bresna

I'll be seeing them when they play at the Shalin Liu Music Hall in Rockport, MA. I haven't seen them in a while so I am looking forward to seeing them again. That being said, I don't think I've seen them with Orrin Evans in the piano chair, so it'll be different.

Mr Creosote ate his last thin mint. Thank you Mr. Jones - you certainly got me to laugh like hell quite a few times.

I picked up the Tone Poet LP of Grant Green's "Born To Be Blue" and maybe it's just me knowing that Lion didn't release it when it was recorded, but to my ears, I'm not digging this date a lot. Green's playing is just eh and Ike Quebec doesn't sound that good at all. I guess this Tone Poet LP sounds good from an audio perspective, but I have stopped grading audio these days. Once again, side 1 has a huge amount of dead wax, making me wonder if Kevin Gray is ever going to get the hang of cutting in all analog without a preview head. It seems like he might be one to benefit from a digital preview circuit.

I was glad when Mosaic went to the lift off lids. Those hinges were a pain and it was almost inevitable that the hinge would break, particularly on the heavy LP sets. If you open the lid with the box sitting flat, the action of opening that lid completely causes the box with the LPs in it to lift off the flat surafce, putting all of the weight of the box onto the piece of paper that attached the lid to the bottom box. If you held the box in the air to avoid this, it would swing in the air off the paper and if you weren't careful, you could swing it too far and hear that tell-tale "crack" as the paper and/or glue let go. All in all, just a lousy design. Of course, that could just be the engineer in me.

Sanders is schedule to play at Scullers in Boston in June. It's been a while since I've seen him. I do hope he has a good night.

But you're missing something here - most of us did dump all of our records. Sure, not for downloads, but for CDs. LP covers can be nice but even these old LP covers are mostly nostalgic and usually because at some point, our eyesight goes to shit.. LP covers get dings by simply putting them down wrong and ring wear from simply putting them away. Seams split on your favorite records because you made the mistake of playing it too many times. To make matters worse, they are often the main reason your records got scratched. You have to buy special liners or vinyl sleeves for the covers, which of course makes them even harder to store and look at and in the end, sterilize the look. Nothing ruins an old LP more than haveing to look at it through a 4 mil vinyl sleeve. Yes, the CD artwork was smaller and took away from the "art" aspect of the LP cover, but you have to admit that the jewel case protected the CD and the artwork much better than the LP cover - an amazing concept! But this thread is not about LPs. It's about cassettes. You want to talk about tiny artwork? Cassette artwork had to be unfolded from under the cassette because it was so tiny. Even when my eyes worked well, I sometimes needed a magnifier for the printing in these things. I can't see anyone getting nostalgic about cassette artwork.

RIP Claudio. The pain is over. Damn prostate cancer claims another one.

A nice cup of Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee from Gold Star Coffee in Toronto. Nice cup for not a lot of money - relatively speaking.

I was lucky to have seen him many times and I never left one of those gigs with anything but appreciation for his artistry. He didn't have a bad night. He was always smiling. RIP sir.

It's nostalgia, plain & simple. I understand it too. But don't conflate nostalgia with "everything's going to shit". That's what got us MAGA. I had a 1965 Chevrolet Impala when I was in high school and college. I loved that car. I experienced some great things in that car. Great memories. I have a nostalgic love for that car. In the late 80's, I fell into some money, so I decided I would get my 1965 Chevy Impala convertible that I always wanted. It showed up on a flatbead and I gleefully jumped into the driver's seat and started it up. Ahh, there was that sound of the 283 V8. Man, did that bring back memories! I was in heaven. Then I drove it. What a dog!! You could move the steering wheel back & forth for several inches and the car would still go straight. You turn and the whole front end nose-dives into the corner. No road feel. You float along. Hit a bump and almost bite you tongue. Put the top down and forget to unzip the glass rear window and it shatters. Snapping on the tonneau cover was a joke. Most of the snaps wouldn't snap and every other one ripped out of the vinyl. And then run out to the car in the sun with the top down and jump in with shorts onto that black vinyl bench seat. Mother %$##$!!!! The worst was those frickin' bias ply tires! You go into a corner on an exit ramp and hit a bump and the car walks off the road. Scared the crap out of me. Radials went on within days. Worst car i ever bought.

That is my very-experienced opinion and it is one shared by many other audiophiles who tried to make that format the best it could be. While I may not have had a Nakamichi Dragon, I had a very high-end cassette deck and I only used TDK or Maxell FerroChrome or metal tapes. No auto-level recordings, meticulous attention to detail and yet it never came close to LP, much less CD. All it ever did was add hiss to anything you recorded. Dolby A, Dolby B, dBx, etc. all took away from the music. I think I might have a bunch of old Blue Note prerecorded cassettes somewhere in a box. I couldn't wait to get that music on CD. Night & day.

So another old low-fi analog tech is making a comeback? So those of us who lived with all its shortcomings are supposed to cheer? Dolby tapes had no hiss because they rolled off the highs so much, you couldn't hear it. The trick for the best sound out of a cassette was to avoid Dolby and live with the hiss. At least then, you got the full fidelity of the music. It's funny, but I was over on another forum and some loon started complaining about HD TV, saying stupid shit like, "The picture is so much better on an SD TV". I figure he was just trolling but then several other idiots started agreeing with him... well, maybe it was a group troll job?

Having seen Marchel Ivery live twice, I can understand the applause. He played great those two times that I saw him.

Jim - stealing the catchers signs has been a fundamental part of the game. But it really only came into play when there was a baserunner on 2nd. The coaches can't see when the catcher flashes his signs between his legs and the batter can't turn around to check or he risks a quick pitch that he can't react to. I was a catcher when I was a kid. We had special signs for when someone was on second. We knew the sign could be stolen, so we changed them up - sometimes from inning to inning. Allowing legal sign-stealing would ruin the game. The change-up would disappear. No sense throwing any off-speed pitches when the hitter knows it's coming or else he's just going to tee off on it. These guys are professional hitters. Watch BP sometime. They can and will tee off on the warm up pitcher's soft tosses. I suppose if all you want to see is HRs, sure, allow this to happen. But if you want to see real pitching, stop this stuff.

I don't know about that Jim... if teams were allowed to steal the other teams pitches and communicate what pitch was coming prior to the windup, how would this improve the game? "Hey batter, here comes a fastball." Wasn't that a line in Bull Durham? How did that work out? Oh yeah...

Great interview with Peart.

I really like "Moving Pictures" but it gets so much flak from the rock cognoscenti that I almost feel embarrassed to say this. Tough. I like it and I play it for me.

I've been listening to this for the last 2 days and it's caused to me realize three things about Rush: 1) I find myself listening to Peart's drums on most songs. Geddy Lee's vocals are almost a distraction 2) They made some pretty terrible and/or odd songs, which is why I don't own much of it. 3) Peart's drumming makes me wonder if this is what Monk would have sounded like if he played the drums. His keeps the time fine, but the wild, sometimes seemingly random accent beats are what really makes him sound so incredible. After listening to this for a long while, I decided I wanted to hear "Moving Pictures". I know - gak and all that - but it's my favorite Rush record. Goofy shit lyrically, but as I said, listening to Peart is where it's at. "Red Barchetta" is my favorite Rush tune. He's also a little like Blakey with the drum roll transitions at odd spots. Just a fun drummer to listen to. I still think they overdubbed some of them or else Peart had 3 arms.

LIFO is never a good idea in a shipping department.

Not a great title for an LP.

I think you have a typo. You typed "record player" when I think you meant to type "record destroyer".

So you ordered this set in December 2019 and are getting it now and I ordered it in February of 2019 and I haven't received any notice. This is bizarre.

You watch a video like this and it's much easier to understand why Peart retired after this tour. I can't imagine trying to keep playing at such a frenetic pace as a 20-something, much less a 60-something. It's also easy to see why Rush isn't going to be one of those ghost bands that keep playing until every member is dead. Rush isn't Rush without Peart. I was glad when I read that they agreed with this.

He was an incredible drummer. It always amazed me that it was only one drummer on some of those Rush songs. I used to think they were overdubbing.

I think the "regular" TOCJ CD sounds pretty decent. I bought the Japanese RVG because at the time, I was really digging their sound. I kept the TOCJ for my listening copy.