Kevin Bresnahan

She's 80! Wow... time sure is flying by.

I e-mailed Michael Cuscuna about this and he said that Bob Belden and David Weiss went through these tapes and chose what they felt was the best take of each track. I trust their judgement and for me, the 3 CD set is enough... actually too much to be truthful. Like you, I think the double-LP issue was pretty good by itself. No way I'm dishing out over $200 for this box set full of alternate takes.

This is what the one I have looks like: This is what it looks like opened: You can see that little half moon hole? That is where you are supposed to clip the cardboard tip into. It doesn't hold. And after a couple of tries, of course that little cardboard tip bends and will never hold. I almost think they expect this to be disposable.

Soon to be reissued on 12 LPs. Yes, you read that right - 12 LPs.

So it gets better... I open the mailbox today and what do I find? My gas cap! USPS "tracking" is such a joke, I don't know why they even offer it.

I called the parts department at the dealer who sent my gas cap and he said that because of the high holiday volume, the Phoenix sorting center is out of capacity, so they ship some packages to a New Jersey sorting center, then they get sent back to Phoenix to get shipped out. W. T. F!

Nice CD but horribly packaged. Whoever thought that this would be work as a CD carrier, never tried using it repeatedly. Hey, cool, it opens like a Christmas present. Hmm... how do you put it back together and stick it onto a shelf? That little tip of cardboard doesn't seem to hold it closed.... better get it in a plastic sleeve. As an engineer, I don't like it when an art director foists such a poorly thought out package on us.

Tony D'Aveni - Winter Wonderland (IZTONE). I picked this one up at a Christmas show at Jocko's Jazz club in Methuen, MA quite a few years ago. The show was great as is this CD. Recorded and mastered in MA. Not often I hear a CD mastered in East Longmeadow, MA, which is a short drive from my old hometown of Holyoke, MA.

Yule Struttin' - A Blue Note Christmas Even the CD is festive:

A needle drop of Don Patterson's "Holiday Soul" (Prestige). Of Prestige's 2 "Holiday Soul" LPs, the other being by Bobby Timmons, this one will put you to sleep. If Christmas music can be boring, this one fits the bill.

If you like Donaldson's "Mr. Shing A Ling" and you still spin LPs, the Tone Poet LP sounds very nice. Well worth picking up.

Barbara Dennerlein - Christmas Soul (MPS)

Some weird shit going on with a gas cap I ordered from Amazon. Shipped on Monday, Nov. 30th. Showed as departing the carrier facility in Phoenix, AZ on Dec. 2nd. Showed up as "out for delivery" in Maine on Monday Dec. 7th. Now showing as "Package arrived at carrier facility" in Phoenix, AZ on Dec. 9th. Did it ever leave Phoenix or was that weird "Out for delivery" message an error? If that is what happened, it still doesn't explain why this package has sat in Phoenix for 11 days.

Nice sounding LP and the music was better than I expected. I don't know why, but I always thought this would be boring funk, especially with the All Music review. I think it's a fun record and Idris Mohammed is great.

Having never heard Kindred, I was never been willing to spend "Venus money" and certainly not "Venus SACD money" on these recordings. I see a copy for $14. Is it worth picking up? Then again, it is Amazon and there are CD-R Venus CDs on there.

Up for 2020! I was just listening to these tunes again the other night and "Funky Drummer Boy" is so fun. Jim - given the demise of PledgeMusic, are these tunes available elsewhere?

My 78 year old uncle contracted it way back in the early days (April or so) and with his heart problems, I didn't think he was going to make it but he got a mild case and seems to be OK today. My mom's place hasn't had a new case in a week. It was getting to the point that I was dreading mid day phone calls from her.

There are several CDs by the Mingus Big Band that were put out on the Dreyfus label in the 90's that are well worth seeking out. I am particular to "Gunslinging Birds".

I am only guessing, but there has been a trend over the past 40 years or so, maybe stemming from Bob Carver's famous (infamous?) transfer curve challenge, that the complex impedance of a speaker's load will interact with an amplifier's output transformers to shape the sound. In other words, the sound you hear is the result of the amp/speaker combination and not just the amplifier itself. A bench typically uses fixed loads to test the amp. I don't tend to agree with this interpretation because I don't believe that an audio amplifier outputs are that affected by the speaker's variable impedance, at least in an audible way. Audio amplifiers are designed to work with audio speakers and it seems to me that only a badly-designed amp would sound vastly different from speaker to speaker.

Interesting article: https://newyorkjazzworkshop.com/where-was-jazz-in-the-1990s-part-1/ but it seems to ignore the fact that In the late 80's to the mid-90s, smooth jazz dominated the jazz landscape, including commercial radio. I remember walking into the Tower Records "Jazz Room" and seeing stacks and stacks of Kenny G, David Sanborn and The Rippingtons CDs. There were two clubs in the Boston area and one catered almost exclusively to the smooth jazz crowd. To my recollection, the contemporary jazz scene was dominated by Wynton and his like-minded offshoots but even then, guys like him and other "big names" like Dave Brubeck, Herbie Hancock & Sonny Rollins played in big concert halls and I hardly went to those. Most of the live shows I went to back then were in the smaller clubs to see artists whose main body of work took place in the 50s, 60s & 70s - players like McCoy Tyner, Joe Henderson, Stanley Turrentine, Bobby Hutcherson, Elvin Jones, JJ Johnson, Jackie McLean, Johnny Griffin, Tommy Flanagan, Benny Golson, etc - that list goes on & on. I should've kept a journal. I can't forget to mention Nick Brignola. I never missed a set when Nick played. I did have some younger favorites playing in the hard bop idiom (like the players in One For All) but a lot of them didn't make the trip to Boston until very late in the 90s. Some of the bigger name artists on the "younger" side that did get to Boston who were in prime form (not to put down their subsequent work) were players like Joe Lovano, Renee Rosnes, Michael Brecker, Greg Osby, Chris Potter, Ralph Peterson - again, this list could go on & on. Some of these shows were incredible. Listing just a few of my favorite recordings from the 90s is easy... Nick Brignola - On A Different Level (1990) Joe Lovano - From The Soul (1992) Renee Rosnes - As We Are Now (1997) Michael Brecker - Tales From The Hudson (1996) Joe Henderson - So Near, So Far (1993) or Double Rainbow (1995) Eric Alexander - Up, Over & Out (1995) Harry Allen - Day Dream (1998) Teddy Edwards - Tango In Harlem (1995) Danny Gatton/Joey DeFrancesco - Relentless (1994) Jimmy McGriff/Hank Crawford - Right Turn On Blue (1994) Gary Smulyan - Homage (1993) Lew Tabackin - Tenority (1996) Frank Foster - Leo Rising (1997) ... and probably another 20 titles easy. Now that you got me to make this list, I see there are quite a few of these that I haven't spun in a while. I'll have to add them to pile.

I'll listen to Kenny G's Xmas CDs over Dylan's any day. It's that terrible.

His Christmas album should have been marketed as a muppets CD because he croaks more like a frog than Kermit.

Jesus, if it's anything like his Christmas album, you got rooked. Dylan's Christmas CD is the worst Christmas CD I've ever bought.

I bought one of Noah's LP directly from him at a live show (I asked him to bring it if he had any). I still haven't picked up his second one. I am also interested in Jason Palmer's LPs. I just don't know how this label stays in business since they charge so much for an LP and require you to buy so many at once. It's an unusual business model - rich & "not too picky" is not a usual combination for Jazz fans.

Those bonus tracks are also in the Mosaic.