Re: [ARSCLIST] Mercury co-founder Irving Green passes

[David Lewis <davlew@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Tom Fine:

You are correct. There were probably 50 more CD's that could have been done
(perhaps more if one 
considered being completist on the mono stuff, which was an unlikely track
because there was 
specific and limited interest in the pre-1956 catalog and that interest was
addressed with the 
handful of mono reissues).

Dave Lewis:

Well, I may represent the "limited interest" faction, but I was certainly
waiting to see certain Hanson recordings come along - mainly Griffes' Kubla
Khan, the Loeffler and Sessions' "Black Maskers." To this day, I keep a reel
tape version on hand of "Maskers" just so if I want to program it on my
radio show, I can make a transfer. I would have thought these things,
although monaurally recorded, considerable to make the "cut," but umusic, I
guess, knows better than me, a mere consumer and (god forbid!) critic.  

I understand your stance on wanting to defend "people who paid for, and own,
the stuff" (I'm paraphrasing). However, there is such a thing as husbandry
in art, and when a catalogue swelled by acquisitions is handled by an ever-
shrinking staff of people, important things get lost or ignored. Big music
corporations don't listen to consumers or even to the old timers who've been
there before, and when it comes to decision makers they tend to hire from
the same small pool of uninspired people who have failed elsewhere. It's a
round robin of the same executives, and as the major music industry merges,
shrinks and circles its wagons against copyright issues, new delivery
systems, changing trends and everyone else who is participating in the
business, it seems less and less likely that it will survive. No other
business I know of has been able to conduct itself in this way and still
survive. 

I neither require, nor expect you, to answer this. It's just my humble
opinion.

David N. Lewis
Assistant Classical Editor, All Music Guide

My life is the clearest proof that if you have talent, determination and
luck, you will make it in the end: Never Give Up. - Sir Georg Solti