Kevin Bresnahan

If you've ever thought of taking one of the many Jazz cruises out there but wondered what it might be like, here are the activity schedules from the McBride's World At Sea Jazz cruise that took place Jan. 20-27 of this year. I had a blast and truth be told, got a little more Jazz than I could handle by the end.

I would not consider the first one as it only has 4 GB of RAM. If you want Windows on your machine, skip the second one, as Windows 11 is a free upgrade from 10 and the only reason they wouldn't have done this is because the core processor is too old and isn't supported on Windows 11. Windows 10 is no longer supported by Microsoft. So that leaves #3. Although I do wonder about the seller. Who specifies a minimum monitor size? If I were buying one, I'd probably check Dell's Outlet first. Here's one there: OptiPlex 7000 (7020) Small Form Factor Newegg.com is a place where I've had good luck. Here's a decent one there: Acer Aspire Desktop Computer

I have to add something here as a cautionary tale. I have Ubuntu running on several laptops & have installed it on quite a few more for family & friends. Dell laptops make it pretty easy. You just press F2 or F9 after you press the power button, go into the bios screen and change the boot order, boot from the USB drive and install Ubuntu. Hp laptops on the other hand, can be a huge pain in the ass. Some Hp computers have the bios "locked" to a Windows operating system. I managed to hack a couple of these to get Ubuntu onto them but it was incredibly difficult. It took me days to figure it out. Installing & re-installing Ubuntu with different configurations in the bios until I finally got it to stick. I have little interest in doing that again. The worst thing about it, is that I managed it on one, duplicated the process on a second, and it didn't work. Ha ha ha.

This is a good album that I found sealed in Stereo Jack's dollar bin years ago. I still laugh when I see the cover picture because I thought it was a sunny side up egg at first.

I don't believe that you can download Ubuntu onto your computer as an operating system. What I have had to do is download the .iso file and "write" that to a USB thumb drive making it "bootable", using something like Rufus. Then, you boot off of the thumbdrive and you can try it for a bit or install it. I would recommend trying it first. When you install it, you can make your PC capable of "dual boot", which will let you choose which operating system to boot into (Windows or Ubuntu) but I have never done that so I can't tell you if it works well. If you choose to use dual boot, you might need to worry about how much memory you allow Ubuntu to use, as Windows runs using "virtual memory" that grabs extra hard drive space to run smoothly. If you take too much of your hard drive for Ubuntu, you Windows system might run very slowly.

Here's one of my early favorite "Smooth Jazz" dates.

At the risk of getting a bunch of shit for this, I'm still going to say it... if the stuff free-blowing players like Brötzmann play is "Jazz", then why shouldn't the stuff smooth players play be labeled similarly? Because let's be honest with ourselves - Smooth Jazz is a lot closer to Jazz than a lot of the really out stuff being labeled as such. I used to think I knew what Jazz was. I stopped trying to figure it out a long time ago. One of the albums that turned my head was The Bad Plus' "These Are The Vistas" with their cover of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit". If Jazz can include covers of grunge metal, anything goes, right?

I tried Mint a few years ago. As I understand it, Mint is a graphics overlay onto Ubuntu that gives it a "Windows" look & feel. I used it on one of laptops and liked it. I was going to install it on several more machines but then an update happened and that Mint laptop stopped working. I switched it back to Ubuntu and I haven't tried it again since. I might try it again just to see if they've fixed that bug. The main reason I use Ubuntu/Linux is because I used to get old laptops from various corporate places and these corporations deleted the Windows operating system, so I needed something. Additionally, these older laptops run super fast with Ubuntu.

I have about 6 laptops running Ubuntu. It's perfect for what you describe. It comes standard with Firefox and Open Office for surfing & basic office stuff. Ubuntu is free. You just need to make sure you have at least 8 GB of RAM for the latest version to run.

What an incredible legacy he leaves behind. His name was second only to Alfred Lion when it comes to, "If his name is on it, it's gotta be good".

When you were on a 28.8 dial-up modem, you rarely read every post to these newsgroups. You had to pick and choose. You could only tie up you landline for so long.

Last night at his gig, I bought Jaleel Shaw's "The Soundtrack Of Things To Come" (Changu Records). I have yet to play it but at first glance, whoever is in charge of their graphics need to take a better peek at the final artwork before sending it to the printer. I can't read all of the track names, even with my reading glasses. Whoever did the scan for discogs cranked up the contrast & brightness significantly. The original looks much darker than this scan.

His were black but looked just as imposing. They sounded very good. At first, the high frequencies were rather diffuse. I figured it was the tweeter array used for the midrange, as that's probably my "high" frequencies these days. But when I had him toe in the speakers a lot, the highs became much more pronounced. Even he commented that they sounded much better with that severe toe-in. It created a very small "sweet spot", where we sat playing some great music. He had a Qobuz hi rez download of Cannonball's "Somethin' Else" and I immediately played "One For Daddy-O", one of my favorite Blue Note tracks and it was sublime. When Cannonball hits his first solo, it just jumped at us. I made him wait until the end of the track before playing somethin' else and when Miles asked, "Is that what you wanted, Alfred?", it sound like he was in the room with us.

I visited a friend-of-a-friend's house over the weekend. I have visited him before. He's always buying the latest & greatest audio gear. This time, he had Tekton Ulfberht speakers. Holy cow, are these things huge! Using a tweeter array to cover the midrange frequencies results in a much bigger speaker than most. These were probably a foot taller than me. My wife would kill me if I tried bringing these home. BTW - he claimed that these speakers had an insane 97 dB sensitivity. I don't believe that for one second as I've never seen a non-horn speaker have numbers much higher than 92 dB. Apparently, some independent labs have measured much lower sensitivity (less than 90 dB0 and the founder/owner of Tekton is supposedly threatening to sue them over it.

Next up on my show list is Jamie Baum at Scullers on March 7th. She's bringing Jaleel with her, so I'll get to see him again shortly. The show I have on my calendar after the Baum gig is an unusual one - Randy Brecker and his wife Ada Rovati are playing at the microscopic Press Room in Portsmouth. The rhythm section are UNH faculty, and I've heard a couple of them over the years. Should be a fun night, if maybe a bit crowded. This club is general admission and likely without tables (standing room) for this show. When I saw Nels Cline there, it was packed to the gills. I was surprised the fire marshal didn't show up.

Thanks for this. i looked on Laurie's bandcamp page but not YouTube. I think I can safely pass on this one. I have a lot of Laurie's previous releases and I don't find myself pulling them off the shelf very much any more.

I don't think so. Dyson was not playing with any nuance and I was close enough to not even hear what the mics were putting out of the speakers. He had a hi-hat, two crash & a sizzle cymbal and he crashed those two crash cymbals way too much,

I think I'd like to hear some samples before buying this one. The rhythm section is rather unknown outside Vancouver.

I was very disappointed with the show last night. Old man rant coming... it was TOO FUCKING LOUD. Drummer Joe Dyson was the biggest culprit. I should have known he was going to be loud when I saw that he had every drum mic'ed as well as two overhead mics over his kit. He had three times as many mics as the rest of the band combined. It made for a drum-centric sound which was not pleasurable at all. My wife hated it and she left with her left ear "shut down" for a few hours after. It was that loud. I anticipated it and closed my right ear when Dyson really started bashing the cymbals. Other than that, the music was pretty good. Shaw's style is different. Most songs had what sounded like free improv, but more controlled. I don't want to get into the "noodling" argument again, so I will say that there were long streams of sax and Ben Street's bass floating over Lawrence Fields' piano fills and behind Dyson's cymbal crashes. My wife has only recently started attending Jazz shows with me and she was adamant that I never buy tickets for her to see this band again and that she never wanted to see Dyson behind the drum kit.

I'm on the 6th book in Karin Slaughter's Will Trent series. I have been enjoying the ABC TV adaptation, so I thought I'd like the books. I do. It's unfortunate that the television show diverged from the books so much though. The two are nothing alike, from physical descriptors to character presentation.

I just crossed over 30 years of posting stuff on the internet. I started sometime in 1995 on the rec.music.bluenote newsgroup. How time flies. This may have been my first post: https://groups.google.com/g/rec.music.bluenote/c/bAXCUZGNkbg/m/5ITeHd-pkjsJ

Duvall's character in the first Reacher movie was probably the only saving grace in that movie.

I try to see Smulyan play whenever he is in my area. He's a great bari player.

Jaleel Shaw is bring a band to Jimmy's in Portsmouth, NH Thursday night (2/19). Even though the club is very close to my house, I don't go to Jimmy's very often because the shows are usually pretty expensive. This show was under $40, which is pretty cheap for this venue.

This seems like an odd CD title. I wonder if it is a bit of a joke. That certainly doesn't look like the setting for an "audiophile" recording and I highly doubt that an upright piano was used for it.