Kevin Bresnahan

Terrible series name and lousy covers but often great music. I avoided many of these because of those cheesy covers and a few odd LP combinations. I'm regretting that now.

This is what the Beatles thought about Capitol chopping up their albums for release in the US:

The state of Maine is going to have a lottery. Everyone who gets vaccinated can enter. For however many people get vaccinated by July 4th, they are giving away that amount to one lucky vaccinated resident. It's up to almost $900,000 now.

The Drummonds (Renee Rosnes, Ray Drummond & Billy Drummond) - A Beautiful Friendship (Videoarts Music). Nice piano date for Rosnes, who, as far as I know, never went by Renee Drummond when she was married to Billy.

Michael Cuscuna didn't tell me who, just that it was a "British audiophile label".

I have been told that Andrew Hill's "Passing Ships" was re-mixed to analog stereo by Malcolm Addey for release on an audiophile label in the UK. I guess the honchos at Blue Note heard the tape and decided to release it themselves. They did compensate the label who initially paid for the work but still... sounds pretty sleazy to me.

When my oldest daughter was 6 or 7, I had switched over to laser discs for her Disney movie watching because the VHS tapes wore out too fast. One day, she had a friend over and they decided to play hopscotch. They decided that those pretty Disney laser disc movie covers were the perfect size. Luckily, they only broke two.

Julian Lage - Squint (Blue Note). I pre-ordered the Gray/Blue splatter LP just because it looked cool. It turns out they had Kevin Gray cut this and I've liked a lot of the Tone Poets he cut. It does sound very nice. Music is... different from what I expected. I've seen Lage play live a few times and this is less like that. He touches on many musical styles here. There's some country, some blues and some rock-lite tunes.

As I said, I have not read "Raise Up Off Me". My earlier comment was based on a conversation I once had in a record store where one of the participants said that after reading it, they thought a lot less of Hawes than they did before they read that book. I gathered it didn't paint a pretty picture of Hawes.

Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

If that's an example of his writing style, I'll pass on this one.

Maybe because of the self portrait he created with his autobiography, "Raise Up Off Me"? I haven't read it but it supposedly doesn't paint a pretty picture.

How did you turntable/stylus handle the "Plantation Bag" torture test?

Kenny Werner - Church On Mars (Newvelle Records). I got in my first of two individual LPs ordered from Newvelle Records. Expensive as hell ($65 each) but very nice pressings of music that isn't available elsewhere (yet).

The Tone Poet series is being curated by Don Was and Joe Harley and they have not limited it to the Blue Note catalog. There have been Solid State ("Now He Sings, Now He Sobs"), Pacific Jazz ("Katanga", "Chet Baker Sings" & "New Bottle, Old Wine") and United Artists ("Money Jungle") releases sprinkled in there.

Not that it means that they are right about this, but the denizens of the Hoffman forums are saying that the new Tone Poet reissue of this sounds very good. Several of them are claiming that it's the best-sounding Tone Poet yet. I would take that with a grain of salt because they always seem to elevate each new release above the previous one and because I don't see how the sound could top that Kenny Burrell Tone Poet, which sounds pretty damn good.

Jack Wilson - Merge (Chiaroscuro Records). This is a really good record that was recommended to me many years ago by Sonnymax. I was lucky to have caught Wilkins on one of his rare visits to the Boston area.

Was it set to Automatic? If that's the case, it must've switched to the Speaker setting when you were playing back your music. Good catch. You'll just have to remember this if you ever want to listen via the phone's speakers.

I think if Cuscuna knew that answer, we'd have alternate takes now.

Cuscuna once told me that he searched the tape archive and never found the session tapes for the "Leeway" recording date. He said that all that's in the vault is the LP-sequenced master tape. He even said something along the lines that it was one of the biggest disappointments after he got access to the tape vaults.

10 Lee Morgan dates to be reissued on SHM-CD in August: https://www.cdjapan.co.jp/products?term.prodkey=UCCQ-9573,UCCQ-9574,UCCQ-9575,UCCQ-9576,UCCQ-9577,UCCQ-9578,UCCQ-9579,UCCQ-9580,UCCQ-9581,UCCQ-9582 Do any of these have extra never-before-released tracks?

If you lower the volume on the iPhone, does the sound still break up but at a lower volume or does it stop? Sometimes, media players on phones default to a "line out" level, which is typically full volume. Full volume could be distorting the playback via your earbuds.

I wonder if the autograph is genuine? Plus it's mono and there are a lot of mono fetishists out there. The mono aspect of this one doesn't make much sense as it's just a fold down of the stereo recording. I suppose if money were no object this would seem like a cool purchase if only for that autograph. Too bad my name isn't Bill.

I still think it's absolute garbage that they now know that the initial release was messed up but rather than send us this new cut free or offer some sort of discount for those of us who spent the money up front, they come out with the corrected version, give it a new subtitle and stand there with their hands out. Screw them. I don't care if this sounds like Monk is in the room with me, I ain't buying this.

No turntable can "handle" marauding toddlers. A toddler grabs your TT arm with a record on there and your options are: stylus is toast, record is toast or both are toast. FWiW, I just bought a turntable for my secondary listening space where I needed it to be able to on a shelf - so no traditional cover. I bought a Denon DP-400 (~$500): I swapped out the stock cartridge for an Ortofon 3M Black (~$750) and I have a very nice sounding turntable. With this funky cover in place, it's safe from my dog's tail, but a toddler could still reach into that opening where the stylus resides. BTW - that cover doubles as a cover stand, It actually works well: