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December 16, 2016:

THE KAY MIXES

Bruce Kimmel Photograph bk's notes

Well, dear readers, it is Friday and Friday, this very day, is the day I begin my two weeks of ME time. And to that I say hallelujah. And speaking of hallelujah, as I write these here notes I am listening to the first pass mix of Kay Cole’s album – it’s really wonderful in just about every way. The mixes are excellent and I’m mostly happy with them, but there are little things to finesse, just minor stuff, mostly to do with the piano sound on a handful of tracks, and on a couple of tracks the balance isn’t quite right – it always has to feel like the vocal and piano are doing a duet, a dance, and occasionally it doesn’t feel that way to me. I’ve been hammering away at an order – I came up with one a few days ago, began to second guess myself, never a good thing, and I just kept going back to my initial instinct and as I’m listening to it now in my original order it’s kind of perfect.

And speaking of hammering away, I have endured early morning hammering for most of the past seven months and I cannot tell you how tired I am of it, and how tired I am period because who can sleep with all that relentless noise. I only got six hours of sleep and then the hammering woke me up. I got up, in a foul and fowl mood, my usual morning stuff, answered e-mails, printed out a few orders, then I got back in bed and at some point around ten the hammering stopped and I got another hour of sleep. Once up, I was still in a foul/fowl mood and speaking of fowl, I was in such a foul fowl mood that I wanted to eat the head of a chicken. I did some work on the computer, and I think the Kritzerland show is now fully cast, so that’s good and I’ve started choosing the songs. Then I moseyed on over to the Coral Café for a little lunch.

I had chicken strips, a side salad, and a few fries (really few), all good. Then I picked up two packages – but there should have been others and, of course, those were “on their way” from the USPS, only the USPS delivery had already happened so something was screwy. When I got home I immediately called Amazon and got a nice chap – he saw that it was out for delivery and he got the post office on the phone and we had a conversation with some postal employee who admitted that they only make one delivery, could see that it said out for delivery, had no explanation, said it could take up to eight days – we were just listening to this woman blather on, trying to cover all the bases – then she said they’d only gotten the package that day and that’s why it hadn’t been delivered – while that was technically true, they actually had the package at 12:02 am and at every step the tracking information clearly said it had been sorted and put on the truck. We finally gave up on her, and the chap gave me a promotional credit and said he’d call on Saturday to see if it came.

Then I listened to some new CDs – some concert music by Mrs. William Alwyn, Doreen Carwithen – I’d enjoyed her film music and I truly enjoyed the selections on this CD – a piano concerto and various shorter pieces – all tonal and all really good. Then it was on to Rachmaninov – first Paul Paray doing the second symphony, an excellent, straightforward performance of the short version, recorded in the late 1950s on Mercury Living Presence – lots of detail and clarity but too dry. Still, I liked it. Then I’d gotten Vladimir Ashkenazy’s versions of all three symphonies – these are highly lauded by all, and as always they didn’t appeal to me – too ordinary and I wasn’t crazy about the sound, so not a keeper for me.

Then I just happened to look at my orders on Amazon and guess what – the packages were delivered. That means that Miss USPS woman got on the phone with or spoke to the carrier and made him go back and deliver what he’d clearly left on the truck. So, I went and picked those up. I came back and spent the rest of the evening listening to stuff – the Australia Eloquence remastered Bernard Herrmann Hitchcock Phase 4 album – better sounding for sure, but boy is it dry – a little reverb would do wonders. I guess when it came out one simply wasn’t aware of things like that. I heard William Steinberg conducting Robert Russell Bennett’s symphonic poems on Stephen Foster and Jerome Kern, which are fun. And two Villa-Lobos cello concertos, just incredibly great. There’s more to hear – and I took a complete break from Mr. Sibelius. And then Kay’s mixes arrived and that was the rest of the evening.

Today, I’m lunching with dear reader Jeanne – she chose the jernt, and she’s coming out this way. After that, I will hopefully pick up some packages, probably won’t jog unless the rain has stopped, and then I’m just relaxing.

Tomorrow I’m waiting to hear if we can do the little finessing the mixes thing – it won’t take more than a couple of hours and I’d love to get it out of the way. Sunday I’m seeing our own Sandy Bainum in Merrily We Roll Along. And then the next two weeks are mine all mine.

Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, have a lunch, hopefully pick up packages, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s Friday – what is currently in your CD player, and your DVD/Blu and Ray player? I’ll start – CD, all the usual suspects. DVD – screeners. Blu-ray, so many. Your turn. Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, happy to be so happy with the Kay mixes.

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