William Parker's New York festival pays dividends for record buyers everywhere
by Tom Hull
This table provides a working guide to how the JCG is shaping up. This does not include anything moved to bk-flush: these include items relegated to Surplus, reviewed in Recycled Goods, or just passed over. Entries in black are written, gray graded but not written, red ungraded but with prospect notes (all these are at the bottom of their approximate grade levels, alphabetized). A-list, B-list and Duds are alphabetical; HM lists are ranked, with breaks for three-two-one stars.
| Picks |
|
| A |
|
| HM [***] |
|
| HM [**] |
|
| HM [*] | |
| B | |
| Duds |
|
Album count: 42; Word count: 1671 (graded 24: 1277; additional 18: 394).
Note: Previous column totals by section:
JCG 17 2 13 17 3 1597 JCG 16 2 11 11 3 1360 JCG 15 2 11 15 4 1578 JCG 14 2 11 14 4 1504 JCG 13 2 11 16 4 1528 JCG 12 2 11 16 4 1553 JCG 11 2 10 17 3 1507 JCG 10 2 9 16 4 1607 JCG 9 2 11 16 3 1549 JCG 8 2 9 18 4 1575 JCG 7 2 10 12 5 1660 JCG 6 2 13 12 3 JCG 5 2 12 16 4 JCG 4 2 10 15 5 JCG 3 2 12 10 5 JCG 2 2 10 12 7 JCG 1 2 9 12 4
I try to write up an informal note on every jazz record I hear the first (or sometimes second) time I play it. Those notes are collected over the course of a week, then posted in the blog. They are also collected here.
The surplus file collects final notes when I decide that I cannot realistically keep a record under active consideration for the Jazz Consumer Guide. These notes are mostly written at the end of a JCG cycle and posted to the blog when the column is printed. In effect, they are the extended copy to the column. There are various reasons for this. For especially good records, it is often because Francis Davis or someone else has already reviewed it and my two cents would be redundant. For old music it is often because I wrote something in Recycled Goods and figure that was enough. Sometimes good records have just gotten old. Most of the time the records aren't all that interesting anyway. I can handle 25-30 records per column. It just doesn't make sense for me to keep more than 60-80 graded records in the active list at the start of a new cycle. In many cases, I decide the prospecting notes or Recycled Goods review suffices, so note that in the file.
Working on the following (both new and old). When done they will go to the print or done or flush file. When the column is published, the done entries will be dumped into notebook.