A bit of a rant

I wrote recently about joining the Jazz Heritage Society in order to plug some holes in my music collection as cheaply as possible. I succeeded nicely in picking up some classics such as Dave Brubeck's Time Out and Miles Davis' Milestones, plus a number of others, generally for around $5 a pop, which I consider reasonable. I have been finding, however, that these pre-internet organizations, especially the ones that have not kept up with the technology and have not established a worthwhile internet presence, really are hard to do business with. Some of them, like the BMG music club, have even had to go out of business. I think the JHS may be close to having to do the same very shortly. Here's why I think that.

First of all, the "printed" materials that came with my introductory shipment were right out of the stone age. You could almost smell the mimeograph solution on the letters. I hadn't seen anything as quaint since seventh grade. The "catalog" they sent was printed on rough, cheap newsprint. It was in color, after a fashion, but looks not unlike those "colorized" black and white movies.

Now, let's be clear: I joined the JHS just to get music cheap. And, I have succeeded in that, so far. But the other shortcomings I'm about to outline are, I think, inexcusable for an organization calling itself a "Heritage Society". First, going back to the internet discussion, I'm inundated, almost daily but easily twice weekly, with "Featured Selections" that I am required to respond to. Some selections that I have declined (in fact, I've declined every one so far), have even returned as featured selections again. Like my mom used to tell us kids when we were growing up, "No means no". I don't understand why the JHS doesn't get something as simple as that and can't make their website operate properly.

Next is the music. Take last week's shipment for example: Miles Davis' Complete In a Silent Way Sessions, and a 10-CD set of Chet Baker. The Miles set was just like the regularly available commercial set, chock full of pictures, information, liner notes, etc. The Chet Baker set, on the other hand, contained NO information about the recordings. None. Zilch. Zippo. Okay, sure, I got ten hours of music for about three bucks a CD, and these were also my first Chet Baker (and Gerry Mulligan) recordings, but, come on! Is it really asking too much to at least have a listing of the musicians playing on each recording? Maybe a blurb about when some of the bigger hits were recorded. I mean, really, isn't this a Jazz Heritage Society recording? What about the "heritage" part. That includes understanding the heritage of the recording, right? Just buying and listening to the music doesn't promote the heritage of jazz, or anything else for that matter.

It is going to be really, really hard to learn anything about the 200+ songs on that 10-CD set. I'm going to have to try, anyway.

My advice to readers is, go ahead and join the JHS for the cheap music, just be prepared to send lots of e-mails and fill in the blanks in your jazz education yourself.