Vinyl Me Please Anthology

To be fair, the CD cover that is listed is way better than the original generic late 70’s cover that was on a bunch of those unreleased Blue Notes.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure Music Matters changed Shorter's Soothsayer and Grant Green's Solid covers from their original BN Classic 70s covers to covers that were stylistically in line with the BN covers of the 60s, so I'm guessing something similar happened here. Tbh, I find the missing track more concerning.
 
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How does everyone feel about the people who tend to post quite a lot of pictures of jazz albums without any actual content about them on the FB group? I'm personally torn on it. I belong to a FB group called Jazz Vinyl Lovers run by Ken Micallef (who writes for various places such as Stereophile and the like, and has a great Youtube channel) where the only real objective is posting jazz vinyl album covers, but it tends to be full of great people who add info to their posts and create interesting discussion. So, in that case I have to say I'm in favor of it. On the Anthology FB group, I'm not sure it provides a good function most of the time, but it's not something I feel too strongly about. What made me actually post about it now is that I confirmed something I've been suspecting for a long time: that there is one user who frequently posts CD covers that he intentionally "disguises" so that it isn't readily apparent that's what they are. I've taken note of his posts that often seem to be a CD booklet taken out of the jewel case and cropped closely so that the telltale edges of the booklet are cut off, allowing it to be mistaken for possibly a vinyl album cover. Does this cross the line? Is this just very odd behavior? Why would someone frequently post CD covers on a FB group that is ostensibly a journey of learning about jazz and Blue Note in particular? What is the point?
I hate it, and this is pretty much why I only look at the FB page once a week. Everytime there is a gear, fresh grab or now spinning post I have to grit my teeth and fight the urge to post "I am here only for the music, please take your pictures to an more appropriate forum"

The next anthology series needs to have amazing/rare music because VMP has added nothing to the experience. 2/3 of the way through and a couple of pointless podcasts and a couple of video AMAs, neither of which has added to my understanding of Hard Bop compared to what @seeirwin put together. Sorry, vent over.
 
I don't like it. I'm considering leaving the FB group b/c of too many notifications. It's silly. I just want the music and this forum.
I hate it. Those "What's Spinning" post just clog my FB feed. I wish someone from VMP had actually moderated the group. Or they had created a p/w protected section of the old forums so we could have a few different sections so people who like the masturbatory What's Spinning / "I love this album" posts could have a place for themselves.

Fwiw, I reported a couple people who just spam What's Spinning pics as Spam and then blocked them. It has made the experience tolerable. I have not found the FB group to be added value. YMMV.
For me most of the FB group is just background noise. Some people's behavior can be annoying (posting photos of albums that have nothing to do with BN or the artists in the box). The second podcast was lacking in much that was interesting. There was no real dept in their conversation about the albums. Nothing has lived up to their, "Student of Jazz" billing except what Sean Irwin has done. I have to listen to that video he did on Horace again just to get a grasp on things. There should be more if this type of content.

I didn't watch the Don Was AMA, but the problem with AMAs is that people don't know how to ask interesting questions. You have to sit through a lot of basic fan boy/girl questions.

The music and package is great so far. I'd like to get my hands on the book that comes with it.
Glad to know it's not just me. I really don't think reporting them is going to help. The rules don't disallow them explicitly, although I'd personally view them as spam I think VMP wouldn't because they just like that people are posting shit and technically it's posts about jazz. The real reason I think it won't do much good is because they aren't moderating the page well at all. There were two posts from a guy selling Music Matters albums that didn't get taken down even though it is against the rules explicitly and was reported.
 
I hate it, and this is pretty much why I only look at the FB page once a week. Everytime there is a gear, fresh grab or now spinning post I have to grit my teeth and fight the urge to post "I am here only for the music, please take your pictures to an more appropriate forum"

The next anthology series needs to have amazing/rare music because VMP has added nothing to the experience. 2/3 of the way through and a couple of pointless podcasts and a couple of video AMAs, neither of which has added to my understanding of Hard Bop compared to what @seeirwin put together. Sorry, vent over.
100%
I didn't even think about the "I'm here for the music" angle. The guy who I am talking about is probably the biggest offender of this type and he and the second biggest album cover poster are two people who were vocally against anyone talking about the Dexter Gordon album cover mistake. If only we could post a Maury meme under their posts: "You claimed to be only about the music... You're constant spamming of album covers shows that to be a lie!" 😄
 
How does everyone feel about the people who tend to post quite a lot of pictures of jazz albums without any actual content about them on the FB group? I'm personally torn on it. I belong to a FB group called Jazz Vinyl Lovers run by Ken Micallef (who writes for various places such as Stereophile and the like, and has a great Youtube channel) where the only real objective is posting jazz vinyl album covers, but it tends to be full of great people who add info to their posts and create interesting discussion. So, in that case I have to say I'm in favor of it. On the Anthology FB group, I'm not sure it provides a good function most of the time, but it's not something I feel too strongly about. What made me actually post about it now is that I confirmed something I've been suspecting for a long time: that there is one user who frequently posts CD covers that he intentionally "disguises" so that it isn't readily apparent that's what they are. I've taken note of his posts that often seem to be a CD booklet taken out of the jewel case and cropped closely so that the telltale edges of the booklet are cut off, allowing it to be mistaken for possibly a vinyl album cover. Does this cross the line? Is this just very odd behavior? Why would someone frequently post CD covers on a FB group that is ostensibly a journey of learning about jazz and Blue Note in particular? What is the point?
I would be way into posts of records with people explaining what they like about it, who is playing on it, or something that just goes beyond "look I have this record and it is spinning now." That's not only a preference from a content point, but it also really clutters the feed when people post these without any commentary and then facebook's algorithm scrambles the post order based on whatever secret formula. I wish the VMP folks would pin a post for people to just put pictures of their systems or whatever record they are spinning, and then everyone could dump them in the one thread. I think there is a better way to manage the way the forum is run to promote dialogue and community, but I'm not sure anyone is "in charge" of doing that. It's a bummer really, because there are almost 500 people in there who are all pretty interested in the same very specific thing.
 
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I didn't watch the Don Was AMA, but the problem with AMAs is that people don't know how to ask interesting questions. You have to sit through a lot of basic fan boy/girl questions.

The Was AMA was definitely worth the watch for me. Think his staff picked the most interesting questions to give him and I learned quite a few interesting bits during it. I want to guess he answered maybe 5-7 questions during the whole half hour with nice detailed answers and stories.
 
Completely concur with the gripes over the "what's spinning" type of posts about non Blue Note related albums and artists, the place really needs a moderator and someone driving content like Irwin. So, while the podcasts and AMA's were interesting to a degree, the whole student of Blue Note intent has fallen flat. I actually studied some Jazz history in college and nothing has close to resembling a "jazz history education". Now, the quality of the pressings are fantastic, certainly on par with Tone Poet, very well done.
 
Again, I'm not part of this whole thing, but it seems like *at minimum* VMP could easily have planned a daily post about Blue Note. This is all for the 80 year anniversary, right? They could have easily planned 80 daily "This year in Blue Note history" posts or something like that.* That would give the conversation some direction, provoke some actual engagement with the topic, and provide some of what they promised (although nothing you couldn't find with a simple Google search, either). They should be moderating what other people are posting, yes, but you can't expect much on-topic discussion if the host doesn't offer a topic.

*For all I know they're doing something like this already and it's not helping, but based on what I've seen in this thread so far, it doesn't sound like it.
I mean before the forum was nuked, Storf said there would be lots of articles run in conjunction with the Woodstock box, have there been any? And he is still actively soliciting articles on Twitter. VMP is complete amateur hour.
 
Again, I'm not part of this whole thing, but it seems like *at minimum* VMP could easily have planned a daily post about Blue Note. This is all for the 80 year anniversary, right? They could have easily planned 80 daily "This year in Blue Note history" posts or something like that.* That would give the conversation some direction, provoke some actual engagement with the topic, and provide some of what they promised (although nothing you couldn't find with a simple Google search, either). They should be moderating what other people are posting, yes, but you can't expect much on-topic discussion if the host doesn't offer a topic.

*For all I know they're doing something like this already and it's not helping, but based on what I've seen in this thread so far, it doesn't sound like it.
VMP is doing little to no original content outside of the podcast on the facebook group. Some members like @seeirwin are posting great stuff, but VMP has barely done anything. They "experience" aspect that was promised is missing altogether as are the deals, giveaways and other stuff they promised.

Feels like VMP sold it out quickly and then felt like they needed to do nothing else to make Anthology memorable since they already got their money.
 
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