Site Report: 7/17/06


Along with the primary, anonymous objectives of this website, there’s a tiny bit of narcissism in launching such a thing, what with the Web being sort of the ultimate vanity-publishing graffiti wall. That same self-consciousness now spurs me on to a brief report that no one needs, but that may answer a couple of questions for the curious.

The Jazz Shelf has been online for almost six months now. Response (thanks for the comments, everyone) has been positive, allowing for expected differences of opinion here and there. The most popular individual pages to date, not counting menus and sub-menus, are:

Genesis
Keith Jarrett solo
Andrew Hill
Chick Corea
Ornette Coleman
Coltrane on Impulse

Blakey, Hancock, Evans, and McLean are not far behind; then comes the rush of everything else. (Guess the Genesis page is a runaway favorite because it takes more than one viewing to read it all. I thought about six people would look at it.) Thanks to a couple of sites for generating some of the traffic:

Jazz Links
Keith Jarrett site

I might add a Links page someday, depending on if I can put together a worthwhile list. A couple of readers have made other suggestions, mainly regarding site navigation, but it depends on my time and energy as to what gets implemented down the road. Meanwhile, it’s as functional as it needs to be.

Not a single page is the same as when they were first made available back in February. Despite a couple of years’ worth of writing and editing, it’s not until you get everything in one place that you notice the repetition, the needless sub clauses, the repetition, the sentences that irk, and the repetition. The first week online was spent with me frantically editing almost everything, taking out words, clarifying the muddy bits, and abandoning the more hopeless strands of prose. (Writers might sympathize, and I’ve done numerous spot-edits since the Panic Week.) Anyway, I’ve got most everything whittled down to my grumbling satisfaction by now.

What’s next? There’s another Miles boxset to cover, then maybe some stragglers from my collection, then I’ve got some future reissues on the radar. Apart from those things, I have no idea what will be added. Why no albums from modern artists? The short answer is that my stash of modern jazzers is scattershot, and I haven’t had the inspiration yet to write about Brad Mehldau or whomever (even though I had five of his CDs at one point). That might change, but first, I wanted to make sure I got the classics down, and if most of my faves are from the past, what can I say?

Final random note: I spun Joe Henderson’s In Japan yesterday and was knocked out (again) by how good it is. All JH fans who don’t have it must enjoy the ride. Happy listening, folks.


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