Kevin Bresnahan

What a great life. I can only imagine at the stories he could tell. I never did get a chance to see a show at his club during my many trips to Chicago. I saw a show at the Green Mill once but never Joe's place. I hope he left it to someone who will continue on so that I do get a chance to go there one time.

It's funny you say that as it's exactly what I did. I found Fielder's "Plays the Music of Pepper Adams" and "Each Time I think of You" on Amazon so I grabbed them.

I haven't drank that in many years but when I did, it was always very good. A little sweet but not candied like a Spatlese or Auslese.

I wouldn't worry too much. I'm sure that Jordi will put it out soon. Andorran copyright is still only 25 years.

2014 & 2015 vertical of Beran Zinfandel. I didn't realize that the Wagner (Caymus) family had released a straight Zin to the general public until today. I have had their own Caymus Zin on trips to wine country and I always hoped to be able to buy it in a store. I saw this in the store with a little shelf talker that said "Caymus Family". I'm glad I saw that.

$9.99 to ship a $9.99 CD! Ouch. I think I'll pass. Maybe... but it's only available as a digital download. I'm not a huge fan of that. Maybe it's time I change my attitude on this?

That $90 box set on discogs doesn't sound too bad and the seller has good feedback. COVID-19 is delaying a lot of things so I would give the seller the benefit of doubt here. If you're worried about the box hinge being ripped, don't. Those box hinges used to fail all the time. You could pay $140 for one with an intact hinge and it could fail on you the third time you flipped it open. Then you'd have the same condition box for an extra $50. I was glad when Mosaic got rid of those hinges, particularly with LP sets. That hinge was almost guaranteed to fail on heavy LP sets. I've toyed with idea of using a razor to cut off all of my hinges so that when they do fail, they won't rip the boxes.

I am always surprised when someone says that they like this date. It has never been a favorite of mine. I actually think it's pretty boring. I'm spinning it right now in fact and... nope. I just think it sounds sloppy.

There is one eBay seller from Japan offering the SHM CD version but their feedback is pretty bad, with several complaints that they accepted orders without any stock to ship. I assume that is the case here too.

The problem I have here is that I got a tracking number, not just a dispatch notice. A tracking number should mean that the item is on its way. I've never had an item cancelled and refunded to me after it left the building. Clearly, if I ever find myself ordering from them in the future, I will not trust that an item has shipped when I get a tracking number. The cynical side of me believes that Chalkys realized that they had some valuable stock sitting on their loading dock so they pulled them off the shipping shelf and cancelled the orders so they can sell them later at a big profit. The more logical side of me thinks that maybe UMI got hold of them and forced them to pull the stuff back. I'll never know what happened but I don't think it was handled well at all. I actually wouldn't have minded a straight-up cancellation compared to the way they handled this.

I got TWO shipping dispatch notices - one with a tracking number - and yet today I received a cancellation notice. Pretty shoddy. Has anyone ordered the SHM CD from Japan? I've seen a few Japanese listings but I don't want to waste my time trying to get a refund from a Japanese seller if they do not have these in stock.

I got a shipping notice too.

I'm thinking about grabbing a few of Dale Fielder's CDs that he has up on the bandcamp website. They're a PIA to find though. You can't just find one and click on Fielder's name. You have to search on his name and go through all of the search results to find them.

The color indicates the type of dye used. One type of dye is better than the other. It's been too long since I've studied this, but I am pretty sure that the clear-looking dye was used in "archival" CD-R's, which means that it has the longest shelf life.

Cheaper on eBay but still the most I've paid for CD in a long time.

I tried ordering one from an Amazon UK seller. I'll see if it arrives.

Lloyd toured in support of this CD release but I don't seem to remember Abercrombie being in the touring band, It was a great show either way.

I have had a couple of commercial CDs fail. One was a UK CD from the early days of CD manufacturing and it "bronzed" to the point where it stopped playing. The other was also from the early days of the CD and it played the first several tracks but then stopped. The aluminum near the edge of the CD looked like something started taking bites out of it. I read that it was a bad coating used in the label side. I have had quite a few commercially sold CD-R titles stop playing so I always back up any that I get these days. The last one I got was from the VSOP label. $16.99 for a CD-R and flimsy artwork. Ouch.

I saw her play in late October of 2017 at Scullers in Boston and she was still playing great. She was a late sub for George Cables in Javon Jackson's band. Eddie Gomez and Jimmy Cobb rounded out the rhythm section. As you can imagine, it was a great show.

I used to listen to the radio exclusively for many years. WROR 105.7 - Loren & Wally. News, traffic, some fun & a tune or two stuck in there. Then, about 4 or 5 years ago, they fired their top comedy writer and cut way back on the talk/music, going with more & more ads. The funnier DJ retired. Then they fired the traffic guy. About 3 years ago, I decided to figure out what I was listening to so I decided to time stuff. I put on the radio and for 10 straight minutes, there was nothing but ads. They came back with some small talk, a couple of 5 minute tunes and then another 8 minutes of ads. I drive an hour each way to work and I would guess that I was listening to ads about 40% of my drive. I tried Sirius/XM and never looked back.

I would hate to be ordering LPs in this heat. Don't you have to worry about warped records?

What is your budget? There are a lot of options out there, even in the receiver realm. And to your benefit, these days, most receiver tuners include HD radio, which may or may not be an improvement for you. As for "comparable quality"... well, that is a personal thing when it comes to audio. I was not a fan of Pioneer back then so "comparable" to me doesn't mean that much. Ha ha. I know that there will be people who disagree with me on this, but I find that speakers matter way more to what you hear than your amplification as long as the amp has enough clean power to drive them.

Unless you're really in love with this old Pioneer SX-650 (sold new in 1976), I would just give it away and buy a new integrated amp. You only need a new receiver if you still listen to FM radio. Google "Pioneer SX-650 restoration" - there is a cottage industry out there restoring these receivers so it's pretty likely that your amp is starting to fail. I read some forum posts of people restoring them and it seems pretty difficult, especially given that Pioneer changed the schematic during the production run. A full rebuild would be the way to go if you just have to keep it, but be aware that a full restoration is not cheap. I think it would be money better spent on a new one.

I got your answer Dan - the label appears to have the Contemporary label printed up beforehand, but the inner album info appears to be a hand stamp. So someone forgot to stamp yours. But I have to add that you getting me to look at this has me noticing that the Side 1 info is very faint. It's look like whoever was stamping these labels was a bit of a slacker.

Is that for the LP version or both the LP & CD? If it's the LP version, I wonder if this is being affected by the the fire that destroyed the Apollo Masters factory? The Apollo Masters factory was the largest supplier of blank lacquer discs in the world. They were one of only two worldwide LP lacquer plants, the other being MDC, a smaller-scale factory in Japan that has always been booked solid. There is no way they could handle the overflow from that Apollo plant. Now, the LP industry has to wait until someone steps up a fills that void, wait for an opening at MDC or switch over to DMM LP masters, which does not seem to be the preferred way to produce LPs.