Kevin Bresnahan

There's a reason Kevin Gray stopped cutting vinyl for this label. He doesn't work on bootlegs.

Vintage ADS speakers, like the AR-5's mentioned by the thread starter, will likely need updating in many cases. If you do decide to go the vintage route, check the surrounds and considered re-capping the crossovers. Both are relatively easy and not too expensive if you do it yourself. I have a friend who re-capped his 1980's era B&W towers and the improvement in the sound was substantial.

I have B&W speakers on both of my systems and I agree that they are pretty damn fine sounding speakers. But even used, they are pretty expensive.

That ping you heard 30 years ago may still be there with your current speakers. It could very well be that your ears are no longer capable of hearing it. You should be able to pick up a pair of fully restored (re-coned/re-capped) AR-5's for under $1,000. Just be prepared for them to sound different from what you remember. Many of our memories of things from 30 years are colored. Some would say "rose-colored". What I'm saying is that you might find yourself disappointed.

Joey at the organ at Scullers. My buddy Bob took this shot.

Aw shit... this is terrible. Too young, He was an incredible player who I always tried to see when he came through town.

I miss it too. I think the reason many of us miss it is precisely why it's gone - they used to sell Japanese imports priced well below anyone else. They had to be losing money on those things. I remember getting in Japanese CDs with $28 price stickers on them and thinking, "How are they selling this to me for $10"?

Yeah. you're right! We are very normal over here. Oh... wait a minute... you're being sarcastic!

While I was not a big fan of the CTI sound, he helped keep jazz alive and moving forward into the 70's. I sometimes wonder what would've happened if he didn't do these CTI albums. For some reason, I always thought that Taylor was a black man. Don't know why, but I did. I was pretty caught off guard when I saw his picture in the linked obit.

Yeah, Michael said that Addey re-did this analog stereo master from the original 8-track analog tapes for this Tone Poet LP. I don't imagine there are too many mastering engineers out there who mix in analog these days. It would seem to be a dying art. I've had enough trouble making a good cassette dub of a stereo LP. I can't imagine setting the levels right so that 8 tracks of audio don't drive the signal into overload.

Michael Cuscuna never identified the label but did say that it was a UK label and that they were compensated for the mastering work they already did. I didn't hear that they planned additional material. I wonder what they were planning for side 4?

I have enjoyed quite a few of these Tone Poet LP releases. I think a large majority of them sound great and look even better than the originals. I have no problem buying them... after I find out that there aren't any mastering problems. I've been burned and I'm not doing it any more. What bothers me over on the Hoffman boards is this weird attitude that you can't say anything bad about them. It's almost as if they're afraid that they might stop releasing them if people complain. Theses people will tell you to clean your record, swap your cartridge, swap your turntable, swap your phono preamp, or the worst case "I don't hear the problem so it must be you". They will literally say anything except the obvious, "Boy, Blue Note really screwed this one up". I think back to Blue Note's CD reissue programs. I remember getting corrected CDs sent to me for Wayne Shorter's "The Soothsayer" and the RVG CD of Bobby Hutcherson's "Dialogue" because there were mastering defects. Blue Note (Michael Cuscuna) heard about a problem and they fixed it. They even offered corrected CDs to those affected. What a novel idea - customer service. Blue Note no longer seems to care about this.

Yup. I can only take the idiocy for so long over there before I call one of them out. The latest one is a guy telling me that I need to respect the opinion of an "industry professional". Sure, me, a guy with a BSEE and 37 years of working in the high tech industry needs to bow down to a guy because he claims he sat in once when a record was cut. I told him we don't need to taking out tape measures.

I never did get around to picking this up. I love Kamuca's work so it should've been a no-brainer. The biggest problem with picking it up now is that VSOP only sells CD-Rs these days.

To update those of you who care... I recently sent my LP of Hill's "Passing Ships" to Lon and he says that his playback is clean - no distortion during the track "Plantation Bag". I was able to get a clean payback with my backup cartridge, so this didn't shock me. FWIW, I am filling you all in over here on this forum because I get the feeling I'm close to getting the boot from the Hoffman forums. A poster over there who claims to be an industry professional is saying that the distortion I heard on the "Passing Ships" LP is in his "copy of the master tape". I pointed out to him that some people can play the record without hearing the distortion, therefore, the distortion cannot be from the tape. He just refuses to acknowledge this basic fact. He claims that they can "master" the distortion away. I said that is more likely that whoever made his tape copy did so with the recording levels set too high. Depending on the gort (moderator) on duty, I may be in purgatory over there. I should just put the idiot on ignore at this point.

Still no signs of reissued SHM-CDs of Lou Donaldson's "Here 'Tis" with the extra track "Blues #4" or John Patton's "Blue John" with the extra 5 tracks though. I've been hoping to see them reissued.

The thing that bothers me about that Tone Poet thread is that they talk like every Tone Poet LP is the greatest Jazz recording ever made. You can't really even argue with them about it or you get shut down, particularly if Scotti likes it. They're over there raving about fringe Blue Note dates that didn't sell back in Blue Note's heyday and didn't sell on CD, like sessions from George Braith or Don Wilkerson (to name a couple). Now they are suddenly classic Blue Note records that must be in everyone's collection.

I can't stand Bitches Brew either but I wouldn't create a whole video diatribe on it,

I haven't spun this in a while. I'll try to get it onto the turntable later today. Thanks for reminding me.

There are posters over in that thread that should be called for their asinine statements about "hearing digital" but you just can't do that over there. Over there, "I hear this" is irrefutable, even if you can point out that they said differently in the past. It gets so tiring over there, especially now that many of the posters on that thread bashing MoFi and digital audio in general are the same ones who were raving about these pressings for years - YEARS.

So this is one of those "almost embarrassed to say" posts. I was reading a review of one of Art Tatum's group sessions recordings - the one with DeFranco - when I realized that I never got around to buying those group sessions. I've onwed and enjoyed the one with Ben Webster for years (on the XRCD) and I always planned to pick up the box set but never got around to it. So yesterday, I finally grabbed 4 or 5 of the group sessions. I'm actually looking forward to finally hearing them.

An even better pastor joke... The Reverend John Fuzz was a pastor of a small congregation in a little Pennsylvania town. One day, walking down Main St., he noticed a female member of his congregation sitting in the town bar, drinking beer. The reverend thought this was sinful and not something a member of his congregation should do. He walked through the open door of the bar and sat down next to the woman. "Mrs. Fitzgerald," the reverend said sternly. "This is no place for a member of my congregation. Why don't you let me take you home?" "Sure," she said with a slur, obviously very drunk. When Mrs. Fitzgerald stood up from the bar, she began to weave back and forth. The reverend realized that she had had too much to drink grabbed her arms to steady her. When he did, they both lost their balance and tumbled to the floor. After rolling around for a few seconds, the reverend wound up laying on top of Mrs. Fitzgerald, her skirt hiked up to her waist. The bartender looked over the bar and said, "Here, here buddy, we won't have any of that in this bar!" The reverend looked up at the bartender and said, "No, no, you don't understand, I'm Pastor Fuzz." The bartender nodded and said, "Well then, if you're that far in, you might as well finish up." BTW - this is a very old joke with many variations.

I actually tried to make edits to several Jazz musicians' pages many years ago and every one I made got rejected by the Wiki gatekeeper of the article. I even cited several online articles & interviews to no avail. If the Wiki guardian doesn't like you, you aren't editing anything. I gave up after that.

The word on the street is that the Japanese SACDs were mastered from the master tapes by Kevin Gray when he had the master tapes queued up for the Tone Poet LP cuts. Since I've had such crappy luck with Gray's LPs these days, I'm going to forego the LPs and go straight for the SACD this time. This is one of the few times when this is the cheaper route too.