"Vandermark lays an egg"?

Maybe not golden ones (verdict’s still out), but I’m thinking along the lines of palladium on the precious metals' value scale ;)

c'mon, derek, you did this when you got all the free america discs comped to you too. this is not writing. it's a press release thanking the company for sending it to you gratis. which does nothing for visitors looking for substance.

I want some free jazz too!Maybe a review after the single-digit-decade?

I think that this sort of release raises the same kinds of questions other monster multi-disc sets raise. So the V5 puts out a free jazz Merzbox, apparently at the urging of the label owner, who probably knows that this sort of landmark release will offer his label notoriety.
I'm somewhat opposed to this sort of bloat in release volume, I really can't see this being an interesting musical document to anyone other than incredibly hardcore V5 fans. Producing and consuming objects like this seems like more of a devotional act than a means of promoting or enjoying an artist's work. The double CD mentioned in the article sounds like a far better idea.
But, hey, I haven't heard "alchemia" yet, maybe it's only a coherent document in its full 12 hour glory...

"This is not writing."

Huh? That's a pretty perplexing gripe. Fwiw, I didn't intend this as a "press release"- I doubt Marek or Vandermark or anyone associated with the project is even aware of its existence (same with that *notorious* Free America post). It's meant more as a heads-up, a chance to vent some enthusiasm with some opinions/observations both musical & otherwise thrown in. Ye of the "opportunistic op-ed" ought to be able to appreciate that; the ruler you use to rap my knuckles lacking much of an edge for similar reasons ;) Nice of you to assume the "gratis" part too.

A more formal and critical review will hopefully be appearing over at Dusted soon, once I've had time to swim through the set in sum. How about offering your own take on the box instead of grousing ineffectually about my preliminary survey? I, for one, would like to read it.

Bill, I don’t get it, please explain.

Will, good points. Ideally I’d rather approach this box as I have say, Art Pepper’s Live at the Village Vanguard set or Bill Evans’ Last Waltz box; incrementally & with plenty of time for pauses, detours & digestion. That’s the chief appeal of these large concert compendiums for me, the convenience of being able to pull a single set or an entire night’s music from the shelf and listen to it on a whim, either within the context of the rest or out of it. That kind of listening is great for long commutes too, sort of the CIMP concept of a concert experience in your car or living room, on speakers or thru ear goggles (albeit a pared down facsimile of the real deal). Whether this V5 set will stack in the same league as those classic boxes mentioned above, I dunno. But the prospect of hear Vandermark’s songbook tweaked & tinkered with in a longitudinal workshop setting is an intriguing one to me.

It took me the better part of a decade to finish Cecil's 10(great beat,easy to dance to)-and speaking of decades(fifties,sixties,seventies,eighties...),what is this? The single-digit-decade.

I really can't see this being an interesting musical document to anyone other than incredibly hardcore V5 fans. Producing and consuming objects like this seems like more of a devotional act than a means of promoting or enjoying an artist's work.

I've never felt that box sets of any type were for anyone other than fans. I mean we're talking beyond Greatest Singles collections to box sets such as this one, or just those ones compiling every official recording in chronological order, etc. Just the price of these box sets prohibits casually interested people from choosing them as their method of entry, and few people thinking they want to check out this group they've heard of will think to start with a 12-disc box set of live recordings.

I think producing this box set is both a devotional act and a means of promoting and enjoying the music. I'm sure the label-runners are big fans of V5, box sets gain notoriety and collector's status therefore promoting the group and the labels involved, and let's face it there's a whole lot of weirdos out there who will THOROUGHLY ENJOY punishing themselves with 12 new V5 discs ;~)

Michael

>there's a whole lot of weirdos out there who will THOROUGHLY ENJOY punishing themselves with 12 new V5 discs

This is the part that baffles me. The idea of a super-hardcore Vandermark 5 fan taxes my imaginative powers.

The most excessive/exhaustive box I have is that 20-CD Miles at Montreux thing (and yeah, I got it for free). I've listened to all of it once or twice, and I have favorite discs I return to with reasonable frequency. Some of those 80s bands really had something - too bad it only rarely showed in the studio.

I think Cecil still wins, though, because he's got two 10-CD boxes. (One of which I'm likely to stuff into my iPod for my trip to Seattle this weekend - I've got a six-hour plane flight, so I can listen to a whole bunch of the Feel Trio, or Morton Feldman's String Quartet No. 2. Or just a whole bunch of death metal, like usual. But where's the fun in not taking advantage of semi-long-term confinement? Might as well go epic.)

i'm not a fanatic, but i have liked a lot of Vandermark's work; I've only loved parts of records, so it is intriguing to me to hear this whole nutso box set of a week's worth of live sets.

i've only given it one full listen, and over the course of a few days, but i can say, as might be expected, it gets less and less interesting. here's why, in my opinion:

Vandermark's compositions are often too similar in their dynamics. This becomes apparent when hearing so many of his songs successively.

The covers of 'free jazz classics" are not very inventive, Compare Ware's treatment of Rollins' "Freedon Suite" to V5's.

This is a well-rehearsed, very tight band, but they never sound loose. Compare with the Plugged Nickel box (totally unfair, yes, but every live box should be compared to this one); That great quintet sounds both tight and loose through out. You can hear the communication, small ideas developing into bigger ones, a variety of responses to what one person throws out, etc. The V5 box doesn't offer enough of what I want to hear in a live box--which is that creative spark, that thrill of discovery.

Might it be better in a two disc compilation? I think so.

one more thing, if you will:

a very useful thing to do when listening to The Plugged Nickel box is to listen with special attention paid to Miles' leadership. He employs an amazing range of techniques--some subtle, some not, some funny, some challenging. And he'll assert his leadership feel in different places in a song, and differently with each musician. And they'll respond differently too. Perhaps a musician can discuss this more intelligently, but I don't hear that sort of thing in the V5 box, but I have heard it in others, such as the Cecil Feel box that Phil mentioned.

Do forgive me for being a bit dense, but how can you be tight and loose at the same time?

dan, i guess what i mean is a band made up of superb musicians that know how to play together (tight) but aren't just going through the paces on stage, they're still experimenting and figuring stuff out, risking ideas (loose). The V5 didn't come off that way to me (enough of the time).

http://www.jazzcornertalk.com/speakeasy/showpost.php?p=7666&postcount=68

I still don’t completely agree with the reasoning that box sets are primarily the province of hardcore fans or completists. The prohibitive price part, I get. Who wants to plunk down the ducats on something that’s not going to yield commensurate returns?
But content is a whole other deal and I think it goes back to Bill’s point above. These collections usually aren’t designed/intended to be listened to straight through or even over a handful of sittings. I mean who really sits down & sets aside 12 straight hours for uninterrupted music; I’m willing to bet that for those who do controlled substances are somehow involved.

Boxes function more like mini-libraries that the owner can refer to back at his/her leisure in whatever personalized check-out format devised. The Monk Riverside box, for instance: it took me a good four or so years of casual listening to consume that one & I’m still going back to it & will continue to do so ‘til I’m in the ground. Those Fantasy and Mosaic boxes are pretty convenient that way in that you can pack a four-disc brick or two with you and have a workday’s worth of listening in highly portable form.

As usual personal taste is the principal determinant. For example, I probably wouldn’t spend much time with the Miles box Phil mentions, even if I did manage to score a copy for free or on the cheap, way too much dross in there by my reckoning.

And Adam’s tight-loose amalgam makes perfect sense to me, some of the best band’s derive their greatness from juggling just such a surface-seeming dichotomy.

"Do forgive me for being a bit dense, but how can you be tight and loose at the same time?"

dan - how did you get so cool...?

Lack of time, Tomas old pal, lack of time. In the light of Goilbab's exposé above, maybe Adam should pay royalties on the tight-loose analogy to Mr Tom Storer, who seems to have penned the concept in March 2003, apparently here in Paris. Still sounds daft to me, though.

I'd be happy to pay Tom Storer royalties, though when it was referred to here it was the first time I read it, actually. He put it better than I, but I doubt it was the first such definition.

Daft? You silly duck.

The problem with referring to something as simultaneously "tight" & "loose" is simply that it violates the usual injunction: don't mix your metaphors.

The Monk Riverside set is great, but it was not the initial release of that material, it was a compilation made two decades after the fact.

If you type "Derek Taylor" & "ducats" into google you get 21 hits, I note.

The Monk Riverside box, for instance: it took me a good four or so years of casual listening to consume that one

I would still place that in a realm beyond normal musical interest, as I doubt the everyday listener considers buying something it will take them four years to listen to. I see the point about Fantasy collections, etc. Maybe we could consider those perhaps like 'entry-level' box set, for the fan who is let's say an Enthusiast. Then there's more and more intense box sets that a more intended for fans of the rank Obsessive. And when looking at certain box sets you gotta decide whether you're ready to make that step up! Perhaps box sets should have ratings on them!

My overall point is that box sets involve some degree of fandom. They can offer convenience, too, but while I like the Misfits, I'm happy with my couple of albums. On the other hand my friend Jeremy loves the Misfits and found it absolutley necessary to by the box set (housed in a coffin). Often its the collector-appeal that makes the box set, which I think works particularly well in genres of music discussed often on Bagatellen.

I bought The Jam box set when I was 19 because I was getting heavily into them, knew I wanted every album, and the box set was a more economical choice than buying individual discs. But I figure many people, like my friend Jeremy, already have all the albums, and it's got to be the package, the booklet, and the rare extra tracks that stimulates the saliva glands.

I bought the Led Zeppelin Remasters box set (on cassette!), but I write that off to whatever they put in Southern water that makes boys automatically love Led Zepellin by their 13th birthday.

And I guess this counts as a box set: one of those Trojan 3-discs sets, Producers set, with Niney, Clancy Eccles, etc. It was dead cheap and I thought 'Wow all this dub for 10 quid!'). I have since compiled it down to one cdr that I rarely listen to.

Otherwise, I rarely have the spare cash to buy new cds, let alone box sets!

These collections usually aren’t designed/intended to be listened to straight through or even over a handful of sittings. I mean who really sits down & sets aside 12 straight hours for uninterrupted music

The Merzow box set became a marathon challenge like this. I remember seeing a listing in the Wire where a gallery was going to play every disc back to back with free admission all night/day.

M

[Derek] And with news out now of Bishop handing in his walking papers to be replaced by an incoming Fred Lonberg-Holm the music here may represent some of the last by the classic V5 line-up.

[Mike] Hmm, "classic V5 line-up"? That's a tough call, because I'd have to take Mars Williams over the new guy. I'm a big Vandermark fan, but sadly I haven't been able to follow his music as much as I'd like because of my other preoccupations. I've managed to pick up more than half of the V5 albums over the years and catch a few gigs, but sadly I'm not always on top of his stuff. Someday I will catch up! I've always thought of V5 as a group of excellent, but not extraordinary, musicians playing extraordinary compositions, with the exception of Vandermark himself, who I've heard a lot of extraordinary playing from. From that perspective the change in drummers didn't register very much on me. Everyone who's been in that band does a fine job of playing the tunes and the solos are frequently outstanding. The compositions are fresh, innovative, varied, and often simply kick ass, which is a quality not to be maligned in music, but besides the leader, the soloing and "looseness" (meaning controlled deviations from regularity in joint thematicism, etc) doesn't reach the religious heights of Tim Berne groups, Braxton Quartet, Coltrane Quartet, Masada, etc. I think I prefer more blurring of the boundary between heads and solos than I hear in V5, but I've never heard a V5 tune I didn't love because the heads are the best in the business and the solos are generally great, though sometimes kinda pedestrian. But anyway, Mars Williams was (is?) a bad-ass muther and his solos (note also early Brotzmann octet/tentet stuff) went deep, so for a classic lineup he gets my vote. Come to think of it, I had the pleasure of attending the very first V5 concert in history (at the Lunar Cabaret in Chicago, tiny place that was packed with people standing all the back to the door) and I remember at the time having very little familiarity with Vandermark's music, but being totally blown away by the clarity, propulsion, and thematic constrasts--I remember thinking "this style of writing is a new direction for jazz"--even though there was no drummer in that set because he was sick and couldn't do the gig. (After their set was a hot set by Witches and Devils, which also had Mars Williams and Vandermark blowing sweet passion--it was a killer Ayler tribute band with Hamid Drake that used to do some hits back in the day.)

The Vinny Golia Quintet has been making music in a similar vein and of similarly outstanding quality (better drumming and of course with the greatest guitarist in the world) for years (quite different lineups though) as V5, but sadly hasn't enjoyed similar exposure and success. It's tragic that their mind-blowing new double album (on Jazz Halo) doesn't even have any US distribution! Do whatever it takes to get it. Crazy world.

[Adam] c'mon, derek, you did this when you got all the free america discs comped to you too. this is not writing. it's a press release thanking the company for sending it to you gratis. which does nothing for visitors looking for substance.

[Mike] C'mon Adam, this is a mean-spirited remark. It was a blog post and the content seems very appropriate and worthwhile to me, a concise presentation of news of considerable interest with meaningful personal contextualization. That's obviously not a "press release". I was visiting the site and found substance in Derek's entry. If Derek intended to write a review or feature, it would've been under those categories, not the blog. We should be grateful for different registers of writing, not say ridiculous, haughty things like "this is not writing", which seems to be a brute imposition of arbitrary and contentious assumptions about what forms of discourse are valid.

[Will] I think that this sort of release raises the same kinds of questions other monster multi-disc sets raise. So the V5 puts out a free jazz Merzbox, apparently at the urging of the label owner, who probably knows that this sort of landmark release will offer his label notoriety.
I'm somewhat opposed to this sort of bloat in release volume, I really can't see this being an interesting musical document to anyone other than incredibly hardcore V5 fans. Producing and consuming objects like this seems like more of a devotional act than a means of promoting or enjoying an artist's work. The double CD mentioned in the article sounds like a far better idea.

[Mike] These remarks bother me. They are cynical, vacuous, and unproductive. Why should this "raise questions"? Why can't it just be an art object offered for sale to those who desire it? Is there no artist you'd gratefully welcome a monster box set from? I think it would sad if the answer was "no". If "yes", then why is your taste any better than dedicated V5 fans? Why shouldn't a variety of music be released to give listeners more choices about what they wish to invest their time and money in? What's wrong with earning notoriety by offering a meaningful service that a group of people will welcome? Obviously the label owner is expressing personal passion and love for this art. What's the problem?

Your position seems vacuous to me because the volume of music released has been absurdly beyond the scope of any individual listener for many years now. On neither practical nor ideological grounds can someone advance a "dilution of the marketplace" argument. Already people have to pay incalculable opportunity costs to listen to anything. More choices in the music recording marketplace helps democratize the business component of music and helps decentralize power and resources. In an ideal world every concert would be recorded and available for inexpensive purchase the next day by anyone in the world, and the selection of what music to listen to would be in the hands of listeners as a personal choice, not radically pre-empted by the undeniably arbitrary socio-economic conditions of the present system of music recording and distribution, which presents consumers with a tiny fraction of the recordings that exist in the world and wastes all kinds of effort in extra-musical preoccupations like marketing. By saying "bloat" you're insulting the taste and values of the people who will welcome and cherish these recordings. A large percentage of my personal music listening is in the form of CDRs of music that will probably never be publicly released, even if it's vastly more worthwhile than thousands of publicly released recordings. That is the reality of musical recordings as pure objects in themselves apart from their socio-economic context, at this point in time. I see great value in anything that bridges the arbitrary gap between private releases and public releases. Surely there is a small group of people who will have copies of these V5 recordings, such as the inner circle of people related to the concert promoter and local connoissuers and the musicians themselves. If they find value in their listening to these recordings, then other people may as well. There's no benefit to depriving these other people of such an experience. By the same logic, I fully support low-volume CDR labels.

You say "I can't really see this being an interesting musical document to anyone other than incredibly hardcore V5 fans.", but why should any release be interesting to anyone other than the tiny percentage of listeners who will take an interest in it? Why should a record producer cater to the opinions or interests of people who don't desire the music? Is there any rule written in the tablet of nature that musical recordings should only be produced and sold if they have appeal beyond "incredibly hardcore fans"? It seems like you're imposing all kinds of arbitrary standards on the marketplace for musical recordings. If you're not a big enough V5 fan to desire these recordings, then why not just ignore it? And if you are a devoted V5 fan, why not just celebrate the boxset's existence? These kinds of ideological generalizations about monster boxsets don't hold up to any scrutiny.

You say "producing and consuming objects like this seems like more of a devotional act than a means of promoting or enjoying an artist's work". What's wrong with devotional acts? Isn't any small label release a devotional act? Won't devoted fans enjoy the artist's work as a result of these recordings being offered? "promoting" presumes some kind of arbitrary criterion of value for the activity of producing and consuming musical recordings. Where is your implicit criterion justified?

You say "The double cd mentioned in the article seems like a far better idea". Better idea to who? Don't you think that serious V5 fans who want to study V5 music at an in-depth level would find the complete set a "better idea" than a double cd condensation? Why would your opinion be relevant at all to a transaction between V5, a record producer, and a group of serious V5 fans?

If Tim Berne released a 200-CD boxset tomorrow I'd buy it the very minute I had the cash and I'd be deeply grateful for the lack in my life it would erase. The simple and obvious fact is that there exists music in the world and there exist people who enjoy hearing it. When it comes to the music a person could enjoy, the more that's available the better. Remarks like Pitcher's above are just raining on someone's parade, pure negativity with no insight or justification.

Mike: for the record, derek and i have occasionally stuck it to each other, but we've managed to remain on good terms. he chided me here for the remark, and i followed his suggestion to post a few remarks of my own on the V5 box, which i did.

And i agree with you about the personal worth of big boxes, though even as a fellow Tim Berne admirer, 200 cds would finally put a pause in my purchasing urges. Don't give Berne any ideas!

The triple Bloodcount Unwound was simply not enough!!!! I need at least 20 more discs of that group and another 50 of the Taborn groups... Saw an incredible set last night of Berne, Tom Rainey (aka God), Michael Formanek (unbelievably great playing as usual--this man is a MONSTER), and Baikida Carroll. It was, I don't know, just wow. Okay, it's in bad taste for me to change topics in this thread. I'll save my Berne rambling for another occasion. But it's in my daily thoughts...

The problem with referring to something as simultaneously “tight” & “loose” is simply that it violates the ususal injunction: don’t mix your metaphors.

I violate that injunction all the time & am still standing, albeit somewhat wobbly.

The Monk Riverside set is great, but it was not the initial release of that material, it was a compilation made two decades after the fact.

Color me clueless or maybe I’m just missing the context for the quote, but I don’t grasp how this niggling distinction is relevant.

If you type “Derek Taylor” & “ducats” into google you get 21 hits, I note.

Too much free time on your hands, Nate? Maybe I can cajole you into funneling some of it toward some fresh content for Bags? ;)

On a side note, I really dig Mike's italicized method of quotation. And back on the subject of ducats: if the hit count cracks “50” I’m hoping Google will send some of those shiny, eminently spendable coins my way as remuneration.

[me] Remarks like Pitcher's above are just raining on someone's parade, pure negativity with no insight or justification.

[me again] Oops! That was Will, not "Pitcher"! Name mixup/typo, mea culpa.

If Tim Berne released a 200-CD boxset tomorrow I'd buy it the very minute I had the cash

There are similar boxsets for Bach. It seems to me that the problem is not so much buying them as getting them physically out of the shop and into your home.

I'll goilbab that anytime, baby

Mwanji, you know that you always can count on me to help, brother. But, well, anyway, two hundred...

Mr Parker-
First, thank you for taking the time to really respond to my comments on the V5 box set. I really enjoy this sort of engagement, prickly as it may at times be.
On that note, I do have to say that I think that you dramatically overstate my position, particularly in saying that “Remarks like [Will’]s above are just raining on someone's parade, pure negativity with no insight or justification”. I think that the closing line of my initial post, “But, hey, I haven't heard "alchemia" yet, maybe it's only a coherent document in its full 12 hour glory...” seems to belie your assertion that I’m a churning ball of bile.
I was taking general issue with the idea of heavy release schedules in general, of which I should have specified box sets as being only one part. I recall a comment from another thread on this website to the effect that often times an artist will release tons of records so as to have a weighty discography, which can come to confer “seriousness” on that artist by its sheer size. I’m not accusing the V5 of this, I’m just pointing out that this idea seems to have some currency.

“ Already people have to pay incalculable opportunity costs to listen to anything. More choices in the music recording marketplace helps democratize the business component of music and helps decentralize power and resource”
It seems to me that if you wanted to drop the barriers to entry into what you feel is important music, you would be more opposed to the idea of a box set than I am, after all, the $130.00 asking price is pretty steep. That sounds like a way in which my desire to hear this music might be “radically pre-empted by the undeniably arbitrary socio-economic conditions of the present system of music recording and distribution”. And like you, “I see great value in anything that bridges the arbitrary gap between private releases and public releases”. I think that the rise of the CD-r is great for democratization of music production, though there seems to be a bit of a problem with getting many CD-r releases properly distributed.

Beyond our agreements on how great it would be for everyone to have access to good music, I think that we disagree on the idea of the extent to which all productive moments an artist has should be made available to that artist’s fans. I think that I would rather hear what an artist feels are the absolute best moments of a specific creative period. This process of selection, in my opinion, forces the artist in question to have to think about their art at an arm’s length, to say “of this great week we had, these are the best two hours”. This enables you, the listener, to better understand what the artist is trying to do. This is why I thought that the double CD would be preferable (also, following your comments on democratizing access to this (probably totally great) music, this would make much more sense).
Frankly, I’m surprised that you didn’t comment on Derek’s comment about wheat and chaff (“One complete set per disc, it’s a bushel of aural wheat along with the chaff from five days of intensive, all-consuming music-making”), but then, “Why would your opinion be relevant at all to a transaction between V5, a record producer, and a group of serious V5 fans?”.

Further commentary from you along those lines, “It seems like you're imposing all kinds of arbitrary standards on the marketplace for musical recordings. If you're not a big enough V5 fan to desire these recordings, then why not just ignore it? And if you are a devoted V5 fan, why not just celebrate the boxset's existence?” If being a “big enough fan” of a release is a fundamental criterion for commenting on it, you must be pretty annoyed by the bulk of cultural criticism in the world. If everyone held to the rule that “if you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all”, not much would ever get done.
So, again, thanks for taking the time to comment on my comments, this exchange has gotten me thinking about how I consume music releases, as opposed to how I enjoy music. Good stuff.

I don't really think there are any financial "barriers to entry" for anyone reading this to listen to pretty much whatever they want these days for free, I'm sure this box will be shared within a week or two if it hasn't been already, so it's really the commercial object that's under discussion here, not the actual music.

How so Jon? My lead post was more of a curtain-raising summary on the tangibles of the box & the details of its release (I hope no one read it as any sort definitive take or “review”- how could it be?). But the ensuing discussion has fortunately touched on “the actual music” of both the set and the band. I'm up to disc four and so far the set’s been consistently enjoyable for the most part. “Camera”, one of the debut tunes, sounds rough in spots and there are a few others where collisions/lapses occur, but overall as two complete nights of music it holds up nicely.

There may not be “financial” barriers to entry, but there are (subjectively) ethical ones. If there’s such rampant “sharing” going on, how do you stay in business? Why should I buy Erstwhile product when I can grab the music thru file-swapping or via a willing friend with a burner? One reason -outside of the probable pangs of a guilty conscience- could be the total package itself, an appreciation for the amount of work and craft that went into it. I think a similar motivation is operating in the case of this box; it’s obvious from the contents, musical & peripheral, that the band and the label put a lot of effort into it.

"Come to think of it, I had the pleasure of attending the very first V5 concert in history (at the Lunar Cabaret in Chicago...) ... there was no drummer in that set because he was sick and couldn't do the gig."

I was there as well. Do you remember who that missing drummer was? One hint: his initials are H.D. (What a different band it would have been -- though one which could not have played as often.)

"(After their set was a hot set by Witches and Devils... a killer Ayler tribute band with Hamid Drake that used to do so me hits back in the day.)"

Actually, the drummer for Witches and Devils was Steve Hunt (who I just saw at Caffeine's annual gig -- really smokin'!).

Derek, the last thing the world needs is another back-and-forth on the ethics of file sharing. I'm not specifically advocating it in this case, I don't do it myself (I have too much music on CD to listen to and not enough time in the day, although sometimes when I buy serious duds, I wish I'd checked them out for free first).

but they're a part of our reality now. if someone wants to hear this box for free (and has computer access and a reasonable download speed), I'm sure they can. if someone wants to hear the four hour box I released last week for free, I'm quite sure they can do that also. am I thrilled about that? not especially, but it's reality.

Jon, agreed on all counts. I was just trying to point out that a large number of folks will be listening to this box via legit copies & a significant other contingent won’t be opting for the “free lunch” route for various reasons.

I’m still curious about how/if you see file sharing, CDRs, etc. affecting Erstwhile sales. Do you think it cuts substantially into your profits?

Jason, nice to hear that Caffeine is still gigging. I thought they had disbanded shortly after that oop OkkaDisk release.

"I’m still curious about how/if you see file sharing, CDRs, etc. affecting Erstwhile sales. Do you think it cuts substantially into your profits? "

no way to tell, really, too many variables. much like Dan's Berlin/Vienna comparison, it's a topic in and of itself.

one of the next pair of releases I'm working on now, Julien Ottavi/Dion Workman-misenlian, will have a Creative Commons copyright (creativecommons.org/about/licenses/) rather than a conventional one. this isn't something I know too much about yet, I'm learning about it now.

back to the V5...

"if someone wants to hear the four hour box I released last week for free, I'm quite sure they can do that also. am I thrilled about that? not especially, but it's reality."

Yes it s amazing how much you can ...actually even more than what you d look for on record stores ... although i dont do it myself i through friends get passed scary lists of ref ... plus you can get out of print, live, broadcasts etc

THOUGH using that and by records cause you know it ll pay for more to be produced are two different things ....

i can go to Bookshops AND librairies basically

best
n

Agreed, don't want to discuss the ethics of file-sharing etc but do want to point out that, for impoverished cultural workers like myself, broadband access here in the UK is still a monthly cost that I can't quite budget for.

For me there is actually a financial barrier to entry. Plus I simply don't like spending too much time in front of a computer screen. I prefer not to have to access music that way.

That said, I just recently noticed that Leo now offer a lot of their back catalogue as downloadable MP3s at $6.99 an album. What with the current exchange rate....

"Agreed, don't want to discuss the ethics of file-sharing "

indeed not that way ... i just wanted to mention that there is an ethic in some case and
if that has some sort of Public Library service
for anyway extremely few people looking for impossible things to find that s ALREADY something ... also i would pay just to find these documents that is no question if the price was reasonnable

but an ALBUM is something else to me still
and that question can also be adressed to normal CDs in the market (more where lays the problem i find )

final point for file share ......

best
n

Just about the same way a Book and an article in a newspaper are not the same thing and not the same use probably

it could be same with labels proposing DVDs with some hours of live music from their artists in case your interested and that would differ from AN ALBUM

what i find expensive and often unproper is the amount of live shows more or less well recorded sent out as albums on the market

best
n

If all of the jazz greats owned bright orange '75 Cadillacs, ken would have to go out and get one too.

it wouldn't make him into a jazz great though.

bless his funny little midwestern work ethic.

ww

I am posting because I am someone who has 'bought' the box. (Only because of some fortuitous auction action on a certain site.) For starters, the Polish label's presentation material, large booklet, etc. is quite good. Recording(s) have a certain 'bare-walls', small club aspect but still listenable. I'm still working my way through the entire set; never playing two discs in succession. At this juncture, I would take sides with previous postings about the drummer. For me,I find his timing is right on the money.