Kevin Bresnahan

I'm feeling rather low as I prepare to head back to my hometown out in Western Massachusetts for my mom's funeral so I decided to put some Jazz on the turntable. As I looked at the racks, Frank Kimbrough's "Meantime" jumped out at me. These Newvelle LPs are oversized and the spines really stand out in the LP rack so they're tough to miss. But just like I miss Frank, I'm really going to miss my mom. Appropriate selection.

This is my favorite Gonsalves recording & this OJC CD sounds really good. It's too bad it has an ugly "tab crunch". I hate when one of those jewel case tabs gets in front of the booklet and you close the jewel case before you realize it. They never come out. At least it's only one here.

The Cars - Greatest Hits (Elektra). I need some workout music. 😀

Contains George Benson's "The New Boss Guitar of George Benson" & McDuff's "Hot Barbeque"

I assume you've heard that Mars Williams is going through some tough times right now? There's a Go Fund Me page here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/marswilliams

I'll have to try it. They sell it at Costco.

A hot cup of Gold Star Coffee's "Gourmet Blend". This blend of Colombian, Brazilian, Guatemalan & Kenyan coffees is really smooth. Gold Star Coffee out of Toronto is still the best place for whole bean coffee at a good price.

The political threads were crazy back then. With today's polarized political scene, can you imagine what it would be like now? Eeek!

My mom held on for almost 17 years after my dad died back in 2006. Last week she fell and hit her head. She did not recover and died this morning at the age of 85, just two weeks shy of her 86th birthday. I'm still a bit bummed out right now so I can't give her a write up like I did my dad. For now, let's just say my gregarious nature is definitely from my mother.

I've seen Danilo Pérez several times. Most memorably as part of Wayne Shorter's rhythm section.

How is this? I've had this CD in my hands and in various carts over the years and never followed through with it.

I had my cell phone muted at Scullers a few weeks ago at a show with The Cookers. I went to open a youtube video link to check on a tune they were playing and the damn thing un-muted itself on me and a few notes from the video blasted out of my phone. Luckily, it was between songs and David Weiss commented, "Hey, no Coltrane when we're playing," and the crowd got a good laugh. I was supremely embarrassed.

I miss the days when artists streamed stuff on their websites. I wish I had saved more of it for future listening as chances are that this material will never surface again - certainly not legitimately at least. I have a ton of live performances from Jeremy Pelt & Greg Osby, but there were several other artists who stopped hosting live material that I wished I'd saved. Those days are gone I guess.

I enjoy her previous "Jazz" release, "Pop Pop". I may pick this up if I happen to see it on a shelf. I wonder if they'll file in the rock section as they do with "Pop Pop"? BTW - I saw her live once and she was pretty close to "obnoxiously drunk". Not an enjoyable evening.

I've mentioned another memorable show here on the forums a couple of times. It was memorable mostly for a long conversation I had between sets of a December 1999 show at Birdland with Michael Brecker, Dave Liebman & Joe Lovano in the front line with Phil Markowitz, Rufus Reid and Billy Hart rounding out the band. The club was sold out but a seat at the bar was available. I grabbed an open seat and saw a pretty incredible performance. Throughout the set, there was a woman about my age sitting next to me. She was clearly getting into it. When the set ended, we got to talking and I was amazed at the level of detail she noted in the players' solos and tune selection. She told me she was heading to another gig - I think she said at the Vanguard - and vacated the seat. One of the people I was at the show with jumped into the vacant seat and the first thing he asked was, "What were you and Maria Schneider talking about? You were talking for a long time". Maria Schneider? Really? Now it makes sense. BTW - someone filmed several of these shows. They're up on YouTube. These videos don't seem to convey the energy level I felt at this show. These 3 tenors were really blowing hard and Billy Hart seemed to be crashing the cymbals more than usual.

I saw one of those sets at the Vanguard in 1999. I got there early and sat right in front of Jackie. I was so close, I could read his name etched onto the bell of his sax. The guy I went with lived in New York and he couldn't believe I wanted to wait in line to get in or that I would want to sit that close. After the show, he was nearly speechless and thanked me for making him sit there. He really wanted to move. I think he would say that was one of his favorite shows too. Billy Higgins was the draw for me that night. It was the first time I got to see him play. He had been off the New England Jazz scene for a long time due to his health issues. It was a magical night. Best Jazz show I ever saw. FWIW, I tried to find that bathroom the night I saw Lou Donaldson and when I ventured back there, Lou was warming up so I lingered a bit to listen. Lorraine came back and said, "What are you doing?" When I told her I was going to the bathroom, she said something like, "It's right there. This room is only for musicians". WTF? You have to walk through it to get to the bathroom. I guess that was her idea of a "green room".

I would not recommend re-using that old external HD unless you run some memory tests on it first. Files can also get corrupted if the drive starts to fail. Not all drives fail catastrophically. I've bought 4 Samsung T7 1TB SSD drives over the years and not had any problems (fingers crossed as I type this): https://www.amazon.com/SAMSUNG-Portable-SSD-1TB-MU-PC1T0T/dp/B0874XN4D8

I saw JJ several times at The Regattabar in Cambridge, MA. Me & my friend Rob were regulars back then, so we had our table that we almost always got (243 maybe?). It was front & center. JJ's slide has been a fun story I tell people about when they ask about my favorite Jazz shows. One (all?) of those shows had Renee Rosnes at the piano. She was fantastic and those shows are why I try to never miss her when she come through Boston/Cambridge. Another funny story was when Arthur Taylor's Wailers came to the R'Bar and they pushed Arthur's drum kit into the crowd right where we sat. I was about 4 feet from Arthur. Luckily, he didn't bash those cymbals too much.

I saw JJ a few times and at a couple of those shows, I was at the front and I had his slide glide over my head too. Now playing disc 3 from Buck Clayton's jam session box from the Mosaic set. 2 takes of "How Hi The Fi" & "Blue Moon". I find it weird that this set is now selling so cheap on discogs. There's one there for US buyers for under $70. A few years back, this CD set was regularly selling for close to $250.

I just finished playing my favorite Horace Silver recording, "The Hardbop Grandpop". It's just a fun record and swings like hell. Silver's bouncy piano is well placed in the mix and the band is tight. And what a band - with Claudio Roditi, Steve Turre, Michael Brecker, Ronnie Cuber, Ron Carter & Lewis Nash.

VLC can play wav files on a Mac. VLC can play practically anything.

If there is a lesson for those reading this, it's that everyone should be making multiple backups of their music library. I have 4 backups, with one stored at my daughters' house. I even have a partial backup at work but that one is useless as once I attach it to my work PC, it gets encrypted. The only way I could get anything off of the encrypted drive would be to write the mp3 files to a bunch of DVD-R discs, which would take a very long time.

I would also suggest taking your external hard drive over to a friends house that has a Windows PC just to see what that hard drive looks like on it. It may have gotten corrupted/damaged when your old PC went down.

Quicktime used to be an app on Apple PCs that was used to play video files. It can also play .mp3 files. If it's saying that .mp3 files open with QuickTime, I would guess that Apple Music is not your default music player. When you ripped your music to this external hard drive, what file format did you use? If you used Windows Media Player as a ripper, the resulting .wma files will not play on an Apple (that I am aware of). You might have to download something like VLC Player (https://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-macosx.html) to play them.

from Jim via Facebook… Hey, I've been getting requests for signed copies of the new album on Posi-Tone. If you'd like one and can't make it to my upcoming shows (April 29th at Blue Llama, May 2nd and Moriarty's, and May 3rd at the SpeakEZ Lounge), you can shoot me $20 via Venmo, Paypal, or CASH App and I'll send you one if you're in the continental US. If you're outside the USA, just PM me and we'll figure it out. PayPal: paypal.me/jimalfredson Venmo: @Jim-Alfredson CashApp: $JimAlfredson I ordered one but I added $2 to my PayPal order to cover their fees. I’m looking forward to hearing this.