Suspicious Activity?

The Bad Plus | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (August 17, 2011)
• Original Release Date: 2005
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Columbia
• ASIN: B000CDSS9A
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (39 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #27,367 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars CD contains DRM software that opens your system to viruses, November 12, 2005

By 

Phillip Roncoroni "goodcowfilms.com" (Manhattan, New York) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

As many people may know by now, Sony was recently caught with egg on their face when a security specialist found out that a recently purchased CD (Van Zant: Get Right With The Man) from Sony music not only installed DRM software (digital rights management, to limit and outright prevent copying music to certain devices), but it did so in such a sneaky way that it hid itself entirely from Windows, and opened the system up to security issues such as viruses.

This CD has the same copyright protection, called XCP. When installed, Sony hijacks your computer and installs custom software which:

1) Hides itself entirely from Windows by installing as a rootkit

2) Hides itself in such a manner that any files begining with $sys$ are also hidden. For example, if you install the XCP copy protection software on your machine, and rename "document.doc" to "$sys$document.doc" it then becomes invivisble to you forever.

3) Installs its own custom CD-Rom drivers to hijack your system. It also sneakily names these drivers "Plug and Play Device Manager" to seem as if it's a part of Windows. Trying to delete these drivers manually will disable your CD-Rom drive entirely.

4) Offers no uninstall option until you manually contact Sony

As of my writing this review, Sony has "apologized" for this incident, and claims they will "re-evaluate" this copyright protection software on their CDs in the future.

In the meantime, a virus is currently running wild, which names itself begining with $sys$ in an attempt to hide from the user and virus scanners.

Several class action lawsuits are also pending against Sony right now.

In summary, as you can tell from above, Sony's actions here are absolutely horrible. This is your music. You purchased it, and they should not have any right to dictate how you can use it, let alone install software which compromises your system security.

This is one of the CDs with Sony's XCP copyright protection software on it, and as a result, you should not buy it to send a message to Sony that this will NOT be tolerated in the future.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A few words about The Bad Plus, April 10, 2006

By 

Sor_Fingers (Boulder, CO USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Suspicious Activity? (Audio CD)

I read some of the reviews before I bought this album and was prepared for something not really as good, but as a completist and huge fan, I decided that I had to have it. I was actually delighted to find something not only much better than what I expected, but just shy of on par with the other two albums in The Bad Plus discography.

I know many people have their reservations about these guys. Many write them off simply because "it's not jazz." I can say that I agree with them: The Bad Plus, and this album in particular is not really jazz. What I don't agree with is when people give the album a bad review because it's not jazz. I, for one, like a lot of music that isn't jazz and happen to know a large assortment of other jazz fans that have appreciation for music that isn't jazz. What I have to say about The Bad Plus is that they are what they are: interesting and quite good music. I believe it was Duke Ellington that said "There are two types of music in this world, good music and bad music. I like the good music." Whether that be jazz, classical, rock, bluegrass or Norwegian death metal I'll listen to it as long as it is good. God forbid musicians to try to do something unique and different.

Now, a little more about the album. I can first go about praising Iverson, Anderson and King for their amazing musicianship. David King's drumming is energetic, creative, complimentary and never distracting. He provides a firm groove and all kinds of color on the album. King also writes what I believe to be the group's best tunes. Reid Anderson's bass playing is also quite stellar. He is constantly interacting with the other two musicians, stirring creativity and adding creative interjections when appropriate to add to the musical palate. The stand out musician in this trio however is of course, pianist Ethan Iverson. He has excellent improvisational ability, stunning right hand/left hand independence, technical ability beyond belief and is bursting at the seams with creativity. The group works as a unit and are constantly in conversation with each other whether they are improvising as a soloist or collectively. The jazz cat with attitude persona is worn well by them all and they make some really exciting music.

Suspicious Activity? is loaded with lots of good material. The album is beautifully bookended with two great ballads ("Prehensile Dream" and "Forces" both by Anderson). David King's composistions like I said stand out above the others. Both "Anthem for the Earnest" and "The Empire Strikes Backwards" are full of energy and quite catchy. Ethan Iverson's two composistions, "Let Our Garden Grow" and "O.G. (Original Gentelman)" are far out in terms of traditional melody and harmony are concerned, but still make sense to the listener. "O.G. (Original Gentelman)" even swings a bit, which is rare for The Bad Plus. The album loses a little bit of momentum in the middle with "Knows the Difference", "Lost of Love" and "Rhinoceros is My Profession" which merely don't stand out as opposed to being wasted CD space. The disc billows at a massive climax on the cover of Chariots of Fire which just steals the show. In fact, this album really could have used more brilliant covers in the Bad Plus tradition and a little less original material.

The other thing that makes this album dwindle a little is the production. One of the most amazing things about The Bad Plus's previous two albums is the absence of no editing or splicing or overdubbing (with the exception of two cuts off of "Give", 1 instance of splicing and 1 wrong note fix). In fact, less than half of the tracks on "Suspicious Activity?" are edit free. The trio used a lot more overdubbing which sort of destroys the acoustic jazz trio persona. Iverson gets his fingers working on harmoniums and celestes even, which are albeit cool sounds but don't really work for their setup.

I regard "Suspicious Activity?" to be not suberb like the groups other two studio releases, but is quite strong. I would certainly not call it their best, but I see it as legitimate, interesting and well done. The minor details I mentioned above are small flaws which are part of a really well done release from the midwestern trio.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Root Kit!, November 9, 2005

By 

Puck U. Suny (Austin, TX) - See all my reviews

I really liked this album and love the Bad Plus but now I've had to completely reinstall the operating system to get rid of the root kit. I will never, ever buy a copy protected album again.