heavyharmonies

JPLRocks, I appreciate your points, although I disagree with one or two of your assertions. I feel I need to re-iterate a clarification I made later in the thread: I'm quite sure of the sources I have on this issue, however I will not "out" them without their approval. I already have assurances from one of them that they will be speaking up on this matter publicly, just not right now. Anyway: If he had come on here and responded in a calm professional manner, something along the lines of "I'm sorry you are mistaken. These are legitimate releases and I have been given the rights to do so by....." rather than "YOU COCKSUCKING MOTHERFUCKERS CAN KISS MY ASS IN HELLLLLLL!!!!!!!" the whole conversation would have been more constructive, and in all likelihood would never have proceeded as far as it did. When tempers get hot, reason goes out the window to a certain extent (I plead guilty there for a stretch). Also his story changed several times throughout the course of the thread; that sets off all sorts of alarm bells to me. Boots, reissues, CDRs, what have you, are all fine, as long as they are not sold, touted, promoted as the real thing. That is the largest issue that was raised, and subsequently *ignored*. An informed buyer purchasing a bootleg/reissue is not a problem and happens every day. Swindling prospective buyers by not disclosing the details about the discs IS the problem. -Dan

Only a month after I sold off 80% of my collection, here I am buying CDs again. The sad/scary/stupid/ridiculous thing is that a couple of them are ones that were in the 4,200 that I sold to PJ. I guess I can't resist picking up OOP stuff when I see it. The CDS I bought this week: Styx - The Serpent Is Rising. WAY OOP. For $6.99 I wasn't about to pass it by. Springfield, Rick - Rock of Life. Less of a find, but probably the "rockiest" of his vintage material. Paid $7.99 Platinum Blonde - Alien Shores. Poppy stuff, but I kinda dig it. $6.99 Nasty Nasty - Get Some!!!. Local glam band. Fairly tough disc to find. $7.99 Marx, Richard - My Own Best Enemy. New release, $12.99. I picked it up based on some positive buzz reported online. Eh. I'm not really a fan of this type of Nu-Pop. Gibb, Barry - Now Voyager. The Bee Gees (and solo efforts) is one of the artists that I kept everything from, so I I'm always looking to fill in holes in the discography. Expensive at $75, but two just sold on Ebay in the $100-115 range, so I don't feel so bad. Fear Factory - Linchpin (Australian Tour EP). One of the discs that I sold to PJ, but since they don't come around all that often I figure I'd snag it at $6.99 Edguy - Hellfire Club. Love all their stuff. $10.99 Angelica - Angelica. Decided to re-own this one for $7.99; I'd forgotten about the Ken Tamplin connection. Royal Hunt - The Best Live (Japan). Another artist that I collect everything from. $18.00 Praying Mantis - Predator in Disguise (Japan). Ditto, although this one was a bit pricier, $29.00 MSG - Nightmare (The Acoustic). I simply cannot resist cool Japan-only releases. This is a great-sounding EP! I've always preferred the MacAuley-era MSG material to the material either before or after. $18.00 and about 25 CDVs for my collection. I'll be rolling out a new web site for cdv information at some point here soon. -Dan

So which of the major indy labels do you think is doing the best job? Which one do you buy the most from? My nod goes towards MTM/MTM CLassix, although every now and then Escape reissues some absolute monsters. At one point I loved the stuff coming out on Frontiers, but I think they've diluted their talent pool too much; they're not as consistent as they used to be. -Dan

Well I got to meet the famous (infamous? nefarious? :D) PJ this weekend. He drove down from Canada to buy my CD collection. A few minor hiccups in obtaining all the cash, and FedEx was a bit unhelpful when it came to arranging the shipping, but all that aside, the transaction went smoother than I anticipated. Arranging the sale of 4,000 CDs in one fell swoop isn't a small task. There's a lot of trust involved on both sides when dealing with a sale this large, and I'm happy to report that he's better than his word. It was a pleasant, easy transaction, and he's a cool guy to boot. My credit cards are no longer groaning from a 5-figure debt, and now I have room to store and sort the CDs I did keep.... Now to start hunting again (hell, that was most of the fun anyway) -Dan

This has all the earmarks of someone whose account has been stolen. The last month: 65 positives 4 neutrals 32 negatives The 5 months prior to that: 384 positives 1 neutral 1 negative Something happened here... -Dan

It's been 2-3 years since I've bought anything from him. I spoke with him on the phone at the time, and he was working out of his garage. He seemed like a nice guy. I think he may simply have outgrown himself: trying to run that much volume out of your home, by yourself, is just asking for trouble unless you're organized. -Dan

My observations/experiences: Impulse Music. Biggest problem is that only 20% or so of what they list on their site is actually in stock. AOR Heaven. Excellent service and response, although the weak dollar makes shipping quite expensive; I usually wait for a bunch of their "Sale Bin" to be stuff I want. Schmankerl Records. EXCELLENT! Great inventory, and some real obscure AOR and hard rock available. Can't recommend them highly enough. The one I order the most from: The End Records. Mostly heavy metal, but they do get some AOR material on occasion. Good service, and all prices include shipping to the U.S. -Dan

Ask him to scan and email you the insurance receipt/coupon that he claims he filed. -Dan

"PJ's House O' Porn" :D Actually, one area where '80s rock is still king is in the... *ahem* "gentlemen's clubs". Great for the ole' Bump 'n Grind... -Dan

Just a quick note to thank PJ for coming by and relating the events surrounding this scamm... err, umm, "seller". While not exactly a close-knit family, the world of melodic/hard rock CD collecting is a small one. We all gots to spread the word on the hosers. Anyone remember Jymmi Slang or Manny Comres? I did business with both back in the day. -Dan

After reading the discussion in this thread, I've just added the S/T to the site, along with samples from all the tracks. In my opinion solid, but nowhere near the gem that "World on Fire" is. WoF is a masterpiece. -Dan

I may get kicked out of the club for this, but actually right now I've got two 10-CD boxed sets in my office, one of Benny Goodman, and one of Glen Miller. What can I say, I like 1930s-40s big band music. More back on topic, the new Sonata Arctica - Winterheart's Guild is a melodic masterpiece. -Dan

Bumped the speed down a notch... -Dan

Since you guys obviously don't have enough to do :D... I've incorporated the ability for multiple versions of cover art for the same CD to be posted (Japanese release different from U.S. release different from German release, etc.; reissue cover art). You can see an example here: Example The JavScript will cycle through as many versions as there are, so if you have alternate cover art for discs, go ahead and submit 'em... (let me know if you think the cycling time is too fast, too slow, or ok). Thanks, -Dan

Hey guys, Thanks for all the work you've been doing submitting cover art, but I do have a request. When grabbing pictures or scanning pictures, please make sure there's enough resolution to actually work with. The album covers on the site are 200x200 pixels, so anything where the actual cover is that size or bigger is great. Some of the ones that have been submitted, I can't really use since, when I crop the picture to the actual size, they end up being so small that by the time I upsample them to 200x200, the JPEG artifacting is so bad that the picture is blurry. For example, this one is fine: But this one is too small to work with: I'd like to post as high-quality pics as I can. Thanks! -Dan

I've bought from them via Ebay a few times; never a problem... -Dan

I think that Gowan is doing a remarkable job as a replacement for DeYoung. I also think that Augeri is a perfect replacement for Steve Perry. When someone moves out, you move on... -Dan P.S. One of the better replacements in the course of musical history has got to be when John Elefante replaced Steve Walsh in Kansas. I *LOVE* the Elefante material that Kansas released...

Early Japanese anime. I remember coming home from school, oh musta been 1982-3 or so in order to catch them on TV. Brief synopsis: Earth is under attack from INSERT EVIL VILLAIN HERE. A world war II battleship, the Yamato is converted into a space cruiser, including a gigantic "wave motion gun". Captain Avatar (crusty old cap'n), Derek Wildstar (our hero), Nova (hero's love interest) and a cast of others went off into space to fight the evil ones. Each episode would end with a pronouncement of "There are only X days left to save the earth. Will our heroes survive?" (basically a countdown to the end of the season). There were 3 full TV seasons plus several feature-length movies. The theme song was cool as hell. I've got some episodes on VHS. Haven't forked out the $$$ for the DVDs yet. On a hard rock-related note, I picked up some tapes of the animated series "Biker Mice From Mars" on Ebay. Haven't watched any of them yet. The only reason I bought them was that I have the soundtrack on CD, all songs sung by Jeff Scott Soto (Eyes, Yngwie Malmsteen, Takara, Talisman, Axel Rudi Pell). -Dan

2 words: Star Blazers. 'Nuff said.

Dokken - Shadowlife Warrent - Ultraphobic and Belly to Belly Queensryche - Hear in the Now Frontier Extreme - Waiting for the Punchline Bulletboys - Acid Monkey Shaw/Blades - Hallucination Pink Cream 69 - Change All garbagius maximus.

Yep, I've got the board set to not allow uploads other than images for avatars, and there's both a pixel dimension and file size limit on that. One thing to keep in mind: the absolute minimum the cover art images should be is 150x150 pixels (200x200 or larger is ideal); when I enlarge the images to 200x200, there's a loss of quality. A couple of the images that were uploaded here I couldn't use (Shotgun Messiah - Second Coming, Skid Row - Subhuman Race, Lillian Axe - Fields of Yesterday). Also, as I process the images and add them to the site I'll be deleting the threads they were in; keeps everything nice and tidy. Thanks for all the cover art thus far! -Dan

When you're typing in a message/reply, see all the buttons above the text editing box? Choose the one labeled IMG. A popup box will prompt you for the URL to the image.... -Dan

On all the band pages and the individual CD pages, in addition to adding that disc to your Ebay Monitor wantlist, you can now do a direct search for that CD in current Ebay auctions. Not only that, but you can choose between Ebay U.S., Canada, U.K., Germany, and Australia. Clicking on one of those links will pop open a new window with the auction search in it. You don't have to close that window between searches, just Alt-Tab back to your main browser window to click on a different search and it will display in that same window (in other words, it doesn't spawn a zillion windows, just one regardless of the number of searches). I figured that would make things easier for people to do a "spot check" without leaving the band/CD page... Enjoy. -Dan

Ok, I'll add an opinion on the other side of the equation. I kinda dig Reno's posts ala "humour of the day". Granted, I've seen many of the individual one-liners before, but as far as I'm concerned, keep 'em coming... -Dan

Doesn't appear to be. You'd have to start over with the new name (i.e., settings and posting history would not transfer), and then I'd delete the old user. -Dan