Issue 152

The first installments of this series appeared in Issues 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149.150 and 151 – Ed.]

Melody was on summer break from her nursing studies at the University of South Dakota. She wanted to be an operating room nurse. She also wanted a ride on my bike, and asked if I’d take her out in the morning. I looked over at dad and he approved with a shrug and a nod.“Sure, where do you want to go?” I asked.

“The badlands!” she eagerly responded.

I knew nothing about the badlands, but I loved the idea of riding there with Melody.

Melody’s dad had several cabins around his trout pond and I was happy to sleep off the ground that night. The city campgrounds in Spearfish are nice, but a proper bed and a private shower was a welcome respite.

The bright sun woke me at 6:30 am and Melody was at the door by 7. “Breakfast is ready!” she exclaimed in an eager voice, surprised perhaps that I hadn’t yet jogged around the pond.

The whole family was sitting inside their log house at a large, heavy, rough-hewn wooden table, along with several paying guests. Heated trays of eggs, bacon, ham, cottage style potatoes, toast, and a large pot of coffee greeted me. I wondered how so few people could eat it all.

There was lots of laughter and storytelling. The guests were excited about going to, or having visited, the sites in the area, especially Mount Rushmore. Melody related with fervor the story about what a hero I was for dealing with the “morons” in her dad’s bar the day before. The guests were transfixed. They knew there were a lot of Harleys around, but they hadn’t heard what happened in the bar.

“What would you have done if the dad and son hadn’t shown up with the shotguns?” one of them asked. “Don’t want to think about that,” I responded.

“In fact, I didn’t think at all, I just reacted. It wouldn’t have been pretty. Thank god for the shotguns.”

“What if we just ban all civilian-owned guns,” a well-meaning lady reacted; “everybody would be safer!”

“Ma’am, in 100 years of vigorous enforcement, we haven’t been able to control illegal drugs,” I responded. “What makes you think that we’ll ever be able to control illegal guns. You can’t make the bad guys harmless by making good guys helpless.” She didn’t respond, but several people nodded in agreement.

Through the window, I noticed a van pulling up. It was marked with the name of a retirement village in Rapid City. The driver unloaded fishing poles and tackle from the back of the van. Six or seven seniors got out and made a beeline for the breakfast table. Now I understood why the hot plates were so large.

One of the seniors had stopped to look at my bike. In a thick accent, he told me about the BMW he had in Greece. It was a sidecar rig abandoned by the Germans after World War II. Seems they were in a hurry to leave ahead of the advancing Red Army.

He had no love for the Germans, but he loved that bike. He removed the sidecar basket and replaced it with a flatbed. Now it was a three-wheeled pick-up truck used to haul produce to the local market from his family’s farm. He said he used that rig for over 30 years and raved about its reliability.

Melody was getting impatient to go for a ride. She kept popping her head into the dining room and signaling. When I returned to the cabin to get my gear, she was there in a flash, wearing a rawhide jacket, tight, black leather jeans, and carrying a satchel.

“What’s that?” I asked. “Just some extra clothes,” she responded.

The temperatures had warmed up nicely and we were off. What a joy to ride those scenic hills. There weren’t many Harleys on the road as it wasn’t yet noon.

The hills flattened out to grasslands before we hit Rapid City.

Melody insisted on showing me around the campus of her school, an open, treed, spacious quadrangle with a mixture of modern and traditional buildings. There wasn’t a Che Guevara T-shirt anywhere in sight, and everyone was friendly and polite. That stroll turned out to be delightful.

We gassed up and she directed me to the freeway, despite the fact that highway 44 looked to be a more interesting road on the map.

In less than an hour, we got to a place called Wall. Who the hell names their town “Wall”; maybe Wall means “paradise” in Swedish, or something. I wondered why they didn’t they call it Spring Valley, Crystal Lake, or Paradise Hills. In that case, it would have been as misnamed as Palm Springs — which should be called Furnace Gulch.

A better name for Wall might be “Floor,” as everything around there is flat. At least that name would be accurate.

We stopped in some tourist trap called Wall Drug. That’s why Melody wanted me to take the freeway! I knew it was coming since first leaving Rapid City because billboards announced it every 10 miles.

 

 

Located in a rambling wooden building which had expanded into adjacent stores through entryways cut into the interior walls, it was packed with motorhome tourists. Everything was available there from lawn chairs to Laphroaig.

It was getting very hot, so she purchased ice and sodas and we headed south towards Badlands National Park nearby. This turned out to be a desert landscape of sharply eroded buttes and pinnacles. I wondered why Melody was so keen to visit.

She directed me off-road for a few miles onto a single-track lane that led to a very secluded gully.

“Just park anywhere,” she said.

I found a level spot and a flat rock on which to set the bike’s side-stand. She grabbed her tote and the ice from the saddlebags and led me up through the pinnacles and onto a small butte. It had a panoramic view over the surrounding desolation, dirt and rock formations in pastel grey, beiges, reds, and browns. There she laid out a blanket, some glasses, and a bottle of vodka. Only then did I notice the sodas she bought were tonic water.

She mixed a couple of drinks in plastic cups and even flavored the rims with lemon wedges.

“To my courageous hero,” she toasted; “I don’t mind telling you that I was as scared yesterday as I’ve ever been. Other than my dad, I don’t know anyone else who might have done that for me, not even my brother. You’re amazing, really!”

It was more reflex than bravery, I thought to myself.

After a drink, she pulled off my shirt and covered my back and chest with sunscreen. Then, to my surprise, she did the same thing, and asked me to cover her back. It seemed like the most natural thing to do. Then she casually poured another round.

“Hope you don’t mind? I’m a naturist,” she said, “I sometimes come here with my friends from school to spend Saturday afternoons.”

I’d never heard the term “naturist.” I knew about naturalists, but I was pretty sure the Park Service didn’t actively employ naturists. I hoped no naturalists came upon us to spoil the mood.

We shared bike stories, then life stories. She’d enjoyed an enchanted childhood, but had to face a very difficult identity crisis in college which she hadn’t quite resolved. I suggested that she shouldn’t be too surprised if it was never resolved. Even if it was, how would she know? “Life doesn’t come with an owner’s manual. You are what you think you are, or whatever you make of yourself,” I told her, “The important thing is to not let others define who you are.” She liked that.

She went off behind a rock for a break, and came back totally au naturel. I followed suit (or suitless) and we slathered each other with sunscreen, continuing our conversation as if everything was normal — which seemed to be the case for her.

We baked like croissants under the relentless sun. As it receded behind the Black Hills, the sky turned pink and yellow in a surrealistic light show. It was almost a surrealistic experience. We reveled in everything nature had to offer.

After a perfect rib dinner in Rapid City, and a magical, midnight ride under a bright moon, we pulled into the parking lot of the trout pond. Fortunately, my cabin hadn’t been rented, so Melody got the key and I had the cabin for another night. I was grateful as I really didn’t want to ride another half-hour to Spearfish.

As I was incandescent with sunburn, I expected it to be a long night. Then I found a little vacation-sized bottle of aloe vera on the bathroom counter. Thank you Melody’s mom! After my shower, I used it all. It was sufficiently effective to allow me some sleep.

Melody was at my door at 7 am just like the morning before. We enjoyed another great breakfast with the guests and family, and I told her that I’d better get back to the Spearfish campground before the renegades sent out search parties. She asked to go with me.

I looked over at her dad. He approved with a shrug and a nod.

Previous installments in this series appeared in Issues 146, 148, 149 and 151.

I feel like a rabbi talking a non-Jew out of converting to Judaism. It’s incumbent on him or her to try to discourage any would-be Member of the Tribe, in preparation for the hardships and challenges that lay ahead. That’s how I approach those who would embrace open-reel tape, if they don’t already own legacy machines and tapes, because rediscovering open-reel tape has none of the benefits of the return to vinyl (or even cassettes): there’s never been a time when you couldn’t buy a turntable or new vinyl, and the format has been revived beyond even Mikey Fremer’s wildest dreams.

Everything about open-reel seems to be a cautionary tale. As has been discussed before, aside from Ballfinger and a few restorers of vintage decks, there are precious few new machines to consider, let alone afford. You have to buy second-hand, and hope you bought a deck that needs little work, or at least is the sort for which spares exist. Copper has gone into depth on the topic of the hardware; this article is about the caveats of which you should be aware when buying used pre-recorded tapes.

Brand-new pre-recorded tapes, from companies I call The Open Reel Revivalists, aren’t enough of an inducement to get into open-reel unless you are loaded, and have catholic tastes when it comes to music. Admirable as they are, the brand-new 1/2-track, 15 ips tapes cost a bundle and don’t necessarily address most people’s musical preferences. I suppose the trap for those who only want brand-new machines and tapes is not unlike having a Bugatti Chiron while living in Monaco: nowhere to go, and nothing to do other than admire your purchase while hardly enjoying it.

As I have stated before, my obsession has resulted in the acquisition of eight machines and 2,300 pre-recorded tapes from the time frame I categorize as The Original Open Reel Era, which ended in the mid-1980s. This immediately sets a cutoff point regarding repertoire. Anyone who wants any material recorded after, say, 1985, regardless of the artists, is sh*t-out-of-luck. So, Caveat No. 1 is: Don’t Buy Into Open-Reel Tape If You Hate Easy-Listening, Middle-of-the-Road Pop, Classical or Soundtracks and Show Scores.

As drastic as that sounds, that’s pretty much what’s available out there. I’m saving my observations about the dearth of rock music and other genres for a future column, but suffice it to say that the available repertoire is limited to whatever genres appealed to the stereotypical (pun intended) audiophile of the era. This, of course, is no issue for those who do prefer classical, soundtracks, etc., but for Baby Boomers partial to rock, soul, country, funk and other post-1960s genres, the pickings are slim. Again, I will discuss the low survival rate of rock tapes in an upcoming column.

Caveat No. 2 is about condition. Sorry to repeat myself, but 2,200 of my 2,300 purchases came from eBay and without exception, all were offered as seen, with the vendors noting that the tapes are untested, as they had no access to tape decks. What this tells you is that the tapes sold on eBay are probably collections found in an attic, garage or basement after a parent or grandparent has passed on, or other situations in which the vendor has found a pile of tapes with no interest in them for his or her own use.

Again, a future column with discuss how I have dealt with this, and how I have thrown out around one in every 30 tapes – but that ain’t bad when you consider what’s worth keeping from every pile of 30 or so used LPs you might acquire. Indeed, one of the upsides to this adventure is the unbelievably high survival rate of Original Open Reel Era pre-recorded tapes (rock notwithstanding). I can only attribute this to the likelihood that most were owned by audio enthusiasts who knew how to handle and store them. Oh, and who respected them because they have always cost twice that of contemporary LPs.

As for Caveat No. 3, it’s about prices. If this was 2018 or even 2019, I wouldn’t be telling you about what inflation has done to the prices of used tapes. If I keep referring to eBay, that’s because it is the most omnipresent source, and is a yardstick for values in most categories, e.g. what the going price is for a pair of vintage Stax headphones or Montblanc fountain pens. What’s happened is that interest in open-reel tape is enjoying a near-vertical trajectory, even if it is only within a tiny community (or minuscule cult). The number of devotees may be negligible when compared to vinyl returnees or newcomers, but they tend to be fervent, seasoned audiophiles.

A result of the renewed interest in open-reel tape is 100-to-200 percent inflation in the price of old tapes. Even dreck that couldn’t command $5 two years ago (which is the value of a decent empty plastic spool) is now $10-$25 plus postage. I won’t identify this “dreck,” only to say that there are dentists’ offices that wouldn’t touch this stuff as background music. If you do decide to test the eBay waters, expect to pay $20-$30 for tapes described as in good condition, irrespective of any genre except rock. Add another zero to that for the top rock artists.

Caveat No. 4 will only affect you if you go global, but it addresses something that infuriates me, and wish I desperately want to save you from suffering: the utter swill issued in the UK. From what I can tell, the USA, the UK and Japan were the only territories which manufactured pre-recorded open-reel tapes in any numbers, with the USA by far the most prolific. My guess is in excess of 10,000 titles were produced in the USA over the roughly 30-year lifespan of the pre-recorded reel-to-reel format. What I can tell you is that out of my 2.300 tapes, only six are not from the USA.

Those six include two Japanese tapes – a Percy Faith album and the soundtrack to South Pacific­ – but I am at a loss to tell you how many titles were issued in Japan, and the one source I should have asked was the dear, departed Tim de Paravicini. Suffice it to say, he had dozens of Japanese open-reel tapes, for which he paid gigantic sums, and he confirmed, before I even acquired my two, that they are without peer. I heard his Miles Davis and Ramsey Lewis tapes, and demo tapes from TEAC, and sat there slack-jawed. Yes, they’re that memorable.

 

 

Before getting to the actual target of Caveat No. 4, I should pass on what Tim did tell me. He was certain that the Japanese tapes sounded so good because the tape stock was absolutely first-rate, while duplicating was undertaken in real time. As for the US-sourced tapes, he said the reason they sound as good as they do, despite certain economies and some labels taking liberties with track playing order, was that the duplicators such as Ampex were scrupulous in maintaining their recording “slaves,” even if the copying was at high speeds. Most of the tapes I have are on decent stock, Ampex or Scotch, and I have not come across one tape which needed baking.

(Brief aside: Another authority confirmed to me that the tapes which do suffer from gumming up or shedding, thus needing baking, were specific stocks of studio-bound professional blank tape, not the stocks used for commercial pre-recorded tapes.)

Note that the Japanese tapes I have seen are 7-1/2-inch ips 1/4-track tapes, while Tim had some real gems on 10-inch spools that played at 15 ips 1/2-track. US tapes began as 1/2-track 7-1/2 ips, then 1/4-track was introduced, and ultimately the speed was cut to 3-3/4 ips for cost savings. It also seems that the loftier the artist, e.g. Leonard Bernstein, the more likely the tape was of the higher speed. Rock was treated like a leprous scab, so most are 3-3/4 ips.

 

 

 

Now the caveat. The third market, the UK, issued a smattering of 7-1/2 ips tapes, both 1/2 and 1/4-track. The four I own are classical and only so-so sonically, and I have no reason to believe that there were too many other titles. Instead, we get to the target of my loathing: the “twin-track mono” 3-3/4 ips atrocities issued by EMI and an affiliate budget label.

A history lesson is in order here. In the 1950s and 1960s, the British were relatively impoverished compared to Americans. Audio separates were the province of well-paid professionals. If you study Hi-Fi Yearbooks, however, you will see a plethora of cheap open-reel tape recorders, dozens of them. Why? Because the cost of LPs was so high that British music lovers of average means taped off-air, e.g. BBC concerts, or copied friends’ LPs. As a blank tape that would hold two LPs cost half the price of one album, you can see the instant savings.

Despite this, EMI issued a slew of tapes, from Frank Ifield to Nat King Cole, Shirley Bassey to the Yardbirds, Cliff Richard to Johnny Mathis, Manfred Mann to P.J. Proby. These came on 4-inch spools in 5-inch boxes, the irony being that the packaging was better than most of the US offerings while – unlike the USA – every tape had dedicated, printed leader-and-tail, showing some respect for the end-user. But that is not unlike putting lipstick on a pig because the sound was truly, inescapably execrable.

 

 

Why do I mention them at all? Unfortunately, for me living in the UK and logging on eBay.co.uk, the algorithm daily bombards me with these, which fill screen after screen after screen. And they don’t shift. People aren’t stupid. But there’s a wrinkle to this: the Beatles tapes fetch as much as the decent ones from the USA on Capitol and in stereo. Why? Because they are sold as artifacts and memorabilia to hard-core Beatles fans. They have no worth at all beyond mere objects.

Then comes another twist: it has been pointed out that these are the only means of getting the Beatles’ mono mixes is on open-reel tape. Despite the sound being muddy and unpleasant, there’s a cadre of enthusiasts prepared to shell out big money for these. Wrap your head around that one, and then believe me when I tell you that open-reel tape enthusiasts are as zealous as vegans.

 

My heart goes out to Antonio Salieri. For the past few decades, he’s been best known as “that guy who had Mozart killed,” thanks to the film version of Peter Shaffer’s play Amadeus. So, I’ll start with this: Amadeus is a work of fiction. Salieri did not have Mozart killed. And, while he may well have harbored some jealousy toward Mozart’s breathtaking genius, Salieri himself had an admirably successful musical career. A couple of recent recordings serve as a reminder that he was a highly accomplished and prolific composer.

The Italian-born Salieri (1750-1825) joined many of the greatest musicians of Europe in making Vienna his headquarters. There he studied with the brilliant and innovative opera composer Christoph Willibald Gluck. Through that esteemed connection, Salieri was appointed director of Italian opera for the Habsburg court. In fact, he often directed and conducted his own operas, of which he wrote 37. At the time, Italian was considered by many to be the only acceptable language for opera; hence the eyebrows raised at Mozart’s The Magic Flute, with its libretto in German. It should be noted that, thanks to his experience under the cosmopolitan and multi-lingual Gluck, Salieri also wrote some operas in French.

Although he wrote mostly instrumental music, it is Salieri’s operas and other vocal music that have long received the most studio attention. Most recently, there is a new recording of the opera Armida, an early work, dating from 1771, when the composer was only 21. Lully’s and Handel’s versions of the Armide story – it comes from Torquato Tasso’s hugely influential 16th-century epic poem, Jerusalem Delivered – are better known today, but Salieri’s opera seria would have been at the height of fashion, and was probably well received in 1771 Vienna.

Now, for the first time, you can hear a recording of the whole thing, thanks to Christophe Rousset’s longtime fascination with Salieri (he and his instrumental ensemble, Les Talens Lyriques, previously recorded two of the composer’s French-language operas, Tarare and Les Horaces). For this Armida recording on the Aparté label, Rousset tapped some fine Classical-era specialists to fill the four solo parts: soprano Lenneke Ruiten in the title role; mezzo-soprano Teresa Iervolino as Armida’s maid, Ismene; soprano Florie Valiquette as Rinaldo, the Christian knight; and baritone Ashley Riches as a fellow knight, Ubaldo. The choral sections are handled by the excellent Chœur de Chambre de Namur.

As in all the operatic versions, Salieri’s is a Crusades story in which Armida, an Eastern sorceress, lures Christian soldiers to her island, where she slaughters them, until one day she faces Rinaldo and finds him just too gorgeous to kill. It’s not easy to find information about the Italian libretto by Marco Coltellini, but Les Talons Lyriques has generously provided some clear, helpful resources on its website, including a synopsis.

https://www.lestalenslyriques.com/en/resources/armida-ressources/

Gluck’s influence can be heard in any random track (interestingly, Gluck himself did not attempt to set the Armide story as an opera until after his student had done so). In this Act III aria for Ubaldo, in which the knight wonders at the hellish creatures on the sorceress’ island, Salieri’s orchestral writing bursts with rhythmic and harmonic energy. The vocal line includes both arching melodies and vigorous ornamentation, which Riches at times handles with more enthusiasm than control.

 

As Armida, Ruiten provides an impassioned performance, by turns wild and reflective. The timbre of her extreme upper range brings to mind Maria Callas. In this aria, with help from the chorus, Rousset’s band again provides the perfect emotional drive.

 

My plan at this point in my column was to talk about Falstaff, a work completed in 1799, almost 30 years after Armida. It was categorized at the time as a dramma giocoso, or comedy, as one would expect given that it’s based on Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor. I should say loosely based on it, since Salieri leaves out some of the play’s major plot arcs in this short work, in collaboration with his librettist, Carlo Prospero Defranceschi.

My plan did not work out. I usually use this column to highlight new recordings, but a situation I came upon in the Salieri catalog is so grimly fascinating that I think it’s worth a short digression as an illustration of how the music industry has changed in this digital age.

There seemed to be a new recording of Falstaff, but the more I researched the purported 2021 release on VDC Classique with Simone Perugini conducting the Fête Galante Baroque Orchestra and featuring Irving Hussain as Falstaff, the more astonished I became. Consensus is that here is no such recording! Never mind that you can listen to it on YouTube or buy it on CD on Amazon; it is widely agreed among hardcore Salieri fans that Perugini himself might not even exist, nor do any of the singers on this recording.

It is, in the opinion of multiple experts, a “rip” of a 1980s Hungaroton recording with Tamas Pal conducting and Jószef Gregor in the title role. By this I mean that the digital file of the old recording has been manipulated slightly (down a quarter tone here, up 15 beats per minute there) and called “new.” Evidence suggests that “Simone Perugini,” or whatever entity that name represents, has done this with other pieces as well, including some operas by Domenico Cimerosa, apparently made by altering multiple pre-existing recordings.

This type of digital fraud is surely illegal, but it would require that whoever currently owns the Hungaroton recording invest in a legal fight, which seems unlikely to happen (and against whom would it be waged?). The least I can do is point you to Pal’s original recording of Falstaff, a delightful and elegant reading, available on Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/album/20wXEaPNUTwtqhyhkcI196

Happily, there is another new Salieri album I can report on with confidence: Salieri: Strictly Private (on the trustworthy Haenssler Classic label). Musicologist and conductor Timo Jouko Herrmann (he’s real!) leads the Heidelberg Symphony Orchestra in some instrumental movements and songs from Salieri’s chamber cantatas, secular and sacred works composed for private events at the Habsburg court. The (very real) singers here include soprano Diana Tomsche, mezzo-soprano Esther Valentin, tenor Thomas Jakobs, and baritone Philipp Schädel, among others.

With a dexterous, fluid voice, Tomsche leads a German translation of “La preghiera sudditta (Gott! Erhalt’ zu unsrer Wonne)” for soprano and chorus, a number influence by Lutheran chorales, proving that Salieri had thoroughly studied the masters of previous generations.

 

Antonio Salieri was a gifted composer and sought-after teacher who created hundreds of beautiful works in the early days of the mature classical style. There is no reason for his legacy to be tarnished or for him to be reviled or pitied. And his output certainly deserves to be more than a footnote to a fictionalized biopic of Mozart.

Header image: portrait of Antonio Salieri by Joseph Willibrord Mähler.

Nearly eight-hour Get Back documentary is revelatory for fans

Like all Beatles fans, I was intrigued with the news that New Zealand film director Peter Jackson had convinced the Apple Records powers-that-be to let him recut the Let It Be movie, to provide a more complete view of what transpired in January 1969. The resulting three-part The Beatles: Get Back documentary takes seven hours and 48 minutes to view – exclusively on the streaming service Disney+. Debuted over the Thanksgiving weekend, Get Back offers plenty for those who can’t get enough of the band that for most followers of the rock era agree created an unmatched body of work – and in less than a decade.

Jackson starts off the three-parter with a 12-minute summary of the Beatles’ success from their days as teenagers, through Beatlemania, the decision to stop touring in 1966 and become a recording band, and other events, in order to provide a historical backdrop for the uninitiated. The Lord of the Rings-trilogy filmmaker then makes the smart organizational decision to divide the documentary into a day-by-day chronicle of the project, since the band knew they had only less than a month to write and record an album – with all of them playing together in front of cameras. Like the best rock documentaries (e.g., Gimme Shelter), Get Back offers a dramatic arc. In this instance, we already know it culminates in the rooftop concert at Apple headquarters, marking the last time the Beatles would perform together publicly.

The original 1970 Let It Be film, panned by critics and fans alike, feels almost like a truncated, 79-minute trailer full of jump cuts. With more than 60 hours of film and 150 hours of audio captured for posterity by original director Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s team, Jackson figured another, more complete film must have been hiding in all that footage. He wasn’t wrong. Still, Lindsay-Hogg deserves kudos for having the foresight to place highly sensitive microphones to pick up conversations, and at least eight cameras filming from every angle for a fly-on-the-wall perspective.

 

The original plan was them to perform the album for a worldwide telecast in front of an audience at some exotic location. A Roman amphitheater in Libya or a location at sea were considered, although the Beatles – with the exception of Paul McCartney – never fully endorsed the concept, though thanks to the new documentary, it’s revealed that John Lennon changes his mind. Lennon and George Harrison separately admit that since “Mr. Epstein’s” passing (the Beatles’ original manager who died in 1967), the once Fab Four were in need of leadership. Later on, McCartney notes he hates “being boss,” as had been the case for several years, but no one else had stepped up. Lennon doesn’t correct him. Harrison still secretly stews about having to play third fiddle, literally, behind the duo, and Ringo Starr is Switzerland (not “Russia,” his code name, we learn).

Get Back was the Beatles’ attempt to rebel against the strictness of their past laurels at the EMI-owned Abbey Road recording studio by playing live together. Although producer Martin painstakingly presided over the Beatles’ past glory, in Get Back he seems relieved that he needn’t explain to EMI’s bosses why the lads weren’t emanating their usual recording studio magic. Martin shows up occasionally at Twickenham Film Studios, where the production was shot, and hardly says a word in the new film. When they move to the Apple studio, Martin realizes EMI must bring in some professional audio equipment, such as a PA, to finish the project.

Even though the band’s previous sprawling studio outing, the White Album, was well received, bad feelings apparently festered with an every-man-for-himself experience in the making of the album, which they wrapped on Oct. 18, 1968. Lennon reportedly later questioned Martin’s studio trickery (Hello, “Revolution No. 9?”), which is why they were bent on doing no overdubs for the next time around.

Act Naturally

On January 2, 1969, the Beatles exchange New Year’s pleasantries in a mostly empty soundstage at Twickenham, where they had made A Hard Day’s Night, Help, and the Hey Jude TV special the year before. Denis O’Dell, Apple’s head of films, secures the space, even though it wasn’t designed as a mobile recording studio. George Harrison lends his home rig for the project. Production at Twickenham was to commence later in the month on the O’Dell-produced The Magic Christian, co-starring Ringo Starr, which explains why his co-star Peter Sellers makes an appearance at a Get Back session.

Comparing Get Back with the bootleg VHS tape of Let It Be I watched in the early 1980s, for me, two pivotal scenes that last perhaps all of five minutes together gave me in retrospect an unfair view of what the Beatles were trying to accomplish with this back-to-their-roots project. Jackson adds context, instead of Lindsay-Hogg’s sound bites in the original film.

 

 

In the earlier version, Paul and John face each other in chairs. Paul vents on how George doesn’t want to make films or play concerts. John doesn’t say a word. I always thought that John’s silence meant that he was thinking, “You f*cking idiot [Paul], don’t you get that it’s over?” 52 years later, Jackson shows that it was actually a two-way conversation between Lennon and McCartney.

Jackson’s version repeats Lindsay-Hogg’s capture of a heated exchange between Harrison and McCartney, but goes a bit longer. Paul offers a suggestion on his guitar playing, but quickly adds that he thinks Harrison is taking it as an annoyance. “You don’t annoy me anymore,” George explains. “I’ll play whatever you want me to play … or I won’t play at all if you don’t want me to play. I don’t think you know what you want.” George’s final aside debuts in Get Back.

Part One of the Jackson film ends with something of a cliffhanger: George quits and stays away for eight days. Will he return? With the cameras on, John suggests they recruit Eric Clapton, incidentally George’s best friend, to replace him. Later, John and Paul have an un-filmed lunch to discuss the George situation. A secret microphone picks up their several-minute conversation, in which they both empathize regarding how George must feel, but agree that no malice was ever intended on their part.

Tomorrow Never Knows

Again, without the cameras, all four Beatles meet at Ringo’s home in an effort to woo George back. It doesn’t go well. At a second meeting a few days later, Harrison agrees to return on the condition that they dump the live TV show event; they agree.

Prior to his temporary absence, Harrison questions the acoustics of the movie studio as not being ideal. They decide to leave Twickenham for the new recording studio at Apple’s HQ, built by “Magic Alex,” the Beatles’ electronics guru. George and the band are satisfied with the sound. But it’s probably not enough to cure them of the doldrums, their realization that things are not clicking. In published interviews, all four Beatles complained about the difficult vibe.

In an effort to break up the monotony while they wait for a muse to strike, Jackson, in  several scenes, shows the Beatles reading the tabloid and fanzine press about the boys’ latest transgressions. I find John and Paul’s goofing around with vocals during this period irritating. Were they doing it for the cameras? Who knows? I wonder if George felt the same way.

Guests during the tedious sessions include inseparable Yoko Ono (soon to be married to John), and later Linda Eastman (soon to be married to Paul). Other visitors include Linda’s six-year-old daughter Heather, Ringo’s wife Maureen, and George’s wife Pattie. George invited two Hare Krishna friends to the early Twickenham days.

In Get Back, McCartney says he supports the John and Yoko union – when neither are there and George still AWOL – but jokes, “it’ll be comical 50 years later that [the Beatles] broke up because Yoko sat on an amp.”

 

Other similar moments make Get Back revelatory. For example, Starr can play piano, as he bangs out for Harrison a rudimentary version of “Octopus’s Garden,” which Martin witnesses. As Harrison makes arranging suggestions, it’s almost as if Martin realizes how short-shifted the guitarist must have felt being delegated to one or two songs per album, although potentially being every bit the musical genius as Lennon-McCartney.

More often than not, the sessions were jams, or covers of favorite rock and roll standards, instead of the fully-formed Beatles songs to which we had become accustomed. At the time, Harrison, John and probably Paul were clearly thinking, exit strategy, instead of the faked togetherness. They talk often about, “maybe we should divorce?”

Get Back, unlike the Let It Be movie, reveals the genesis of several tracks, particularly “Get Back,” which lyrically was initially something completely different, commenting on Pakistani immigration and which could have been easily misinterpreted. Some of the footage is priceless, such as learning it was John (not George) who played the blistering lead on “Get Back” and also performed the sublime steel guitar solo on Harrison’s “For You Blue.” Lennon clearly takes pride in his performances.

Lots of future Abbey Road fragments emerge, such as McCartney’s “She Came In Through the Bathroom Window,” “Carry That Weight,” and “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer”; Lennon’s “She’s So Heavy,” “Mean Mr. Mustard,” and “Polythene Pam”; Harrison’s “Something,” and Ringo’s “Octopus’s Garden.” Other not fully worked-out songs include Lennon’s “Road to Marrakesh,” to the tune of “Jealous Guy,” and an early version of “Gimme Some Truth.” Harrison plays “All Things Must Pass,” and admits he had been stockpiling songs for a solo album. He wrote “Wah Wah” after handing in his temporary notice.

For Get Back, they fixate on a dozen or so songs, trying out different tempos, arrangements, feels, ad nauseam. Lindsay-Hogg wants to know exactly what they’re going to play live, as time is running out. It can’t be overstated how much of a difference that bringing in Billy Preston on keyboards changed their collective moods, both at Twickenham and Apple, adding a much-needed other instrument, another aspect of the proceedings made obvious by Jackson’s version of what took place.

The Beatles all agree that the roof will be the location of their secret concert. Luckily they owned the building at 3 Saville Row, for which they paid £500,000 in 1968. There’s some concern whether the roof will hold the weight of the audio equipment, as Paul is seen jumping on the roof to test it as they investigate what’s up there. Lindsay-Hogg’s brilliant stroke was dispatching several cameras down on the street to capture peoples’ reactions, and he also mounted a secret camera at the foyer to record the inevitable visit from the two Metropolitan Police officers, who were responding to 30 complaints about the noise.

The Beatles ultimately turn out first-rate roof performances. Beatles road manager Mal Evans comes off as their most valuable player, fending off the police officers’ insistence of going up on the roof for at least 20 minutes, meanwhile getting in a few more takes for the entire 42-minute “concert,” even if they repeated some songs. Ten minutes later, a sergeant (no, not Pepper) investigates: why is the music still blasting, even after Mal assures the bobbies that they can lower the PA levels? A few minutes later on camera, Ringo, in mid-performance is the first band member to notice that Old Bill has come to visit, and then Paul sees them. They figure, quit while you’re ahead before anyone gets arrested.

I Should Have Known Better

The Beatles’ inclination to not release the album Get Back was correct, in case this really was the end. Instead, they went into the studio and make a proper Martin-produced album, which turned out to be the masterpiece Abbey Road. It was a fitting farewell, and should have been their last studio LP that they started recording in mid-April 1969.

In Part Two of the Disney+ film, Apple executive Peter Brown mentions to Lennon that Allen Klein, who aspires to manage the Beatles, will be coming by Apple during a Get Back session. Later in 1969 Klein wrested control of the band, with the blessing of Lennon, who convinced Harrison and Starr that Klein would be better than McCartney’s father-in-law to look out for Apple’s interests. In Get Back, Lennon tells Harrison about Klein’s genius, how he and Yoko spent all night talking with him, and how lucky they’ll be having him in their corner.

After the Beatles finished recording Abbey Road, Klein enlisted Phil Spector to produce and re-mix the Get Back sessions.  Spector’s version included lush strings on McCartney’s “Let It Be” and “The Long and Winding Road.” Paul was livid.

 

In the 2000 Beatles Anthology book, Apple managing director Neil Aspinall stated that the Let It Be record was released to serve as a companion soundtrack to the movie in May 1970. Let It Be the album was released through Klein’s ABKCO label as a companion piece to the movie, since he now could dictate such a move. From Klein’s perspective, even if the Beatles weren’t a continuing entity, individually, three of their talents were a bankable investment, in which he would earn a piece of the sales action of their solo efforts, as well as posthumous releases. By 1972 Klein wasn’t managing any of the Beatles.

According to the 1995 book Bootleg Beatles, in 1969 an unauthorized record titled Kum Back contained a rough version of Get Back, and was put out under different titles by other bootleggers in subsequent years.

In my opinion, Let It Be as an LP should not have been released in May 1970. I think Beatles fans would have been satisfied in the spring of 1969 with a five-song EP of the best rooftop live versions of “Get Back” (played three times on the roof); “I’ve Got a Feeling” (twice) “Don’t Let Me Down” (twice), “One After 909,” and “Dig A Pony.” Putting out this EP would have beat the bootleggers. (George didn’t get his rooftop number in the movie, so what else is new?) Apple could have also issued a 45 rpm seven-inch single with George’s “For You Blue” on the A side backed with Paul’s “The Long and Winding Road.” A second single could have been Paul’s “Let It Be” b/w the extended take of John’s “Dig It.” A third single could have had Paul’s “Two of Us” on the A side and George’s “I Me Mine” on the B side.

Of course, to capitalize on all the attention of The Beatles: Get Back, a newly released Let It Be (Special Edition – Super Deluxe) four-LP + 12” EP sets you back $199.98, and it costs another $50 for the official hardcover book. For me, I’ll stick with a bootleg CD of Get Back, acquired in the late 1990s, containing the original mixes that Glyn Johns engineered during the Twickenham and Apple sessions. In recent years I didn’t hesitate buying the deluxe vinyl versions of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, The White Album, and Abbey Road, decisions to which I attribute solely on the quality of those albums’ music.

 

 

Since the early 1970s, the Beatles’ deep archives and imaginative packaging of new product, now under the auspices of the Universal Music Group, keeps baby boomers with disposable income (and their offspring who grew up on the music) shelling out big bucks for expensive physical media gift-giving in the digital age.

Of course, the Beatles’ music will be forever be played by other artists in all genres. In what turned out to be perfect timing on the Monday night after the Thanksgiving weekend, I thoroughly enjoyed Cellophane Flowers’ neo-classical spin on Beatles music, the brainchild of singer/songwriter Jeff Lake, at Manhattan’s The Cutting Room.

Here’s “A Day in the Life,” as performed by The Cellophane Flowers with Jeff Lake on guitar/vocals, Ally Jenkins (violin) and Tara Hanish (cello) at The Cutting Room, Nov. 29, 2021.

 

 

 

Their 2019 studio version:

 

 

 

Header image courtesy of Disney+. Photo by Linda McCartney. © 2020 Apple Corps Ltd. All rights reserved.

Someday, PS Audio will host an event, whether at an audio show or elsewhere, and of course there will be food and drinks served. Here’s what will be on the audiophile-approved lunch menu: Today’s Specials

• Michael's Frem-Cheese Mushroom Pizza
• Steven's Stone-dogs
• Rocky Mountain Audio Fest Oysters
• John's As-If-Ken’s-Son Smoked Bangers and Mash
• Steve's Vegan Gut-’N-Burg'r w/Purple Onions
• “Part-Time” Anchovy Poppers
• Dark-O’-the-Woods Dried Fungi with Chocolate Ganache
• Nelson's Passy-Perfect "Straight Class A" Lobster and Spinach Pie with Old-Growth Merlot-Leaf Dolmas
• Paul’s Mc-Gowin'-to-Oahu Spam Musubi with Mango Chutney and “Hawaiian staple” Mac(aroni) Salad with “Best Foods” Mayo (and Truffled Mango)
• Jonathan's Scull-candied Apples with Crème Anglaise
• Dave's Clark Bar with Apricot Nougat
• Harry's Piercing Sticky Toffee Pudding
• Gordon's "Halt-the-Seeds" Indian Hot Pickles and Naan
• Herb's Wheat-and-a-ton Tri-Platter of Butter, Homemade Savory Crackers, and Warm Gruyère
• Bob's Graham Cracker Crust Passion Fruit Cheesecake
• Eggs Art Dudley (a real, tested recipe created in memory of Art): Scrambled Eggs on a Warm Biscuit with Butter, Millionaire’s Bacon, and Béchamel Sauce

Beverages

• Wine
• Beer
• The Macallan 25
• Soft Drinks
• Coffee with Lyra Stylus Performance Treatment (well, not really; just the coffee)
• Tea
• Jana’s ”Downward Dog” Kombucha

Maitre D': Andy Schaub Chef du Cuisine: Frank Doris Sous Chef: Gary “Pugsley” Doris Header image courtesy of Pixabay.com/Engin_Akyurt.

It is almost a given that if you dedicate eight hours of your time to watching a Beatles documentary, you are not just a casual fan.

The events chronicled in this new Peter Jackson-edited Beatles documentary, Get Back, have been written about and reported to us Beatles fans for over 50 years.

It has been said that The Beatles have had more books written about them than any other historical figures except Jesus Christ.

I can’t speak authoritatively about that comparison, but I have read dozens of Beatles related books, which take up several shelves in my bookcase.

I realize that many Copper writers may have insights and opinions about this new doc – read Tim Riley and Larry Jaffee’s articles in this issue – but since I also write a Beatles column for Goldmine, I have spent far too many hours of my time forensically analyzing this band, and, although I’m still out promoting my new book, Twisted Business, I feel compelled to throw my two cents in.

What this new doc does is to finally blow many Beatles myths to smithereens.

Myth One: Yoko broke up the Beatles.

Once you watch how Yoko sits next to John for the entire month of planning this project, you come to realize that John, at this point in his life, was totally dependent on the stability that Yoko gave him. Without her, I don’t think he could have made it through the grueling timetable involved in making Get Back. She never gets in the way.

As a band member who has been at stress-filled rehearsals for albums, it is not surprising that, at certain times, band members bring in close family or friends to make the tension easier to bear. Mick Jagger once commented that the Beatles might have been the world’s biggest band, but they operated within a very tight, closed circle (four Beatles, Mal Evans, Neil Aspinall, Brian Epstein and George Martin), which over time became overbearingly claustrophobic. That is what led, in my opinion, to the demise of the band – the individual desire for freedom.

George did this with Clapton’s appearance during the recording of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” on the White Album. George also had his cadre of Hare Krishna members sitting in the studio at the beginning of Get Back, probably to send him good vibes.

Ultimately, the addition of Billy Preston was probably the greatest example of when it came to smoothing out the inner band tensions, not only being a friendly face, but also adding incredible musicianship to both Let It Be and “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” on Abbey Road.

 

For John, Yoko provides, in my eyes, what a comfort animal does for reluctant flyers. That is not a diss. It is an acknowledgement of where John was at this point in his life. My wife was so impressed that Yoko could last that long in this situation, hour after hour, day after day. My wife knows how boring all this stuff is. I know how boring all this stuff is. Kudos to Yoko!

Myth Two: Let It Be (the album and movie) signaled the end of the band.

Finally, we see what this movie/album was really all about. Chronologically it is absolutely not the end; in fact, now that the correct timeline is shown, we now know (although many Beatles fans eventually came to know this fact) that the Let It Be project was recorded before Abbey Road. I think what the new doc finally shows us however, is that Let It Be was really no different than creating A Hard Day’s Night, Help or Magical Mystery Tour. All of these movie projects had deadlines in which songs had to be created to go along with a film. Let It Be was no different. The immense talent of the Beatles’ songwriting rises to the occasion.

The problem with the release of Let It Be in May of 1970, however, was that it was sold to us as the last official studio album, and the movie was so depressing to watch in 1970 that I just hardly ever played the Let It Be album after that. In fact, several years ago I did a poll of Beatles fans asking them which were their most-played and least-played Beatles albums. Let It Be was, hands down, the least-played. Now we know that there was no reason to feel bad about the band. The songs were very good and the process of writing them led to Abbey Road.

Myth Three: Ringo was a lucky guy. He is just an average drummer.

I will go on record as saying that the Beatles were the lucky ones in getting Ringo. They have all said, in separate interviews, that Ringo was the most professional member of the band when he joined. There is no better proof of his greatness than watching him in this documentary. He is flat-out amazing. In fact, as each song is slowly developing in front of our eyes, (we finally see how the sausage is made) they don’t become “Beatles” songs until Ringo plays the drum parts. They are always the perfect piece. Every time. I have always felt this way ever since the Beatles opened The Ed Sullivan Show on February 9, 1964 with the song “All My Loving.” The song swings because Ringo swings. He is an absolute killer of a drummer and I appreciate him even more today after watching the doc.

Myth Four: Phil Spector produced the Let It Be album.

Phil Spector is nowhere to be seen. How he ever convinced John to give him full production credit (for adding strings to a couple of songs) is truly laughable. This was a Glyn Johns production with executive producer advice from George Martin.

It only goes to show how John gets manipulated by strong con men (Phil Spector, Magic Alex and Allen Klein).

Myth Five: The rooftop performance was insufferable to the band.

WTF?? They looked so damn happy playing live together for the first time since that final show in San Francisco in August 1966, I could almost cry! I’ll even go so far to say that this pure joy they experienced was the catalyst for the Abbey Road sessions that followed almost immediately after.

 

Michael Lindsay-Hogg was 29 (the same age as the band members) when he filmed and directed all this footage.

How he missed that joy with his original edit absolutely stuns me.

The incredible quality of the film makes it hard for me to believe that it was made 53 years ago. Over that time, the following band members, family members and band associates featured in this documentary are no longer with us to see how this incredibly historic moment in time has finally gotten its due:

John Lennon
George Harrison
George Martin
Billy Preston
Linda McCartney
Maureen Starkey
Mal Evans
Neil Aspinall
Peter Sellers
Alexis Mardas (Magic Alex)
Allen Klein

There is so much more. I urge you, if you are a fan, to watch this doc and get the one of the special-edition super-deluxe Let It Be 2021 box sets (available in various formats), as it has lots of musical extras including the full Glyn Johns mix (it’s original title was Get Back) which was originally rejected by all four members of the band, and then ultimately accepted.

Header image courtesy of Disney+. Photo courtesy of Apple Corps Ltd.

Writing about the history of disk recording lathes poses a major challenge. Not because there is not enough to say. Quite the opposite, in fact. There is an enormous amount of information to be conveyed, enough to fill a rather thick book, beautifully bound in leather, preferably typeset using traditional methods. I shall perhaps disclose, at this point, that I am typing all my texts, including my pieces for Copper, using manual typewriters.

 

 

It was in 1989, in Berlin, Germany, that the last remaining disk recording lathe manufacturer assembled the last machine of this kind to be made in a very long time. It was a Neumann VMS-82 "DMM" lathe. Direct Metal Mastering was a patented system, developed by Teldec (Telefunken-Decca) and apart from a different cutting process, also involved other aspects of manufacturing, such as a special "DMM" record profile, for which special molds had to be used in the record press. To be allowed to use the DMM name and logo, a record had to use the complete DMM process, as specified by Teldec. If one was to comply with the Teldec specification, then the record had to bear the DMM logo. This makes it too easy to identify DMM records, so, just to keep life complicated, it only worked that way for a few years, while the DMM process was still actively supported by Teldec. After that, and to this day, people ended up using whatever they could find in terms of equipment and materials, so it was difficult to keep to the original DMM spec. Upon expiry of the patents, the use of the DMM name and logo became deregulated, and anyone is now free to use (or not use) it as they see fit.

 

The main point of the DMM process was that the master disk was cut directly on metal (a thin copper layer deposited on top of a stainless-steel disk), instead of a soft material (such as wax or lacquer, as was the norm prior to the invention of DMM) which then had to be metallized to become electrically conductive, then pre-plated, to withstand the more intense electroplating process that would produce the stampers for the record press, and enable the mass-manufacturing of records. This saves a few steps of galvanic processing compared to lacquer masters, which have to be silvered, plated to produce a negative "father" disk, and then the father disk has to be plated to produce a "mother" disk, which is then plated again to produce the stampers. The DMM disk was already a metal mother, so the galvanic foreplay could be conveniently cut short, skipping straight to the final steps needed to produce the stampers.

 

The blank DMM disks were of course also specified and sold by Teldec, as were the cutting styli, which had a proprietary shank that would not fit any other cutter head than the one developed by Teldec and Neumann for the DMM system. This was the Neumann SX-84, which in itself had a proprietary mount and would not fit any lathe other than the Neumann VMS-82.

 

The VMS-82 was essentially identical to the mechanical assembly of the VMS-80, an earlier Neumann lathe developed for cutting lacquer masters, with some modifications (including a new "suspension unit" that holds the cutter head, designed to hold the SX-84) to assist with cutting on copper instead of lacquer.

 

The VMS-80 had already been a radical departure from the usual Neumann tradition. All Neumann lathes, from the very first model up until the VMS-80 was introduced, shared the same design and basic technology. The VMS-80 was the first one to not use the traditional Neumann lathe bed, instead using a low-profile flat-slab design, strikingly similar to the change in design direction adopted by Scully a few years earlier, who also had just stopped using their traditional lathe bed and moved to a design that was more reminiscent of a consumer turntable than a machine tool. I guess it was just ’80s fashion, along with perhaps a push by the marketing department to "get rid of the old-fashioned looks." In purely technical terms, the new lathe bed did not really offer any particular advantage over the old design. Aesthetics aside, the other radical departure was that both the platter motor and the pitch control motor were now DC servo-motors, driven by some rather intense electronics. The VMS-80 was a direct-drive design, as were all Neumann lathes. The earlier Neumann lathes, however, used Lyrec synchronous AC motors, which locked to the powerline frequency and did not use any control electronics.

 

In the next episode, we will dive deeper into the technology behind this final generation of Neumann lathes. Header image: A Neumann VMS-82 disk mastering lathe, originally designed for the DMM process, now converted to cut lacquer masters. Photo courtesy of Scott Hull, Masterdisk.

Octave Records’ latest release is Levelland by country-folk duo Bonnie and Taylor Sims. It’s a contemplative and romantic set of songs by the two, who have been playing and recording together for more than 15 years – but haven’t recorded a duo album until now. Bonnie and Taylor have earned numerous accolades, including 2020’s internationally-charting Number One single, “I See Red,” as well as top honors in the RockyGrass and Telluride Bluegrass Festival, and other awards.

Levelland, named after the “underwhelming” (as they put it) town in Texas where they first met, features the lead and harmony vocals of Bonnie and Taylor, with Bonnie playing mandolin, Taylor adeptly picking the acoustic guitar, and Brad Morse accompanying them on upright bass. The sound is open, clear and intimate, ideal for a label like Octave Records that presents the artistry of its performers in the finest-possible audiophile-quality sound.

The album was recorded at Animal Lane Studios in Lyons, Colorado using Octave Records’ Pure DSD process and the Sonoma multi-track DSD recording system. It was recorded, mastered and mixed by Gus Skinas. A number of vintage and other instruments were used, including a 1946 Martin D-18, 1957 Martin OOO-18, 1910 upright bass, and a 2015 Newsom F5 mandolin.

Levelland is available as a limited-edition release of 1,000 hybrid SACD discs with the master DSD layer and a CD layer. In addition, the album can be purchased as a download bundle including DSD64, DSDDirect Mastered 192kHz/24-bit, 96kHz/24-bit and 44.1kHz/16-bit PCM. Levelland was produced by Bonnie and Taylor Sims and Jessica Carson was the executive producer.

 

Levelland presents Bonnie and Taylor’s singing with a warm, rich purity, complemented by the stunning clarity of the acoustic instruments. The sound is intimate and inviting, presented without studio trickery or embellishment. The nuances and dynamics of Bonnie and Taylor’s singing and playing is conveyed up-close-and-personal, from their heartfelt harmony vocals of the title track and “Let It Play,” to the upbeat drive and dexterous fingerpicking of “Side By Side.” Bonnie’s impassioned, high-register vocals take “Every Little Bit” to a powerful emotional peak, and it’s easy to hear why the duo’s cover of Townes Van Zandt’s “If I Needed You” has been a long-time crowd favorite and staple of their repertoire for many years.

We interviewed Taylor Sims about the making of Levelland.

Frank Doris: In the liner notes you said that Levelland was named after a nowhere town.

Taylor Sims: It’s a town out in west Texas where Bonnie and I met. That’s the most significant [part about] it! That’s where our musical journey started, and why we called the album that.

 

 

FD: When did you first start performing with her and realize, wow, this is really happening.

TS: About 2004 or 2005 while in college. We [were in] a pretty rich community of bluegrass, folk and country musicians. We all started jamming together because Levelland is a dry town and it limited our options for things to do. So, we would just sit around and pick, most every day and every night. [Bonnie and I] became musically connected before we became romantically and existentially connected.

FD: A lot of people will start playing guitar when they’re younger (Taylor began when he was 16), and for some, 16 would be kind of late.

TS: I was always into music. My dad was a big country music fan and we always had really good music playing around the house; Western swing, old country and, singer/songwriter stuff. One day when I was 16, I was in a pawn shop in Amarillo, Texas and saw a guitar hanging on a wall, and it hit me. I just asked myself, why had I not learned to play guitar yet?

FD: You’ve now been doing this for a long time, and had success. How did you manage to hook up with Octave Records?

TS: Bonnie and I went to college with [producer] Jess Carson, but we didn’t interact that much back then. Fast forward to the last seven or eight years and she had moved [back to our area] and started playing gigs, and we randomly crossed paths, then became close friends. Bonnie and I had signed with Columbia Records and in 2020 [the song] “I See Red” went viral, but all of our gigs were cancelled. So, we had a little bit of time and Jess asked us if we’d ever consider doing a record for Octave. It didn’t interfere with our deal with Columbia, so we decided to do it. Bonnie and I had had a lot of requests to do a duo record.

 

FD: Who writes the songs, and how do you write them?

TS: It’s a combination of the two of us. I pore over songs for sometimes years, while Bonnie’s much quicker. She can sit down and write a song in a matter of a day or a few hours where I let the “editor” into my process, more often than I should!

FD: Why did you decide to cover Townes Van Zandt’s “If I Needed You?”

TS: Bonnie and I started singing [that] together really early on. One of the reasons we fell in love was our mutual love for Townes Van Zandt. And, you know, he’s a Texas boy! Whenever we’ve tried to [remove] it from the set list, people always request it.

In terms of other influences, we both love Texas songwriters, Guy Clark, Robert Earl Keen, and we’re both big Dylan heads. Bonnie’s really big into musical theater and she introduced me to that whole world. Most recently I’ve been listening to a lot of Dave Alvin. I’ve always loved his style, [combining] American tradition and blues roots, with that awesome guitar tone cranked up to 10.

FD: How else have you been dealing with COVID world?

TS: It’s been a monumental shift, you know, no doubt about it. We had all of our gigs canceled in March 2020. And as things kind of started to calm down a little bit we found ourselves really missing playing live. We went from playing four or five times a week for years and touring a lot and doing lots of different projects, to nothing. We ended up playing with just a couple of people and making music just for ourselves, sitting around in the living room. But it was very refreshing, creatively refreshing, to have a break, think about what we were gonna do next and be more intentional with it.

The first time we got back on stage [this year], it was just that thing of like, oh man, I really missed this. We played some great festivals this last summer and it was so good cause people were so hungry to hear live music again.

Click here to order Levelland by Bonnie and Taylor Sims.

 

In Copper Issue 150, I shared my review of the Gustard X16 digital-to-analog converter as used in my main audio system, and the results were nothing less than spectacular. My intent was to next focus on the X16 in a much less costly system like one that might include the AudioEngine HD4 powered loudspeakers I reviewed in Copper Issue 149. Just to bring everyone up to speed, I’ve been contemplating seriously downsizing my large-scale audio system for a more manageable one, which might be necessary due to possible upcoming lifestyle changes. Or maybe because I might just be ready to chuck it all, and fully embrace my impending retirement in sixteen months with a much less costly and less elaborate audio system.

However, my ever-evolving circumstances ended up temporarily shelving my good intentions. When the X16 arrived mid-November, my main system had been down since early August. That’s because my PS Audio Stellar GainCell DAC/Preamplifier (SGCD) had been at the manufacturer for repairs, waiting for a new main circuit board. Without it, I didn’t have a preamplifier or a high-resolution DAC, which made it almost impossible to do anything other than spin LPs with my PrimaLuna tube integrated amp inserted into my playback chain. But when the repaired SGCD magically appeared a day after the arrival of the X16, that created a crush on my part to complete my review of the Euphony Audio Summus Endpoint streamer. The review was already in progress, but had been seriously delayed while my system was down. Now that I was suddenly back up and running, it was imperative that I focus my attention on this long-overdue review. Pretty much simultaneously, I was immersed in the Euphony review, the Gustard X16 review, and in determining whether the renewed SGCD was actually functioning normally. Added to all that, my daughter was about to give birth any day, which meant that my wife and I might have to drop everything at a moment’s notice to care for my three-year-old grandson (he’s a bruiser!), two dogs, and a pair of guinea pigs. I had a challenging November-into-December, to say the least!

With regard to the Euphony Summus Endpoint streamer review: my contact at Euphony Audio, Dalibor Kasac, has always insisted that Euphony’s own streaming music player application, Stylus, possesses a remarkable degree of musicality, transparency, and detail retrieval. However, in today’s audiophile world, the Roon suite of music software has become de rigueur in high-end digital systems for music playing and library organization. Despite his enthusiasm for Stylus, Dalibor is a very practical man, so he understands the importance of having his equipment play nicely with industry standard applications that many audiophiles have fully embraced – like Roon. The Euphony Summus equipment arrives from the manufacturer with a Roon core built in, and Dalibor had requested that my upcoming review of the Summus Endpoint highlight the seamless nature of its interaction with Roon. And I’m certain my review accomplished that, while also remaining objective about the quality of Euphony’s own turnkey software solutions. So, for months, I’d been deeply focused on how the Euphony equipment interacted with Roon, and had been listening with Roon almost exclusively. But near the end of the review period, I returned to Euphony’s own Stylus player, and was pretty astonished by the contrast in sound quality between Roon and Stylus. I also did some serious listening comparisons between the Gustard X16 and my own Stellar GainCell DAC, in combination with the Euphony Summus equipment. More on that later. I’ll start with a bit of a continued exploration with the Gustard X16 that was inspired by several exchanges I had with Copper contributing editor David Snyder.

Oversampling Options With the X16

Some additional information about the X16 was brought to my attention by David. He also has an X16, and kindly shared some of his experiences, including adjustments he made to his playback regimen. Apparently David has access to test equipment (hardware, and/or software), and has taken measurements of the X16 as used in certain conditions. He also uses Roon for library management and music playback. My recent system has been using Roon for library management, and the Euphony OS takes advantage of an HQ Player open source protocol that allows for better integration between the Euphony Summus equipment and Roon. David agreed with my thoughts about the superiority of the NOS (No Over Sampling) mode of the X16, and all my critical listening through the X16 was with the NOS mode enabled for playback. Enabling NOS results in fully-native file playback; otherwise, the X16 employs 8X oversampling with every digital signal you present to it. In David’s experience with the X16, he perceived that during playback of Red Book CD-quality files, the sound he was hearing was a bit dull in the treble area. And his measurements showed that when playing 16/44.1 files with NOS enabled, the high frequencies were significantly rolled off. By using the oversampling functions of either Roon or HQ Player, the new NOS curves were almost perfectly flat, resulting in his perception of greatly improved sound quality both in the frequency and time domains.

 

David also uses Roon to upsample PCM sources prior to sending the signal to the DAC; with Roon, you use the DSP function to upsample the signal by whatever modifier you choose. That would typically be 4X-oversampling, or perhaps 8X-oversampling; it’s up to you to decide which you think sounds better to your ears. In my system, since I’m not actually using a full version of HQ Player, I have no access to any of HQ Player’s oversampling options, so I must rely on Roon’s DSP options. They are surprisingly robust, although I’ve heard a lot of people grumble about possible negative results when using Roon’s DSP. I did play about with using Roon to convert everything to DSD several years ago (when I got my first DSD-enabled PS Audio DAC), but I was honestly less than impressed with the results, and have avoided Roon’s DSP with anything since. But I followed David’s instructions, and used Roon’s DSP to increase the sample-rate of my Red Book CD rips and downloads by 4X, while leaving everything else, including higher-resolution PCM, DSD, and DXD at their default (native) playback settings. With 4X oversampling engaged through Roon, I heard a significant amount of high-frequency sparkle in the sound that was previously absent. Now, I’m not a measurements first kind of guy, so I can’t quantify whether what I was hearing was an actual improvement in the sound or not. I didn’t hate it, but I wasn’t certain my ears were telling me that it sounded more correct than playback without upsampling.

 

In my home system, most of my listening is done with my Magneplanar LRS quasi-ribbon loudspeakers, which can tend to sound, perhaps, a bit bright with certain material. My other go-to loudspeakers, the Zu Audio Omens, use compression drivers in what is essentially a treble horn arrangement, and they also tend to sound a bit bright. So, there’s that dynamic I must deal with in trying to make an objective decision on how oversampling might be affecting what I’m hearing through the Gustard X16. That tendency towards brightness of both of my loudspeaker choices might be impacting what I’m hearing with oversampling engaged in Roon when played through the X16. I might feel (or hear) differently if the oversampling was done by HQ Player rather than Roon, but I don’t currently have full access, so for now, it’s a moot point. I plan on doing more serious listening in the near future, and try to reach some sort of consensus on how I feel about using oversampling with Roon and the X16.

 

MQA via the USB input With the X16

One of the aspects I listed as a negative for me personally with the X16 was the lack of full Master Quality Authenticated (MQA) decoding via the I²S input, which is my preferred digital input in my home system. Full MQA decoding is only possible via the X16’s USB input. However, I also mentioned that I’m still on the fence regarding MQA, so it was ultimately not a dealbreaker for me. However, should I actually go through with serious system downsizing, the level of equipment occupying my system would most likely preclude anything with an I²S connection. So, a good USB connection would very likely become the input du jour for any given situation in my new reality.

 

While I was taking the time to explore oversampling via Roon, I thought it might be instructive to take a listen to some MQA titles with the X16, which is made easy by Roon’s built-in access to Tidal. After switching everything in the Euphony System to the Gustard’s USB protocol, I proceeded to sample from a number of MQA offerings. The available selection of MQA titles has recently exploded on Tidal – there’s a boatload of both mainstream and obscure albums across many musical genres. I mostly chose albums I’m very familiar with in either strictly CD-quality versions or higher-resolution PCM versions. I won’t go into detail here, but right out of the gate, 1) I wasn’t completely blown away by any MQA titles I listened to, and 2) I sensed that something in the overall sound quality wasn’t quite right – I can’t put my finger on it, but it didn’t sound completely natural to me. This is going to require much more exploration in the very near future, but suffice it to say, for now, I’m still on the fence regarding MQA.

 

Making Comparisons With my Renewed SGCD and the Gustard X16

In my initial listening tests with the X16, I have to admit, I was blown away by the sound quality. I still am – I think it’s a remarkable piece of kit, especially at its low $499 USD price point. But in the last week or so, as part of the ongoing review with the Euphony equipment, I’ve taken a really hard listen to the recently-returned Stellar GainCell DAC. And I’ll be darned if it isn’t sounding better than ever! On paper, the Gustard X16 has a vastly superior complement of top-of-the-line 2-channel ESS Sabre ES9068AS DAC chips, compared to the specified ESS Sabre 9010 DAC chips in the SGCD. The 9010s are near the bottom of the line, although they match most of the specified capabilities (with the exception of MQA decoding) of the 9068 chips within certain tolerances. PS Audio’s philosophy is that the DAC chips are only a part of the overall picture, and the SGCD has been voiced to provide a significant amount of trickle-down sound quality and goodness from their much more expensive DirectStream family of DACs. After my four-plus years with the SGCD, I can’t argue with that assessment. And the renewed SGCD is sounding better than ever!

 

Now, this is just entirely speculation on my part, and I haven’t gotten a definitive answer from PS Audio yet, but at the time when the SGCD was there awaiting a new circuit board, it wasn’t alone. I was told that there were multiple units waiting for boards, which were in short supply due to the pandemic. I was offered the option – which they didn’t really recommend – of getting a repair of the existing board. That would have involved basically stripping elements from the existing board to isolate the problem, then replacing them with new parts in an attempt to restore the board to its previous condition. My alternative was to wait for a fully-assembled replacement board, which was definitely my first choice. And after hearing such a marked improvement in the sound quality of my renewed SGCD, I’m beginning to wonder if perhaps my new board came equipped with an upgraded ESS DAC chipset – or possible other improvements.

I plan on removing the outer cover to examine the board and check that out soon, I just didn’t want to go through the hassle of doing it prior to the publication of this article. I’ll update the results of my explorations in an upcoming issue. My initial listening experiences with the Gustard X16 were superb, and my opinion of it hasn’t changed at all – it’s an astonishingly good DAC at any price, and especially at its ridiculously low price. But my recent listening to the SGCD has also altered my opinion of it; it’s a much better sounding DAC than I might have previously given it credit for. I actually think the X16 and the SGCD share many more similarities than differences – especially when both are connected via the excellent I²S connection.

 

My Euphony Review, and Changes to my Ongoing Implementation of Roon I’ve been using Roon on and off for over five years now, and for about the first three years, I was given a complimentary reviewer’s subscription. That was a godsend at that point in time, because I was then constantly trying to cobble together a digital file streaming system from DLNA and UPnP open source applications, which were often buggy and frustrating to use. Even with really superb streaming equipment like the Sonore Rendu line of streamers, trying to use freeware to get glitch-free, bit-perfect streaming was quite simply maddening, to say the least! Roon worked, plain and simple, and it sounded better than anything else I had access to at the time. When my reviewer’s subscription ended, I chose to continue to pay the $12 monthly fee – partially, because I was still pretty high on Roon, and I really loved their file management. But also, as an audiophile reviewer, it’s pretty much expected of me to have access to industry-standard music software for many of the reviews I engage in.

 

As part of the Euphony review (you can read that here), I suspended my use of Roon and started using Euphony’s own Stylus application again for the first time in months. Stylus handles the library organization and music playing aspects of the Euphony system that an outboard program like Roon might otherwise have managed. Stylus has an acceptably good graphical user interface (GUI), and really good functionality as a music server and library organizer, if perhaps not possessing the same level of refinement as Roon, especially in terms of visual appeal. But after spending the last few weeks listening to digital files over the Euphony system via Stylus – and that’s whether with the X16 or the SGCD – it’s become abundantly clear to me how much better Euphony Stylus sounds in this implementation. Stylus gives loads of air, delicacy, transparency, and simply gobs of detail. Whereas, any of the Euphony modes featuring Roon sounded, quite simply, somewhat pedestrian, relatively lifeless, and more mid-fi – especially in comparison to Stylus. The Euphony Stylus playback mode utilizes a "ramroot" function that allows the user to insert the files selected for playback into the Summus Server's RAM cache, which is massive at 16 GB. The files are then spooled directly from the Server's RAM to the Endpoint streamer, which results in the files being played with zero latency. This essentially means that there's no appreciable transfer function lag that might otherwise be encountered by playback from disk storage to the Endpoint. I know that some may scoff that any appreciable improvement in sound quality could be offered by this arrangement, but the proof is readily apparent during playback. It’s much more nuanced, detailed, and musical than anything I'm hearing from Roon; Stylus definitely has a technological edge in terms of playback sound quality over Roon.

 

I’m definitely at a crossroads with all this; whether or not I decide to continue to remain heavily involved as an audio reviewer will probably determine whether I keep my Roon subscription or not. At this moment, I could probably walk away from it with no regrets. Maybe it’s time I caved and dropped the bucks for that full HQ Player license – but then, if I downsize drastically, that money would probably be wasted!

 

By the way, my new grandson, Finneas, arrived December 10th (he’s great!), and the five days I spent away from my system gave me even more time to contemplate walking away from it all. After days on end of being Hulk-hammered senseless by my Marvel-Universe-loving three-year-old grandson Henry, and being constantly nuzzled by needy dogs, do I need the headaches of the high-end?

All images courtesy of Gustard, PS Audio, Euphony Audio and the author.

Header image: Gustard X16 DAC.

It’s late and dad has his slippers and pipe
Mom’s wrapping gifts by the fading firelight.
“You going to help or just sit there all night?”
Before he could answer she hands him his boxes
And he knows better than to put up a fight.
The kids may finally have fallen asleep
But both are listening for the possible creak
Of the stairs, meaning someone is hiding up there.
“Who did we get this for?” mom asks with a smile
Dad shrugs and looks woefully back at his pile
Of packages, wrapping, tissue and bows
Telling himself that if he goes slow
She’ll be done soon, and he could go to his room.
Dad is drawn to the window and whispers aside
“Look! It’s snowing!” She stands and comes to his side.
The Christmas lights twinkling outside in the snow
Remind him of a story from a time long ago.
He turns and takes her into his arms.
“Merry Christmas, my darling. Look, I’ll finish the wrapping
Get us crackers and wine from the cabinet above,
And I’ll tell you a story of a Christmas long past
When we first fell in love.”

 

We spoke with Hollis Brown front man Michael Montali about how the project came to be, what their approach was in tackling such an iconic piece of rock, and what he and the band hope this record in the end just might accomplish.

Ray Chelstowski: How did you first get introduced to Aftermath?

Michael Montali: A couple of things. Aftermath was one the of the records, like Loaded, that we turned to when we started the band. We were trying to figure out who we wanted to be, how to write songs, and all of that. It’s one of their earlier records and it’s filled with a lot of backside material that isn’t part of their mainstream, best-known songs. So that was part of the appeal. Some of the other Stones stuff starts to sound like karaoke because it is so well-known. Also, the open tuning technique that Keith Richards started using makes that music difficult to pull off. So, this music is good because it leans on the blues, it’s got standard tuning, and it has a similar aesthetic to what we do with our original music.

RC: You cover the US version of the record. Did you ever consider tackling the UK version, which is a bit larger and includes tracks like “Out of Time” and “Paint it Black?”

MM: We did. We had a conversation about which version we should do, and we settled on the US version mostly because we’re an American band. Also, maybe because it didn’t have as many tunes to have to get down in the short amount of time that we did this in (laughs)! And like I said the UK version has more better-known tunes and we wanted to shy away from covering their biggest songs. The US version shows that the Stones have another side to their catalogue that’s blues-based.

RC: The final product, like the Velvet’s tribute album Gets Loaded, is exceptional. Do you have other albums in mind that you might want to cover in the future?

MM: You’re 100 percent right. We always joked about it after the Velvet Underground project that this would be a pretty cool concept, to do [a cover of a complete album] every couple of years, [or] just do one for Record Store Day or between albums. We actually have a list of the ones that we would like to do. We’ve had it for some time. It includes Ziggy Stardust, (David Bowie’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars); Led Zeppelin IV was up there for a while; maybe a Beatles record? This is a list of those records we really loved when we were starting out and we always said we would cover, but we never really got around to it because of touring and making our own music.

But, during the pandemic we were doing these private outdoor concerts. We are really fortunate to have a fan base that can support us in that way. These concerts had very small audiences for obvious reasons, and someone asked if they could hire us to do an album in full. They asked us to do (Elton John’s) Tumbleweed Connection. We said, “well, you know, we’re a guitar band…”

So, we suggested that we pick the album, and started talking amongst ourselves. Based on our set up, the bluesy-ness of the tunes, the vibe we were having, and [in] not being able to really get rehearsal spaces or get together all that much, we picked Aftermath. We did the show, and afterward, decided to record it. We booked a studio for a day and ran it all live, a couple takes each, and that’s the record.

 

 

RC: Both Gets Loaded and In the Aftermath have a similar fidelity to their sound. How did you approach these projects?

MM: Well, they were both recorded in the same room in the same way. We set up to record live and started from track one and moved track by track to 11. We just did it that way. It’s a similar approach to how we did Loaded. We worked with Don DiLego at his Velvet Elk studios in the Poconos (in New York), and we had it mixed down in Fort Myers, Florida. Don is great because he knows how to work his room and he makes things very easy. He just captures what the people are playing.

RC: I think what really sets Aftermath apart from earlier Stones records is the addition of exotic instruments that Brian Jones weaved into the arrangements.

MM: I agree. I think that Brian Jones opened the record up by bringing in world instruments, especially on songs like “Lady Jane.” It made things more interesting given the time it was released. But we wanted to approach the record from our perspective and how we play live. That kind of gave it a more 1970s Stones flair, like Some Girls or Goats Head Soup. We didn’t want to replicate it. We’re a five-piece band so we decided to just play it and make it our own. Today I think that the Stones would approach Aftermath as more of an organic rock record, especially since the person who was bringing in those [other] influences isn’t there anymore.

Brian Jones was the only guy at the time who could play the Robert Johnson-style blues guitar. Obviously, Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck would start popping up a few years later, but he was the original blues-rock guitar guy in England. I don’t think he necessarily gets as much credit as he deserves because it was a short-lived moment and he had personal issues that overshadowed everything. But Brian Jones was a beast. He should get a lot more credit than he does, especially for taking that band from just being a blues band to having a pop sensibility that probably got them out of the clubs.

RC: You play with the opening arrangement on “Under My Thumb” to where the band kind of stumbles into the groove. It was a creative way of shuffling the expectations we all have toward one of the band’s most popular songs.

MM: A lot of that has to do with the fact that we wanted to track it all live in one day. And a song like that is so iconic that if we opened the way the original does with the marimbas, it would have just been a carbon copy, and not really worth listening to. We just tried to approach it our own way, and that’s the best we got (laughs).

 

I have been looking at their current set lists on tour and just think it’s insane how much material they created. So, the back wall of a band like that is not easy to stumble into unless you’re really hungry for it, and we were. We’ve always been music heads, fans of rock and roll music, and we came at this with a completely different perspective than 1965 London. Hopefully some folks will get turned on to it and learn that the Stones are more than just “Brown Sugar.”

RC: Have you received any feedback from the Rolling Stones regarding the record?

MM: We reached out to their publishing side, just to get the clearance. We got an OK to make sure that when we put this out, we didn’t get blocked or have stuff taken down. But we haven’t heard from anyone on the creative side. We’re hoping for a Tweet one of these days. But nothing yet. That would be amazing. Part of the reason we did this because these people are our heroes. They influenced and changed our lives, and we want to make sure that people have the chance to appreciate this music that is somewhat buried.

Header image of Hollis Brown courtesy of Nick Karp.

Jim Kellem, a talent agent from CMA (Creative Management Associates) and my good buddy, invites me to join him at Patsy’s, where he is having a business dinner with Phil Silvers. Phil Silvers was a comedic actor of Russian-Jewish descent, nicknamed "The King of Chutzpah." He was best known for his starring role as Master Sergeant Ernest "Ernie" Bilko in the hit sitcom The Phil Silvers Show (1955 – 1959). In the series, platoon leader Bilko is a hysterical con man and schemer who runs the motor pool at a small Kansas US Army post. It was a show that was on the level of I Love Lucy and The Honeymooners.

 

Header image courtesy of Pexels.com/Ekaterina Bolovtsova.

As 2021 entered the fourth quarter, the Audio Engineering Society (AES) held its annual fall show online in October, because of the pandemic still being in effect. Thankfully, the show seminars and interviews were recorded for on-demand viewing, so once again, attendees and reporters could still participate virtually.

Part One of Copper’s show report in Issue 151 covered analog electronic instrument design with Sequential Circuits’ Dave Smith, Line 6 co-founder Marcus Ryle and Akai MPC Renaissance designer Jennifer Hruska; and also spotlighted a symposium on the optimization of sound systems in all types of venues and configurations.

All About Stereo Panning

Keynote Speech From Producer Peter Asher

From his beginnings as a child actor in the UK, to pop success as a singer and guitarist with pop duo Peter and Gordon, to international fame and fortune as a Grammy Award-winning producer and manager for the likes of James Taylor and Linda Rondstadt, Peter Asher has had a storied career, and was a featured keynote speaker at AES Show Fall 2021. Reminiscing on his roots, Asher recounted that his mother was a noted classical oboe player, coincidentally teaching a young George Martin the rudiments of the oboe and music theory. His physician father was an amateur pianist and a huge fan of Gilbert and Sullivan. Early exposure to music in the Asher household was via 78 rpm records played on a windup gramophone with a huge horn speaker.

 

Asher recalled that Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock” was the first record he ever purchased and it was indicative of the fascination at the time with American culture by British teens. British record stores would offer the latest imported jazz, rock and roll and folk records, plus what would amount to “bootlegged” acetates of more obscure folk and blues music from artists like Woody Guthrie.

Intrigued by how records were made, Asher received both his first guitar and his first tape recorder in his teens. He jokingly noted that his early experiments included a primitive overdubbing technique achieved by using a piece of cardboard to block the erase head. Although the result was muffled, the young Asher was delighted that his attempts at adding a harmony vocal to his pre-recorded melody part actually worked.

The first exposure to stereo technology came to the UK commercially via BBC radio broadcasts. The left channel would broadcast on BBC radio while the right channel could be heard on the BBC television channel in a simulcast. Listeners were advised to place their radio six feet from their televisions and to tune into the station broadcast to listen to the test tone in order to perfectly balance it in the center of the stereo spectrum.

From orchestral performances to the left and right panning of moving trains and even the sounds from a ping pong match – all were enthralling, as stereo sound became a revelation to UK listeners, and Asher in particular.

 

The Secret Life of Low Frequencies

The Secret Life of Low Frequencies was presented by Bruce Black, founder of Black Audio Devices and engineer at MediaRooms Technology LLC, Skywalker Sound, Dreamworks, and other post-production houses. The seminar recounted his history as an engineer and acoustic designer and his cumulative knowledge and exploits in creating acoustic spaces and rooms for a wide range of artists and producers in both the music and film/TV arenas.

The Secret Life of Low Frequencies was an hour-long, scholarly lecture about acoustics and physics with a number of practical and real-world tips, culled from Black’s extensive experience. While the lecture primarily addressed how to handle low frequencies within professional studios and critical listening environments, the principles also apply to personal listening spaces – something near and dear to the hearts of many Copper readers. Among Bruce Black’s insights:

• As low frequencies play a huge role in the perception of sound, whether for music, film, or other media, they are crucial for carrying dramatic weight and power, but can also ruin a listening experience if handled poorly or incorrectly.
• Sound transmission has two essential methods: by particle motion (high frequencies) and specular reflection (reflection off smooth surfaces), but it can also travel by pressure (low frequencies).
• 300 Hz, Also known as the “Schroeder Frequency,” is the demarcation line between particle motion and pressure-based sound transmission.

Resistive absorbers such as fiberglass and other materials that deaden sound are crucial tools in being able to control particle-motion sound transmission. The thickness of the material is related to the frequency ranges it can effectively absorb. For example, a one-inch thickness can handle up to 1 kHz, while two inch-thick material is effective at down to 300 – 400 Hz.

Black believes that insulation as an end-all for acoustical treatment is extremely limited, and that other remedies for various frequencies are required for an effective acoustic treatment protocol.

Resonance devices that respond to pressure reflections are the first step in those different remedies. Bearing in mind the 300 Hz dividing line, materials that are useful for particle motion can be considered differently from materials for pressure-based transmission.

Pressure absorbers, which will often have a bass port, will usually be closer to walls and other hard surfaces where sound energy gets displaced upon impact. As a result, using foam unilaterally, as some manufacturers might advertise, will inevitably lead to uneven and less than optimum outcomes.

Standing waves, or resonances, are the frequencies across the sound spectrum that are some of the hardest to handle – and Black pointed out that the majority of those are in the lower-frequency registers.

Although non-parallel walls are often desired to prevent room resonances from piling up, Black’s experience is that a room configured similarly to the 5-foot. by 7-foot one on the chart below can be managed more easily in terms of standing wave resonances than the one on the right with distortions of the waves hitting the 90-degree corner.

Non-parallel walls can cause resonances to frequency shift bounce back and forth erratically, making them harder to predict.

Black noted that there is no way to actually get rid of resonances. Controlling the spacing between room resonances, which is seldom taken into consideration when designing listening environments, is one of the most critical aspects, in his opinion, for getting a good acoustic room signature. Attainment of an even distribution of resonances in the frequency domain is key to obtaining a reliably good acoustic space without unusual colorations.

Calculating the dimensions of a room with the measured frequencies can generate a frequency graph that will give a visual indication of where the problems may lie and in what frequency ranges, so that proper remediation can be applied. This tedious process is repeated at different frequencies until the smoothest graph possible can be acquired.

Black also delved into consideration of construction materials, such as when drywall may react with certain low-frequency resonances to almost act like an additional speaker. Additionally, he looked at a number of other problems that may arise when attempting to design a listening environment.

Space limitations unfortunately deter further elaboration here, but Bruce Black’s insightful essays and articles have been published by AES, Mix, Recording magazine, The Cinema Audio Society Quarterly, and other publications,

Future coverage of AES Show Fall 2021 will include symposiums with cutting-edge producer-artist St. Vincent (Annie Clark), and platinum award-winning recording and mix engineers on the latest audio trends and challenges in the field, along with a look at seminars on audio mastering, archiving albums, and audio for cinema.

All images courtesy of the Audio Engineering Society.

This article originally appeared in Issue 22. It’s a Copper tradition to have a holiday story by WL Woodward at this time of year, so we present it again here in slightly edited form. I grew up on Ash Drive in suburban Connecticut. When you hit Thanksgiving, you then started thinking about Christmas. These days, they’re running Christmas ads starting just after the Fourth of July. In the 1960s nothing to do with Christmas started until after Thanksgiving. And that was okay; each season needs its own time. The first Christmas tingle came when you saw Santa on TV riding down a snowy slope on a Norelco shaver. As silly as it sounds, that first glimpse made me tight in the throat every year. Christmas was just the most anticipated, the most magical, and the granddaddy of them all. We grew up lower-middle class, which meant that as far as presents there were good years and bad years. Some Christmases we each got one good toy-type present and the balance were clothes we needed anyway. And we knew we were lucky, because twice a day all year our parents would compare us to kids in China who got a kernel of rice for Christmas and were glad to have it. Other Christmases Mom and Dad felt in the money and there would be cool stuff. But it never mattered. It never mattered. I don’t remember ever dwelling on a had-to-have present. Except of course, the Johnny Seven O.M.A. From the time you are 5 years old until about 10 you spend a lot of time in the woods planning army campaigns and feeding bugs to frogs. We knew two kids who kept it up until they were 15, but they were different. We all had the usual run of cap pistols, fake Tommy Guns and even the occasional rifle that shot plastic bullets.

This article originally appeared in Issue 22. It’s a Copper tradition to have a holiday story by WL Woodward at this time of year, so we present it again here in slightly edited form.

I grew up on Ash Drive in suburban Connecticut. When you hit Thanksgiving, you then started thinking about Christmas. These days, they’re running Christmas ads starting just after the Fourth of July. In the 1960s nothing to do with Christmas started until after Thanksgiving. And that was okay; each season needs its own time. The first Christmas tingle came when you saw Santa on TV riding down a snowy slope on a Norelco shaver. As silly as it sounds, that first glimpse made me tight in the throat every year. Christmas was just the most anticipated, the most magical, and the granddaddy of them all.

We grew up lower-middle class, which meant that as far as presents there were good years and bad years. Some Christmases we each got one good toy-type present and the balance were clothes we needed anyway. And we knew we were lucky, because twice a day all year our parents would compare us to kids in China who got a kernel of rice for Christmas and were glad to have it. Other Christmases Mom and Dad felt in the money and there would be cool stuff. But it never mattered. It never mattered. I don’t remember ever dwelling on a had-to-have present. Except of course, the Johnny Seven O.M.A.

From the time you are 5 years old until about 10 you spend a lot of time in the woods planning army campaigns and feeding bugs to frogs. We knew two kids who kept it up until they were 15, but they were different. We all had the usual run of cap pistols, fake Tommy Guns and even the occasional rifle that shot plastic bullets. But the Johnny Seven was a game changer. If you could score that weapon system you would be invincible.

One of the problems with playing army in the woods went something like this.

“BANG! Bang bang bang, I got you!”

“Did not!” “Did too!” “Did not, I was down behind this tree and your bullets hit the branch there!” “Did not!” “Did too!”

This argument could go on until somebody snuck up and shot you both. We had a boys’ rule – you could shoot people having an argument. However, with the introduction of the Johnny Seven into the Denslow Woods theater of war, you couldn’t argue Jack. You were dead.

“BANG! Bang bang bang, I got you!”

“Did not!”

“Did too! I hit you with the Johnny Seven Tommy Gun and grenade launcher!”

“Ok, I’ll come quietly. Just don’t hit me with the anti-tank rocket; I have to be home on time for dinner.”

The Johnny Seven was above my dad’s pay grade, same with all the other kids. Thank heavens. We’d have had to go back to feeding bugs to frogs.

In Connecticut you can get snow as early as mid-November, possibly even late October. I have a confession. It could snow in August and I’d break out Bing Crosby’s Merry Christmas, the one Christmas record we owned, and play it on my portable RCA. The first snow is always the best. The last memory you have in the yard is sweating your ass off pushing that jackal-hearted lawn mower, and now…it’s snowing. There is a blanket of white, softly covering everything perfectly. Even the cords on Mom’s clothesline have an even patina of crystals balancing like a billion refugees all trying to cross a rope bridge at once. Christmas is coming. It was time to start playing Der Bingle. I had to keep the volume down though because Mom lost her mind if you were playing that sh*t before Thanksgiving.

This album was beautifully produced. The first side had all ballads, incense-infused renditions of heart-sung holiday requirements like “Silent Night” and “O Come All Ye Faithful,” beautiful, moving religious and secular songs, ending with a hit from World War II, still one of my favorites, “I’ll Be Home For Christmas.” Oh yeah, and Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas.” Still the all-time best-selling single.

The B side featured more earthy traditionals, more upbeat, and done with the wonderful rhythms of the period. The swing-a-licious Andrews Sisters did several cuts including the first of that side, an old cornball. Crosby’s ability to screw around with beats two through four and still hit the “one” or skip the one entirely and phrase the next bar was like watching a lightning bug wondering where he was going to light up again. And yer both surprised.

 

By the way, you always hear small solos in pop that make you wonder, “who is that guy?” Like the signature lick and guitar solo in Bowie’s “China Girl.” I’d love to know the guy’s name who did that three-bar clarinet solo in this Bing jingle. It’s perfect.

There were so many sounds of the season. The carols and carolers outside Woolworth’s. The bell of the Salvation Army volunteer with the red pot, wishing you a “Merry Christmas” whether you threw anything in the pot or not. Mom yelling at us to all calm down, smiling as she did.

We always put the tree up on Christmas Eve, an old tradition from their generation, which back in the day included live candles on a pine tree that had been dead for a month. Gotta bring that one back. Must’ve been exciting. Like most families we always underestimated the size of our living room, doors and stairs. Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without the sound of my dad puffing that tree up from the cellar, using strange words disguised as grunts.

The hush of the night outside before Santa came. I guess the hush of winter is the same every night. But the week before Christmas. With the cold you couldn’t feel because something else was happening. A celebration. Even if you grew up in Florida next to a freeway, the ambient sound would bow to the sound of the world holding its breath.

I could say I’ve no idea where the magic comes from, but I know darn well where it comes from, and it has nothing to do with presents. We all, all of us, celebrate Christmas. The holiday is full of fun, decorations, traditions, eggnog, mince pie, Muppets and angels. You don’t have to have had a happy childhood or even adulthood to get this. If you’re poor, your joy comes in seeing your kids get a great meal and a warm bed on Christmas Eve. And if you’re not poor, you share your blessings to give a poor family that meal and a warm bed, and you in turn are blessed. That’s just how it works folks.

 

OK, that also gets me in the throat. That man could Sing. Truly the King.

I never needed that first snow to love the annual blessed breath of the birth of the Christ. I also don’t need to exercise the words of better men. We feel differently at this time because we are more aware at this time. God bless those who feel it all year, or at least starting at the Fourth of July. Merry Christmas all my dear brothers and sisters.

Header image courtesy of Pexels.com/Lisa from Pexels.

The Burt Bacharach and Hal David songwriting machine was running full speed ahead through the 1960s. While Dionne Warwick was the singer of many of their best tunes, there were plenty of other artists through the 1960s and early 1970s who made their mark on songs that Bacharach and David had composed. This installment looks at a handful of notable recordings.

If there is one tune in Bacharach’s catalog that he claims as his overall favorite, “Alfie” is it, and he has mentioned this on multiple occasions. This version from 1966 was a hit by Cilla Black in the UK.

 

This 1970 Bacharach/David tune about suburban flight, “Everybody’s Out of Town” by B.J. Thomas, was given a whimsical turn with its arrangement, featuring a tuba and banjo beneath the sophisticated lyrics. B.J. Thomas hit Number One with “Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head,” and also covered a handful of other Bacharach/David songs, including “Send My Picture to Scranton, PA” and “Long Ago Tomorrow.”

 

Manfred Mann took the recording session for “My Little Red Book” in stride. Because he wasn’t playing the strident piano chords to Bacharach’s satisfaction, the composer sat with Mann at the piano, banging out the piece together until it matched what Bacharach was hearing in his head. No hard feelings, though, and the tune would appear in the soundtrack for the 1965 film, What’s New, Pussycat?

 

Dionne Warwick had already sung Hal David’s “message” lyric, “Windows of the World,” a tune of concern about the Vietnam War. “What the World Needs Now” is more direct in its approach to anti-war sentiment, with Jackie DeShannon recording the definitive version. It was Grammy-nominated and inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

 

“One Less Bell to Answer” had quite a few cover versions, but the 5^th Dimension did one of the finest renditions with their jazzy take on the tune.

 

So, what happens when you attempt to make a movie adaption of a Broadway stage production, which itself was an adaption of a very popular film? You get an unused song, “Seconds.” Although a movie adaptation of Promises, Promises never got produced, Bacharach, having split from Hal David at this point, paired with Neil Simon to write tunes for the possible film. This recording by Gladys Knight & The Pips appeared on their 1974 album I Feel A Song, with the arrangement by Bacharach.

 

Trini Lopez of “Lemon Tree” and “If I Had a Hammer” fame cut this Bacharach/David tune, “Made in Paris,” in 1965.

 

Here is another standout: Jackie DeShannon’s swinging take on “So Long Johnny” from her album Are You Ready For This? DeShannon has covered a handful of other Bacharach/David songs, and they are well worth seeking out.

 

And here is a Bacharach/David tune that never became anything more than a minor hit: “To Wait for Love.” Given all the versions I’ve heard (including Tony Orlando, Jackie DeShannon, Tom Jones, Herb Alpert, Jay and the Americans, and others), this recording from the mid-1960s is no better or worse than the others, but remained unreleased until 2013, when Columbia Records released recording sessions that Patti Page made for the label that were never used on singles or albums. She made her mark on the charts in the 1950s with novelty tunes like “How Much is That Doggie In the Window?” for Mercury, but at Columbia, she entered a second and less successful phase singing more serious material.

 

I’ll leave you with a curiosity from 1969, back in the era when everyone from Wendy Carlos to Isao Tomita were “switching on” and exploring making music via Moog and other synthesizers. Here is Christopher Scott, from the album Switched-On Bacharach (no, I couldn’t make this up!), with “What’s New, Pussycat?”

 

We’ve covered many recordings penned by the Burt Bacharach and Hal David songwriting team, but what about Bacharach’s work beyond his split with Hal David in the mid 70s? We will look at newer recordings by Bacharach in our next installment.

‘Tis the season to be shopping and time once again for retailers to be visited by the ghosts of customers past. In the spirit of the holidays, here are several anecdotes taken from my own experiences with customers.

Customer: “There’s a violin in it.”

Sales Manager: “What did you say?”

“I just heard a beautiful piece of music on the radio. It had a violin in it. I want to buy it.”

“Do you remember the name of the radio station? Was it the classical music station? If so, we can look it up on their playlist or call the station…”

“I don’t know. There was a violin in it.”

“OK. Was it a solo violin?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Was it a violin with another instrument? Perhaps a piano?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Was it part of a small group of instruments? A violin with an orchestra?”

“There was a violin in it.”

“Without more information I can’t really help you…”

“I guess you don’t have it. Thanks for checking.”

When I was the sales manager at a classical music store, I met many wonderful people and had the pleasure of helping enthusiasts find the recordings they were looking for.

I also had to deal with arrogant customers, litigious customers, and customers who thought they were entitled to impose their own rules on everyone else. Like the customer who raced into the store and announced that her husband had presented her with a gift certificate to the classical music store even though she didn’t want to shop there. After finding some discs to buy she threatened to sue me personally because I wouldn’t ring up her sale. (I couldn’t because I was still helping the customer ahead of her.) I explained that only one employee worked during each shift and I would be happy to help her in a moment. She leaned on the counter, phone in hand with her lawyer’s number prominently displayed, and complained in a loud voice to anyone who would listen about being forced to wait while I assisted another person.

One slightly irregular customer who always behaved badly needed me to look up a very esoteric recording. After searching on the computer for about a half hour I located the disc and asked her if she wanted to order it. “Oh, no, I just wanted you to find the information. Tell me the name of the label so I can buy it on Amazon.” Another time I was playing a recording of popular opera arias when Ms. Irregular arrived. She screamed at me from the only place in the store that didn’t have an acoustic dead spot: “You’re crazy! That music and singer are horrible! You should see a psychiatrist!” Of course, everyone turned around to look at me – the guy with such poor taste in music he was in desperate need of therapy. After that incident I made sure to play the disc every time I saw her having a beverage at the coffee bar.

Another customer browsed for a while, grabbed an armful of LPs, and exited to show them to her friend who was waiting outside. She didn’t ask if she could remove the merchandise from the store but I was able to watch her from the counter. When she returned she replaced the LPs and grabbed some more vinyl to show her friend. At that point I explained in as pleasant a manner as possible (a major accomplishment since I hadn’t started seeing a musicologist psychologist yet) that merchandise should stay in the store until it was paid for. Nothing personal. Store policy. She admitted she knew the policy, apologized for removing the LPs without asking, and had her friend come into the store to look at other selections.

Several days later a poison pen letter to the editor appeared in one of the local papers. The writer complained she would never return to a certain music store because the manager accused her of stealing. The customer neglected to mention she was aware of our policies or that I trusted her when she removed LPs the first time. Or how I politely explained our policies without accusing anyone of anything.

Then there were the hunters and gatherers…customers who would gather handfuls of discs, decide they didn’t want them, and finally drop the recordings anyplace in the alphabetized bins. (It’s hard to locate a Mozart sonata for someone if it’s been categorized under Stravinsky.) And there were customers who just seemed to enjoy the hunt. They would ask if we sold a particular disc, start inquiring about other discs before I had a chance to show them the one they wanted, race around the store searching for another title, find it without even looking at the previous disc they asked for, start inquiring about another CD (repeat this chase sequence several times)… then exit without buying any of the recordings.

My most entertaining customers were the people intimidated by classical music. They marched into the store eager to buy something like Adele’s latest album, looked around, and stopped dead in their tracks. You could see them thinking, “Whoa! It’s classical music! Which circle of hell is this?” When they realized we only sold classical music they pivoted and ran out, horror-struck, looking as if they had just spotted the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

So it goes. Come visit the music store anytime. Buy a disc of opera arias and you, too, can terrorize your family and friends. Looking for something else? Just remember to tell the staff if it has a violin in it.

This article originally appeared in Copper Issue 65 and has been revised.

With 16 Top-10 singles, including six that reached No. 1, Daryl Hall and John Oates proved that combining two genres can be a real moneymaker if it’s done right. Their blend of R&B and rock borrows concepts from many other artists while always sounding uniquely and unmistakably like Hall and Oates.

The two musicians were 20 and 19, respectively, when they met as undergraduates at Temple University in Philadelphia in 1967. Both had grown up in suburbs in nearby Montgomery County. Although Hall (whose family name was Hohl) majored in music, Oates was a journalism major on a wrestling scholarship. None of that mattered, though, when they were hearing great R&B artists like Stevie Wonder or playing in various bands. They became pals and roommates before they became musical partners, which finally happened in earnest in 1970.

Soon after they signed with Atlantic Records in 1972, they were ready to release their debut album, Whole Oats. This collection of original songs has a pleasant folk-meets-soul sound. Hall established himself right away as having the pre-eminent musical chops, playing a wide range of instruments (even cello), creating the arrangements, and taking lead vocals. Atlantic stalwart Arif Mardin produced.

Unfortunately, nobody noticed. In fact, the duo’s first several albums went nowhere commercially. But they were key for the act’s development. Their second effort, Abandoned Luncheonette (1973), includes a touch of that funky Philly soul style that would become part of their signature once they got big. Today, everybody knows the single “She’s Gone,” but when it was released it did not reach the Top 40. Lou Rawls’ cover the following year certainly helped.

The title song, credited to Hall, has a slightly psychedelic glaze and a Laurel Canyon chattiness with barroom-piano backing. It’s all borrowed, but the elements are combined in an entirely original way.

 

Todd Rundgren produced the next album, War Babies (1974), and also served as a session musician alongside members of his band, Utopia. If you wonder how hard-edged prog-rock would mesh with folky soul, that problem was solved by a change in Hall and Oates’ sound. There’s a lot more rock on War Babies than on the previous records. Although that about-face undid some of the progress they’d made toward building a fan base, they gained more than they lost: this was their first album to enter the Billboard 100.

With lackluster results from Atlantic Records, they switched to RCA, reintroducing themselves with the 1975 album Daryl Hall and John Oates. They produced this album themselves, with help from their keyboardist, Christopher Bond. Their efforts were quickly rewarded by their first Top 10 single, “Sara Smile.”

Bond also produced Bigger Than Both of Us in 1976, the source for the mega-hit “Rich Girl.”

Side B opened with a song co-written with Hall’s longtime girlfriend, Sara Allen, “London Luck & Love,” a significantly more interesting track than “Rich Girl.”

 

Beauty on a Back Street (1977) was not as successful, but they regained some footing with Along the Red Ledge the following year, even convincing George Harrison to sit in on guitar on one track. Determined to ride the growing pop wave, they chose Harrison’s own producer, David Foster, to shape this album.

You can hear the slicker production values on “Serious Music,” a collaboration between Oates and keyboardist/songwriter George Bitzer, who had played with the Bee Gees. The sound has a surface diffusion associated with mainstream pop; there’s a heavy reliance on synths, too.

 

They stuck with David Foster for X-Static (1979) but decided to go it alone as producers on the very successful 1980 album Voices. The single of their cover of the Righteous Brothers’ “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” made it big, as did two originals, “Kiss on My List” and “You Make My Dreams.”

A lesser-known song from Voices is the album opener, Hall’s “It’s Good to Be Back.” There’s a touch of Elvis Costello in the impassioned simplicity of the verses’ lyrics and melody and a Southern rock twang in the accompaniment; both are unusual flavors for this duo.

 

All the success Hall and Oates had had up to 1981 was outstripped by the performance of that year’s album, Private Eyes. It produced three Top 10 hits; both “I Can’t Go For That (No Can Do)” and the title track reached No. 1. But the following year, H₂O did even better, with the album itself climbing to the No. 3 spot, a personal best.

Big Bam Boom (1984) was the final commercial triumph in Hall and Oates’ reign, with pop hits like “Method of Modern Love” and “Out of Touch.” All the elements of their winning style were so well integrated and essential that their songs routinely showed on multiple charts at once, especially pop, contemporary adult, and R&B.

After taking four years off from the studio, they signed with Arista in 1988 and released Ooh Yeah! With their longtime bassist, Tom “T-Bone” Wolk, as co-producer, they created a synth-heavy collection of tracks. The highlight, notable for its multi-guitar arrangement and vocals in H&O’s old-school soul style, is “Realove.”

 

Hall and Oates continued to put out albums every few years through the 1990s. Our Kind of Soul, which came out in 2004, is their most recent record. Only three of the 18 tracks are originals, but the choice of covers makes up for that fact. It’s a buffet of gourmet soul food, with songs by Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, and Barry White, just to name a few. One of its gems is “You Are Everything,” first recorded by the Philadelphia-based Stylistics in 1971. The duo gives the song its smooth, sexy due, a shade faster than the Stylistics’ well-loved version.

 

COVID-19 delayed a joint tour with Squeeze, but they were able to reschedule most of it in 2021. Although they haven’t recorded in a while, they keep the fires burning with live performances. There’s something about the Hall and Oates sound that stays fresh and inviting through the generations, like a favorite brand of beer. You hope it will always be on tap.

Header image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Gary Harris.

Dale Watson, performing at Lee’s Liquor Lounge in Minneapolis (Issue 107's Parting Shot). It was the penultimate show at the venue, now closed. Dale was so fond of Lee's that he wrote a song about it called "Louie Lee's Liquor Lounge."

Before my upcoming trip to the record store, I comb through my collection and pull Miles Davis, Kind of Blue, Johnny Cash, Live at San Quentin, Jimi Hendrix, Band of Gypsies, and the Who’s Tommy and the Kids are Alright. I’m always tempted to get rid of Dark Side of the Moon, but it’s the 180-gram 2016 reissue transferred from original master tapes recorded at Abbey Road Studios. I’m never sure about Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti, so I keep it. The artwork and music depress me – something that doesn’t happen with any other Led Zeppelin record, but the moody songs are too good. Once-played contemporary country albums are definitely being traded! A few bands are central in my musical development, so The Rolling Stones, Ozzy Osbourne, and Queen (twenty-seven records in total) have a permanent space on my shelves. Nearly everything else can go.

I am a minimalist collector with 178 records, and I am ruthless in culling them. If I haven’t listened within the last year and don’t intend to play it within the next month, then it’s time to swap the record for what could be a new gem. Having fewer records keeps me focused on the ones I find meaningful. I asked Joshua Becker, author of the upcoming book Things That Matter (2022), who’s featured in the documentary Minimalism (2016), if it was possible to be a minimalist and collector at the same time.

“Minimalism, by definition, is the intentional promotion of things we most value by removing everything that distracts us from it. I have no doubt that by keeping only the records that hold special meaning to you, you elevate their importance in your life.”

I’ve been a minimalist since childhood. Unlike my friends with attics full of baby clothes, toys, and mementos, we moved every few years, so I learned to get rid of useless and unused items. I’ve narrowed down my books to twelve that are not easily found at the public library. My daily wardrobe consists of t-shirts and track pants. Annual tune-ups are necessary for my vintage bicycle, but I have no car to maintain. I own no watches or jewelry, and I’ve sold off never-polished Tiffany silver that sat collecting dust on ignored tabletops. A sterling inheritance of absurd cigarette boxes, candy dishes, and candlesticks that helped procure my last remaining valuables: a stereo, which I consider my work equipment.

Some minimalists shed their physical media and rely solely on streaming services, but I need the sensual feel of paper and the hidden promise in obsidian vinyl. When I was younger, record jackets and sleeves depicted my favorite musicians and how they changed over the years. The artwork was a portal into brilliant new worlds, like those painted by Roger Dean for Yes albums. Who didn’t daydream about crossing into the universe of Tales from Topographic Oceans? Liner notes acquainted listeners with engineers, studios, and producers. Printed lyrics were chapters of a book offering insight into the band while introducing mind-expanding concepts. I will never forget hearing Queen’s “The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke” from Queen II (1974). Inspired by Richard Dadd’s (1817–1886) canvas of the same name, Freddie Mercury repaints the layered mythical fairy realm into 2:41 minutes of verse.

 

Not only was this the first time I heard the harpsichord, but I was also encouraged to learn new words — the keys to unlocking a song’s meaning. Let’s just say there weren’t too many sixth graders using a college dictionary to look up ostler, tatterdemalion, and satyr. The sum of these sensory experiences provides a total immersion into the music, one that a streaming subscription cannot replace.

When I began rebuilding my record collection a few years ago, I purchased a set of shelves that could hold 400 albums – I even considered buying two, just in case. In a hurry to fill the empty spaces, I acquired, washed, and organized records but still agonized over missing titles. As the collection grew, I unknowingly started buying duplicates of my favorite records. No one needs two copies of The Rolling Stones’ Emotional Rescue. The next logical step would have been to create a database — either a spreadsheet or Discogs catalog, but that requires a great deal of work — turning my hobby into a job. According to Becker, “Too often we bury the most important under the least significant, and that is often the case when we fall into the trap of merely collecting quantity rather than quality.” When I surpassed my capacity to keep track of all the new albums, I lost track of the ones I already loved.

There are people with thousands, even millions, of records. Brazilian businessman José “Zero” Freitas owns about seven million. Elton John’s collection once numbered 70,000. Grandmaster Flash built a two-story house to archive his diverse lifetime collection, which he shares with fellow DJs and up-and-coming musicians. It’s unlikely I will ever have more than two hundred albums, a scant quantity for serious collectors yet excessive to minimalists. However, we must judge for ourselves how much happiness or misery is derived from stuff.  In discovering the true spirit of my collection, minimizing records has become more important than amassing them. Now, if I could only find a new home for two dozen classical albums, I’d have my more space on my shelf and in my head.

Header image: enso calligraphy, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Kanjuro Shibata XX.