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Vintage kodak projector on classic mike preamp, camera, and other miscellaneous items

Arts, related and otherwise… including books, film and miscellaneous adventures.

The Biggest Record Show in Texas (and the United States)- The Austin Record Convention 2019

May 23, 2019 by Bill Hart Leave a Comment

The Biggest Record Show in Texas (and the United States)- The Austin Record Convention 2019 Yep, stuff is big here- trucks, some people (fit, not fat), buildings, hair, BBQ, hell the entire state is big. And the Austin Record Convention, which has been operating since 1981, was pretty great this year. Lots of dealers (over 300, according to the website) occupying 40,000 sq feet of clean, well air-conditioned modern space. The show takes place in South Austin, just a stone’s throw from the river in the middle of downtown Austin. It claims to be the biggest record show in the United... Read More

Filed Under: Ephemera, In Brief

Peter Green: A Love That Burns- Definitive Reference Guide by Richard Orlando (3 volumes, Smiling Corgi Press 2017).

September 4, 2018 by Bill Hart Leave a Comment

Peter Green: A Love That Burns- Definitive Reference Guide by Richard Orlando (3 volumes, Smiling Corgi Press 2017). To call this exhaustive study of Peter Green’s performances an ambitious undertaking would be damning by faint praise: over 1,900 pages, cataloging and commenting on the history and attributes of 1,000 recorded performances by the legendary guitarist Peter Green spread among three volumes.  These volumes took author Richard Orlando more than 15 years to assemble. Green is a relatively modern artist who composed and performed within our lifetimes—and within a fairly... Read More

Filed Under: Ephemera, Stickies

SEDUCED BY SOUND: AUSTIN, 100 Musicians on Why They Make Music

January 12, 2018 by Bill Hart Leave a Comment

SEDUCED BY SOUND: AUSTIN, 100 Musicians on Why They Make Music    Even if you hung out in every bar, dive and dance hall in a town for the last 40 years, you wouldn’t capture the musical influences, history and “feel” of a place as well as this book tells it. Part history, part interviews with music makers, SEDUCED BY SOUND: AUSTIN is far more than a cheat sheet for the vast array of talent that inhabits this “live music capital of the world.” It tells the story of the Austin music scene, in the words of the people who lived and made it, in a way no narrative history... Read More

Filed Under: Ephemera, In Brief

From the Gulch to the Delta

January 29, 2017 by Bill Hart Leave a Comment

From the Gulch to the Delta- On Pawn~ in Asheville, N.C. We are down in the Gulch, Nashville’s newest “hot” urban enclave, bubbling with fashionable boutiques and trendy nightspots. Our trip from Virginia was uneventful, if wet; the views along the higher ridges were hampered by fog. With a brief stay-over in Winston-Salem, a quiet town of old architectural gems (and one of the best café lattes ever, at a place called “The Hive”), we landed in Asheville. This is a vibrant city nestled into the Blue Ridge Mountains with the charm of the south but a distinct culture all its own.... Read More

Filed Under: Ephemera, In Brief

The War of Fog

January 20, 2017 by Bill Hart Leave a Comment

The War of Fog -Adventures in Audiophile Moving.   For forty days and nights, we’ve been packing boxes and squaring away our Hudson River home for sale to the new owners: roughly 12,000 records have gone through my hands recently; a few thousand left a while ago, and are now in the hands of a friend who returned to vinyl; as many were handed off to a wholesaler who dealt with the listings and shipping (none of the really rare stuff got sold, so you didn’t miss a thing). The wholesaler came back a couple weeks ago to take another 2,000 records out of here. That left me with about 6,000... Read More

Filed Under: Ephemera, In Brief

Featured Book Review: The Godfather of the Music Business: Morris Levy

April 27, 2016 by Bill Hart

        This book—an in-depth biography of Morris Levy, a legendary music business figure with reputed “mob ties” —is long overdue. We seem to have a collective fascination for scoundrels, thugs and gangsters. But Levy was no mere thug: from his Birdland, a midtown jazz club where Charlie Parker, Coltrane, Monk, Miles, Bud Powell and Count Basie played, to his mass marketing of pop music in the decades that followed, Levy had a keen sense of where the business was headed and capitalized on it. Yet Levy always remained a shadowy figure, even decades after his death.... Read More

Filed Under: Ephemera, Features

Interview with Richard Carlin, Author of The Godfather of the Music Business: Morris Levy

April 27, 2016 by Bill Hart

Interview with Richard Carlin, Author of The Godfather of the Music Business: Morris Levy    Why a book about Morris Levy? Was it the dearth of information about him, the shadowy reputation or something else that drove you to research and write this?   RC: The project did not start as a Morris Levy biography. I was doing some work on a broader project- about a generation of mostly Jewish men who were the children of first generation immigrants-all from the Bronx, who were successful in the music business. I was familiar with some of the published material on Levy- there was a... Read More

Filed Under: Ephemera, In Brief

Yuri Grishin- “The British Recording History”

January 2, 2016 by Bill Hart

          Yuri Grishin’s name should be familiar to some readers; he is the polymath who assembled the extensive labelographies of Island, Vertigo, Harvest and Charisma in a series entitled “The Famous British Collectable Record Labels. ” Those books–which include images of the releases, catalog numbers, details about cover art, mastering, matrix information and details on sleeves, variations in different countries, along with “inside” interviews—provide an invaluable resource to collectors, are now out of print and are themselves collectible. Grishin... Read More

Filed Under: Compendia, Ephemera

New Skynyrd Documentary: Gone with the Wind

January 2, 2016 by Bill Hart

  Not long after writing a retrospective on Lynyrd Skynyrd, I happened on this film documentary– Gone with the Wind– about the band. Without knowing much about the film, I was thoroughly surprised by its depth and the care that went into making it; not just talking heads, or jarring, badly filmed footage of concert excerpts, it tells the story of Lynyrd Skynyrd from the earliest days, and includes interviews with some of the surviving members. Drummer Burns, who is featured in a number of interview clips, died earlier this year. The film benefits from some pretty candid... Read More

Filed Under: Ephemera, In Brief

Road Trip!

August 25, 2015 by Bill Hart

  photo credit: Modestas Urbonas The weather was glorious this weekend in the Hudson Valley and we took full advantage. Our path eventually led to Beacon, New York, which has been transformed from a sleepy river town to Brooklyn-on–the-Hudson. In addition to a couple of interesting antique stores and a great little taqueria named after a Mexican wrestler (Tito Santana), we visited Audioccult, a sweet little new/old record shop in town. We found some nice records- mostly U.S. ‘60s and ‘70s rock and R&B. (Some were first pressings and in better than usual condition at very... Read More

Filed Under: Ephemera

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In Brief:

There Is No “Magic Bullet” in Hi-Fi

There Is No “Magic Bullet” in Hi-Fi No Magic Solutions I’ve spent some time on the audio chat fora over the years. Many popular threads these days are devoted to cheap improvements that can be made using audiophile “tweaks” or repurposed non-audiophile products. These can be applied to isolate gear, enhance the signals or connections or otherwise address some perceived problem that, once solved, offers to raise the level of music reproduction. It’s like a cheap solution to upgrade your system: from audiophile fuses, special wires (beyond simply having a high-quality interconnect, speaker wire or power cable) and other tweaks, to contact fluids and other things that you can attach to power sources, equipment, or place in the room (bowls, various harmonizers or active resonators, noise harvesters, etc.) This is apart from room treatment, which is sui generis; that is, every situation is … [Read More...]

Milt Ward Reissue-release date May 6, 2022

Milt Ward Reissue-release date May 6, 2022  Andreas Vingaard, of Frederiksberg Records, dropped me a note that the Milt Ward & Virgo Spectrum record about which much has been written here will be available on vinyl beginning on May 9, 2022. However, several promo emails today, Friday, May 6, 2022 say the record is available NOW via Bandcamp (see link below). The reissue was done with the participation of Milt Ward’s family and includes comprehensive notes in a booklet. Given the price of original pressings, this should be worthwhile even if not taken from the master tape. I plan to get a copy and we’ll do a shoot-out with my “OG” pressing. I’m sure some of you are willing to brook a little sonic compromise to get access to an otherwise very hard to find, expensive spiritual jazz rarity. At the time of this writing there is one copy on Discogs in NM condition for media for over … [Read More...]

Milt Ward Virgo Reissue Coming from Frederiksberg

Although I don't have all the details yet, I have learned that Frederiksberg Records, a small, eclectic label from New York, is in the process of reissuing the hard to find (and even harder to pay for) jazz obscurity, Milt Ward and Virgo Spectrum. You can find out more by keeping tabs on Frederiksberg's Bandcamp page, https://frederiksbergrecords.bandcamp.com   I'm told there is a bootleg out there so be careful. Frederiksberg is doing this project with the participation of the family of Milt Ward, which is to be applauded. Hopefully, this will give more access to a great jazz record at a reasonable price. The Roots album reissue from Frederiksberg (which is sold out on vinyl on the Frederiksberg Records bandcamp site) still appears to be available through some online retailers as a pre-order, so that's another one to jump on now if you can find it-- the original is extremely pricey and … [Read More...]

Clem Snide- Forever Just Beyond

Clem Snide- Forever Just Beyond With a name derived from a character in the same literary work as the band name so famously identified with the Walter Becker-Donald Fagen duo, Clem Snide has an extensive discography, typically cataloged as “alt country.” This latest release is the work of one of its founding members, Eef Barzelay, who was responsible for much of the songwriting and singing. According to his bio, Barzelay suffered some serious bumps in the road during the last decade, including a failing marriage and financial ruin. At the same time, he learned that Scott Avett was a fan and they found inspiration in each other, leading to this album- a collaboration of artistry where Avett and Barzelay share some writing credits and Avett produces. The result is a fresh, upbeat set of tunes that are appealing in their simplicity and refreshing in their sincerity. The band is first tier … [Read More...]

Muriel Grossmann- Reverence

Muriel Grossmann- Reverence Muriel Grossmann continues her quest for musical ascension on Reverence, which was released on vinyl in early December, 2019 on the RR Gems label as a 2 LP set. The compositions are Grossmann’s, and the band is much the same as the group of seasoned musicians with whom she has worked for some time (and detailed in the review of her Golden Rule), but for one notable exception: the addition of a keyboard player who brings that rich, woody Hammond B-3 sound to a series of compositions devoted to Africa. In some ways, Ms. Grossmann’s exploration of the roots of jazz deliberately eschews any superficial attempt to make African music. Instead, she draws inspiration from its influences, which are wide ranging and deep—you can hear rhythm and blues sounds mixed with more traditional African instrumentation and polyrhythms and come away with something that is both … [Read More...]

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