Kevin Bresnahan

What an incredible legacy he leaves behind. His name was second only to Alfred Lion when it comes to, "If his name is on it, it's gotta be good".

When you were on a 28.8 dial-up modem, you rarely read every post to these newsgroups. You had to pick and choose. You could only tie up you landline for so long.

Last night at his gig, I bought Jaleel Shaw's "The Soundtrack Of Things To Come" (Changu Records). I have yet to play it but at first glance, whoever is in charge of their graphics need to take a better peek at the final artwork before sending it to the printer. I can't read all of the track names, even with my reading glasses. Whoever did the scan for discogs cranked up the contrast & brightness significantly. The original looks much darker than this scan.

His were black but looked just as imposing. They sounded very good. At first, the high frequencies were rather diffuse. I figured it was the tweeter array used for the midrange, as that's probably my "high" frequencies these days. But when I had him toe in the speakers a lot, the highs became much more pronounced. Even he commented that they sounded much better with that severe toe-in. It created a very small "sweet spot", where we sat playing some great music. He had a Qobuz hi rez download of Cannonball's "Somethin' Else" and I immediately played "One For Daddy-O", one of my favorite Blue Note tracks and it was sublime. When Cannonball hits his first solo, it just jumped at us. I made him wait until the end of the track before playing somethin' else and when Miles asked, "Is that what you wanted, Alfred?", it sound like he was in the room with us.

I visited a friend-of-a-friend's house over the weekend. I have visited him before. He's always buying the latest & greatest audio gear. This time, he had Tekton Ulfberht speakers. Holy cow, are these things huge! Using a tweeter array to cover the midrange frequencies results in a much bigger speaker than most. These were probably a foot taller than me. My wife would kill me if I tried bringing these home. BTW - he claimed that these speakers had an insane 97 dB sensitivity. I don't believe that for one second as I've never seen a non-horn speaker have numbers much higher than 92 dB. Apparently, some independent labs have measured much lower sensitivity (less than 90 dB0 and the founder/owner of Tekton is supposedly threatening to sue them over it.

Next up on my show list is Jamie Baum at Scullers on March 7th. She's bringing Jaleel with her, so I'll get to see him again shortly. The show I have on my calendar after the Baum gig is an unusual one - Randy Brecker and his wife Ada Rovati are playing at the microscopic Press Room in Portsmouth. The rhythm section are UNH faculty, and I've heard a couple of them over the years. Should be a fun night, if maybe a bit crowded. This club is general admission and likely without tables (standing room) for this show. When I saw Nels Cline there, it was packed to the gills. I was surprised the fire marshal didn't show up.

Thanks for this. i looked on Laurie's bandcamp page but not YouTube. I think I can safely pass on this one. I have a lot of Laurie's previous releases and I don't find myself pulling them off the shelf very much any more.

I don't think so. Dyson was not playing with any nuance and I was close enough to not even hear what the mics were putting out of the speakers. He had a hi-hat, two crash & a sizzle cymbal and he crashed those two crash cymbals way too much,

I think I'd like to hear some samples before buying this one. The rhythm section is rather unknown outside Vancouver.

I was very disappointed with the show last night. Old man rant coming... it was TOO FUCKING LOUD. Drummer Joe Dyson was the biggest culprit. I should have known he was going to be loud when I saw that he had every drum mic'ed as well as two overhead mics over his kit. He had three times as many mics as the rest of the band combined. It made for a drum-centric sound which was not pleasurable at all. My wife hated it and she left with her left ear "shut down" for a few hours after. It was that loud. I anticipated it and closed my right ear when Dyson really started bashing the cymbals. Other than that, the music was pretty good. Shaw's style is different. Most songs had what sounded like free improv, but more controlled. I don't want to get into the "noodling" argument again, so I will say that there were long streams of sax and Ben Street's bass floating over Lawrence Fields' piano fills and behind Dyson's cymbal crashes. My wife has only recently started attending Jazz shows with me and she was adamant that I never buy tickets for her to see this band again and that she never wanted to see Dyson behind the drum kit.

I'm on the 6th book in Karin Slaughter's Will Trent series. I have been enjoying the ABC TV adaptation, so I thought I'd like the books. I do. It's unfortunate that the television show diverged from the books so much though. The two are nothing alike, from physical descriptors to character presentation.

I just crossed over 30 years of posting stuff on the internet. I started sometime in 1995 on the rec.music.bluenote newsgroup. How time flies. This may have been my first post: https://groups.google.com/g/rec.music.bluenote/c/bAXCUZGNkbg/m/5ITeHd-pkjsJ

Duvall's character in the first Reacher movie was probably the only saving grace in that movie.

I try to see Smulyan play whenever he is in my area. He's a great bari player.

Jaleel Shaw is bring a band to Jimmy's in Portsmouth, NH Thursday night (2/19). Even though the club is very close to my house, I don't go to Jimmy's very often because the shows are usually pretty expensive. This show was under $40, which is pretty cheap for this venue.

This seems like an odd CD title. I wonder if it is a bit of a joke. That certainly doesn't look like the setting for an "audiophile" recording and I highly doubt that an upright piano was used for it.

Bill Heid - Dark Secrets (Savant) I love the back cover photo.

Yes. Jerry Roche, the founder of Mighty Quinn Productions, worked at Mosaic for 13 years. He had the bad luck of diving into the CD reissue game right as the market was loosing steam.

I would have suggested Connelly's Bosch books but they seem like very good examples of murder mystery novels to me.

If you want detective series with a twist, try the first Glen Cook Garrett P.I. book, "Sweet Silver Blues". Garrett is a human detective living in a world populated by gnomes. I read them (there are 14 of them) a long time ago and remember enjoying them.

How was the attendance? I know he stopped touring for a while due to the Berklee controversy. It will be interesting to see if he tours the Boston area again.

Emmet Cohen has posted on Facebook that Ken suffered a heart attack a few hours after leaving the stage after a performance on the last night of The Jazz Cruise. If you have a Facebook account, Emmet has posted a short video of one Ken's clarinet solos last night. Ken was doing what he loved to the end. https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1DSRHs5HxY/

Most of this one: I think I was at this one... I've seen Yoko at Scullers many times so I've forgotten a few of them. I'm pretty sure that some of the music I saw is on this CD but i have been told that there were tape issues on the night I went, so maybe not.

This sucks. Ken will be missed and not just for his playing. I was lucky to see him and talk with him between sets at the old Jocko's Jazz Club in Methuen, MA. He played there solo as well as part of a "Four Brothers" front line. What wonderful memories.

Now playing - probably one of the more unusual sax/guitar duet CDs - André Jaume & Raymond Boni's "Pour Django" (CELP). Boni often uses his guitar it to shade Jaume's sax rather than harmonize with it, giving it a rather "atmospheric" sound in places. I've mentioned this before, but I tried to see Jaume perform live for over 30 years, but he never came anywhere near me - at least in a way that I heard about it. During my first months of retirement a couple of years ago, I actually looked into taking a trip to France just to see him, but I couldn't even find him performing there, making me wonder if he has retired from performing entirely. He is 85, so I shouldn't be too surprised if that's the case.