5.0 out of 5 stars
more information, please, December 6, 2010
This review is from: The Hindsley Legacy (Audio CD)
5 stars on the material - classic concert band music from a legendary conductor and arranger, Mark Hindsley. I was fortunate enough to meet Dr. Hindsley and be part of a concert he guest-conducted at the University of Illinois.
However...
When were these recordings made? Where were these recordings made? How were these recordings made?
These are questions that digital stores like Amazon and iTunes rarely, if ever, include. A date is shown above as November 9, 1999 with the legendary Mark Hindsley conducting. Yet Hindsley died October 1, 1999 so this would be impossible.
Pardon my rant, but this is important for the future of digital music stores: Collectors of this and other genres of music would love to know more information about the recordings. I contacted Mark Custom Recordings to see if they knew more, such as the actual dates of the recordings, where they were recorded (Krannert? Smith Hall?), what type of equipment the recordings were made on, and who was playing on them.
Remember when "albums" used to list all the personnel that played on it? I have 12 albums from the University of Illinois and every member of the concert band is listed, as is a large picture of the ensemble and conductor, plus notes about the music. Ah, those were the days, when sellers cared.
Someday, hopefully, Amazon and iTunes will have full scans of liner notes and photographs (currently Amazon allows "customer images" to be uploaded, but many are blurry and unreadable). Until then, the important information that makes recordings like these even more personal will be lost.
Related example: from Amazon's web page for Miles Davis' Kind Of Blue (Original Recording Reissued):
"Audio CD March 1997"
"Original Release Date: 2000"
and below that "Release Date: 7-SEP-1999"
Wha? How could the original release date come after the cd? Amazon has 3 conflicting dates for a recording that was made in 1958! They took the time to print those, why not take the time to proofread them?
Instead of simple explanation of dates of recordings, a consumer has to go through "customer reviews" to get more info - all the while sifting through opinions of, in the case of Kind Of Blue, 731 customers.
My point: If Amazon won't take the time to print the information for a popular-selling jazz cd by Miles Davis, they sure aren't going to take the time to do it for a lesser-known, but important-in-his-field legend like Dr. Mark Hindsley. I wish they would.
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