Blue Note Eviscerates its Forum!!

Has anyone checked out the Blue Note Board today? They have cut the number of topics, and plan to focus only on "core (Blue Note) interests". Its WWIII over there!! I know that many of the jazzheads here frequent that board. I am am particularly saddened by BN's actions. It was the absolute best way to get Jazz info on the net.
I would like to fantasize about a Jazz forum here, but understand how already stretched out our Gorts are.

Anyway, if you have come over from the BN Board, welcome and please post!! Your opinions and knowledge will be greatly valued by many of us.

 

Does this have anything to do with the runaway success of Norah Jones?

 

People are claiming that over there.
Frankly, I can't see EMI acting that quickly on anything.....

 

Nah, I think this is just another way of directing traffic, but it's still dumb. A lot of people depend on BN to enrich their experiences with Jazz, and once you start pulling that pycho stuff on the forum, it only angers the angry.

Another forum bent on preserving a selfish nature of control. Ain't the 1st time, folks.

 

The morale on the borad really went south about a year ago...that's when I started to visit less frequently. I think negativity and the desire to be able to moderate more closely is the reason for the changes.

It has nothing to do with Norah Jones...where did that come from...

 

Hey, since some of you are into jazz...did you ever run into a Blue Note board troublemaker named "DEEP" or "Dan D'Imperio"? We had to ban him from the jazz forum we run over at 52nd Street. I cited him with four violations, and slapped the cuffs on 'im. He has a name for himself, going to various jazz websites and causing problems. Word has it his actions were the cause of another prominent jazz board being taken down a couple of years ago.

Verve pulled their jazz boards totally from the public a couple of years also. I just saw it as yet another nail in their coffin. I didn't visit too often but a lot of us would rave about some great recordings that needed reissue, or even dropped some suggestions on what we'd like to see. Very obvious that Univer$al doesn't want our input--they got rid of the only means of communication between the public and the label.

FWIW, our 52nd Street Jazz website needs some serious work. I'm only the tech person there now, but used to write up a review or two in my day. (Nothing I'm particularly proud of.) Anyone's welcome to sign in and wreak a little jazz havoc there. I'm trying to do a few things to improve the place, like put a new review system in place, and branch out from what I call the "stuffy oldtimers" jazz mentality some of the visitors have. I'm not adverse to adding new forum sections to our site (for more contemporary forms of jazz, or Latin jazz, big band, "early" jazz or whatever).

The hardest part is redoing our image, I guess, since IMHO it has been mis-managed a bit in the past. I'm working on a new review system, and looking at adding more reviewers to the staff. It's all volunteer...nobody but me gets paid. (And only a pittance--whatever I take in from Amazon sales pays only partially for the hundreds I shell out to pay for the server space.)

Not trying to steal any visits from SH's forums here, but just getting the word out if anyone's interested. I don't have a suggestion box, but may add a new forum section so old AND new visitors can tell us what we're doing wrong. (I certainly don't feel we're doing much *right*!)

http://www.52ndstreet.com

 

Take a look around the threads. According to the Blue Note discussion board, Norah Jones is responsible for the commercialization of jazz, the dearth of music education, and the eventual collapse of the West Coast into the sea. God forbid someone from their little clique make it big. Better she had been a nobody in the fifties who released her modest piano-trio-with-vocals album on an obscure label; then the same people would be hollering for Michael Cuscuna to reissue her music.

 

Oh, so true... I've probably been guilty of this myself at times.

 

Why are some, but my no means *all*, jazz lover so damned WHINEY about the Norah Jones debacle? Someone like her gives the label a much-needed financial boost, gets the name Blue Note in the public eye...and this is somehow BAD? Nobody gets upset that Miles and Brubeck are on the same label as Boston and Journey, or any other rock or funk band. RCA had Elvis...and Sonny Rollins, and Shorty Rogers. Capitol had George Shearing...and those musical heathens The Beatles.

Sheesh.

Ron, you're right--had she be some obscurity of the past, possibly with some demons in her closet (drug addiction, abuse, etc.), she'd be a hero by today's standards.

The moderators of their board may have just gotten tired of all the bickering and in-fighting. Or maybe they got word from "higher up" that people were dissing Norah Jones, and that it should come to an end. Although at the Blue Note boards, I'm sure she wasn't all that well liked to begin with...the general public probably doesn't even know Blue Note is (and was) a jazz label...or cares.

 

Good one, good one!

 

This is why I support the Gorts here and the decisions they have to make to keep this forum a great place to visit. Maybe BN can tighten up things over there and the forum will get better. Let's hope so!

 

You'll get no argument from me there, but the reason the BN forum has come to this--which is a shame, really--is that the moderators were too lax and lazy for too long, then, ultimately, take it out on the rest of the forum after allowing a handful of jerks to make a total mess of it. I've seen that happen to many times in the past. One of the reasons I lurked more than posted an BN was because of some of the hostility and constant whining--not least about Norah, which I don't doubt, to some degree, prompted this action, but the mods have only themselves to blame, and in the end, all members pay for it.

The whole Norah thing was a load of crap from the beginning: so she's not 'jazz' enough for the BN purists? At least she made Blue Note a real name label again, and maybe from there they can build upon it and add some more trad jazz acts. Only an idiot complains about an amazing success story like that which, in the end, helps everybody else, not least BN fans. Maybe, with all those millions coming in, we get some better remasters, SACD's, even vinyl, because of her.

And I dig her anyway, so there!

ED

 

Well, to be fair, opinions about Norah were quite split on the BN board. A bunch of people didn't care for her and bemoaned BN's descent into middle-of-the-road pop success , but a lot of people - the more rational ones if i do say so myself - saw her success as a good thing (whether they liked her music or not).

The lack of any kind of moderator, software problems, and the decreasing input from Tomatbluenote was what really started the board to go downhill. It was truly a case of the inmates running the asylum. It was fun while it lasted, but finally Mr. & Mrs. EMI returned home from their extended vacation and saw what a mess their house had become. I'm sure once things settle down everything will return pretty much to normal. Almost everyone overreacts over there!

Ray

 

Yeah, Rudy, DEEP still pops up from time to time over there, though not as often after someone gave him a taste of his own medicine and hurt his feelings one day. He's actually a fairly accomplished jazz drummer, but his personality (on-line at least) really turns me off. He's crude, childish, and offensive - and as much as i try to separate the artist from his art he makes it very hard for me to want to listen to anything he's a part of. He's his own worst PR guy. He probably would have been banned at BN long ago if only there was a moderator around to do the chastizing.

Ray

 

Hello Ray!

 

Which brings up an interesting point: if the BN board had no mods--I had just assumed somebody, anybody occasionally at least peeked in--
then why the sudden clampdown? Just who got pissed?!? Norah's manager? As you correctly point out, Ray, the opinion on her was mixed, but what could anyone expect? It's the nature of forums to have divided opinions on some subjects. Just too bad what happened was so rad.

ED

 

Welcome to the forum, catesta!

Well, this is rare: a newbie that knows an old codger like Ray

ED

 

I'm a BlueNote refugee.

Trying to figure this mother of a board out.

 

Try the search feature, Chris. Search anything. You'll do backflips at how fast it is. Makes the UBB software at BN seem like caveman technology.

 

I'm still trying to figure out, how you all got pictures by your names.

 

The Norah Jones thing is the same as when the grunge bands of the early 90s started getting commercial hits. The hardcore fans complained that their music was no longer exclusive. In fact, there was less to seperate themselves from the rest of the public. Blue Note looses their selling point if they go commercial.

It kind of makes me wonder if BN didn't get rid of Bobby McFerrin because he became noticed by the mass public.

 

True! Like pulling teeth to get any little tidbit of REAL information...

 

I believe the bad vibes created bad publicity overall and like RDK says...EMI came back from an overdue extended vacation to find their home a ruthless mess.

For those reasons stated I have only been an occasional poster there and more of a lurker myself.

 

Sheesh, what happened to that place? I'm not sure if Norah Jones-related discussions, etc. had anything to do with it (it still sounds like a half-baked idea), but the official reasons given by Tom stink. I understand if they want to use the board to promote Blue Note related releases, but if they shut out anything unrelated to the label, it only hurts them in the long run. I understand getting rid of the off-topic sections, but losing the whole reissues forum was a big, big mistake. I don't know, it just seems really, really narrow-minded to try and limit the scope of jazz discussion to Blue Note releases. Obviously they don't expect to put an end to everything outside of their label (a ridiculous possibility), but they certainly are making a push to but themselves at the center of attention.

P.S. As for the extra effort in monitoring threads, the reissues forum, as I remembered it (may have drastically changed), rarely got into heated discussions, at least the kind you find on the off-topic forum and in the current threads on Jones. Sure, some people there act like asses, even those who are usually nice, and some guys can be pretty grouchy in general, but the reissues forum was one of the most widely-read, civilized, widely-posted forums they had. Anyway, maybe the Blue Note folks will jump over here. It would be cool if some indie types from there like Chuck Nessa jumped into here.