LATEST ADDITIONS

What’s the point of having a blog if I can’t occasionally indulge in self-promotion? So if you’ll forgive my blatancy for a moment, today marks the official pub date of my new book, <I>1959: The Year Everything Changed</I>. Unlike my last book, which was entirely about foreign policy, this one actually might be of some interest to the readers of this space, because it covers not just politics but also culture, society, science, sex—as the title suggests, <I>everything</I>. More to the point, there are three chapters (out of 25) that deal explicitly with jazz. (Key jazz albums of 1959 included Miles Davis’ <I>Kind of Blue</I>, Ornette Coleman’s <I>The Shape of Jazz to Come</I>, and Dave Brubeck’s <I>Time Out</I>.) There’s also a chapter about the creation of Motown (another 1959 phenomenon), and a jazz-blues vibe infuses the whole book.

FM radio, once the mainstay for those seeking exposure to new music, is under attack from satellite radio, Web radio, and corporate playlists. Do you still listen to FM radio?

Released in July, <I>Live at Otto's Shrunken Head</I> (STPH020-2) is the latest Stereophile CD from reviewer Bob Reina's jazz quartet, Attention Screen. Unlike the group's first CD, <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/musicrecordings/907att"><I>Live at Merkin Hall</I></A> (STPH018-2, released in 2007), which was recorded with multiple microphones, I captured the eight improvisations on <I>Live at Otto's</I> using a single pair of mikes.

Back when there were bricks-and-mortar retail record stores to speak of in tenses other than past, I used to participate in new-release conferences. Retail-store buyers&#151;the people who decided whether consumers would see your CDs as they browsed in the stores&#151;would gather at a nice destination, such as Lake George, New York. The various labels would then make presentations about their upcoming new releases.

A new integrated amplifier called the Lars Type 1, which made its debut at the <A HREF="http://blog.stereophile.com/ces2009/lars_by_lars">2009 Consumer Electronics Show</A>, has given my notion of a dichotomy between mainstream audio and alternative audio a severe beating. In that sense, the Lars Type 1 has been a life-changing product, although the change took longer than expected for me to digest.

Seems to me most musicheads always have a reserve of bands, solo artists, string quartets, jazz soloists that they know but haven’t really seen or connected with. You know `em but you don’t.

I woke up this morning with a couple of sweet lines playing themselves over and over in my mind. The doctors and scientists call this phenomenon an <i>earworm</i>, which is an entirely unpleasant term. Isn't it? I mean, I would never want an <i>earworm</i>, but I don't at all mind the sound of pretty words running through my head.