iTunes as a hazard to the preservation of jazz:
The digital music era should offer listeners more information about jazz, not less. The stakes are high. If jazz fragments into millions of digital files, future generations could be left with a maddening cultural jigsaw puzzle. This music could quickly become one of the mysterious art forms that is translated to the public by a small group of experts.
Same goes for Zappa, I would reckon…
Of course real jazz only comes on 78 RPM discs… except of course old discs varied in their playing speed before they were standardised to 78 RPM. Of course Freak Out was a real vinyl record – a c;lassic double album according to the wiki… except if you lived in the UK (or Europe?) where it was originally released as a single disc. George Harrison complained about the CD issue of Sgt Peppers – it sounded wrong to him. They eventually pinned it down to the fact that he had only ever heard the mono mix and the stereo CD was different. When I started buying records Mono LPs were cheaper than Stereo LPs – which would have been considered the right choice by Wayne Bremser?
If you download the music you can download the information….
http://www.vervemusicgroup.com/product.aspx?ob=prd&src=list&pid=9680
…is that a link to iTunes from the Verve site?
I stopped buying Zappa’s records sometime around the late 1970’s. I explained to someoone at the time that I used to buy Zappa records in anticipation of two sides (this was when you had to turn your records over!) of his genius but lately I bought them in the vague hope they might contain two minutes of his genius. At last, thanks to iTunes, I can just buy the two minutes and avoid all the iinane dross that he pumped out.
Thank you iTunes.