Well, hopefully. This is the third vintage receiver or amplifier I have ordered from ebay. Let’s hope it all works out. Below is a photo of my just purchased Kenwood KA-701 from about 1979. It has 80 watts per channel. That’s 80 1970’s watts which is about 160 in today’s numbers or if it’s a modern Chinese digital amp it would be rated about a million watts.

If anyone is keeping track, the first (a Sansui receiver) purchase was canceled. The second (a Pioneer integrated amp.) arrived (from Japan) damaged. That was a fun set of returns since I also had to return the transformer I had to order from Amazon to power it. Since it used weird Japanese 100 watt electricity. Glad this one is made for the American market. Looking forward to seeing how it pairs with the speakers (a pair of Paradigm Monitor 11’s). It was supposedly serviced, cleaned and tested to spec. and it comes with a one year warranty.

Update: It came, packed to withstand a hurricane. Sounds great, it is particularly good with jazz. I started with Van Halen’s first album and was not that impressed, but followed with Billie Holiday and was amazed.

Jeff Beck, Tal Wilkenfeld, Vinnie Colaiuta, and Jason Rebello in 2007 playing one of Jeff’s most famous songs, written by Stevie Wonder. And Tal gets the solo, not Jeff! Hard to go wrong here…

Garth Hudson, master instrumentalist and last surviving member of The Band, dies at 87

You have to be a legend if you’re the best musician in a band so influential they were just called “The Band”.

The title is a quote from Babylon 5. It fits.

There is a line in the movie “The Blues Brothers” where the late Donald “Duck” Dunn says, in his great southern drawl, “… Jake’s’ not lyin’, we had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.” I’ve always loved that line. In 1975 Bruce Springsteen played the Hammersmith Odeon in London. He had that kind of band…

I have never gotten to see Springsteen, placing him on my list of “Bands that got away”. But I always heard he put on a helluva show.

I was mentioning how it didn’t matter that the Stones weren’t technically perfect and I thought I should post a band that is technically perfect live. Plus the Rolling Stones may be the greatest rock and roll band ever, but this is the greatest rock and roll drummer, ever.

Fun fact: YYZ is the airport code for Toronto International Airport. The beginning cymbal riff is actually Y-Y-Z in Morse Code.

Also: How legendary must you be to play a rock-and-roll instrumental, which is a thinly disguised sped up piece of classical music, to a stadium of close to 100,000 people, and have the crowd “sing” along?!

Those of you who know me know I am quite the music fan and have been lucky enough to see many, many live acts over the years. The Stones have always eluded me. Mostly due to the eye watering cost of the tickets. They have long been on Mrs. Boch’s bucket list as well. I finally agreed to spend the money a few years ago and then COVID happened and the show was canceled. This year our kids went together and purchased the tickets for our birthdays. We had great seats.

Wow! All I can say is 80-year-old guys should not be so energetic. It was an amazing show. Some bands you go to see for their technical skill and musicianship. The Stones are not that type of band. As you can see in the video below, mistakes were made. Mick clearly blows his cue to start singing. It just doesn’t matter. It’s the Stones. It was sort of a Rock-and-Roll religious experience.