Kevin Bresnahan

Tor Lundvall - A Strangeness in Motion - Early Pop Recordings 1989-1999 (Dais). I've been buying Tor's dark ambient recordings for years so I was surprised the first time I spun this and heard what sounded like a 1980's recording from The Church or Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. Since I like that type of music, it's keeper.

Ravi Shankar - Ragas Hameer & Gara (Deutsche Grammaphon). I like to relax to these Ragas. I get this floating feeling with the sitar droning.

Jimmy Heath - Love & Understanding (Muse).

Charles Earland - Mama Rose (Muse). Earland with George Coleman on tenor for 4 out of 6 track. Pretty decent date.

Great CD but I didn't realize it was "rare". Concord released this originally. Is Reel to Real a new Concord label? Doing a Google search, I see that Real to Reel is a new Zev Feldman label. So is Concord licensing stuff now? Interesting.

Duke Ellington & John Coltrane (Impulse!). I haven't played this record in a long time. I think I picked this up in my earliest days of getting back into vinyl. It's an "all analog" pressing from 1997. As good as the music is, I don't think it sounds any better/different from the old Impulse! CD.

Wretches and Jabberers Soundtrack (Rumor Mill Records). Very "folksy" record. When it was issued, it was being touted as a special audiophile recording "Produced in Collaboration with McIntosh". I bought it mainly because I liked the song samples and it was limited edition.

Historically, "bootleg" meant an unauthorized live recording. We used to call unauthorized releases like this "grey market". Legitimate recordings released in unauthorized ways.

Like any wine, not all Barolos are created equally. I've had great Barolos and some that were not good at all. It's also possible that you got a bad cork. There were a few studies that show as much as 10% of all corked bottles have some cork taint.

2016 Kinsella Jersey Boys Cabernet Sauvignon. This is some big Cab but it's not harsh or tannic, Smooth as silk. Lots of fruit from front to back. The front of the bottle doesn't show much about the name of the wine which is why I used the back label.

Isn't this close to the CDs released back in 1998: https://www.discogs.com/John-Coltrane-Giant-Steps/release/5599728 & https://www.discogs.com/John-Coltrane-Giant-Steps/release/1468729? It looks like the main difference is "Like Sonny" has been substituted for another alternate of "Naima".

Van Morrison - Moondance (WB). This was reissued in 2008 by WB with mastering/cutting by Steve Hoffman & Kevin Gray. It does sound very good. Better than an original? Maybe, but it's not night & day better. It's certainly a quieter pressing than those old WB pressings from those days.

Bill Hardman - Focus (Muse).

Cued up next for me!

I actually liked this a lot more than I thought I would when it first came out. My thinking was, "If it was so good, why did it take so long to come out?". How wrong I was. I was able to get Lee to sign it at one of the many times I saw him perform.

Lee Konitz Nonet - Live At Laren (Soul Note). Killer band. Red Rodney, John Eckert, Jimmy Knepper, Sam Burtis, Lee Konitz, Ronnie Cuber, Ben Aronov, Ray Drummond & Billy Hart. Great playing all around. I can't help it, but I get a feeling that I'm listening to a Mingus date at times. My copy has a cut corner and a sticker that says, "Distributed by Polygram Special Imports, 810 Seventh Avenue, New York, New York 10019".

Somehow, I managed to catch Lee Konitz live many times. He was a master. RIP to a Jazz legend.

Andrew Rathbun - Shadow Forms (Steeplechase). Rathbun on reeds, George Garzone on tenor, Scott Lee on bass & Jeff Hirshfield on drums. Interesting post bop date. I was able to see this band live at a "CD release party" show and they were better live.

RIP Kawasaki-san. I listened to some of your music but I wasn't a huge fan. I never was able to confirm if it was actually him, but I once had an E-mail dialog with him about CD audio stemming from a post he made to the old rec.music.bluenote newsgroup. He claimed that every time you played a CD, the laser burned off some of the plastic. I tried showing him the science to prove that this was not possible but he said he could hear the difference in his CDs every time he played them.

This is from that second super-duper deluxe box set that Blue Note put out a couple of years ago: https://www.discogs.com/Various-Spirit-Time/release/12972018?ev=rr It included "A set of 20 Topps Blue Note Trading Cards based on Topps’ 1959 Baseball Trading Cards featuring artists including Thelonious Monk, Horace Silver, Dexter Gordon, Lee Morgan, Grant Green, Hank Mobley, Freddie Hubbard, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Charles Lloyd, Robert Glasper, and more"

Hank Mobley - Hi Voltage (Blue Note). I do like this funky side of Mobley. I picked this LP up and it looked un-played. My least favorite BN label. BTW - why is it "Hi Voltage" on the cover and "High Voltage" on the track title list, the label & in the liner notes?

Clint Hopson, who used to post here as clinthopson but more frequently on the old Jazz Corner's Speakeasy, has died. He had been in hospice for a bit so this was not unexpected. I always liked Clint. He knew his stuff and his posts were often insightful. He was pretty funny and cantankerous at the same time. I always liked the guy. Edited to add a link to his profile.

I know! I bet I looked at this cover a hundred times and never saw it and then when Aric brought it up... it might've even been on the Blue Note forums... I was like, "What the heck?" Now I can't un-see it.

My biggest concern about the records in your picture is that some of that might be mold. Mold is not easy to get out without some scrubbing. Have you experimented with straight dishwashing soap and some light scrubbing? I'd try that before investing in a cleaning machine. If you can't get this heavy dirt off by scrubbing with soap & water, I doubt that a cleaning machine can do it.

When you see this cover all blown up, you can kinda see why some people thought that there might have been something racially motivated here. It was a very weird choice to break apart "messengers" by separating it the way it was done on this cover. Strangely enough, I never noticed it until Aric brought it up here many years ago. Now I see it every time.