The quality of live albums usually range from bad to terrible, but there are some of them that can be just great. I was listening to the Bob Dylan 300th, or maybe it was 30th anniversary set. I was set back on my heels (no mean feat when you consider I was sitting at the time) by how good some of it was. "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere" sung by Shawn Colvin, Mary Chapin Carpenter, and Roseanne Cash was just wonderful. Stevie Wonder on the other hand is awful, but there is A LOT of great music that even sounds good.

What are your favorites, and why?

WBEZ the last surviving all jazz FM station operating in Chicago recently announced that within a year they will change format - to talk radio. Obviously the world needs more talk radio. I still have one college radio station with full time jazz programming, but after that, it's up to my collection and what little live stuff is happening around town.

Chicago, which once had a justified claim to being the center of jazz, has now rejected it. Change isn't always for the better.

Interesting article about archiving recordings on wax cylinders from the early 1900s..

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0413/p13s02-stct.html

And here is the web site to actually listen to the digitized recordings:

http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/