Copper


Commentary

Issue 174Opening Salvo

We’d like to take a moment to let readers know that Copper’s Comments sections are moderated. While we encourage thoughtful and spirited discussion, please be civil. The editor and Copper’s editorial staff reserve the...

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Tape vs. Vinyl: An Old Pawnshop Favorite

Issue 174Deep Dive

I just received my reel-to-reel tape copy of Jazz at the Pawnshop from AudioNautes Recordings last week. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this recording, who I suspect...

Pilgrimage to Sturgis, Part 32

Issue 174New Vistas

The Bhagwan played his sitar for about 20 minutes. Most everyone left for home during that time. When he looked up, he seemed surprised to see that there were still eight...

The History of A&M Records, Part Eight: Hor...

Issue 174Featured

In 1975, A&M Records established a subsidiary jazz label called Horizon Records. John Snyder (who had previously worked with producer Creed Taylor) was the label’s creative director, and left in...

The Golden Decade for Popular Music…The 1950s?

Issue 174Featured

I belong to a music-listening group consisting of five people who get together once a month. Everyone gets a turn to be the host who provides the playlist, wine, and...

Unlikely Beauty

Issue 173Parting Shot

Solar flare? Cosmic egg? A new image from the James Webb Space Telescope? No. This is simply an oil stain on pavement. Sometimes beauty is found in unlikely places.

The Prospects Are Good

Issue 173Audio Anthropology

How many of these has anyone seen? It’s a circa 1960s JVC Nivico SRP-471E turntable. Not much information is available about these online.   Detail shot of the SRP-471E. It...

Piper Payne: A Mastering Engineer For Next-Gene...

Issue 173The Copper Interview

After establishing her reputation as a mastering engineer over the past decade in Oakland, California for such artists as Third Eye Blind, The Go-Go’s, and LeAnn Rimes, Piper Payne merged...

Long Live Rock

Issue 173Featured

For a while now, I have been thinking about how classic rock will look in its last stages. Artists are quickly aging, and surviving members of the great old bands...

The Best of CES Awards

Issue 173Featured

On the top floors of 30 Rockefeller Center sits the Rainbow Room. It’s a lovely restaurant and sometimes event space that offers a breathtaking view of Manhattan. It even has...

Classical Music for a Desert Island, Part Two

Issue 173Featured

Part One of this series on desert island classical music albums appeared in Issue 172. To recap: this list reflects my taste. Yours may be entirely different. In fact, it’s very...

Around the World In 80 Lathes, Part 23

Issue 173Revolutions Per Minute

Having visited Japan and their disk recording lathes in previous issues (see Issue 171 and Issue 170), it is now time to travel back to Europe, this time to a...

Pilgrimage to Sturgis, Part 31

Issue 173New Vistas

Written by B. Jan Montana The Bhagwan hopped off the picnic table and walked around it, shaking his arms. He stepped into his Airstream and came out a few minutes...

Back to My Reel-to-Reel Roots, Part 24: The R2R...

Issue 173Natural Born Kessler

Ken Kessler assesses the increase in the reel-to-reel presence at the Tonbridge AudioJumble. Only five months have passed since the previous AudioJumble, but cataclysmic events have taken place in that...

Octave Records Debuts The Audiophile’s Guide: T...

Issue 173Octave Pitch

PS Audio’s Octave Records now offers its latest release, The Audiophile’s Guide: The Loudspeaker, a book and companion SACD/download that tells listeners exactly how to get the most out of...

Phantom of the Stereo: Creating a Convincing Ce...

Issue 173Speaker Stories

If, like me, you are truly determined to get the best presentation from your stereo system, and specifically, desire the ultimate in clarity and center imaging from vocals, what are...

Complete Recovery: Unusual Takes on Others’ Son...

Issue 173Complete Recovery

Sometimes a performer is so taken with another artist’s song that they just have to do their own recording of it. These cover versions can range from faithful portrayals of...

Simple Minds’ Jim Kerr: Following the Direction...

Issue 173Disciples of Sound

Some music sounds as fresh today as it did the moment it was first released. This has always been the case with Simple Minds. Their sound has always had muscle...

The 1980s: The Music Was Unfairly Maligned

Issue 173Deep Dive

Leave it to an unexpected COVID-driven quarantine to reassess one’s affinity for an entire decade of music. The impetus for this rabbit-hole deep dive was my Australian Facebook friend Katie...

Club 19

Issue 173Opening Salvo

We are saddened by the loss of Loretta Lynn (90), one of the most iconic and groundbreaking country music artists of all time. Immortalized in the movie Coal Miner’s Daughter,...

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Neil Young’s Time in the Ditch: A Retrospective

Issue 173Idle Chatter

There is something extraordinary about listening to a legendary artist hit their absolute creative peak, pumping out quality music seamlessly, in a manner that makes it seem almost too easy....

The NAMM Show 2022, Part Two

Issue 173Show Report

Part One of Copper’s NAMM 2022 Show report ran in Issue 172. Sony is a company whose presence was all over NAMM 2022, similar to how Adobe impacts any photography...

Pat Metheny: Versatile Jazz Guitar Virtuoso

Issue 173Trading Eights

Jazz fusion and contemporary jazz guitarist/composer Pat Metheny is the only person to have won Grammy awards in 10 different categories. And while his cache of 20 Grammys is not...

Dracula and the Dancing Plagues

Issue 173The Mindful Melophile

During the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries a few villains and events emerged that wouldn’t be out of place if you found them in episodes of TV’s American Horror Story....

The History of A&M Records, Part Eight: Jaz...

Issue 173Featured

Like almost every well-known record label, A&M Records also made some forays into the jazz world. Some would be more of a relaxed style of pop-jazz, while others would come...

Buffalo Springfield: Progenitors of Psychedelic...

Issue 173Off the Charts

There was folk. There was rock and roll. There was blues, coming back home via the 1960s British scene. But thanks to innovative groups like Buffalo Springfield, all those genres...

Redemption Song

Issue 172Opening Salvo

Sir Rastus Bear who’d ever believe You’d be by a song Redeemed – Blue Öyster Cult, “Redeemed” Copper’s Tom Gibbs is going to be absent from the next few issues....

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Piper Payne: A Mastering Engineer for Next-Gene...

Issue 172The Copper Interview

Despite her relative youth, Piper Payne has forged a formidable reputation as a mastering engineer, a rarefied set of skills that can make or break a recording commercially. Her work...

Beyoncé In the Perfect Tense

Issue 172Wayne's Words

Renaissance (Columbia/Parkwood Entertainment) I’d always enjoyed Beyoncé’s music, from the time when she was in Destiny’s Child, the essential R&B girl group of the 1990s. That Beyoncé Knowles (now Beyoncé...

David Libert: A Rock and Roll Warrior Tells All...

Issue 172Disciples of Sound

When it comes to rock and roll excess, tales from the rock tours of the 1970s rarely disappoint. It was an era defined as much by the music and live...

Classical Music for a Desert Island, Part One

Issue 172Featured

Over the past few months, our esteemed editor Frank Doris has been sharing with us his personal choices for a desert island collection of rock albums (as per his list...

Reel-to-Reel Roots, Part 23: Better Than Rice K...

Issue 172Natural Born Kessler

Ken Kessler revels in the stories told by scraps of paper found in tape boxes However old the tapes, however worn and unloved, nothing amuses or delights me as much...

Pilgrimage to Sturgis, Part 30: Limited Identity

Issue 172New Vistas

It was a lovely mild evening as the sun set behind the hills which flanked the Belle Fourche River. A light breeze filled the canopy of overarching trees providing shade...

Tubes to Go

Issue 172Audio Anthropology

Written by Frank Doris Boldly proclaiming the maker’s name in one of the coolest logos ever: the Marantz Model 240 stereo power amplifier. Available with in black or silver, this...

Can’t Get Enough (of Your Pressings)

Issue 172Deep Dive

Author’s note: The following article was written in spring 2021 for the recently-published book Record Store Day: The Most Improbable Comeback of the 21st Century (Rare Bird Books, Los Angeles),...

Take a Walk in Wonderland: Revisiting the Music...

Issue 172Featured

In previous Copper articles (Issue 168 and Issue 169), I have discussed the Musical Instrument Museum (MIM) in Phoenix, Arizona and some of my favorite exhibits. Here I would like...

A Visit to The 2022 New York Audio Show, Part One

Issue 172Show Report

The New York Audio Show returned after a bit of a break, and it was nice to get back to a local event I had attended for the first time...

Around the World In 80 Lathes, Part 22

Issue 172Revolutions Per Minute

Over the last several episodes, we have traveled to different parts of the world to look at the different engineering cultures in different times and places, all sharing a common...

Theatrical Display

Issue 172Parting Shot

The quiet woman in the ticket booth at the historic Silco Theater in Silver City, New Mexico. We also featured her in Issue 171’s Parting Shot.

Born to Rock: Graham Whitford of Tyler Bryant &...

Issue 172Idle Chatter

From being born into a house of classic rock royalty to becoming darlings of present-day indie blues-rock, Graham Whitford’s rock and roll journey was a matter of destiny. As the...

What’s in a Name? MIRTAS – The Music Instrument...

Issue 172Featured

From December 2013 and for several years afterward I worked as a project manager in the UK for the Academy of Music and Sound, managing MIRTAS: the Music Instrument Retail...

An Octave Records Trifecta: Augustus, Thom LaFo...

Issue 172Octave Pitch

Vinyl fans, take note: Octave Records has added three titles to its growing roster of LP releases: Ragtime World by melodic rockers Augustus, The Moon Leans In by singer/songwriter Tom...

The History of A&M Records, Part Seven: A&a...

Issue 172Deep Dive

Continuing our 60th anniversary celebration of A&M Records, our journey will now take us south of the border. A&M’s foundation was built on music with a Mexican flavor – the...

Ralph Vaughan Williams: A Master of Orchestrati...

Issue 172Something Old / Something New

On October 12, 2022, fans of 20th-century British music will have something to celebrate: the 150th birthday of Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872 – 1958). Stretching back to the Middle Ages,...