with Boulez's Le Marteau sans maître under Robert Craft in 1958. Volume two, issued the following year, was handed to a thirty-three-year-old American who had barely been recorded at all. Morton Feldman's debut album, and one of the earliest sustained documents of the music that would come to be called the New York School.

The eight works gathered here span 1951 to 1957, the years in which Feldman worked out the notational problems that shaped everything after. Extensions 1, Structures for String Quartet and Projection 4 all date from 1951, followed by Extensions 4 for three pianos, Intersection 3, Two Pieces for Two Pianos, Three Pieces for String Quartet, and Piece for Four Pianos. In the Projections and Intersections, the score is a grid: register, duration, density, and little else. Pitch is left to the player and rhythm is only loosely fixed. Sounds are placed rather than developed, and left to decay at their own speed.