Kevin Bresnahan

Horace Silver - Finger Poppin' With The Horace Silver Quintet (Blue Note). Blue & white label RVG pressing. Nice date. I used to play this all this when I first picked it up on CD (with Finger Popoin' on the CD spline).

I've never seen these covers. The pictures look like de-capped ICs, which is what I work with every day. I expect to see these in tear-down reports or FA reports but not on the cover of Jazz LP.

It's missing a disc from the US version.

I saw the poster for Nat Adderley's gig in Cardiff in the late seventies the day after. Missed Teddy Edwards like that, too. All because I didn't go into Spillers on the right day. MG Another thing for which the internet has proven to be a godsend. I get my schedules on line and rarely miss good shows.

I was going through some old club calendars that I saved from my traveling days and I found another one that I missed. In late October of 1996, I was in Goteborg, Sweden on a business trip and I bought tickets in advance to see Arne Domnerus in a septet with Bengt Hallberg on piano. I was so looking forward to going. Unfortunately, my customer made plans that night for us and I couldn't back out of it (not a good business decision). The worst thing was that the tickets were pretty expensive. Good thing my company ate the cost and not me. On another business trip to Germany, I was in Berlin and Mal Waldron's trio was playing at a club. I went to go and got completely lost on the subway. Hours later I finally found it but didn't go in. It was late and I was beat. i should have gone.

I've missed a few. I was just getting Jazz when Stan Getz came into town in a duet with Kenny Barron (their Montmartre gigs from this tour were released on "People Time"). I wasn't into the Jazz scene enough then and had no idea that Getz was sick & would soon die. I also missed Art Blakey's last trip through Boston by about 4 months. I was looking for information about when he would be coming through town when I discovered he had died. The lack of the Internet made it tough to get Jazz news back then. It's not like it was reported on the Boston nightly news. (Edited because I found the club's flyer) During a trip to the LA area in July of 1996, I went to the Club Brasserie in the Wyndham Bel Age Hotel that had Teddy Edwards on the bill. I went and had a blast. Absolute blast. Horace Tapscott was on the bill the week before and I was already in town but I had just arrived and was too tired to go. I figured I'd just catch him later. He was gone before I got the chance. Funny thing is, the week after I left, Red Holloway played there. I never got a chance to see Red either so there's two shows I would have gone to if I could have extended my trip. Again as I was just getting into Jazz, Jimmy Smith came into town with Kenny Burrell on guitar and I think Stanley Turrentine on tenor. I wasn't into Jazz organ at that time so I blew it off. I've never seen Kenny Burrell to this day. He's never come back through town that I can recall. I stupidly missed a great show because I wasn't that into vibes: McCoy Tyner & Bobby Hutcherson in a duo performance, I heard about it later that it was an incredible night. One last one that will always haunt me: me & my buddy Rob had tickets to see Jaki Byard in a duet with Michael Marcus. We had great seats and were sitting right in front when the lights went out because of a car accident that wiped out the building's transformer. We were all standing around chatting with Jaki while waiting see if the lights would come back on but they cancelled the show for a couple of weeks. Jaki was murdered a short time later.

Cat Stevens - Teaser And The Firecat (Analogue Productions). New vinyl from the (then) new QRP pressing plant, Beautiful sound and dead quiet. Nice record as well.

I've had these same speakers for many years as well. I think they sound pretty good.

I doubt this can beat the Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab gold CD by a whole lot. That's a pretty good sounding CD.

Mine was not glued at all. It came off with the plastic outer wrap. Same as the Miles box. Like Pete, both of my boxes have the back sheet inside the box now.

I was in Stereo Jack's one day and the discussion in the store got around to favorite records and this one was one Bob Blumenthal's favorites. I didn't have it at the time so I picked it up. Very nice jam session. The band truly sounds like they're having fun.

I get where Scott is coming from. I used to try and help people out by steering them away from expensive wires and interconnects as one of the last things a newbie should be trying to change to get audible improvements. I almost feel dirty coming in here and saying that expensive speaker wires aren't worth the expense. The subjective world seems to be winning the battle, particularly on other forums where "I hear a difference" is taken as sacrosanct. Science sucks and all that. Trust your ears and nothing else. Sorry, but I disagree. Without science, the world would be a very different place.

I would prefer to stick to speaker wire discussion, since they are in the signal path and could possibly affect your sound. If you all want to start talking about AC power cords... well, in my book, fancy power cords are simply a waste of money. And yes, I have experimented with them too. Start another thread about power cords so I can ignore it.

I wish I didn't already buy that Harry Allen CD a few years back for almost $25. It's a beautiful date with some very nice piano playing by Tommy Flanagan. It's probably my favorite Harry Allen CD.

I first ran into upgraded speaker wires back in the late 80's when a rep from a local company, who knew I was an audio geek, told me about his latest speaker wires, which cost him $10,000. He said that they made his very expensive amp "listenable". It was "un-listenable" before then. What the... I had to hear this and he was glad to show me. We listened to some great music and I told him his system sounded great, but how did it sound before with the old wires? He started going on about no bass, muted highs, just general crappy sound. So this $10,000 amp, $5,000 pre-amp & $4,500 CD player needed speaker wires to make them listenable? I was glad I didn't have the money to buy that gear. Fast forward a few years and I get a bargain on some heavy gauge Monster Cable speaker wires. I buy them and start an A/B test. I swapped as fast as I could, back & forth to no avail: I could not hear any differences. Maybe there were some, but if there were, they were far too subtle for me. I recently did it again when I bought a pair of Blue Jean Cables speaker wires. I have also done this with an expensive CD player interconnect. I swapped away (even pulling in one of my daughters to the test) and we couldn't hear any differences. I have come to the conclusion that I do not have the audio memory to hear these differences. To my line of thinking, this is a good thing. It saves me a lot of money. Now the dreaded "science arguments"... I can get into them here on Organissimo, unlike at other forums. I work in the RF industry where signals can go as high as 100 GHz. That's 100,000,000,000 Hz. Most people's hearing tops out at ~16 kHz. That's 16,000 Hz. Believe me, cabling affects RF performance and it's almost directly proportional to frequency. We test the heck out of "interconnects" (RF signal cables) to make sure that we are transmitting the signal to the device under test as best as we can. Loss is a killer at high frequencies. It can mean the difference between being able to test a part or not. I can tell you that these very, very expensive cables test out identically down below about 1 GHz. To almost every cable, any signal below about a 1 MHz (that's 100,000,000 Hz) is just DC. In other words, you connect it and the signal on one end comes out on the other pretty much unaffected. Now, what can affect audio cabling? Resistance, inductance and capacitance could do something, right? Not really. Most amplifier designers are very particular about their designs and it's all about the transfer curve. They worry more about power delivery to a 4-8 Ohm load than they do about its absolute output impedance. At these frequencies, that's what matters. So how much should we worry about these things. Well, capacitance and inductance don't mean much at all. Certainly not at an audible level. Resistance - now there you got something. You will see a loss of power with a lot of resistance. This will result in a lower volume, but that should be it. But how much resistance are we talking about? 1 Ohm of added resistance to a wire is a lot - it would take a pretty bad speaker wire to add this much resistance and even that much resistance is likely to be inaudible to most listeners. Here's a good article that sums up a lot of what I am saying and adds a discussion on the damping factor, which some people believe is the be all-end all for audio amplifier design. But as this article shows, even that has very little affect unless it's really bad. One last thing - I am not saying that anyone buying expensive speaker wires, RCA interconnects or AC power cords is an idiot. If I had the money, I'd consider upgrading myself. Many of these esoteric wires and cables are almost works of art. However, for me, I know that I can't hear a difference so I put this item very far down my upgrade list. Other listeners can hear a difference, so they are happy with their purchase. I am just as happy that I can't. It allows me to concentrate on improving what I hear changing my system. Lon and I can still talk about audio and get along fine. I am sure I'd love the sound of his system and I imagine he'd dig mine. We can disagree on how we got there too.

So young... I remember seeing him play a few times and I was impressed by the big sound he got out of his bass. RIP Mr. Burno. Wasn't he good friends with Jazzy Mary (Glennon) & Lois Gilbert from the old Jazz Corner?

Those are pressed by Rainbo Records in CA and they are from a digital source. While they're supposed to sound fine, I don't see the point of 'em. It's just the CD with clicks, pops & surface noise added.

I never knew about this box set. Does anyone know of a place where I can get a copy? I got turned onto the Electra/Musician "Live!" LP years ago and I'd love to get this completed concert.

Kate Bush - 50 Words For Snow (Fish People). Brand new out of the sleeve, these sides have never played without crackle & pops. The first time I played this, I didn't like it that much. I still don't think it's great, but I it's not Yoko Ono bad.

The Modern Jazz Quartet - The Modern Jazz Quartet At Music Inn (with Jimmy Giuffre) (Atlantic). Original black label pressing in OK shape. Unfortunately, the vibes distort every now & then and there are some pretty good pops but listenable. Not my favorite LP, that's for sure. Too polite? EDIT: I paid way more than $6 for it!

While expected, this is still an incredible bummer. Horace has always been one of my favorites. I am glad I got to see him on his last tour. It was great to see and hear him that one time. RIP Horace.

One thing I always wondered about this... doesn't it make sense to abbreviate something said out loud as "December sixteenth, two-thousand and thirteen" to 12/16/13? Does the rest of the world state dates differently from the US? I can see if you state today's date as "the sixteenth of December, two-thousand and thirteen", then 16/12/13 makes sense. Is that how it's done there? Numerical dates are simply abbreviations of stated dates and abbreviations typically follow syntax. No one would abbreviate "emergency room" as RE.

The Incredible Jimmy Smith - Christmas 64 (Verve). Black label reissue (with reissue sticker on the cover) but still a Van Gelder pressing.

Many years ago, my buddy Rob talked me into to going and seeing Jim Hall during one of his annual treks to Boston. Previously to this, I was rather ambivalent about his playing. After that show, I never missed him again. He was a great performer and I'll miss him. He just came through town a month or so ago and looked very frail. It was still a great show. RIP Mr. Hall and thank you for all the smiles you gave me.

Al Cohn - No Problem (Muse). This is a nice date, if not a bit predictable. Barry Harris plays his usual stuff, which is very good, but also quite a bit predictable.