Kevin Bresnahan

I really like that Eddie Harris CD. I bought it when it came out and I play it pretty frequently.

John Lennon - Imagine - Deluxe Edition. I'm playing blu-ray disc 1 for the original quadraphonic mix. The 5.1 sounds a bit odd with Lennon's vocal tightly stuck to the center channel speaker. The quad is a bit more realistic.

When I bought my B&W 805 Nautilus speakers, my wife was not happy. She hates the "tweeter on top" design. She says that the grill covers must stay on at all times.

Jimi Hendrix - Machine Gun: The Filmore East First Show 12/31/1969 (SACD). I haven't listened to this in a long time. It's not my wife's favorite and since we both retired, I'm not home alone much where I cam crank this. Truth be told, as I'm spinning it, I think I should have put on some studio Jimi.

I asked Cory Weeds about this bonus material, as I thought it was already released on CD in 2004 on his Cellar Live label as "You'll See! - The Anniversary Quartet Live At The Cellar" & quickly deleted due to some contract issue. I asked him how it can be said to be "the first time available digitally". He said, "To my knowledge that 2004 recording was never made available digitally. I don’t even think digital was really around at that time so this will be the first time that the record is available digitally". So basically Cory's not calling an optical disc of 1's & 0's "digital". To his credit, this will be the first time this material will be available to stream or download, but it has been available, albeit briefly, on CD already. FWIW, this 2-CD set is worth picking up just for this 2004 material alone. It was a great CD release and I was disappointed that it was pulled so quickly. This was the cover of that CD:

I've seen Perry play multiple times with Maria Schneider's orchestra. I never did pick up any of his Steeplechase CDs over the years.

These? Yeah... I don't think I could even consider those. My wife would never allow them in my house. In this case, I think I'd agree with her. I don't think they look very good.

My favorite Pharoah Sanders release is "Crescent With Love", which has Sanders operating at a sedate pace for most songs. I still play it quite often.

At least up here in Maine, this is mainly due to asinine pricing by the cable monopolies. When I first got cable here in Maine, it was $99/month for a "triple play" package (cable/internet/phone), which I got simply for the price as I never even hooked up a landline phone when I moved here. Within a year of moving in, Time/Warner cable was bought by Spectrum. This company is run by idiots. Total idiots. When my initial $99 offer ran out, they wouldn't give me any deals. Year after year it kept going up until it got to $220/month. When I called to ask for a better deal, they said it would continue to go up until it hit $320/month, which they said was the "standard" price for my package. I tried YouTubeTV, liked it and dropped their cable. They were still charging me $80/month just for internet. When Fidium Fiber arrived, I switched to them for $25/month. So Spectrum could have easily kept getting at least $100/month from me but due to their stupidity, they get $0.00.

I really liked him in Pink Floyd.

I'm just getting ready to needle drop this one as well as her other Tappan Zee LP, "Ancient Dynasty". I've given up on them getting released on CD at this point.

Um... what the heck is that? The thumb sets the perspective and from that, this is not a CD cover. Unless the person holding it climbed down a beanstalk.

That's OK. Neither do we & we live here.

Eric Alexander & Vincent Herring - Split Decision (Smoke Sessions) Great new recording with Eric & Vincent going at it again.

There's no "fuss" really. I guess it's just about completeness. I would buy this new set if it had those two tracks. As it is now, I won't be buying it for the third time. I had the Mosaic set for years & upgraded to the Connoisseur 2-CD set when it came along. I see no reason to buy this new one at all. FWIW, they do belong on this new set and someone should have known this but, Blue Note lost that knowledge along the way. I'm surprised their Jazz Detective missed them.

Being up at the beach now, I see tons of scooter riders. I cringe when I see so many of them weaving around cars in traffic. I guess they figure that because they're on a little scooter, their bodies are somehow impervious to car metal. I still haven't gotten the itch to ride again. These days, I get my 2-wheeled excitement from my Magnum Cruiser ebike. I've had a couple of close calls on that too. People don't like to give bicycle riders the 3 foot buffer that they're supposed to. I had one big truck's mirror come very close to my head once. Scared the heck out of me.

I've sent an e-mail to Joe Harley, who is my only contact there these days. Hopefully he can do something but it's very very unlikely since they are advertising its availability already. I'm sure it's way past the point where they could add these two tracks. For the past several years, I've tried e-mailing Blue Note's corporate offices many times using Email addresses Michael Cuscuna gave me but no one seems to be reading those E-mails or, if they are, they are simply deleting them... or they have a directive, "If that asshole Bresnahan E-mails, be sure to delete it". It really makes me miss when Cuscuna & Tom Evered were running the reissue program. They were extremely accessible and rarely ignored a valid question. Michael also acknowledged his mistakes and almost always fixed them.

Michael Cuscuna & I talked about these two tracks before the 2-CD set came out. He said that they weren't in the Mosaic box due to an oversight on his part. He believed that they should have been included. When the second release came out without them, I got the feeling that someone goofed when they pulled the master tapes for Ron McMaster and simply duplicated the songs on the Mosaic but Michael never flat-out said that. He never named names when there was a mistake like this, unless it was his fault. The thing about these two tracks was that while they made were for a 45 rpm release, they were cut the first day in RVG's new recording studio and not with any other tunes. That sort of "orphaned" them from the rest of the 45 rpm sessions.

The new reissue is the same as the double CD. Just a different cover. The track order is the same for disc 1, shuffled a bit for disc 2: CD1 1. A Light Reprieve 2. Buzzard Lope 3. Blue Monday 4. Zonky 5. Later For The Rock 6. Sweet And Lovely 7. Dear John 8. Blue Friday 9. Everything Happens To Me [Short Version] 10. Mardi Gras 11. What A Difference A Day Makes 12. For All We Know 13. Ill Wind CD2 1. If I Could Be With You (One Hour Tonight) 2. I've Got The World On A String 3. Me 'N Mabe 4. Everything Happens To Me [Long Version] 5. How Long Has This Been Going On 6. With A Song In My Heart 7. Imagination 8. What Is There To Say? 9. There Is No Greater Love 10. All Of Me 11. Intermezzo 12. But Not For Me 13. All The Way

I've been waiting for this compilation to be released again so that Blue Note could finally rectify the missing last two tracks from these sessions ("Cry Me A River" & "Uptght"), which have only been released on a rare Japanese CD titled, "From Hackensack to Englewood Cliffs". Michael Cuscuna once told me that they missed those two tracks when he did the Mosaic box in 1987 and again when they re-did it for the Connoisseur 2CD release in 2005 but that he would try to get them out in the future. Looks like they missed them again. To be honest, I think the 2005 2-CD Connoisseur set was supposed to have these two tracks but someone screwed up during the mastering process and no one pulled that master.

It's very good. I picked it up the minute I saw Ammons' name on it. I got the 1993 Vee Jay CD with bonus tracks.

Blue Note released several LPs from that concert (Bobby Hutcherson, Bobbi Humphrey, Marlena Shaw & Ronnie Foster), so they more than made up for any recording costs. The fact that Byrd's performance was the only one not released at the time speaks to the label listening to the artists even back then. It's not like them keeping it in the can was good for Byrd's wallet. Here's what Michael Cuscuna said to me about this when someone on the Steve Hoffman forums questioned why he didn't release it himself: MC: Reality check: This was the only Montreux performance from that Blue Note night on July 5, 1973 to remain unissued in all territories. I asked Donald why and he said that like other live recordings he tried in the States, the results never reached the level of production and perfection that the original studio tracks did. He said it wasn’t successful and did not want it out. In those days, getting studio time to mix down multi track tapes – especially on speculation – was rarely approved. Fast forward to Don Was’s era as Blue Note president. From his vantage point, there isn’t much unreleased, but he liked to find whatever he can. The Byrd Montreux tape was a revelation – not as slick or perfect as a Mizell Bros. production, but cookin’ in a great groove nonetheless. So Don released it and we’re all happy about that. Why this is some indictment of me and the assumption is that this album would have sold hundreds of thousands more copies than anything else at that time are fictions that I can’t grasp.

The "Just Coolin'" release is the one that really bugs me too. This session was widely distributed through back channels for years & years... decades even. I don't think I knew of any Blakey fan who didn't have it. I even had someone send Michael Cuscuna his "mastering" take on an CD sequence but Michael wouldn't budge that it was not worthy of being released. Michael often talked to the artists about sessions like this and for all we know, Blakey himself might not have wanted that session released. I know that Donald Byrd specifically did not want those Montreux recordings released, but we see what artists' desires mean to today's Blue Note reissue team.

I like a lot of the stuff Zev has gotten issued. What I don't like about some of the things I've heard about him is that he (or those who know him) calls himself the "Jazz Detective", implying that he discovers these sessions that no one else found and puts them out. This is not always the case. Just because something has only been circulating via bootleg tapes doesn't mean that it was "lost" before he heard it.