Kevin Bresnahan

We're venturing away from Larry's situation here, as he was committed to a facility by his wife. But I do want to comment about the adult children of an elderly parent... I think it's far more complicated than the children simply not wanting to take care of their parents. Many times (most times?), they simply can't give their parents what they need. When my mother started falling and breaking bones, she kept insisting on moving back into her home, where she was alone. Her doctors did not want to release her into her own care, sending her to rehab hospitals several times. She insisted she was fine at home alone. My mother needed someone with her 24/7. She needed help going to the bathroom. She needed help cooking meals without burning down the house (she set the stove on fire once). She needed help taking her meds. She needed help going to her multiple doctor visits. But her children all had jobs/lives and there was no way we could do this for her. Take it from me, being her son made it extremely uncomfortable helping her go to the bathroom. You know how hard it is to help someone in the bathroom with your eyes closed? On top of that, me & my brother were with her one night when she fell & we had a tough time picking her up. Dead lifting a 180 pound woman without injuring her is tough for a couple of 60+ guys. I almost blew my back out & she still had large bruises from it. Mom continued to refuse to leave her home until she fell, split her knee open and almost fell down a flight of stairs to her death. Her 4 children were incredibly relieved when she agreed to move into a retirement facility, at first to an apartment which eventually progressed into an assisted-living room. She actually enjoyed the first two years in her apartment before she had to move into an assisted living facility, as she had a lot of friends there and the food was great. None of us were happy that it happened this way but it really was the best for her. I'm pretty sure she would have died several years earlier if she had stayed at home alone or if she moved into one of her childrens' homes, where she would have been alone for most of the day as we all worked. The saddest thing about my mother's situation was that the assisted-living part happened during COVID when many of these facilities were very very understaffed and her quality of care suffered dramatically.

This Herbie comp: was released with this cover in Germeny:

Good to hear from you Larry. Sorry to hear of your unfortunate visit to an assisted living facility. Some are better than others but it's hard not to feel like a prisoner at times. I hope you can avoid having to go back in the future.

And the refs gift the Chiefs with another BS call for their benefit. Bills fans have every reason to call out the NFL for the way that delayed pass interference call was made. If it was a penalty, the ref throws a flag. If it's not, they don't. What should never happen is that they all get together in a huddle and say, "I didn't see anything, did you?" until they find one them willing to say, "I think I did". I'm about done with the NFL these days with the way the referees are calling games.

I still can't believe that there was no flag for hitting Deebo in the helmet on that play. The NFL talks the talk about player safety but they refuse to walk the walk when it comes to calling it the right way.

I like the 49ers but I still have trouble rooting for McCaffrey. I am not a fan of the way he's acted since his college days.

It would be helpful if you could update your list when titles sell. Considering that two of the CDs I requested were already sold on another forum, I'm a little hesitant to put together another list of titles to buy unless I know they're still available.

I was told that Mal Waldron stopped playing in the US because they had banned smoking in the clubs. Because of that, I never got to see him play live. I actually tried seeing him when I was in Munich on business and saw his name on a flyer for a Jazz club. I jumped onto the U-Bahn to go and when I got off the train, I was nowhere near the club. After wandering around for about a half hour, I gave up and headed back to my hotel. Kicking myself for that but this was before smartphones and I wasn't comfortable walking up to strangers in Germany to ask in English where the local Jazz club was. It wasn't in the best section of town.

Gene Ammons - Jammin' In Hi Fi With Gene Ammons (Prestige/OJC). I never did buy this on CD over the years. The vinyl will have to do for now.

I saw him live and almost left the show early. It was pretty boring to be honest.

Cables are not usually inexpensive to be honest. Quite a few manufacturers sell them for thousands of dollars. FWIW, it's extremely difficult to compare the differences in wires, cables & interconnects, as the time it takes to swap cables is usually several minutes. Studies have shown that human audio memory is not much good past 30 seconds which means most of us don't remember exactly how something sounded after a wire swap. Don't even get me going on people claiming to hear differences after hundreds of hours.

PM for these: Barron ,Kenny Green Chimneys $6 Davis ,Eddie Lockjaw Streetlights $8 Dickerson ,Walt Relativity $10 Dorham Kenny Blue Spring $5 Ammons, Gene Jammin' in Hi-Fi $8 Ammons, Gene Jammin with Gene $6 Cobb ,Jimmy/Generations Tough Guys $7

I have a feeling Jerry Jones is going to find a way to hire Bill Belichick & if that happens, the Cowboys defense will likely be turned around pretty quickly. As shitty as the Patriots were this past year, their defense was still really good. They lost 8 games by less than one score. If the Patriots had a functioning offensive line & the NFL referees didn't suck as bad as they have, they might've been a playoff team. That being said, Prescott's only got one more year on his contract and I don't see any reason why they'd extend him as he hasn't shown anything in the postseason (plus they already owe him $45 Million for next year). I suppose they could go "all in" for 2024/25 in their last year with Dak, and hope he can finally get his act together in the playoffs.

I'm a bit happy that I was never ever able to "hear" an amplifier or speaker wires or RCA interconnects or AC line cords. I tried tube amplification a few years ago because I always wanted to, but alas, I didn't hear any difference between those tube amps & the solid state amps they replaced. Plus, they were hot as hell. The only thing I futzed with over the years that made a huge difference to what I heard was speakers & once I settled on B&W speakers, I haven't had to change much. I'll probably have to re-cap the crossovers at some point, but with my failing hearing, that day may never come. Having said this, there are possible electrical reasons that the old 80's era Sony amplifier didn't sound as good as your new amp. Older electronics, particularly from the early to late 80's, were susceptible to bad caps. These caps often fail slowly and if they are in an electrical path that handles audio, it could affect the sound... scratch that... it likely will affect the sound. Caps are used as filters. They filter noise in particular. If you have a filter cap start to fail, it could allow more noise into the circuit. There are other possible failures going on like a failing transformer or even custom ICs. If you happen to be Facebook friends with our forum's host, Jim Alfredson, he has been repairing old electronics as part of his piano tuning business and he posts videos showing all kinds of issues he's been finding with these 80's era synths/amps/preamps. Bad caps, fried traces, cracked boards, cold solder joints, bad op amps, bad ICs... The list goes on & on.

The last audiologist I went to was many years ago... probably 35 years back now... and even then, my right ear had a significant dip in the mid-to-upper audio frequencies. I think the graph showed a pretty good suck out at 8,000 Hz. I'm wondering if hearing aids would even help with that or if they would improve my tinnitus or make it worse.

I've started to think about hearing aids. I went to a lot of extremely loud rock concerts in my teens & twenties and, sad to say, I sometimes left those shows with ringing ears. I stupidly didn't even think about hearing protection. My right ear is much worse than my left, so headphones aren't a great option for me. I also have tinnitus, which has begun to make sleep difficult. We use an air filter/fan as a white noise generator, which helps mask the ringing in my ears, but as my hearing continues to fade, hearing that fan has become a bit difficult.

Considering Al suffered what was described as a major heart attack in September, I would think that this meal should be of the "low fat" variety.

Hazeltine is the pianist for One For All, who are as close as we can get today to hearing The Jazz Messengers. I also have a few of his leader dates. I really like the 2 dates he did for the Chesky label, particularly the Jobim tribute, The Jobim Songbook In New York. I have both of these Chesky sessions on SACD and they sound very good. I also enjoy a few of his Venus recordings, sadly only available as expensive Japanese imports. I never did get around to getting all of them. I should rectify that one of these days. This Venus CD gets some play time here:

According to Michael Cuscuna, Donald Byrd didn't want this released. It's weird how Blue Note has moved from a label that listened to the artists to one that just looks for the next buck.

Great stuff. Their "lesser" wine, Mongrana, is also very good if you're on a budget.

https://www.organissimo.org/forum/profile/561-sgud-missile/

Phil Kelly, who used to post pretty regularly on the old Jazz Corner forums, has died. Phil had a 40 year career as a composer/ arranger for film & TV (including over 700 national TV commercials). He started up a big band when he retired as a hobby. Phil & I conversed every now & then on the JC forums and at one point, Phil sent me two of his big band recordings, "Convergence Zone" & "Ballad of the Bouncing Beagles", both on the Origin label. I have enjoyed them for many years. https://www.sigsfuneralservices.com/obituaries/phillip-kelly

I'm kinda bummed that Wallace retired before I got a chance to see him perform live. I don't think he came through Boston many times though.

How is Larry doing these days?

Blue Mitchell - Step Lightly (Blue Note). This is the LT-1082 pressing. While I've found that some of these LT pressings aren't in the best sound, this one sounds very nice.