Sheffield Lab

The CEO of a company where I spent 25 years was invited to give a kickoff speech for an internal training course on Process Improvement. He was brief.

"I'm sure you're all very good at what you do... or I wouldn't have hired you. [audience laughs] After you complete this course I expect you to be even better. I have just one request: before you spend 1,000 hours worth of our shareholder's money improving any process, please be very certain that it's a process we need to do at all."

Exit, stage right... invitation to a paradigm shift.

The Blazing Redheads were on Sheffield? Who knew?

Sorry, my mistake. The Blazing Redheads were on Reference Recordings not Sheffield.

I was thinking of the Usual Suspects and wrote the wrong group.

Thank you, Al. The audio hobby, like any hobby, is supposed to be fun. Yet people often take it too seriously. So much so that it can be difficult to ignore their bloaviating vituperance.

'Blazing Redheads' was a Reference Recordings release. For me being an absolute Latin Jazz fanatic, this record is the 'Jazz At The Pawnshop' of the genre (I own it!), a spectacular recording of a very pedestrian band, more of a collector's item for me than anything else. As far as Sheffield's concerned, I own a few, but rarely re-visit them. Their Tower Of Power release (I'm also a TOP fanatic, and still love me some hard-chargin' horn based funk!) is probably my least favorite recording by this band. The Harry James records stand up. Sheffield does have what I consider seminal records in a sub-genre that I still enthusiastically listen to, what I affectionately call Rock Jazz. Instrumental records by primarily Rock/studio (for lack of a better term) musicians. The James Newton Howard & Friends is a favorite due to it featuring many members of Toto and being a primo recording of one of the great drummers; the late Jeff Porcaro. Coincidentally, I recently re-visited the Sheffield Track/Drum record after not hearing it for many, many years. This record was one of the 1st things that made me think Harry Pearson wasn't the end-all/be-all guru of Audio back in the day as he referred to this as "Absolutely the best sounding Rock & Roll recording ever made!" Really!? It's good, but the best? Even back in the day, I didn't even consider it R&R. Anyhow, I didn't realize it than but the record features a current favorite of mine, the amazing Michael Landau on guitar. The instrumental recordings on 'The Usual Suspects' still hold up also.