Ellington on EMusic

Unfortunately I am out of credits for the month, so I haven't actually purchased this two-disc Ellington set yet, but that needn't stop you. 100 tracks for $4.40--including Peckin', which is a favorite around our house--means you should probably snag it before somebody at EMusic notices the typo.

EMusic bargain on Benny Goodman

Holy Cow! You can get Benny Goodman: 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert Plus 1944-47 Small Group And Big Band Masterpieces, which contains over 3 1/2 hours of music (65 tracks), for 12 credits. This works out to about $7.00 total or $0.11 per track (though costs may differ depending on your EMusic plan). The sound quality isn't ideal, but I'd say that most of the tracks are still playable, especially the small group recordings.

Music via the interwebs, Part 2: One more thought on EMusic

One more thought about EMusic, specifically using EMusic to build a music collection for DJing. This is an avuncular scolding for would-be DJs out there, maybe with a dash of "do what I say, not what I do" thrown in.

So as I said in my earlier post, EMusic is a good way to ramp up a collection if you are just starting out or looking to see what the view is like from behind the DJ table. And it's also a good way to branch out and discover new music.

BUT....

I think it is a bad idea to be an exclusively EMusic DJ, especially if you are using the (less than stellar) social recommendation aspects of EMusic. If you do, you're going to end up with exactly the same collection as all the other DJs that use it and we would all start to sound homogeneous and boring. It's lesson one of Web 2.0: crowd-sourcing can easily breed group-think.

On its own, EMusic is not a very good tool for learning about music. Sure it is a source for music, but without other resources to learn about musicians and jazz, it's not a good way to actually learn. You can easily blow hours browsing around at random, listening to hundreds of 20 second clips, and not gain anything by it. But if you have some other way of learning about musicians, bands, composers, jazz culture, that sort of thing, then EMusic is a useful tool to have access to.

What are those other ways of learning? Friends, books, maybe the Internet (Swing DJs, Pandora), and of course cd/LP liner notes.

Music via the interwebs, Part 2: EMusic

Part two of my review of various online music sources, this one focused on EMusic. EMusic is a different sort of scheme than iTunes or Amazon, in that it is a flat-rate subscription service. The basic plan is $12 per month for 30 downloads, which works out to 40 cents per track if you use them all. The credits are use-em-or-lose-em, so you do have to poke around on the site every month if you actually want to get your money's worth.

Before I get to my comments, two shameless plugs:
1. If you are an EMusic member and a dj, let me know your user name! I'd like to be EMusic "friends" with you. Post a comment or email me. Here's my profile page, from which you can friend me.
2. If you are considering joining EMusic, just hold on a second. They've got an incentive scheme set up so that if I invite you to join, they give us both a bunch of free tracks. So email me if you are considering joining, and I'll send you an invite, and then we'll have extra tracks to play with. And I'll be your "friend."

Okay so that was me pimping for EMusic. Forgive me--read on, and I will give you an honest critique to make up for it.

Starting with what makes EMusic attractive. First and most obviously, the price is right. On a single track per download basis, it's less than half the price of iTunes. Of course, if you download a Best of Oscar Peterson album, you might blow your monthly allowance of tracks on a single album, which you could get for $10 from iTunes or probably less from Amazon. The price advantage comes if you want to poke around and grab a few tracks from an album here, one from that big old compilation, and a few more from somewhere else. If you are looking to build up your collection of danceable music, this is a good approach.

Second advantage: EMusic has an ever-growing collection of interesting music, lots of independent labels, and lots and lots of jazz and blues. I have yet to find anything that wasn't also on iTunes or Amazon, but considering that those services of gigantic international retailers, that's a bit of an unfair comparison--relative newbie EMusic really isn't doing too bad. Several times I have pissed off local djs by revealing that I've grabbed tracks off EMusic that they spent years and years looking for in record shops--stuff that's the prize of their collections. (Two examples: Clora Bryant, ...Gal with a Horn and many of the Definitive Black & Blue Sessions are on EMusic.)

But, EMusic is far from perfect. I would rank the most important drawback as the quality of the digital files you get when you download a track. Some are perfectly good quality, stuff that is fine to spin at a dance on a nice sound system. Other albums are really lacking, so you do have to be careful.

The other drawbacks to EMusic really have to do with the design of the website, so they are aspects of the service that could be improved, if EMusic has the programming talent to do so. Biggest complaint here is that the search interface is PATHETIC. There's no way to do advanced searches, so if you are browsing a particular artist and want to find a specific track, you have to browse through ALL of their albums. Hopefully EMusic is embarrassed by its lack of a respectable search feature, and is working as hard as it can to improve it. If not, shame on you EMusic, shame.

Along with the search interface, EMusic's social recommendation system leaves a lot to be desired. It's impossible to search for your friends (which is why y'all need to tell me your user names), you can't un-friend other users, and you have zero control over your "neighbors"--ostensibly the users whose download patterns are most similar to yours. C'mon, EMusic. Get with it.

As long as I'm griping, here's one graphic design suggestion (you listening, EMusic?): get rid of the pop-up album reviews. Put the full review somewhere on the page, so that I can read the whole thing, or go back and forth between reading the review and previewing the tracks. Thanks, EMusic ;). Also, it would be nice if the EMusic download manager had the option of loading your music directly into iTunes. The Amazon mp3 download manager does this--it couldn't be too hard to add that little feature, and it would save the trouble of having to copy the files from one folder to another, then delete the originals.

Fizz setlist 9/8/2008

This set ran from about 9:00 to 11:10 p.m. or so on 9/8/2008. I got quite a few of compliments on it. Tessa, who runs Fizz, said, "You played a lot of complex music, but it kept people on the floor." What did you think? Leave a comment if you were there.

I made use of some new eMusic finds in this set (fans of Hey Mr. Jesse will recognize a few tracks). I tried to balance that out as much as possible by using very familiar songs, but I think I may have still played too much new music for one night. On the whole the set was a bit scatter-brained, jumping around stylistically (you'll see that in some of the transitions). The flip-side of that is that I accomplished one of the things I always try to do as a DJ, which is to play a wide variety of sounds, styles, and tempos.

1. Dipsy Doodle - Larry Clinton & His Orchestra - G.I. Jukebox, Original Hits from the Swing Era - 3:03
   (At the start there was only one person there besides me. Fizz can be really unpredictable in that respect. I played a few random tracks from my collection.)
   
2. Mackie Messer - 8 To The Bar - Swingin It - 4:17
3. That Ain't Right - Fats Waller - Last Testament: His Final Recordings 9-23-43 - 2:59
   (I love this song, but I don't know if I would spin it at a dance. I figured I would test it out on an empty room. Three more people arrive.)
   
4. Sophisticated Swing - Engelbert Wröbel's Swing Society - Sophisticated Swing - 3:46
5. My Blue Heaven - Stuff Smith Quartet - Swingin' Stuff - 3:46
   (There's a few people sitting at the tables, and they dance during the next song.)
   
6. It's You Who Taught It To Me - Fats Waller - The Unique Mr. Waller - 2:42
7. I'm Coming Virginia - Artie Shaw - Artie Shaw, King Of The Clarinet - 2:27
   (I could have skipped that last one. The next two pull people away from the tables to start dancing in earnest.)
   
8. Wake Up Neesie - Kermit Ruffins - Big Easy - 5:50
9. Don't You Miss Your Baby - Jimmy Witherspoon - Jimmy Witherspoon & Panama Francis' Savoy Sultans - 3:55
   
10. One 0'clock Jump - Oscar Peterson - Oscar Peterson Plays Count Basie - 5:52
    (The OP is a bit too chill for the moment (also on the long side)--I'm afraid I'm losing people to their drinks again. Also, more people are flowing in at this point, so I would rather have an up-beat vibe. The next song definitely works for that.)
    
11. Jambalaya Strut - Dr. Michael White - Dancing In The Sky - 3:46
    (I thought this transition would work really well, but it flopped. Listening to it again, I don't really know what I was thinking.)
    
12. All Of Me - Della Reese - Cocktail Classics - 2:01
    (To make up for it, pull out an old war-horse. The next seven songs are a steady build that works really well.)
    
13. All Right, Okay, You Win - Count Basie - Count Basie at Newport - 2:45
14. Shout, Sister, Shout! - Sister Rosetta Tharpe - The Gospel of the Blues - 2:41
    (My wife loves Shout Sister Shout, I just learned.)
    
15. Loose Wig - Lionel Hampton - Lionel Hampton Story 2: Flying Home - 3:04
16. Savoy - Lucky Millinder - An Anthology Of Big Band Swing 1930-1955 - 3:04
    (People seemed to dig the last track, which surprised me because in the past it has seemed to thin out the floor. I think to myself, okay should I relax the tempo a little after this one? Naahh...)
    
17. Thursday Evening Swing - Cats & The Fiddle - We Cats Will Swing For You - 2:28
18. I Love Jazz - Louis Armstrong - Louis Armstrong - 4:39
    (I Love Jazz has the floor packed. The next song is a peak, at 185 bpm. It seemed to thin out the floor.)
    
19. Flying Home - Charlie Barnet & His Orchestra - The Fabulous Swing Collection - 2:53
    (In retrospect, I might have been able to push the tempo for one song further.)
    
20. Hoodle-Addle - Ray McKinley Orchestra - You Came A Long Way From St. Louis - 3:21
    (The next three are a little set of nice, groovy numbers, which I think went over well.)
    
21. Bye Bye Baby, Bye Bye - Barbara Morrison - Johnny Otis Presents Barbara Morrison - 3:16
22. Country Man - Carrie Smith - When You're Down and Out - 3:46
23. Like It Is - Erroll Garner - That's My Kick & Gemini - 2:44
24. Smack Dab In The Middle - The Deep River Boys - London Harmony - 2:59
    (During Smack Dab I decide I want to play Honeysuckle Rose, which has a very different feel to it. I thought I transitioned well: male group vocal to male group vocal featuring a Stuff Smith violin solo....)
    
25. On the Sunny Side of the Street - Dizzy Gillespie - The Champ - 3:09
    (...and on to another tune that features a prominent violin.)
    
26. Honeysuckle Rose - Twin Cities Hot Club - Twin Cities Hot Club - 4:47
    (I'm regretting playing that Stuff Smith version of My Blue Heaven earlier. It would have been good to play here instead. I don't like the transition to the next song very much--it doesn't make sense.)
    
27. It Don't Mean A Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing - Cootie Williams - Do Nothing 'Till You Hear From Me - 3:45
    (For the next track, I was looking for this groovy Ellington version of Harlem Airshaft, but I couldn't find it. I pull out The Minor Goes Muggin' instead, which kind of kills the floor because it's so frantic.)
    
28. The Minor Goes Muggin' - Duke Ellington - The Complete RCA Victor Mid-Forties Recordings - 3:00
    (Since the floor has thinned, I try to pull everyone back on with a drastic drop in tempo (from 180 to 125) and a change in style.)
    
29. I Don't Care Who Knows - Catherine Russell - Sentimental Streak - 3:18
30. Shake That Thing - Wynonie Harris - Risque Blues - It Ain't the Meat - 2:17
31. Who Walks In When I Walk Out? with Ella Fitzgerald - Louis Armstrong - The Wonderful Duets - 2:21
32. At Long Last Love - Bill Henderson - Bill Henderson With the Oscar Peterson Trio - 2:30
    (The next song is slow, about 100 bpm, and long but has great, really unique energy. I knew a the start of the night that I wanted to feature it, and I figured now was a good time--just before 11 o'clock. The floor was full for it.)
    
33. Song With No Words - Asylum Street Spankers - Strawberry - 5:43
    (The next song was a good transition. A friend of mine's favorite.)
    
34. Everybody Loves My Baby - Sippie Wallace - Sippie - 3:11
    (I didn't know if it would work to throw the next one in there, but I figured I could experiment a little bit at the very end of my set. The previous song is 145, the next is 215, but has a relaxed feel.)
    
35. Forty Days & Forty Nights - The Blue Vipers of Brooklyn - Forty Days and Forty Nights - 2:51
36. Tutti Frutti - Slim Gaillard - 1938-46 - 2:38
    (The previous song and the next song are pretty chill. In retrospect, I should have probably picked punchier stuff because this time of night (just after 11 p.m.) is a threshold for some people--do I stay or do I leave now?)
    
37. All That Meat And No Potatoes - Fats Waller - The Unique Mr. Waller - 2:47
    (A guaranteed crowd-pleaser to end the set.)
    
38. Blues My Naughty Sweetie Gives To Me - Sidney Bechet - The Fabulous Sidney Bechet - 5:43