Monk and Bird

My jazz pal and Artie Shaw biographer John White has tipped me off on two excruciatingly good deals at Amazon recently. The first was a boxed set of Charlie Parker recordings. No notes, no recording dates, no nothing - but ten CDs for less than a quid each which I am still enjoying. On one CD there's an amazing track I hadn't come across before - called Segment. I played it again and again until suddenly a penny dropped. It was almost the same as one of my favourite jazz tunes - Nothing Personal, by Joey Alexandra. Except that Segment has a 32 bar AABA structure, and I think Nothing Personal is a blues (but can't be sure). John's second recommendation is an even bigger bargain, price per unit - the Complete Riverside recordings of Thelonious Monk, which retail at just over ten quid for FIFTEEN CDs. Can you beat it! Or are these the early signs of the end of the CD as a distribution vehicle?