#^d 2014-09-08 #^h Music Week

Music: Current count 23775 [23744] rated (+31), 524 [523] unrated (+1).

Barely topped 30 records for an uneven week -- a couple days I did nothing, while others found me zipping through Bandcamp (mostly, but not only, Catalytic Sound) and Rhapsody. There is, after all, very little in the 2014 unrated queue -- at one point it dropped under 10 records, but two came in on Saturday and four more today so I'm up to 13. The good news, I suppose, is that what's left is relatively good: I reviewed eight actual CDs and came up with two A-, three B+(***), two B+(**), and one B+(*) -- well above the usual curve.

Rhapsody/Bandcamp also yielded two A- and eight B+(***), so I reckon this a pretty good week. At this point the Rhapsody Streamnotes draft file is overstuffed, so I'll try to get it ready to post tomorrow. Should be close to 100 records.

Recommended music links:

I started this section after Tatum moved "A Downloader's Diary" from my website to Odyshape, figuring it was all I could do to maintain a measure of continuity. Gubbels moved his "Listening Notes, Ultra-Brief" from his Tumbler blog over to Odyshape at the same time, and partly because he's more into obscure funk and jazz than Tatum, he became my favorite advance scout. A very large percentage of the better records I've found this year have come from Gubbels and Tatum, and I don't know how (or if) I'll be able to compensate for their loss.

Of course, they're not really gone. Gubbels has a paying job at Rhapsody and has been freelancing in Spin, and will be able to make more income out of his time, so he's basically moving up in the world. Tatum wants to focus more on the novel he's been working on for a while now, although he's also mentioned the possibility of continuing his "Hall of Records" project when the spirit moves him, and I could well imagine that reaching book length.

I don't know where that leaves Cam and Nicky at Odyshape, other than back to square one. A couple years back Tatum was trying to organize a group of writers to do some sort of webzine. We formed a mailing list and hashed over the name -- I have the domain name for Terminal Zone, after my 1977 venture with Don Malcolm, so that was the default -- but somehow the moment slipped by without issue. I had been posting Tatum's column, and posted some material from Cam Patterson, but it wasn't a good time when Cam offered more, so he wound up turning to Nicky and founding Odyshape. That wasn't my zine, but I took a certain pride in it even though my main contribution was negligence. It's a hard thing to do successfully, and evidently it's been hard for them to balance an aggressive publishing schedule off against all the other demands of modern life -- not least, maintaining an income that the zine couldn't possibly provide.

I wonder whether Odyshape might be looking up rather than down had Christgau gone through with his plan to publish Consumer Guide reviews there. That plan got shelved when Medium came through with an offer he couldn't refuse. (It's Twitter-like, so you'll need to use that link to "follow him" -- I think the accounts are separate but I don't recall just how they relate.) His debut there has been pushed back a couple times -- latest word I have is September 10 for an intro and reviews every Friday thereafter (so figure September 12). He's got about ten months to catch up on, so I don't expect many surprises for a while, but it will be good to hear from him again.

New records rated this week:

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries rated this week:

Old records rated this week:

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week: