On Saturday, February 2 we kicked off "New Orleans Month" at Amoeba Hollywood with a rockin' auction hosted by the inimitable and charming Billy Calhoun. Billy's soothing and unflappable style not only inspired some major bidding, but he deftly and seamlessly dropped some science on all the onlookers about New Orleans and the two foundations we were focusing on (New Orleans Musicians Clinic and Tipitina's Foundation), as well as what we are doing on Amoeba.com and how long we have been doing the charity auctions. People learned a lot while they had fun bidding on really cool items. More than a few customers mentioned that they didn't realize we do these auctions every month, and that they learned a lot from all that Billy had to say. Billy educated folks on our Vinyl Vaults and Louis Armstrong digital restoration, as well as the exclusive release of the Congo Square Project which is an amazing collection of music available only on Amoeba.com.

We had several bidding wars, and Billy effortlessly kept the momentum going and kept people engaged. Here are some of the highlights for today's auction---one of the highest generating auctions we have had in a long while. Way to go Billy!!

Amoeba.com’s growing free downloads section had a ton of great stuff this year. Here are some highlights.

Sufjan Stevens – “Justice Delivers Its Death”

This delicate ballad comes from Sufjan Stevens’ latest Christmas opus, Silver & Gold, Songs for Christmas, though its delicate beauty would fit on any of Stevens’ early, more acoustic releases.

Listen

Download

Buy the album

Pissed Jeans – “Bathroom Laughter”

Pennsylvania punks Pissed Jeans’ latest album, Honeys, is due Feb. 12 on Sub Pop. The first taste from the album is a ferocious blast, with singer Matt Korvette scream-talking lyrics quickly as the band bashes out two-and-a-half minutes of hardcore bliss.

Amoeba is delighted to offer these extremely limited, original Louis Armstrong prints designed by renowned artist Robert (“R.”) Crumb. These hand drawn collector pieces are an Amoeba exclusive and are available in full color ($100, 20" x 25 1/4") or black-and-white ($50, 20" x 25 1/4"). We also have a limited amount of numbered full color posters signed by R. Crumb himself for $600.

Robert Crumb - Louis Armstrong [B&W]	Robert Crumb - Louis Armstrong [Color]

R. Crumb is a long time supporter of Amoeba and a huge collector of the antiquated 78 shellac record format, and also a huge fan of Armstrong (read more about Louis Armstrong's legacy here). Crumb was aware of Amoeba’s ongoing vinyl preservation and remastering process (more about that here) and was introduced to Amoeba co-founder Dave Prinz through a mutual friend, director Terry Zwigoff (Crumb, Ghost World, Bad Santa), another avid 78 collector. Amoeba asked Crumb if he would create a piece for the store to commemorate its work in preserving Armstrong’s music, and he obliged. In December 2010 he drew the amazing piece that would become this print. You can own these one-of-a-kind pieces only from Amoeba.

In what might be dubbed the Big Bang Theory of Jazz, the world began in April 1923 when King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band with Louis Armstrong in tow stepped into the Gennett Recording studio and cut nine sides. The Oliver band had been knocking 'em dead for several months in nearby Chicago at the cavernous South Side dance hall Lincoln Gardens, and these recordings would become the gold standard for early New Orleans jazz. Even more significant for the future of jazz, although Louis would play his first recorded solos on these sessions, he would soon outgrow the limited space for him in such ensembles of collective improvisation. He just wanted to cut loose and blow, and as people heard him and his fame grew, he would evolve into the first star of jazz and almost single-handedly transform jazz from a dance music to that of improvising solo performance.

You can witness what Louis had become by 1933 in the first Louis on film – that year he was captured in a live performance on a Copenhagen concert stage – no Hollywood gimmicks or studio post-dubbing of music. And you can explore that transformation in Amoeba's new Vinyl Vault.  In honor of, and as tribute to Louis, we have added digital files of virtually all of Louis' early records from 1923 to 1928, remastered directly from the cleanest original 78s available. So have fun exploring the Louis Armstrong archive in Amoeba's Vinyl Vault.
 

King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band (April 1923 to December 1923)

When I first started collecting 78s, I avoided early “pre-electric” discs because the sound was a bit distant and thin compared to the electric process, which was still a few years off in the future, and I passed up many of these 1923 King Oliver Gennetts. Now I look back on my screwed up priorities and feel it was akin to throwing away a hundred dollar bill because it was too wrinkled. Musically, if not sonically, these early King Oliver Gennetts still hold up as some of the most exuberant discs ever recorded. Every player attacked the thread of melody at once, each adding fuel to the fire without getting in each other's way – never mind that you're not a jazz fan, and don't confuse these recordings with later derivative white revival “dixieland” (or “dorksieland” as some of my friends call it).  Early jazz was first and foremost dance music, the rock 'n' roll of its day, and New Orleans style was loud, brash, rock solid dance music, activating hormones and posing the same kind of threat to middle America that rock 'n' roll would in the 1950s. Check out this1925 headline from a Cincinnati newspaper zeroing in on the insidious influence of jazz.

Shai Fishman is a composer, performer, multi-instrumentalist and sound engineer. He has composed music for museums, feature films and is one of the creators of The Voca People, an international a capella group that has appeared on the Italian X-Factor and has had millions of YouTube views for clips of its performances.

At Amoeba, he’s helped to digitize Amoeba’s collection of vintage vinyl and 78s for exclusive download at Amoeba.com’s Vinyl Vaults. Right now Amoeba is featuring more than 100 remastered songs by jazz pioneer Louis Armstrong, first released from 1923-1926. I spoke with Fishman about the digitizing and remastering process.

Amoeba: Can you take me through some of the basics of converting vinyl to digital? What are some of the concerns when dealing with older vinyl?

Fishman: As far is converting vinyl to digital media, the main concern is high-fidelity digitizing. We need to make sure that the analog recording process is done in such quality that it reproduces the signature vinyl sound we all love so much, in an authentic way, while still enjoying all the benefits of digital media.

Our digitizing allows for 96 KHz and 24 bit audio sampling resolution, which is more than enough to reproduce vinyl and at the same time allows us to have some room to manipulate the wave file, if need be.

When dealing with old vinyl the main concern is eliminating the noise that exists on copies that are older than 30 or 40 (roughly) years. That noise profile may be a simple surface noise, clicks, pops, crackle or any other intricate profile that we have to deal with in order to produce a digital copy that is in keeping with today’s sound standard.