December 2018
Whirlwind 4729
Format: CD
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
Few significant musician/composers of the past 75 years remain as enigmatic and misunderstood as Kenny Wheeler, the UK-based trumpeter who died at age 84 in 2014. Not only that, but few musicians are as influential. Ask most contemporary trumpeters about their favorite peers, and Wheeler is sure to be on the list.
November 2018
The Criterion Collection 937
Format: 4K BD
Overall Enjoyment
Picture Quality
Sound Quality
Extras
In film, inns, taverns, and barrooms are usually plain, innocuous settings with an undercurrent of mystery that often attract conniving patrons who ramp up the action and turn them into battlegrounds. You find them in all cultures. Remember Treasure Island and the Benbow Inn? The titular establishment in this film is an isolated, peaceful inn with wooden tables, a bar on the first floor, and, on the second, a balcony leading to bedrooms -- nice accommodations for travelers.
November 2018
Last month I praised the JBL Xtreme 2 as being one of the brawniest Bluetooth speakers out there, and now comes EcoXGear’s EcoXplorer, a smaller cousin of their mighty EcoBoulder. Indeed Grace Digital and its EcoXGear subsidiary have established a record of producing quality merchandise at low prices. The EcoXplorer weighs five pounds more than the JBL but costs only slightly more than half as much: $169.99 USD.
November 2018
Twenty-five years after Frank Zappa’s death from prostate cancer at age 52, it’s still difficult to assess his career, in part because it was so multifaceted. Composer, guitarist, satirist, free-speech activist -- Zappa had many sides, and while they often overlapped, it’s easier to appreciate each of them separately: he was almost compulsively prolific. In his last 27 years he released 64 albums, many of them multi-disc sets, and since then the Zappa Family Trust has released an additional 49 albums, bringing the total of available Zappa releases to 111.
November 2018
Greenleaf Music 1065
Format: CD
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
Few musicians take their geographical influences into the recording studio, and possibly least of all in the jazz realm. To further their careers, young jazz musicians gravitate toward New York City, and to a lesser degree, Los Angeles or Chicago. Whether they’re pursuing advanced education at places like the Manhattan School of Music or chasing gigs with more established players, they usually spend serious time in the big city before gaining the wherewithal to produce a recording. Whatever regionalism they carry with them has generally been erased by the time their music reaches the masses.
October 2018
The Criterion Collection 114
Format: Blu-ray
Overall Enjoyment
Picture Quality
Sound Quality
Extras
In any conversation about screwball film comedies, My Man Godfrey is sure to be mentioned. Released in 1936, at the height of the Great Depression, it derided the rich as frivolous and empty-headed, and boosted good opinions of the poor, while still being breezy and riotously funny. One wonders if any of the ennobled poor could afford to see it.
December 2020
The Trinity Session, by Canada’s Cowboy Junkies, was recorded in November 1987 and released the following November. Upon its released and afterwards, it was praised for its musical excellence and technical proficiency. Produced and engineered by Peter J. Moore, the album was recorded with a single Calrec microphone and a modified Beta videotape player converted into a digital audio recorder. Part 2 focuses on how the microphone was placed in the church the album was recorded in, as well as how the band was arranged around it.
October 2018
JBL’s recent speaker updates recall David and Goliath. Last month we had the tiny Clip 3; this month it’s the brawny Xtreme 2 -- a loud-playing, 5.3-pound behemoth ideal for tailgate and pool parties.
October 2018
Wouldn’t you love to find a $205,000 pair of speakers that actually performed as expected? Not just some company that claims their drivers were pressed on the thighs of tow-headed Swedish virgins and connected with 25K gold wires terminated with eight-way binding posts of 99.999%-pure platinum. You know the advertising hype you see in the more obscure audio hangouts. But how about something real?
October 2018
Capitol B002842202
Format: CD
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
“With Music from Big Pink,” wrote musicologist Greil Marcus in his landmark 1975 book, Mystery Train, “the Band presented a rough moral drama. It had none of the mythic clarity of, say, John Ford’s movies; it came through a modern haze, something like Robert Altman’s McCabe and Mrs. Miller, obscure in its plots, dialogue hard to catch, communicating with a blind humor and a cryptic intensity nothing in rock ’n’ roll has ever remotely touched.”
September 2018
The Criterion Collection 291
Format: Blu-ray
Overall Enjoyment
Picture Quality
Sound Quality
Extras
You’d think most people would try to avoid spending the afterlife in Hell, but Henry Van Cleve (Don Ameche), after ruling out admittance to Heaven in his own mind, is afraid he won’t be accepted as a denizen of the lower depths. His Excellency the Devil (slyly played by Laird Cregar) asks him to recount his life on Earth, including the women Henry has known. And that’s the basic story of director Ernst Lubitsch’s Heaven Can Wait (1943): Henry Van Cleve’s birth, coming of age, and adult years. Scenes in Hell occur only at beginning and end, to frame a tale told as one long flashback.
September 2018
Some companies like to come up with all-new models every year; others continue to refine and upgrade successful basic designs. JBL, one of the latter, released the original Clip Bluetooth speaker in 2015. In 2016 came the Clip 2, which added waterproofing, and now we have the Clip 3, with a sturdier build, longer playing time on a full battery charge, and a rainbow of colors to choose from. JBL has eliminated a feature that some buyers might miss, but at $59.95 USD, the Clip 3 is still a legitimate choice in a very small Bluetooth speaker.
September 2018
When the Beatles entered Abbey Road Studios in October 1965 to record their sixth studio album, they had no other commitments to worry about -- no tours, no movies, no radio or television appearances. Over the next four weeks, the group would complete Rubber Soul, their second album to be recorded and released in 1965.
September 2018
ECM 2583
Format: CD
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
Is music for the whole body or just your brain?
Depends on the day and your mood, I would argue.
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