Kevin Bresnahan

We’re in Valletta, Malta today.

i just left Barcelona on a cruise ship. Our hotel in Barcelona was the Sercotel Rosellón, which has a rooftop bistro with this beautiful view of the Sagrada Família. My iPhone 16 Pro takes very good pictures, even in low light.

I’m hoping to see/hear Houston on the Jazz Cruise in January. He’s scheduled to perform on it. I haven’t seen him on stage in many years.

Only 300 copies?? Ouch. I guess CD sales really are bad these days.

True, but it basically means that you're paying $500 for a bunch of digital files & not the special fancy USB stick. It also means that it has zero resale value, which is not important to most music fans but IS important to someone who buys it as a collectible item worthy of resale. Why else plate it gold and limit the number if not to make it a collectible? The other thing that makes me smile about the people buying it as a collectible is that they won't be able to sell it on discogs.com. Discogs doesn't allow the sale of digital files of any type.

The dumbest thing about this USB thumb drive is that it isn't permanent memory. These files will be written to volatile memory, which needs to be powered up and written to every now and then or it will fail. Most write-ups I've read estimate that they're good for about 10-15 years before you start losing data. Google "how long can a usb thumb drive keep data?"

We're booked on an Alaska cruise next August. We haven't booked any excursions or bought flights yet.

Andre Jaume - Giacobazzi "Autour de la Rade" (CELP). It's been a long while since I've played this. Too funny - my daughter just barged into the room where I'm listening to this to ask, "What are you listening to? It's sounds like a bunch of high schoolers practicing." I told her it's called dissonance.

So me & my wife leave for vacation #4/cruise #3 of 2026 later this week. We're really looking forward to it. Both of us have wanted to go to Italy for a long time. We almost went there on our honeymoon but the dollar plunged that summer so we switched to Hawaii. The only bad thing about cruising Italy's coast is the limited amount of time we'll get to see the sights. A one day tour of Rome isn't going to cut it. We know this. If we like what we see on this "highlights" cruise, maybe we'll book a longer trip. Next up after this is the Jazz Cruise out of Tampa in late January. I will say this though... it is a bit scary front-loading your retirement like we're doing. But I've seen way too many people, my own parents included, who saved and saved their money for retirement and when they finally did retire, they continued to save it and ended up leaving it behind. You can't take it with you. My mom left her children almost all the money that my dad saved for them to travel. She didn't want to do much of anything after he was gone. I don't want that for my wife. To cover my bases, I've actually encouraged her to take spring break vacations with our daughters to get her used to it. She's gone on 3 of these "girls vacations" and had a blast. Don't tell her I said that.

I've never heard it, so I can't tell if it's because of the playing, but does anyone know why this sat in the can for 12 years?

My wife are cruising through "Hacks" on HBO/Max. We're halfway through season 4 and we're finding it to be weaker than the previous seasons. Hopefully it improves before we get to the 5th (and final) season.

The 3D on my 65" LG OLED TV is stunning, though from the synopsis of this particular movie, I would not care to see it 2D or 3D.

I see that Ravi is playing with Cindy Blackman Santana at the Keystone Korner at the end of the month. For that gig, she has Zaccai Curtis at the keyboards. Should be a good show. I hope she can make it to Boston/Portsmouth and brings Ravi with her.

Renee Rosnes - Face To Face (Somethin' Else). This Japanese-only EP CD is very rare. The time I handed it to Renee to sign (scan attached), she was pretty surprised I had it. It's a nice trio date. Nothing revelatory, but good to have as an early example of her trio style.

On this CD, Peart played drums on the tune "Cottontail". If you are on Facebook, someone has a cool video of Anika loosing a stick during "Tom Sawyer" (my favorite Rush tune) and she barely misses a beat. She was very impressive up there. https://www.facebook.com/share/p/19dJJBoxSi/ And if you watch this video, you can hear a bit of what's going on with Geddy Lee's vocals this current tour. He can't hit all of the high notes like he used so he steps down an octave and comes close but sometimes warbles a bit. He is 73 after all. Still Rush and still worth seeing but not like the old days.