Kevin Bresnahan

I noticed the sound variations of this pressing too so I found a Connoisseur LP and it's better. Playing right now: Willis Jackson "Shuckin'"

When you say "the first Vanguard album", were you referring to the Solid State LP "Live at the Village Vanguard" or to Alan Grant's "Opening Night: Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Big Band at the Village Vanguard February 7, 1966", which showed up on CD for about a week back in 2000? I do like that Opening Night CD quite a bit. I think I'll play it again when I get home. I just hope Alan Grant used good CD-Rs when he had these CDs pressed. Kevin

Write a protest song, record a video and put it up on youtube.com It worked for Dave Carroll (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo). Believe me, if you do this and it goes viral, you'll be on Ellen next week.

Ahh, the old re-grind with the paper bits! I had a few of those back in the day. It was very noticeable with red labeled records. The red labels stood out from the black vinyl. They almost always caused a skip.

I just picked up a few more blue label Prestiges. One is Miles Davis's "Walkin'", which is one of my favorite Miles recordings. I hope this is better than the OJC reissue I have in my LP rack. I'll put it on after "The Immortal Lester Young" (Savoy) (RVG in the deadwax) finishes. "Old timey" sounding stuff on this record (can you tell I've never owned/heard it before?). Edit: Yeah! This blue labeled Pretige RVG LP of "Walkin'" sounds great. I suppose if I was "stuck" with the OJC LP, I wouldn't be totally disappointed. Word to the wise: if you really want a vinyl version of a Prestige record the latest OJC pressing is pretty darn good for the money.

And I'm staring to get back into vinyl again now... why was that? There is a lot of crappy vinyl out there. As much as we like to romanticize those days, there were a lot of reasons CDs took off and took over so quickly and completely. I remember my brother buying Ted Nugent's "Cat Scratch Fever" and having to return it 4 times because he couldn't get one to play over the first few notes of the opening track. Eventually, we taped a few quarters onto the headshell and played through the speedbump. Took the quarters off and it played fine from then on.

I've used my trusty Discwasher D4 for decades. I will say that I think my old late 70s era brush is a lot better than the new ones in getting out heavy grunge. I also think that they changed the formula of the D4 liquid. The stuff I buy today smells weird. I used to zap my records with a Zerostat gun before cleaning with the D4 brush, but my old one died and a new "Milty" model is $100. Too much for what little it did.

Yup. I've been toying eith the idea for many years and came very close to buying a Decware Zen Torii, but the price was just a bit too much for my (wife's) budget. I was able to pick up this Quicksilver GLA for $700. The only drwaback was that it arrived (via UPS) looking like it had been run over by the UPS truck that delivered. I had to replace the destroyed fuse holder on the back panel because they sheared it off during the "drop shipping". I am thinking about putting in Psvane 6CA7-T or KT88-T tubes in next. That's one of the nice things about this amp - self biasing. I can drop in a whole bunch of different tubes with no worries, BTW, this LP of "A Night In Tunisia" is awesome!!

Now playing with tubes... I just picked up a Quicksilver GLA EL34 tube amp. Teddy Edwards - The Inimitable Teddy Edwards (Xanadu) Once you get past the wonky piano & bass sound, this is a pretty nice date. Great solo intro to "Stella By Starlight" by Teddy - worth the price of admission alone. Up next: Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers - A Night In Tunisia (Blue Note) A blue label Van Gelder pressing. Looking forward to it. Kevin

Val, I agree with you that she has done a fine job keeping the place afloat when most Jazz clubs have folded. However, even you must have gotten a chuckle out of her "nice to the people" comment. I have heard from many "people" who have been treated anything but nice by Lorraine at the Vanguard.

"We are totally devoted to the music. We don't talk about commercial things like marketing. I don't care if we're not busy one night or if we lose a dollar or so. We offer a pure experience listening to jazz. If you have the right music, and you're nice to the people, and the people enjoy the club, then that generates its own good feelings." Ha ha! Lorraine nice? Not to most of the people I know. One prominent Jazz figure has told me he'll go back into the Village Vanuard "when the bitch dies".

My comment was meant mainly to address Dan's "read better books" statement. I think the majority of the Harry Potter books were well written. The last couple could have used some editing but I think Rowling got too big which led to her having carte blanche in the end. But let's get back to these kids that can do anything!

The Harry Potter books are well written and I commend Rowling for writing books to pull in young readers. I enjoyed every one of them. Anyone who watches the movies and thinks that's what Harry Potter is all about is missing a lot.

Recently, I've been having fun buying Van Gelder blue labeled LPs at Stereo Jacks. But I have to say, I think I'm seeing part of the reason why Blue Note had the cachet back when these LPs were issued. You see, I've been buying Van Gelder blue labeled Blue Note LPs as well and there is no comparison. The Blue Note pressings are almost all better-sounding than any Prestige pressing. I've plunked on mint looking blue label RVG LPs and heard fuzzy distortion, rice crispies, inner groove distortion and a lot more. There are better sounding versions out there too. I happened to have a new OJC vinyl pressing of Gene Ammons's "Boss Tenor" and you know what? I'm keeping the new OJC and trading/giving away this old RVG STEREO LP. The OJC pressing blows the RVG away. The other thing I've noticed about these Prestige RVGs is that you have to inspect the *vinyl itself* when checking it for scratches. There were several mint-looking blue label RVG Prestige LPs where the vinyl had dimples and marbled vinyl. I think the marbled areas are what was called underfill. Nasty looking. I imagine they woouldn't play very well so I didn't buy them. Kevin

Ha ha! You give me too much credit. My oldest does not take rejection/disappointment well at all. My youngest is much better at it. Truth be told, I'm still working on them, even when they're 22 & 19. I hope I put them out into the world in decent shape.

I would say "let's blame the parents" but since my daughters are from this generation, I can say with a straight face that it ain't us! I think I first noticed something was wrong when our oldest daughter started playing soccer. Her team sucked. I mean really sucked. Among a whole bunch of sucky teams, their team sucked the most. I don't think they won a game. At the end of the year, we started to leave the field when the coach called everyone aside and handed out trophies. Yup. Trophies. I asked him what they were for and he said "It's a participation trophy". I have tried to keep my daughters above the stupidity. I keep warning them that in real life, there are winners and there are *losers* too. I don't know if a lot of today's kids can handle rejection. The therapists will be making a fortune in the future.

Valerie - I think you're right - their proposed prices are steep, especially in this economy and especially for Jazz shows. How are they going to book 250 shows a year with enough name cachet to fill the club at $35/ticket? Jazz fans are notoriously cheap in Boston (according to the few waitresses I've talked to about it). Is it any better out in LA?

Neil Young's anti-digital stupidity shines through again. Dumb quote of the article right here: "Such a format, he said, would contain 100 per cent of the data of music as it is created in a studio, as opposed to five per cent in compressed formats including Apple's AAC (Advanced Audio Coding)". As Bugs Bunny would say, "What a maroon". So Neil, only 5% of the actual analog input is recoverable from a digitally compressed file? Really? So instead of a 20-22,000 Hz analog playback, we only get 20-1,100 Hz playback? While I admire Neil for trying to get the music industry to get its stuff together and end the Loudness War, saying stupid stuff like this will not help. Digital is here to stay. Target things that will improve the digital files out there, like better mastering.

The Sweets Edison date can't hold a candle to what that Lalo Schifrin CD was going for back in the day. Didn't a copy sell on ebay for almost $300 one time... or was it $500? The Alan Shorter CD fetched some good money for a while too. Kevin

Don't you know it, Hans! I could never post this on the Hoffman forum. There are too many loonies for this crap over there. Heck, the inventor of the Bedini Quad-Beam 3 Ultra Clarifier is probably a member there. And you just *know* how the thread's gonna go too. "I hear what I hear and no one can tell me I don't hear it". No matter that it's scientifically impossible to hear wider soundstage, deeper bass, "darker blacks" (whatever the hell that's supposed to mean) etc. by flipping a couple of bits (worst case) in a digital bitstream. When will the audiophile fringe stop applying analog (LP) playback problems to digital discs? Cleaning up the surface of an LP will make it play back better. Cleaning up the surface of a digital disc will make it have less (completely correctable) errors. It simply cannot change what is digitally encoded on that disc. All the terms they use to describe the changes they "hear" with digital disc treatments would require a change in 100's of millions of 1's & 0's.

I just got a E-mail from Elusive Disc. Now on sale!! You must have this!! http://www.elusivedisc.com/prodinfo.asp?number=ABED-QUAD3&utm_source=email&utm_medium=special Now on sale for a mere $199, a machine that spins your CDs, DVDs and even BluRay discs at "quad speed" and fires 4 LASERS AT ONCE at the disc to "POLARIZE THE POLYMER" to allow you to "maximize the laser's ability to retrieve stored data". And get this, "by using the Bedini Quad-Beam 3 Ultra Clarifier to treat your CD's before playing, you will discover a distinct improvement in video and audio quality". Whoa!! So it's like... dude, when you play your disc later, your player will actually read all those 1's & 0's the way they were laid down. Awesome! This is so #%$%@*&% stupid!!! Please tell me that no one here actually fell for this. Please. I think too highly of you to believe any of you would fall for this absolute BS. :lol:

George plays alto on a couple of tracks of "My Horns Of Plenty" too. Nice CD but the bass was recorded too closely. I hear whirring sounds as Ray Drummond slides his fingers up and down the strings. It drives me nutty sometimes.

Yeah, that one. What am I missing (and do I want to know? )

What's wrong with the cover? I must be missing something.

RIP Joe. Great coach who earned the respect and admiration of 10's of thousands of Penn State Nittany Lions. It's unfortunate that the man's legacy has become so tarnished by the ineptitude of his school's administration. Everyone has an opinion about what Joe should have done when told what was witnessed. What he did was report it to his bosses. What they did was criminal (and is being tried as such). My opinion - what Joe did was stupid. Yes, I would have told my bosses immediately, but if they did not call the cops, I would have called PDQ. Not doing anything because your bosses failed, well... stupid is good word. Of course, I'm one generation removed from Joe. History shows that my father's generation liked to pretend that shit like this never happens i.e. look at the catholic church.