Jazz Fans Note: Sale at Virgin

Some locals might be interested in this... In preparation for the September changeover that will be happening, when Virgin music ceases its Canadian operations and hands over the Megastore to HMV, they've been selling off a lot of their merchandise. Books, at 50% off, are well-picked-over at this point, as are the headphones, accessories, video games, LPs, and so forth; but they've just begun marking down some of their CDs and DVDs, and its in the CD bins that I've found some special items. HMV will be buying a lot of their stock, but apparently not anything on obscure labels or any imports -- I stocked up on free jazz and improvised music, including stuff on Leo, on the British label Emanem (not to be confused with angry white rappers), plus some cool William Parker and Alan Silva discs, and two neat Residents reissues, all at half-price. Given Virgin's tendancy to charge the highest possible price for items, that's really not that much of a discount -- I paid around $18 a CD, once taxes and whatnot were included -- but given how hard some of this stuff is to find, I'm quite happy. There's a bunch of cool stuff left to be picked over, including old folk blues (I spied a Blind Lemon Jefferson CD that tempted me) and trad jazz (including some really cool Count Basie and Duke Ellington discs); and there was even some avant garde stuff I left behind, including Curlew, Roscoe Mitchell, Evan Parker, and Michael Moore releases. Worth your while, if you're into that kind of music.

Nothin' much else to say... The Winks play Wednesday at the Butchershop.