#^d 2014-11-10 #^h Music Week

Music: Current count 23996 [23966] rated (+30), 531 [540] unrated (-9).

Thought the odds I might cross the 24000 rated level this week were pretty good, but despite a fairly productive week I fell a bit short. Next week for sure. Probably not tonight. Most likely tomorrow. Just a number, and in some ways a rather low one. I recall talking to John Rockwell back in the 1970s when he had twenty-some thousand LPs in his collection. If he only had the pedestrian habit of keeping lists and jotting down grades, he could have well over 100,000 by now. I only started doing this as an aide de memoire in the 1990s, when I had about 3000 LPs and less than a thousand CDs. However, as so often happens when you start to measure something, it takes on a life of its own. I doubt Cap Anson had any clue that he had 3000 hits, nor that Sam Crawford realized he retired just short (2961). Al Kaline was conscious enough of his stats that he hung on to get 3007 hits, but I remember him saying that had he realized that 400 home runs would have put him into one of those exclusive clubs, he would have hit more. (He wound up with 399.)

Didn't get any new records this past week -- the three listed below came today, and two of those have 2015 release dates. I've had to open 2015 files, not that there is anything interesting in them yet. The 2014 metafile is currently up to 2615 records (807 rated or owned). I worked a little on it last week, mostly trying to fill in some missing jazz records -- that led me to Smoke Sessions, a generally good mainstream label (if that's your bag).

The Jinx Lennon records are on Bandcamp. Liam Smith is a fan, and he turned Robert Christgau onto them, resulting in last week's Expert Witness. I (more or less) agree, although I'll add that I didn't find Lennon's outrage either comforting or cathartic. I just find so much of what's happening today to be sad and pathetic -- not least because it wouldn't take much intelligence, sensitivity, and good will to come up with very different outcomes.

I didn't tweet about the Jinx Lennon albums, mostly because my own longer write-ups aren't very coherent. Ideally, I'd take another run at the writing (if not the albums) before Rhapsody Streamnotes posts (probably next week rather than this, although I currently have 56 reviews in the draft file).

New records rated this week:

Old records rated this week:

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week: