Flora Purim - 500 Miles High (Milestone 1976)

This is one of Lans' that I always liked. Brazilian Jazz. The condition was very good on this cut-out with the jacket corner clipped. This is a live performance from Montreaux. Because the tracks tend to run together, I departed from my normal practice of putting the track marks in during the initial burn and instead recorded both sides as single tracks and then used Goldwave to rip them to my PC as MP3 I then used Goldwave to insert cue points where I determined the track marks belonged and split the two files into their 7 constituent tracks. Then I opened it in Media Player to get the track information and burn my archival copy. There is something different about this approach and I'm not particularly happy about it. The album art didn't appear in Media Player even though it appeared in the "Get Album Info" dialog. There are other even more subtle differences between how Media Player behaves with regard to this album but the basic function of listening seems to be fine. The CD can be had from Amazon for 9 bucks.

Miles Davis - Water Babies (Columbia 1976)

This one came from Lans' collection and finishes off the Miles Davis records. I think there might have been a couple of clicks and pops but generally the vinyl quality was a non-issue. There appear to have been a few versions of this single album on CD; a delux edition with bonus tracks, a remastered version and an import. Amazon's offerings range from 7 to 27 bucks while resellers have offerings from under 5 to nearly 20. Per Wikipedia:

Water Babies is a studio album by Miles Davis released nearly ten years after it was recorded. It features the same line up of musicians from Filles de Kilimanjaro and Nefertiti.

That places the recording a few years before Bitches Brew and a few years after Seven Steps to Heaven. All but one of the tracks are Wayne Shorter compositions. I found it to be quite listenable.

Miles Davis - Seven Steps to Heaven (Columbia 1963)

Another one of mine. According to Wikipedia, "This is the last of Davis's studio albums which relies substantially on standard tunes - once Wayne Shorter joined the quintet in 1964, tunes on studio recordings were almost always composed by members of the group." It certainly feels a world away from Bitches Brew (1969) and Agharta (1975). I think there might have been a little skip in "Baby Won't You Please Come Home" (side B, track 2 and/or CD track 5) but overall the quality of the LP was very good. This single album is currently available from Amazon for $12.

Miles Davis - Agharta (Columbia 1975)

This one comes from my collection. It kind of intimidates me at the same time as it intrigues me. It's so far out but there's a kind of rocking funkyness to it that seems to offset the free-form aspects. The vinyl was in very good condition. This double album is currently available as a two-CD set and Amazon is selling it for 20 bucks.

For the completeness of my records I'm documenting the fact that when I burned Agharta, I allowed the two tracks on the B side of disc one to run together. Even factoring that in, I cannot account for the significant differences between the track times on Amazon and the track times on my copy of disc 1.

I went ahead and purchased the three tracks on disc 1 from iTunes so I could compare the LP version with the downloaded version which I haven't yet done.

Miles Davis - Bitches Brew (Columbia Records 1970)

What can I say? I was up early and got to work late and fit a double album in between. This was out of my collection but Lans definitely introduced me to Miles Davis. Historically, I wouldn't listen to this album very often so the vinyl is in very nice shape. This has been remastered and released on CD with a bonus track and the 4 disc boxed set, "The Complete Bitches Brew Sessions" came out in 1998. Amazon has them for $21 and $45 respectively. Given how long it's been since I listened to this, I think my homemade CD will suffice for the foreseeable future.