Posted 2:45 PM by Gene

Yesterday (on a lighter note, thankfully) I was lurking around a forum for Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. As anyone who collects CDs knows, very little of its music is available; what there is is largely old Japanese pressings that command idiotic sums on the idiot's flea market eBay. I've a hunch Herb doesn't want it released because he's gotten ARTISTIC PRETENSIONS -- he's an ELDER STATESMAN OF JAZZ now -- and views his old hits as Muzak. (He ought to listen to his stuff as a solo act.) We can do worse than that ersatz-Mexican gang of studio pros with their happy melodies, their catchy beats, their all-around fun. The situation is complicated because Herb owns the master tapes but he sold his (and his business partner Jerry Moss's) record label A&M to the great ugly maw now called Vivendi Universal -- the label exists just as a name -- and they just settled a great ugly lawsuit against it, so there's probably no way of releasing the music without a ton of lawyers and ill will, even if he wanted to. Here's hoping Herb eventually comes to his senses and brings the Brass back, all of it, and returns FUN to pop music again.