Kevin Bresnahan

Mosaic Records says that their box sets are limited editions never to be available again, not Blue Note! The Connoisseur Series is limited. They never made any statement that these limited editions would never be reissued that I'm aware of. That would be incredibly stupid on their part. BTW, as has been pointed out by "those in the know", all Japanese Blue Note CDs are limited to a certain extent. They press all they want to sell and then they're done. They have re-pressed many titles due to demand. In fact, their RVG series is marketed as "limited" and yet they've re-pressed several of them. If anyone can be accused of having an unlimited "limited edition", it's these guys. Well, there's also those laughable "limited edition" CDs that OJC puts out. Later, Kevin

So wonky that I dumped it... AM radio comes to mind.

I did ask him about this and he gave me two more titles that might happen but they were not far enough along for him to let me say on line. Apparently, Water has all the say in what they release so it would be good to get a connection there if you want a say in what they license. Later, Kevin

If I drink a coffee after about 3 PM, I can't fall asleep.

I would suggest E-mailing Mosaic Records directly. I do know that the RVG series, in and of itself, was not the brainchild of Michael Cuscuna but in fact, born and nurtured in Japan. I think the guys in the NY office probably saw the response to this Japanese-only series and said, "Hey, we should do that too." One thing I'm sure of is that Michael's job on the RVG series is to listen to the remastered CD and approve it or send it back to RVG for another run (as well as check out the final artwork). I would think he has much less say in the overall sound of RVGs than he does with Ron McMaster-ed Mosaic CDs. RVG is getting paid well to give these CDs his personal "sound", so it probably doesn't make sense to have someone else mucking with it. Later, Kevin

The master tapes are stored in California, not NY. Any "master tape" listening Michael Cuscuna does is on CD-R or DAT from the remastering engineer's bench. Kevin

Booker Ervin with Dexter Gordon's "Settin' The Pace" two-fer omitted one track, "Groovin' at the Jamboree", which was subsequently put out on a single CD of "The Trance"... with 2 other tracks that were already on "Settin' The Pace"! I have yet to buy "The Trance". It's my little protest to Fantasy. They could have easily put this unissued track, which is only around 7 minutes long, on several other subsequent CD reissues they chose not to. I would be less upset if they hadn't E-mailed me back when "Settin' The Pace" came out to say that the missing track wouold be included in "a future Booker reissue". Little did I know that it would be "The Trance"! Later, Kevin

I must've told the guys at Blue Note 20 times that they do not need to remaster "Basra". All they have to do is get Rudy's digital master from Japan. For everyone's sake, I hope they listened. I know Michael Cuscuna went ahead and got a copy of the JRVG just to hear it after I insisted. Maybe that did it? Kevin

If you ever get up near Hartford, CT, Integrity 'N Music has most Venus CDs for around $25, which I think is a pretty good price. I wish these CDs (and especially SACDs) weren't so damned expensive. I'd own a hell of a lot more of them. BTW, anyone who digs Venus in general and hard bop specifically must get their hands on One For All's "No Problem". It is simply fantastic. One of the best this year. Too bad many of it's biggest fans will never hear it. Later, Kevin

I was told these are locked in and since they have catalog numbers, I assume this is true. However, usual disclaimers apply: titles may change between now and release date. Stuff happens. Looking at the catalog numbers, I'd guess that the dates may shift around. Kevin February 2005 Ike Quebec - Heavy Soul 07243 864472 2 7 Tina Brooks - True Blue 07243 864473 2 6 Art Blakey - A Night In Tunisia 07243 864474 2 5 Johnny Coles - Little Johnny C 07243 864475 2 4 Hank Mobley - Hi Voltage 07243 864476 2 3 Pete La Roca - Basra 07243 864477 2 2 March 2005 Wayne Shorter - Night Dreamer 07243 864467 2 5 Herbie Hancock - Speak Like A Child 07243 864468 2 4 Sonny Clark - Dial S For Sonny 07243 864469 2 3 Art Blakey - Like Someone In Love 07243 864470 2 9 Grant Green - Feelin' The Spirit 07243 864471 2 8 Horace Silver - And The Jazz Messengers 07243 864478 2 1

Not that the bits have anything to do with it, but weren't all of the first TOCJ 84XXX CDs remastered using 20 bit technology? I thought they moved to 24 bit right in the middle of this series. Maybe around 1995? And I mean it about the bits... some of the best-sounding CDs I own are 16 bit remasters. Bits has nothing to do with a good remastering job. Later, Kevin

I have mine on order and I just can't wait. "Allegresse" was one of my favorites from a few years back, one that I go back to often. So lush... "Hang Gliding" really feels like hang gliding to me. BTW, I once sat next to and chatted with Maria at Birdland a few years ago (we were both sitting at the bar). She was as great at conversation as she is at writing and arranging. Later, Kevin

I suppose when you come right down to it, is it "Kenny" or "Kinney"? He was listed as "Kinney" early on and I thought I heard it spoken that way on one record or another. Later, Kevin BTW, the reason it could be "Kinney" is because he was born McKinley Howard Dorham". I suppose McKinley could be shortened to "Kinney" or "Kenny".

it is available as japanese mini LP CD Not anymore... came and went in about 2 months. Also, it was in mono and likely dubbed off an LP although I think it sounds like a pretty clean LP. Later, Kevin

Did some of the forums get "restored" to older back up file? I was just reading a thread in the "Miscellaneous non-political" forum and I could swear that there were some posts missing. Anyone else have a thread you watching seem to loose a few posts? Later, Kevin

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the copy of Exact Audio Copy that I downloaded has no LAME plug in. I had to go and find one. The trouble I had was that everyone thinks their LAME encoder is the best. Some use trade names since LAME is open code. Also, several of the websites wanted $$ to download their version. I still have never been able to get a clear answer as to which LAME-style encoder is the "best". I have also read that Musicmatch uses one of the best mp3 encoders out there. I use MM almost exclusively to rip my mp3s and I think they sound pretty good. Is it straight LAME 3.96 or a home-grown version? I don't know. Later, Kevin

Brandon, I'm probably taking too much out on you. Mea culpa. Unfortunately, your view of "snapshots" with regards to digital audio is very prevalent in the world of audio, particularly among analog fanatics. I just had a bit of a knee-jerk reaction. Mind you, I like analog... however, I still think that digital audio gets a bad rap because of crappy remastering jobs. I sometimes wonder that if all the effort some of these companies put into these beautiful SACD remasters was put into remastering CDs instead, we might not even be talking about SACD or DVD-Audio. BTW, I have a copy of Kenneth Pohlman's "The Compact Disc Handbook" that has served me well. In it, Pohlman seems to distill the theory into more understandable terms. The intro is on-line here. Pohlman's other book, "Principals of Digital Audio" is more of a textbook but might strike a chord among some of the board's more intrigued denizens. BTW II, Nyquist's theory is the subject of many heated debates among analog and digital proponents. A technical description of his work can be found here. One more thumbnail description can be found here. Later, Kevin

Two of my mp3 players specifically state that they cannot play back VBR files. In the past, when I encoded using VBR, the resulting files were huge, almost as big as if I had simply encoded at 256 kbps. I'll download CDEX and experiment. CDEX's website seems to indicate that they have developed their own LAME encoder. Does anyone know which LAME encoder MusicMatch uses? I have had great success with MusicMatch. Later, Kevin

Two of these are a "no brainer" in my book: Freddie Hubbard's "Ready for Freddie" and Sonny Rollins' "Newk's Time". If Morgan's "The Sidewinder" is a style you like, you'd probably like Duke Pearson's "Sweet Honey Bee". If not, I really like Jimmy Smith - Prayer Meetin'. Quite honestly, about the only one of these that I don't listen to very often is Stanley Turrentine's "Never Let Me Go" but I think that's mostly because I'm not a big fan of Shirley Scott's organ playing. Jimmy Smith's "Rockin' the Boat" doesn't do much for me either. Later, Kevin

Brandon, you post a lot on threads about digital audio but I think the person that doesn't understand digital technology is you. People seem to fall back on the same old "series of snapshots" theory. If you do the math, you'll see that you can completely resurrect an analog waveform as long as you sample at a rate of 2 times the maximum frequency. You can compare the before and after using all the test gear you want but it will show you that if done right, it will be identical. Done right is the important part of that last paragraph. Artifacts from the sampling circuits and clock can and do add noise to the decoded analog waveform. Error correction of a corrupt bitstream will also skew the results. However, it is not as if any of these artifacts will result in "jagged" analog waveforms and almost every listener would be unable to detect the difference. Experiment with a record and a CD burner. Do some blind listening tests. I would be willing to bet that nearly everyone reading this would be extremely hard pressed to determine which playback was the LP and which was the CD-R of the LP. If you are arguing that there is audible content above 22 Khz, that's different and I am still on the fence about this. I believe that there is some signal up there but 1) I can't hear above 15 KHz (neither can most male humans) and 2) any signals up there will be so low in level as to be inconsequential. Right now, I believe most people falling back on this argument do so because the "series of snapshots" argument doesn't hold water. Bad-sounding CDs are the result of bad mastering and/or bad digital-to-analog conversion in the player. Later, Kevin

Just listened to this on the way into work. Man, does Lateef nail that entry or what! The thing is, Curtis sounds like he's playing with a paper bag over his horn on the whole disc. It makes Yusef's tenor sound crystal clear. On "Judyful", not only is Curtis muted, the rhythm section is turned down as well. I wonder if Rudy was having a bad day in the studio? Kevin

I have this. Someone in Hong Kong sells them regularly on eBay. The funniest thing is that because Cuscuna has the original "Blue Trane" photo, he saw that Trane is actually sucking on a lollipop in the picture, not a reed like everyone thought. The guys in Japan tried to get Michael to use a reed in the shoot and he told them it was a lollipop. On the back of the CD, it has artist listing: Michael Cuscuna, diskjocky; Blue Note Records, music; Julius Keilwerth, sax; Lollipop, candy Later, Kevin

PayPal is a bit of a necessary evil these days. Some auctions are "PayPal only". My biggest complaint with them is their scam for a "premium" account. The first time someone tries sending you payment via credit card, they start hounding you to convert. Don't do it! The wording on the conversion makes it seem like the 3% fee is only for credit card payments. It's a lie... the minute you switch to a premium account all payments from then on are charged a 3% transaction fee - even cash transfers. Later, Kevin

Thanks Bertrand & Jim... my Dad's using today to engage in his favorite pastime which is golf. He's probably on the 4th green by now (he's in a father/son tournament with one of my brothers). I still don't know what I'm going to do today. Any second now, I'll start getting asked, "What're we doing today," and sadly, "Veg out," is not an acceptable answer. Later, Kevin EDIT: Well, it already started 2 seconds after I hit "submit".

I keep getting asked "what I want to do on Father's Day" when in actuality, I just want to completely veg out. Of course, as all Dads know, this is impossible. Unfortunately, my own father was just diagnosed with colon cancer so that certainly puts things in perspective! Live it up people... you only get one shot at it. Later, Kevin