Issue 193

In Issue 192, J.I. Agnew began his series on the topic of signal levels, and the technical considerations in getting them recorded onto disk. The series continues here with a look at magnetic tape recording.

After early disk recording came tape recording. (Reel-to-reel tape and cassette tape operate on the same principles and share the same units of measurement and reference.) Information is stored by magnetizing ferric oxide (aka rust) particles that are rapidly moving across the front of a tape head. The "fluxivity" reference of 0 dB (known as reference fluxivity) corresponds to 185 nWb/m, as established by Ampex when they first commercialized the technology. As with dBu and velocity, once again, this is neither a maximum nor a minimum, but just a convenient reference.

Signals can go much lower than that, up until they are buried under tape hiss. Different tape types, tape machines, tape widths, tape speeds and operating conditions result in wildly different noise floors. The lower limit is, as usual, left undefined.

The upper limit would theoretically be the point of complete magnetic saturation. This would be the point where all magnetic domains on the tape would be aligned in the exact same orientation (north/south poles facing the same way), where further magnetization would simply not be possible. In practice, this point is rarely reached, because tape stops behaving in a linear fashion long before it reaches hard magnetic saturation. Different tape types have different headroom capabilities and different types of music have different linearity requirements (tape compression sounds pleasing and is considered desirable in rock and pop music, as evidenced by the sheer number of software emulations of this effect, for use by studios that do not have access to tape machines), so the upper limit is a very fluid concept and varies with frequency as well. A typical range between the noise floor and usable levels for practical recording purposes is around 78 dB, for 1/4-inch tape running at 15 ips, without using any kind of noise reduction systems.

Then came digital. Originally described in the 1930s by Bell Labs employee Claude Shannon, it would take several more decades until the commercial application of digital sampling in sound recording was implemented. In the digital world, we have the concept of dBFS, which stands for dB Full Scale. In this concept, the 0 dBFS reference is also the maximum signal level possible to store, which is a hard ceiling. Nothing can go above 0 dBFS, so all other dBFS values have a negative value. In Shannon-based PCM (pulse code modulation), it is possible to theoretically calculate the minimum signal level that can be represented, as a function of the quantization (bit resolution). The dynamic range for 16-bit PCM is 96 dB and for 24-bit PCM it is 144 dB. However, these figures are indeed theoretical, as in practical ADC (analog-to-digital converter) and DAC (digital-to analog converter) units, the available dynamic range is lower, sometimes even significantly so. The Compact Disc format uses 16-bit PCM exclusively, and while on the digital side of things, signals from -96 dBFS to 0 dBFS can be represented in binary code, the electrical output of most CD players do not allow for a 96 dB dynamic range to be achieved.

Digital recording, therefore, has both an upper and a lower limit, with the hard upper limit also acting as the reference. This is also the root of the modern "loudness" issue, the tendency to over-compress the audio signal. Since the digital domain imposes the same hard upper limit of peak signal values for everyone and everything, regardless of the equipment used, the only way to make your music sound louder than other music is by intentionally restricting its dynamic range. The idea is that since you cannot have a peak that is louder than anyone else, you need to reduce your peak-to-average ratio, to increase apparent loudness, But once you start going down that road, it is a race to the bottom of sound quality. Once you succeed in sounding louder than the previous loudest record by restricting the peak-to-average ratio, the next person wanting to be louder than anyone else would just need to restrict the peak-to-average ratio some more, and even more, and so on, until there is absolutely nothing left of the dynamics in the music.

Different releases of ABBA's 1980 song "Super Trouper" show different levels of loudness compared to the original 1980 release. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Kosmosi.

Much of that has nothing to do with sound and music, but is driven by marketing statistics. If a record label demands higher apparent loudness because it is known to sell more records, this is based on statistics of sales as related to loudness. Radio stations have a long tradition of using specialized equipment to "condition" the signal, with an aim of increasing loudness to improve their broadcasting range without an increase of their legal power limit, which directly translates to advertising revenue.

In the days before digital, the race for the loudest album was already on, already prompted by jukeboxes with fixed level controls playing different records one after another. The loudest ones would stand better chances of making a rowdy crowd of youngsters shut up and listen. Maybe some of them would even remember which song it was and would go buy it the next day. And it actually probably did work that way. But with the vinyl disk medium not having a hard upper ceiling for peak levels, there were many ways to make it sound louder without sacrificing the dynamic range, and sounding loud and good was definitely better than just sounding loud.

So, creative engineering came to the forefront: pitch and groove-depth control systems to permit higher levels on disk while automatically preventing one groove from cutting into the next; injecting hydrogen and then helium into the cutter head to reduce the thermal time constant and extract a few extra dB out of it before blowing it up. Improvements in tape formulations and in tape machines in general allowed music to get louder on tape.

But where things can get really complicated is when we are trying to transfer acoustic phenomena with a defined lower limit and no upper limit into electrical signals with no lower or upper limits, to mechanical or magnetic media with only nominal references and no clearly defined upper or lower limits, and with vastly different overload characteristics and problems, before finally transferring that to digital with a hard upper limit and a clearly defined theoretical lower limit which is rarely, if ever, achieved in practice, then back to an electrical signal and oftentimes (especially now with the resurgence in vinyl records and the constant flood of reissues) back to the mechanical medium, before returning once again to the electrical domain, just prior to exiting back into the real world as acoustic phenomena that we can actually listen to. This is what you are listening to. It is an eternal attempt at translating and scaling dynamics and signal levels to best represent a balance between artistic vision and economic viability.

Header image courtesy of Pexels.com/Nikita Korchagin.

This might be the most gorgeous preamp and amp set we've ever seen: a Radford DSM Stereo Control Unit and matching 12-watt-per-channel amplifier. Courtesy of Ken Kessler, taken at Tonbridge AudioJumble 2002.

A mighty classic: an Audio Research D 250 stereo power amplifier. Introduced in August 1983, this hot item (literally – it required four cooling fans) delivered 240 watts per channel from 16 6550 output tubes and featured 32 tubes in total. It received rave reviews. Courtesy of Ken Kessler, taken at Tonbridge AudioJumble 2022. Product information courtesy of Ken's book, Audio Research: Making the Music Glow.

They don't make 'em like they used to: the Marantz Model 4300 receiver pictured in this ad still played the smash hits of the day, even after being tossed out of a car window.

 You can't judge a book by its cover: this 1993 Audio Amateur Publications reprint of Mullard's 1959 Tube Circuits for Audio Amplifiers may look like its cover was designed in 20 minutes, yet it contains a wealth of information about building tube amplifiers. But why do those tubes look so angry and sad?

Here's just one of its 136 pages, all packed with information.

When Greg Curtis founded The Bridge Recording in Glendale, California, he knew from the get-go that he wanted a facility designed specifically as a large soundstage for recording and mixing film soundtrack music, and for other post-production work for the film and TV industries. He opened The Bridge Recording in 2009, and its reputation and close proximity to both Disney and DreamWorks-owned premises soon made it a favorite studio for many films and TV shows, including Marvel’s The Avengers, Mad Men, Star Trek: Discovery, X-Men: First Class, Arrow, The Handmaid’s Tale, Empire, Gotham, and many others.

While still a student at USC, producer, musician, engineer and filmmaker Holden Woodward was among the film soundtrack scoring clients who became smitten with The Bridge’s sound, equipment, space, and legacy. When Curtis finally decided to sell The Bridge Recording in 2019, Woodward arranged to purchase it, with the original intent to keep it as a private facility for his own work. After opening it to USC friends, he decided to expand it into a commercial studio, renaming it Silent Zoo Studios (its live tracking room is shown in the header image above), and went about refurbishing and modernizing the space and gear in order to appeal to a clientele beyond the film and television soundtrack arena. 

The story of the historic United Recording Studios was covered in-depth in Copper Issue 133. Sadly, United announced earlier this year that they were calling it quits after 65 years of iconic records and countless tales of legendary musicians and artists, from Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles and Duke Ellington to The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Lizzo, Green Day, Radiohead and numerous others.

In what could only be described as serendipitous timing, Silent Zoo’s upgrades were near completion right when Victor Janacua, United’s booking manager and a veteran of Record One and Ocean Way Recording (along with assistant engineer stints with Bill Bottrell and Scott Litt), became available and was contacted by Woodward to become Silent Zoo’s new manager. Victor’s long experience and relationships with record labels and artists made him the perfect point man to spearhead the Silent Zoo initiative of bringing former United and other clients to Silent Zoo for their future projects.

Victor and I discussed his years (with plenty of war stories) at United and his new position at Silent Zoo, along with what was in store for the near future there.

Victor Janacua. Courtesy of David Goggin.

John Seetoo: The closing of United Recording Studios is reminiscent of when RCA Studios was closed down in New York City some time ago. There was apparently little regard for the history created in the facility, for the value of the acoustic design of the rooms, the equipment, or for the expertise of the people who had been doing the meticulous work to maintain the quality of the recorded output. The new owners just looked at it as insufficiently profitable from an accounting perspective, so scrapping it all for real estate value was the default solution. Was United’s fate similarly decided, and what was it like for you?

Victor Janacua: Yes, absolutely. This is what happens when a real estate company owns a studio. They value square footage more than the content of historical significance. Bill Putnam opened the studio in 1958. You could feel all the albums recorded there when you walked in. All the way till the very last, clients they were still making their own history.

I started my career there in 1989 when I was 21. Practically grew up there. It was a very sad loss for me and the studio community.

In the very beginning when they bought it from Allen Sides, [the real estate investment company] really championed the legacy of the studio, but (then) slowly, they started to push us away. There was even talk about moving the entire building into the Sunset Gower [Studios] lot. It actually was in the works, but as new studio heads would come in, we knew they were out to get rid of United and build new buildings in place of it to increase its property value.

We just did not expect it to be so abrupt and cold. Even after we had made monumental earnings in those last months. We made $150K in four days in January from the Super Bowl commercials we shot, 

On March 6th, they called the whole staff in for a mandatory meeting, and we thought we were about to do some kind of new training, as we often did. One by one, we were called into a low-level manager’s office and we were handed our papers. I was the last one and they handed me a thick-coated excuse with severance but we all knew the truth. It was the end. 

JS: Having previously worked at Ocean Way and also being an engineer yourself, what are some of the unique and, in your opinion, irreplaceable and non-reproducible aspects of United Recording that will be lost to posterity when the building gets torn down?

VJ: Let’s remember: this is the house that Bill Putnam built, starting with those legendary rooms. Studio A had the 72-input Focusrite console. Amazing room where [everyone from] Frank Sinatra recorded “Strangers in the Night,” to Kendrick Lamar’s last album. (we have) Studio B’s 56 input Neve 8068 console. The infamous drum room with the very great “Drumbrella” that came down from the ceiling. [Producer] Rob Cavallo told me that Studio B is the Green Day sound. The new Paramore record was done there.

Of course, let's not forget the million-dollar mic locker and the spectacular Putnam-era echo chambers. 

JS: What are some special moments and stories that you can share from your time at United?

VJ: I guess meeting my musical heroes and then some. Everybody from Miles Davis to David Bowie to Michael Jackson to Dr. Dre. So many memories. So many great people and adventures. Hard to put 34 years of history into a simple sentence. Also, as you know, when you work so hard on a record [and] then the world gets to hear it. Then later, you hear [it over] the loudspeakers [at CVS]. There is some satisfaction in that.

JS: How familiar were you with The Bridge Recording during the Greg Curtis era, and did you ever view it as a potential rival in appealing to your United clients?

VJ: Yes, very familiar of course. The Bridge always had an incredible reputation as a great scoring room. It was good to know that there were rooms like that, besides the gigantic scoring stages.

Not really a rival. There was enough work going around for all the studios.

JS: Did you know or know of Holden Woodward before he reached out to you about Silent Zoo? What was his reputation in the L.A. pro audio and music circles at the time, since he apparently didn’t come up the ranks in the traditional fashion?

VJ: The first time I heard of Silent Zoo was actually a few weeks before the closure of United. We were both being considered for film location [recording] for a commercial and Silent Zoo got the shoot. 

When the scout told me who they chose, I was like, “I’ve got to check them out.”  They were not on my radar.

Candace Stewart, studio manager over at East West and longtime friend, actually put him and I in touch. Holden is anything but traditional. He is an extremely motivated and ambitious guy that has his hands in many different ventures. He works very hard and loves the nit and grit of the studio as much as he does the engineering and creative side. Once I saw him engineering and assisting on a few sessions, as well as everything he does behind the scenes, his level of commitment and determination became clear to me. He’s a multi-instrumentalist, talented producer/writer, and all-around great guy, and I am excited to work with him to make Silent Zoo Studios a household name in the music industry.

Victor Janacua and Holden Woodward. Courtesy of David Goggin.

JS: As you and Silent Zoo plan to give former United clients a new studio home for their future music projects, did you have any advice or tips for Holden as to the remodeling and/or redesign he was enacting at Silent Zoo to enhance that objective?

VJ: Some things I noticed immediately as assets for Silent Zoo were its extensive backline [of amplifiers], broad spectrum of preamps [for different sonic] colors, and their incredible custom proprietary pedal walls, which are some things I have never seen before in my 34-year career. As the new studio manager, I am eager to showcase these unique aspects of the space and promote the individual qualities that Silent Zoo Studios brings to our clients and sessions.

The incredible wall of effects pedals at Silent Zoo. Courtesy of Holden Woodward.

Another subject I have discussed with Holden is vintage gear. While Silent Zoo already has an incredible selection of mics, outboard [gear], and instruments, both new and vintage, I know from my years in the recording industry what pieces of vintage gear are most attractive to top-notch engineers and producers. Holden has already started seeking out and purchasing some serious additions to Silent Zoo’s ever-expanding collection of vintage equipment.

JS: Silent Zoo presumably inherited a lot of great vintage microphones and analog gear in addition to the Neve console from The Bridge Recording. How much, if any, new analog equipment had to be acquired to round out the anticipated demands of your United clients and to complement the digital upgrades instituted by Holden? Please cite some examples.

VJ: Over the past few years, Holden has upgraded and added many new components to the studio. He upgraded the entire computing system for the studio with Apple’s latest tech, including multiple 16-core, 96 GB RAM Mac Pros. The 96-channel Neve VSP [console] has undergone an extensive overhaul, which includes a full re-capping of the modules, motherboards, plasma meters, and center section. Starting out with about 95 percent of the Bridge Recording’s mic locker, Holden has added new microphones from AEA, Neumann, Telefunken, AKG, Schoeps, and more. In the control room, new additions include outboard gear from AMS Neve, Rupert Neve, Manley, Universal Audio, API, Tube-Tech, and more. The studio is also now equipped with a backline of 4K cameras, lighting, streaming equipment, and video editing software.

JS: Do you plan to do any engineering yourself at Silent Zoo, and if so, what kind of projects?

VJ: I am considering bringing in some bands, but only as a producer.

JS: Are there any particular features or qualities of Silent Zoo that you think will make certain United clients immediate converts, and if so, what do you think those qualities are?

VJ: The live room is amazing! It, along with the entire studio, is extremely dynamic. You can easily arrange it to have drums, amps, piano, synths/keys, vocals, and more, patched in all at once for the ultimate production workflow. You can strike it and transform it into a full-fledged film shoot, as we have done recently for a few Nationwide commercials. Or you could shrink the room and make it feel very intimate. Drums sound absolutely huge in the room, or nice and tight in one of our large isolation booths. Like at United, Silent Zoo has a beautiful all-original 9-foot Steinway Concert D piano.

The control room is one of the largest I’ve ever been in. At about 900 square feet, a large team can comfortably spread out and listen back to the session through our ATC SCM mains [monitoring loudspeakers in custom cabinets], and in 7.1 surround sound. The lobby is spacious and features an extensive record collection, espresso machine, snacks and beverages, unique art, and more. Another quality of Silent Zoo that differs from United is the location. Our street and area are much less busy than Hollywood, making the entrance very private and unassuming. Just a stone’s throw from the studio are numerous great restaurants, bars, and coffee spots.

JS: If you were to name three reference recordings to highlight the sterling qualities of Silent Zoo’s control room for mixing, which would they be and why?

VJ: Here are three:

1. Coming soon is a truly once in a lifetime recording featuring iconic drummer/percussionists Jim Keltner (John Lennon, George Harrison, Ringo Starr) and Abe Laboriel Jr. (Paul McCartney), with Bill Malina (Van Halen, Lady Gaga, Lizzo) engineering. With three very different kits set up in the live room, the two of them played off of each other and what transpired is nothing short of magic.

1. We recently had Iron and Wine in to track strings for their upcoming album. The session consisted of 30 players and beautiful arrangements by Paul Cartwright. No matter the size of the ensemble, strings always sound balanced, powerful, and moving.

1. For the 2023 Super Bowl pregame show, we recorded a 20-piece children’s choir rendition of Johnny Cash’s “Ragged Old Flag” arranged by Ben Bram and Scott Hoying, and engineered by Holden. This project went on to win an Emmy for musical direction!

Any solo piano recording just shines through our speakers and into the control room. Oleg Schramm, who was our main piano tech at United and is Steinway-certified, has expressed to me that our Steinway Concert D is one of the best he has ever played, and the best in L.A. in his opinion. 

JS: As a large segment of Copper readers are audiophiles who enjoy comparing their equipment favorites with those in the pro audio community, what does Victor Janacua have for his personal hi-fi listening pleasure, what are your preferred formats?

VJ: I was a vinyl DJ for over 30 years in Hollywood. Retired now. However, I still do sets in my house. I love the analog sound. I have a set up at home in my studio. Two Technics SL-1200 turntables, a Numark M6 Black mixer, and Genelec speakers.

Yes, I still buy vinyl.

Header image: the live tracking room at Silent Zoo Studios. Courtesy of Andrew Buckley.

Copper has an exchange program with FIDELITY magazine (and others), where we share articles, including this one, between publications. 

But in recent years, supposedly smarter, more practical solutions have outstripped it. Anyone who still builds an integrated amplifier today has to think about a certain added value. A British booth operator put it in a nutshell at the HIGH END 2023: “An integrated amplifier without additional benefits is a hard sell these days.”

 

 

Devices such as the Mission 778X, which was already released at the end of 2022, are a good example of this. The compact integrated amplifier is not content with bringing signals from high-level sources to a level that can also drive loudspeakers and also straighten out the frequency curve of (MM) pickups – it also gets along with Bluetooth suppliers such as smartphones and also has a contemporary DAC built in, the ESS ES9018K2M, which can decode digital signals with a sampling rate of up to 384 kHz (PCM) and DSD256. The control hub idea of yesteryear is being rethought. The Mission also reflects two other trends: It comes in a postmodern retro design, is very consciously reminiscent of its ancestor 778 (without the “X”), and is the first amplifier for the parent company in years that they have developed themselves.

 

 

Of course, others do that, too. Many loudspeaker manufacturers now have amplifiers under their own label in their product range again and comment on this commitment with the plausible argument that they know best how to optimally drive their own speakers.

 

Omnipresent At High End 2023: All-In-One Systems 

 

Amplification alone, however, is usually no longer enough. Many manufacturers are responding to the desire of many music enthusiasts to have all their electronics gathered in a single enclosure with streaming amplifiers like the Forté 3 from Axxess. This debut component of the new brand from Audio Group Denmark already forms a complete setup with a pair of speakers, just as you would want in your living room.

 

 

Nubert takes a slightly different approach to the idea of the control center: The nuControl X does without the power section and thus offers more room for maneuver when setting up the setup – after all, active speakers have little use for speaker terminals. For proponents of passive transducers, Nubert offers suitable nuPower power amplifiers. The Control X is thus a fully integrated front end that can communicate with all common streaming services as well as Bluetooth devices. It accepts external line-level sources just as readily as turntables, converts digital signals internally and regulates the volume – all control functions in one box.

 

Old School Remains Relevant 

Some, however, deliberately go against the grain. Amplifier guru Rolf Gemein, for example, whose Symphonic Line models have always followed a strict no-frills approach and are bred only for the best sound. At the trade show, he and his daughter Marion presented a new power amplifier of the “heavy and huge” variety at their booth, which should be well appreciated by all those who have to drive capricious loudspeakers with nasty impedance dips and unimpressive sensitivity. The well-known “La Musica” integrated amplifier, which Gemein now also offers in a “2023 Edition,” is one size smaller.

 

 

Those who have less-extreme parameters to operate in can confidently indulge in the not entirely new fashion of miniaturization and, for example, reach into the shelves of the turntable specialist Pro-Ject, whose Stereo Box DS3 has recently appeared. At first glance, it's a clearly “shrunken” integrated amplifier in the outer dimensions, which despite its very compact dimensions offers three line inputs, understands MM and MC cartridges equally and also speaks Bluetooth. It must be clear that the reduction in external dimensions (and weight) is only made possible by switching amplifier technology. However, these Class-D designs have long since arrived in sonic realms where even audiophile minds feel at home.

 

Tubes Can’t Be Missing 

For a pure bath in the euphony and the conscious renunciation of the last bit of tonal truth, tube amplifiers are still recommended – what can be gotten out of the concept could be seen and often also heard at various booths. The conclusion, as banal as it is pleasing, is that the tube revival continues, and classic 300B designs form the basis for a myriad of integrated amplifiers and power amplifiers.

Anyone who likes to tune and fine-tune their system, and who is looking for ways to subtly improve the sound and bring it closer to their own taste, will find a sheer gigantic playground in tube technology, even and especially in the year 2023. Especially since the cult manufacturer Western Electric now manufactures the legendary 300B tube again. Your typical inexpensive tube amp, often of Chinese provenance, can be made into a high-end high-flyer by implanting a new “heart” and rolling the tubes.

 

 

The influence the amplifier can have on the sound of a stereo setup could be heard at Dan D’Agostino, whose amplifiers in steampunk style, with their large pointer instruments and their recently optional copper-colored trim are more eye-catching than ever. The old master personally demonstrated his creations in Munich, providing insights into the heyday of high-end audio, when D’Agostino competed with fellow developers such as John Curl and Nelson Pass for the most efficient circuits, the best current stability, and the most present sound.

D’Agostino’s big Momentum models are monuments, so heavy that a human alone could not practically move them from their spot. Which prompted the over-excited booth moderator to remark that whoever could carry away the “debris” themselves and without help should be allowed to keep it. By all accounts, no one tried it out.

 

Modern Tech In Retro Garb

It’s all in the eye, so I stuck around the HiFi Rose booth for a while, playing with the many knobs, toggle switches, and especially the gear-mounted volume control of the RA180 integrated amplifier, which can handle up to 1,100 watts on its phalanx of output terminals, has a separate subwoofer output, and looks like it came straight out of a 1960s recording studio. An amazing statement for a company that otherwise is all about ultra-modern streamers.

 

 

Studio design also traditionally dominates at SPL, where its amplifiers are now also available in a smaller size, which significantly increases the “wife acceptance factor” or the living room suitability. Experience shows that SPL components sound as good as they look.

It’s a shame that neither Marantz nor Denon were present at the HIGH END 2023. The new pre/power amp combination from Marantz would have been especially nice to hear in action. One could console oneself at the Esoteric/TEAC booth, where Jasper Bol and his crew had set up a strikingly coherent-sounding demonstration system. The genes of the high-quality Esoteric components are passed on to the more consumer-oriented TEAC model series, which not only concerns the well-known superior VRDS-701 CD drive, but also clever amplifier [designs], which are available from TEAC as handy, but all the more stronger-sounding minis.

 

 

Really [easy to lift]  – this was not the Burmester 232 integrated amplifier, which unfortunately could only be admired as a [static display] at the Berliners. However, the classic Burmester design is definitely suitable to unite the worlds of retro fans with modernists. This is also achieved by T+A and Trigon, which, like Burmester, are among the last [German] domestic electronics manufacturers and are characterized by emphasized clarity, both sonically and visually. Less is more, also, and especially in, amplifier construction.

 

The stated retail price of the reviewed device is valid as of the time of the review and is subject to change.

Header image: HiFi Rose RA180 All images courtesy of FIDELITY magazine.

Richard Gere’s New York office hired me to set up a universal remote control for his VCR. His apartment was on University Place near Tenth Street. This was in the early 1990s. It was a pre-War building and he lived in the penthouse, which had its own private elevator. The penthouse took up the whole floor and included a terrace that encircled it. The décor was in a Southwestern ranch house theme, which included the outdoor space. It was beautiful and had character in an elegant rustic way. It felt like New Mexico with a view of Manhattan. 

That lavish spread was used as his home in one of his movies. Richard Gere’s character was a 49-year-old chef and known womanizer. He played a famous publicly acclaimed chef in the Bobby Flay mode. The story had him falling in love with a younger gal [Wynona Ryder, age 22] who was terminally ill with cancer. The movie, Autumn in New York, did not get complimentary reviews. While well-directed, shot, and acted, unfortunately it repeated the same old, sappy Hollywood formula. I personally enjoyed it, and his apartment looked the same in the movie as it did in real life.

Signed, not singed: Ken Sander gets an autographed book from Bobby Flay, circa late 1990s or early 2000s. Courtesy of Ken Sander.

The restaurant in the movie existed in real life in Manhattan’s Flatiron district, but in the movie, it operated under a different name. I ate there one weekday evening with my mom and sister Vicki. We were seated next to Bryant Gumbel and a woman he seemed close with. A couple of tables away was Bill Bratton, the former police commissioner of Boston, New York City (on two separate occasions), and chief of the Los Angeles Police Department. The commissioner was having dinner with a woman whom I assumed was his wife. Bill came over to Bryant’s table and introduced himself. It went something like this: “Hi, I am Bill Bratton, New York’s police commissioner,” and Bryant answered, “of course, I know who you are, pleased to meet you,” and he shook Bill’s hand. Manhattan was a smaller island then; you could get into new and exclusive restaurants. The city back then was low-key and even celebrities could go anywhere they pleased without being bothered (except of course Times Square, as David Bowie once said).

I have lived in the city most of my life, not counting my time spent in the Army, or after, when I was living in Hollywood. The city was my home base during my touring days in the music business. But making service calls while operating The Cable Doctor business is when I really got to see how the other side lived. Looking back, it was really some view.

The Cable Doctor store on East 14th Street in Manhattan. Courtesy of Ken Sander.

There are times when you cannot win. The day after the service call to Richard Gere’s penthouse I went to his office on Ninth Street to pick up my check. His assistant then told me that the remote did not work, and that Richard had changed the batteries to try and fix it. This information was disconcerting. I told her that by doing that he had erased the data I had programmed in. She replied that Richard knew better than that, and she gave me my check.

The likely scenario is that he’d picked up the remote in order to use his VCR and had pushed play, and nothing happened. My guess is he then assumed the batteries were dead and changed them. Of course, that was game over, with the remote reverting back to factory settings. On the top of this remote there were buttons: TV, Cable, VCR and AUX. I would bet dollars to donuts he did not first choose the VCR function, in order to select the source. But then again, I had programmed the remote (with new batteries) and of course I had tested it to evaluate that the remote’s functions were working. It is quite possible that my last use was the VCR function, and that the remote should have worked for Richard when he tried to play a videotape, so, hmm.

Ron Perlman was a different story; at the time he was starring on Broadway. Not only was Ron present when I had to make a service call to him for his cable setup, he acted like he was my best friend. He was upbeat and helpful, even throwing me the cable wire across the air shaft when I had to run the new cable. He was having a fun time. I enjoyed that call. I later mentioned this to his manager, and his manager said, “Ken, he is an actor; trust me, he is not your friend. It is what they do.” Duh, you dummy, I thought to myself.

Ron Perlman. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Gage Skidmore.

Al Goldstein was a person who appeared at various times in my life. When I was 14 my mom became was acquainted with him. At the time he was in his mid-20s and a photographer for the New York Post. He had an assignment to take photos of the Chinese New Year parade on Mott Street just south of Canal. His transportation at the time was a Vespa motor scooter, and he invited me to come with him. So, I got on the back, and we headed downtown. Once there, he took his pictures. We had an up-close view of all the dragons and fireworks. It was a fun, interesting afternoon.

Around that time, I was on public access TV with two shows, The Cable Doctor Show, and with Speak Out, and that show was getting quite a bit of attention. It had a viewer call-in format. My intention was for New Yorkers to comment (speak out) and voice their opinions on an assortment of issues. I would choose a topic and then viewers would respond by calling in.

Speak Out was for the most part live. It aired on Sunday nights at 11:00 PM. It was a wonderful time slot, since many Manhattanites had already watched the news and they were looking for something to watch afterward. Speak Out was a middle of the road kind of program, in the vein of AM radio talk shows. The format worked and we had a big viewership.

One Sunday night my preteen son, who was supposed to be sleeping, went out to a local bodega, Willy’s, to get candy. When my son walked into the deli, they were watching Speak Out. He said, “hey, that is my father on TV.” They went, “yeah, sure.” My son answered, “no really, that is my dad. How do you think I got out of the house this late?” They laughed. Willy’s bodega was a classic, with good sandwiches and staples such as milk, beer, and an excellent candy selection. Candy is the reason for the deceit of many a child.

Al Goldstein had made millions as the publisher of Screw magazine from the late 1960s to the early 2000s. (It was in fact in a newspaper format.) That was long before the internet blew up. He also had a public access show called Midnight Blue. That was a breakthrough show, being soft-core porn. The show was widely viewed, and it made Screw even more successful.

I had recently done a show regarding an incident of self-defense with an illegal firearm. Al had just gone public regarding this issue. His office had been robbed at gunpoint a month earlier and he was really angry about it. I approached his people for him to be on Speak Out. Doing it live was not an option, but he agreed to do a taped interview at his office on West 14^th Street. During the interview he was outrageous. I asked him about his feelings on gun control, and he said, quote, gun control is all about good aim, unquote. Al had gone public with a rant about the strict gun control laws in New York City. He publicly complained about how unfairly the gun laws were enforced. He complained that celebrities and even newscasters could easily get carry permits, but for regular citizens it was virtually impossible. If you were patient and submitted to all the rigmarole, then maybe you could get a premises permit.

A couple of years later Al was doing an on-air phone interview with Howard Stern. My son and I were listening to FM radio while driving up to Hunter Mountain for a day of skiing. Al was being sued by his former assistant for sexual harassment. But that was not the story. Howard was amazed that Al had just spent three days in jail for contempt of court.

Howard was trying to explain to Al that you could not address the judge with insults, especially about the judge’s background. Howard was all logical about it, and Al was like, why can’t I? The lawsuit had had opportunities to be settled, but Al was stubborn and was fighting it. He was like that, and he had a mouth on him. But he was all mouth and nothing else. And he was no molester. Al was all shtick during the show, with Howard trying to explain to him that some battles were not worth having. Al was insisting, “why not?” in a “what, me worry?” pose, and this was one of the funniest radio shows I had ever listened to.

Half a year later Al had other legal problems. This time it was in Palm Beach, Florida where he owned a mansion in a very private closed community. He got into a dispute with his neighbors, no surprise there. They tried to get him expelled from the community. His answer to that was to buy a six-foot-tall sculpture of a middle finger salute and put it on his front lawn. It took them years, but they finally got him out of there.

Years later I was hired to do an installation at his town house in the east Sixties. He was not there but he had a couple of technical guys that worked for him who were waiting for me. They were helpful, and knew what they were doing; we got the job done. As I left, I wondered why he had needed me if he had these fellas employed.

Even later I ran into Al at CES. He no longer was a millionaire, and he was in poor health and had trouble getting around. Bob Guccione, Penthouse magazine founder and then-publisher, would always have the magazine help Al obtain press credentials. Nowadays I wonder if Al remembered our history together, but he aways seemed to know me, so I think he did.

At that point in time, I was writing technology articles for Penthouse. Bob Guccione got the idea for a tech column after seeing me hosting The Cable Doctor Show. He had instructed Penthouse editor Peter Block to hire me to be the technology guy.

Public and leased-access TV was extremely popular in New York City back then. It was a viable alternative to the homogenized fare the networks put out. Guccione named my column “Technomania,” as he understood the growing popularity of consumer electronics. I had two to four pages in every issue for almost 11 years. They were not product reviews, but rather a roundup of new and exciting products. They did not want me to write anything negative; Peter told me to only write about what I liked. I personally evaluated everything I covered in the magazine.

I quickly became a trusted contributor. I arranged for getting the products in for review, and coordinated with the photographers. With few exceptions, “Technomania” was completely my baby.

Header image: Richard Gere, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/John Mathew Smith & www.celebrity-photos.com.

Jazz aficionados and music lovers will be sure to appreciate Octave Records’ latest release, Decades by pianist Erik Deutsch. Decades takes listeners on a journey through jazz history, though somewhat off the beaten path: rather than the usual standards, the album features deep cuts from artists like McCoy Tyner, Horace Silver, Frank Foster, Jimmy Heath, Cedar Walton and others, along with an Erik Deutsch original, “Amor Eterno” – all recorded in up-close-and-personal Pure DSD high-resolution audio.

Erik is a world-class musician who is currently on tour with the Black Crowes and who has played with dozens of artists including Norah Jones, Shelby Lynne, Leftover Salmon, Don Byron, Warren Haynes, Art Lande and countless others. On Decades he’s joined by longtime musical companions Dean Johnson on upright bass, and Tony Mason on drums. “The band formed about 10 years ago, and this is our first recording together,” said Erik. “We formed as a way to get together and play this kind of traditional jazz piano trio music. The band members were born in 1956, 1966 and 1976, so we called the band Decades. The three of us just connected, even though we’re different ages.”

Decades was recorded using the Sonoma DSD system and mixed on the Pyramix DSD 256 system. The music is captured with realism, from the body and harmonic complexity of the Yamaha grand piano to the richness and depth of the acoustic bass, and the dynamic presence of the drums. The feeling of the trio performing live as it happens is palpable, communicating every musical intent with nothing between the musicians and the listener.

The album was recorded by Steven Vidaic, mixed by Jay Elliott, and mastered by Gus Skinas. The album features Octave’s premium gold disc formulation, and the disc is playable on any SACD, CD, DVD, or Blu-ray player. It also has a high-resolution DSD layer that is accessible by using any SACD player or a PS Audio SACD transport. In addition, the master DSD and PCM files are available for purchase and download, including DSD 256, DSD 128, DSD 64, and DSDDirect Mastered 352.8 kHz/24-bit, 176.2 kHz/24-bit, 88.2 kHz/24-bit, and 44.1 kHz/24-bit PCM. (SRP: $19 – $39, depending on format.)

Decades offers a variety of moods, tempos and styles. Jimmy Heath’s “CTA” takes hard-bop swing and fills it with unique harmonic and melodic ideas. “Breakthru,” by Erik Deutsch’s teacher and mentor Art Lande, deftly weaves blues-influenced lines, octave leaps, and maybe a little tip of the hat to Monk into an engaging mix. Denny Zeitlin’s “Skippy-ing” is, as the name suggests, full of angular melodic leaps and musical turns, played at an irresistible tempo. Erik’s original composition, “Amor Eterno,” brings an introspective feel and showcases the remarkable musical communication and interplay between the trio. The sound is spacious, yet intimate and inviting.

I talked with Erik Deutsch about Decades, about touring with heavyweight artists, and more.

Erik Deutsch.

Frank Doris: Well, I've been listening to Decades and it's blowing my mind.

Erik Deutsch: Oh, thanks, man.

FD: The obvious first question is, why is the album called Decades?

ED: Well, the band formed in Brooklyn, It could be almost 10 years [ago]. It basically formed as a way for me to get together with Dean Johnson (upright bass) and Tony Mason (drums) to just kind of jam and play this kind of traditional jazz piano trio music. It's a body of music that I inherited from my time with Art Lande when I lived in Colorado. This band is very much a tribute to Art Lande in the repertoire. When I was young in Boulder in the early 2000s I had the good fortune of having a piano trio with Lande called Triangle. We would rehearse every Monday for five years, even if we played only two or three gigs a year.

When I went [back] to New York City in 2005, I found that I didn't get to play that much straight-ahead jazz music. [Dean and I] played with a couple of different drummers and then eventually I brought Tony in, who was my good pal from the Charlie Hunter band originally. Tony came in and we just became a thing.

FD: You're on tour with the Black Crowes and you've played with the Chicks and the jam band Leftover Salmon, and Shelby Lynne, who is one of my favorite of favorites.

ED: Oh, yeah. She's cool.

FD: But for this album you're playing straight-ahead jazz and all this other stylistically different stuff.

ED: I came up as a musician in Washington, DC as a kid, and in Nashville. I was always around lots of different kinds of music. Just glued to the radio all day long, glued to MTV throughout the ’80s, you know what I mean? In DC we listened to a lot of different music. A ton of rock and roll, a ton of hip hop. I was going to reggae clubs every week. There was Go-go music on the radio all the time, which I thought was normal music, but it turns out it’s just really a DC local sound, unique to that area.

I always liked blues, and then became a jazz club regular in my late high school years. We also got into the Grateful Dead and I was a little bit of a hippie guy, you know? You take all that stuff and I'm fortunate that I do have chops in these different genres.

I'm not somebody who's bored by pop music. I dig it. I like playing parts. I like playing jazz. I like classical music, although it's too hard for me. (laughs) In fact I enjoy the challenge of switching between genres.

FD: How did you learn how to play piano?

ED: I've had many great teachers.

FD: Your tone is just gorgeous. What kind of piano did you play for Decades?

ED: A Yamaha [that was in Animal Lane Studios]. I forget which one.

FD: The Decades album swings, it has flowing ballads and it showcases your musicianship without hitting you over the head with it.

ED: Thank you, brother. You know, another thing about this Decades name is that the three of us just connected, even though we're different ages. That's the beauty of the language of this jazz music that we can [connect], all three of us coming from different places. Dean is from Seattle, Tony's from North Carolina, I'm from DC. And I think that our band leans a little on the groovier side rather than the super-experimental super-chops thing that you can do with jazz.

Tony Mason is known in New York City as one of the great groove pocket feel guys. Dean is a virtuoso on the bass – he’s a big, strong, powerful guy who can get around that thing and play very beautifully in a way that a lot of folks can't.

Yeah. It's not like we're not trying to prove something. We're not trying to reinvent the wheel. We're just trying to play, dig into some nice repertoire by some classic artists, and there's an original of mine (“Amor Eterno”) in there too. Maybe [music that’s] underplayed, not really standard stuff.

FD: I'd be shocked if you told me there were any overdubs on Decades.

ED: There aren’t any. And a lot [of the songs] were the first take.

FD: Thelonious Monk wouldn't even want listen to the playback. In the documentary Straight, No Chaser, there’s a part where the producer, maybe Teo Macero, says, “okay, you wanna hear what you just played?” Monk says, “no, no, let's keep going.” (laughs)

ED: We didn't either, to tell the truth.

FD: No kidding.

ED: We made it all in about a day and a half. And we probably had time to spare. We were having fun doing it that way, and we didn't see any reason to… none of us are really perfectionists. It was just like, great, let's move on. Next one.

FD: Jazz gives you a lot of room for improvisation and doing your own thing, but when you play with other bands like the Black Crowes, do they want the parts to be the same every night?

ED: Black Crowes is a mix of [playing] parts, and rock and roll piano and organ. The Black Crowes is a gig that has a lot of, a lot of space, probably 40 percent parts and 60 percent space to make your own part.

Their different albums have different levels of that. OK, you gotta hit the organ on this chord, and you gotta hit the pianos on the verses, [let’s say]. But within that, it's kind of open. It’s an old style and it comes from Chuck Leavell, who played on their first album. Rick Rubin hired him. Chuck is one of the masters of rock and roll piano. The band is basically a British rock and roll band that people mistake as a Southern rock band. I really enjoy it. It's a great gig.

FD: I would have to think Leftover Salmon would also give you a lot of room…

ED: They gave me a lot of room. (laughs). You could do anything.

FD: Like the Grateful Dead, you can hit the heights, you can miss, or anything in between. Just shifting gears a little bit: on Decades you had to cover the melody, the harmony, the rhythm, but when you play with guitarists like Charlie Hunter and Jim Campilongo, who are mind-bogglingly good, how do you work with them and figure out what kind of musical spaces you’re going to occupy?

ED: Generally, musicians on this level hire me because they want to hear me do my thing, not to tell me what to do. I think that [it’s because of] my willingness to be an accompanist, or be a lead guy, or be a moody guy or be an energetic guy. The gig dictates what it needs.

FD: Who are your favorite pianists, and people that you hear today that you like?

ED: Oh, you know, the, the Keith Jarretts and the Chick Coreas, and Herbie Hancock and McCoy Tyner…these have always been the masters, you know what I mean? And then Chuck Leavell and John Medeski and Dr. John. I’m interested in anyone who can play, to tell you the truth. I love all kinds of playing.

FD: I don’t know if you can play without being influenced by what's gone before.

ED: I do think that kids coming up these days, teenagers and college kids, don't seem to be as interested in the history of the music. I know that’s a generalization. But I've heard it from enough folks, and I've seen it myself enough times and I have plenty of friends who are teaching college. I'm not sure if it's just like rebellion or there's something more to it. I don't think it's good, but we will see how it plays out.

But this new generation [can be] so smart, so talented. And it's a really nice thing that you can make music without having to spend a fortune [on equipment] these days.

FD: But don't ignore the lessons of history. You could really learn something. If you listen to somebody like Bill Evans you might think, oh, that sounds easy. Then sit down and try to play it.

ED: Agreed. Agreed. A hundred percent.

FD: Maybe it goes in cycles.

ED: I think so too. I'm not going to panic or announce that we have an endemic problem. It's just that I like to observe and see what's going on in pop culture and talk about it. It'll be interesting to see what happens with jazz music in the future, that's for sure.

FD: Jazz always evolves, and it went through some phases that I didn't always like, like in the late 1950s through the mid-1960s with free jazz. I liked the fact that the musicians were trying to break barriers, but I also found there was a little bit too much of, let's just go in the studio and screw around and they'll put out an album and the critics will rave about it, and it's really the emperor's new clothes. Then again, who are we to judge?

ED: Yeah, exactly. It's just another kind of music, you know? People trying stuff.

FD: Is there anything else you'd want to say? I used to ask people how COVID affected their ability to play live, and to make music? But knock on wood, I hope we’re mostly out of that phase, or at least 90 percent anyway.

ED: [The pandemic] changed everything for me. It taught me how to be a good home studio musician, I'll tell you that. I didn't have any chops for it. I had started building a studio, down here [in Mexico City], but really didn't really know how to use it. So COVID forced me to figure out how to use everything. I make a lot of music here from home, and I work a lot in that way, and it's really, really, really rewarding.

FD: Getting back to the Decades album. You can hear that you guys have been playing together for a long time. The fact that professional musicians can just get together, having never played before, and be really creative is great, but there's also something to be said for people who have been playing together so long that you can just give somebody a look and everyone knows what's gonna happen next, which is what I'm hearing on this album.

ED: Absolutely. Thank you, brother. I'm glad you enjoy it. And oh, man, I'm thankful to Octave for letting us record this music. It's a beautiful thing that we got to do it after all these years [of playing together]. You gotta document what you do, especially if you’ve got a good band. So, we're all excited.

At Copper we’re always interested in new audio technologies. The growing presence of ultra-small MEMS speakers (MEMS stands for micro-electromechanical systems) is bringing new design and performance possibilities to devices like headphones, audio glasses, VR and augmented reality glasses, hearing aids, and even medical applications.

USound was founded in 2014 to design MEMS speakers. USound speakers employ a number of technical innovations, including a piezoelectric motor and silicon membrane rather than the conventional voice coils and materials employed by dynamic-driver and balanced-armature speakers. USound has offices in Austria, Vienna, Shenzhen and San Francisco.

I spoke with Andrea Greco, acoustics expert working as a Field Application Engineer at USound, about the company, its technologies and its products.

Andrea Greco of USound.

Frank Doris: Can you tell us a little about USound?

Andrea Greco: USound designed the first MEMS speakers available on the market. We were founded in 2014 and started as a pure R&D company. We’ve received several awards and filed more than 300 patent applications. Our headquarters are in Graz (Austria), while our R&D office is in Vienna. We also have an office in China (Shenzhen) and an office in San Francisco. We recently received a venture capital investment for 30 million US dollars.

Our first series of speakers, Ganymede (pictured in header image), has been manufactured since 2018, followed by our second series, Conamara, in 2021. In the meantime, we founded our daughter company, FAUNA, to showcase one of our applications: audio glasses, which are prescription glasses or sunglasses that incorporate our speakers in their frame.

FD: Please tell our readers about the MEMS technology.

AG: Here is an exploded view of how our speakers are made:

 MEMS speakers, exploded diagram.

MEMS stands for micro-electromechanical systems: at the core of our speakers is a MEMS motor, a layer of piezoelectric material. As mentioned earlier, piezoelectric materials react with a mechanical displacement when an electric field is applied across their electrodes. The bending movement of the piezoelectric layer is transformed into a one-dimensional piston-like motion thanks to a spring structure which incorporates multiple bending cantilevers that are connected to a central element (the H-shaped component in the MEMS die). This component connects the MEMS motor with the loudspeaker membrane (diaphragm), allowing the air to be physically displaced, thus producing the sound that we hear. This results into a very efficient system compared to a conventional electrodynamic speaker.

Underneath is a PCB (printed circuit board) which is a layer including all the electronic components to drive the MEMS motor. Finally, two protection layers complete the design: a bottom protection sheet and a top cover to protect the diaphragm from dust, handling, etc.

As you can see, the basic working principle is simple, even though the design behind it's quite complex, and there is quite a lot of tuning and engineering involved. Not by chance, as I mentioned, we have filed more than 300 patent applications for this design.

The lack of a moving coil and a magnet makes our speakers very thin and light: our speakers are up to 75 percent smaller than traditional speakers based on voice coils.

Moreover, USound’s speakers are compatible with High-Res Audio. In some markets, like Japan for example, a very wide frequency range, extending beyond the traditional 20 kHz, is often requested for high-quality audio products. According to several studies, ultrasound content increases the liveliness and realism of the musical content, by affecting its timbre and spatial perception. Our speakers have a wide bandwidth of up to 80 kHz, which perfectly fulfils the requirements for Hi-Res Audio.

Furthermore, we also offer the opportunity to manufacture speakers totally made of non-ferromagnetic materials, which makes them ideal for special applications like MRI-scan headphones or extremely sensitive products where no interference with electromagnetic fields is allowed.

A Conamara MEMS speaker.

FD: I’ve always been a fan of the resolution and transient response of ribbon tweeters and planar-magnetic and electrostatic loudspeakers. I would think, since the MEMS silicon membrane driver has a very low mass, that the resolution and clarity of your drivers would be superior in performance. Can you comment on that?

AG: As with planar-magnetic and electrostatic, the MEMS speakers also have a very low mass. However, on top of that, the new technology offers even better precision because of the direct control over the movement by the MEMS actuators. They mechanically define the position of the membrane at every point in time allowing for optimal reproduction of the audio signal.

FD: What about the power consumption of MEMS drivers?

AG: Power consumption is a crucial feature, having a direct impact on the final product battery life. Our speakers, when combined with our new Tarvos amplifier, can reach extremely low current consumption (0.9 mA at typical audio output levels). With our audio modules it is possible to reach up to 50 percent less current consumption than traditional electrodynamic loudspeakers.

FD: Headphone manufacturers brag about having an IPX5 (water-resistant) rating, but your products are rated up to IPX8. That’s very impressive.

AG: Yes. Water resistance is a feature which is often overlooked or underestimated when talking about speakers. USound’s MEMS speakers can achieve up to IPX8 water resistance rating, which means that you can submerge them in water up to 3 meters for half an hour without impacting their performance. This means that the final product can be used either under the rain or in the shower or while doing sports (for sweat resistance).

FD: Are there any other particular characteristics of your speakers you would like to talk about?

AG: Well, something else which is not commonly talked about is a speaker’s reflow soldering compatibility. This means that when surface mount components such as USound’s MEMS speakers are attached to printed circuit boards (PCBs), low soldering temperatures (< 200 degC) can be used. The combination of USound reflow soldering capabilities and the small speakers’ form factor makes it possible to use a fully automated pick-and-place assembly process to achieve the highest product quality at a 50 percent lower production cost compared to a traditional process. That's a big thing when you go into mass production.

A second advantage of MEMS speakers is their low mechanical vibrations. Due to the absence of a heavy voice coil, USound MEMS loudspeakers are much lighter than traditional loudspeakers and therefore produce significantly fewer mechanical vibrations. But why are [such vibrations] so dangerous? Well, mechanical vibrations can cause structure-borne excitation to the microphones in the near vicinity to the speakers, causing a feedback loop. This is important, for example, for hearing aids but also for modern true wireless earphones featuring a transparency/ambient mode, where the recording of the microphone is being played through the loudspeaker on the same device. The same applies to heat and electromagnetic fields emission, which are extremely low in the case of MEMS speakers.

Finally, another aspect which is also often overlooked is the product part-to-part variability: the data displayed on a technical datasheet (e.g., speaker frequency response) represents an average performance with respect to a range of possible values. The final product might have an actual response which differs from the displayed value by a certain amount, specified by the manufacturer (or at least it should be). This parameter, referred to as part-to-part variability, can get quite high depending on the technology and the manufacturing process of the specific product. In the case of conventional speakers, it can go to ±3 to ±5 dB with respect to the curve displayed on the data sheet (it also varies with frequency). In the case of USound’s MEMS speakers, this variability falls below 1 dB across almost the whole audible range. This translates into an extremely high final product reliability.

FD: That is incredible. I mean, dealing with a 3 to 5 dB variation in drivers…that's a much wider variation than most people would realize is out there, I think.

AG: Yes. We have recently got feedback from a big company who tested our samples. They came back to us stating, “We have just finished testing your speakers in our lab and they perform exactly as on your data sheet.” We are proud of that.

FD: I would be. I think I need to emphasize to our readers just how small these speakers are.

AG: Thanks to the MEMS construction process, our speakers can achieve extremely thin packages. In particular, our Ganymede speakers, with a rectangular form factor, measure 6.5 x 4.7 x 1.6 mm; our Conamara speakers, with a round form factor, come into 5mm and 6mm diameter sizes and are less than 1.5mm thick.

Ganymede are better suited to free-field applications, where the speaker is not directly placed inside your ear. They are mostly recommended for wearables such as audio glasses or augmented and virtual reality glasses.

Conamara, due to their round shape and small size, are mainly suited for in-ear use: true wireless speakers and hearing aids represent the key applications. The 6 mm model comes either as a full-range speaker or as a tweeter. The 5 mm model is, instead, a better fit for two-way systems as a dedicated speaker for high frequencies (tweeter), where a very clear and distinguished sound and a specific control over low, medium and high frequencies is desired.

We are also proud of the frequency response of our speakers, which is extremely flat and without unwanted peaks and resonances across the whole frequency range. Below is an example of measured frequency response for our Ganymede speaker.

Ganymede MEMS speaker, frequency response.

FD: That's kind of unbelievable. I've never seen a graph like that.

You mentioned that you’d recently developed a new miniature amplifier.

AG: Yes Frank, that is correct. First of all, I need to explain why do we need a dedicated amplifier. Compared to traditional electrodynamic speakers, MEMS speakers are based on the piezoelectric effect: piezoelectricity is the process of using crystals to convert electrical energy into mechanical energy, or vice versa. This phenomenon represents one of the main challenges for MEMS speakers, which require a higher driving voltage (up to 30 Vpp) than traditional electrodynamic speakers, but lower current flow. Therefore, traditional audio amplifiers are not suitable to directly drive MEMS speakers.

Until now we have been using a third-party amplifier, which was suitable to drive USound’s MEMS speakers, but not optimal in terms of power consumption and total harmonic distortion (THD). For this reason, USound has recently released the design of Tarvos 1.0, an audio amplifier specifically designed to drive USound MEMS speakers and to maximize power efficiency, therefore boosting battery life and playing time.

Tarvos is an analog amplifier, which means that it requires an analog input (you cannot drive it directly with a digital audio signal). Because it's an analog amplifier, it has basically no latency: input and output are synchronous without any time lag between them. This makes it ideal for applications like hearing aids, where you want an immediate response.

Its size is incredibly small, 2mm by 2mm, which makes it perfect to be integrated with our speakers. Its bandwidth is also very wide, up to 40 kHz, meaning that it can fulfill Hi-Res Audio requirements. Last but not least, a high-quality audio amplifier should have a very low total harmonic distortion: Tarvos features less than 0.2% THD at maximum output voltage across the whole frequency range. This means that, providing a distortion of one order of magnitude lower than that of the speaker, Tarvos will have no impact on the final audio performance in terms of distortion.

FD: How can Tarvos be used in combination with your speakers?

AG: In order to take full advantage of Tarvos’ features, we have designed an integrated audio module, called Kore 4.0. This USound-patented technology consists of our Conamara speaker, with a PCB with a Tarvos amplifier and all the related electronic components mounted on its back. This module represents the most compact audio solution for true wireless headphones and AR/VR glasses, achieving up to 75 percent volume and 50 percent weight reduction compared to traditional coil speakers. It’s plug-and-play ready and does not need additional mechanical or electronic integration: you just need to provide power and audio input.

Kore audio module inside an earbud.

In the image above you can see how the Kore audio module might fit in a typical earbud casing. Thanks to its small size and extremely low thickness, you can use the remaining volume either to accommodate a bigger battery or other components (e.g., sensors), or to make the product smaller.

FD: Which applications are recommended for use with your speakers?

AG: In terms of strategic applications, MEMS speakers are mainly suitable for true wireless stereo (TWS) headphones, augmented reality and virtual reality glasses, or audio glasses. They’re also suitable for hearing aids and over-the-counter (OTC) hearing aids.

USound has a daughter company, named FAUNA, with the specific purpose of showcasing the performance of our speakers in free field (e.g., applications where the speaker is located outside your ear). FAUNA audio glasses feature USound speakers integrated in their frame, two microphones, and high-quality blue light lenses or sun lenses by Zeiss. They are perfect for conference calls, online meetings, music streaming while walking or jogging, and so on.

A special feature of these glasses is our patented dipole configuration, which allows the user to benefit from increased audio privacy: if you are having a phone call or an online meeting, whoever is standing by your side will not be able to hear the audio content reproduced through the FAUNA glasses.

Our speakers are also being used in unusual applications, where conventional speakers cannot be used, due to their size, weight or layout.

USound developed special speaker strips, called Dione, made of several Ganymede speakers linked together and featuring a flexible PCB. Due to their unique construction and design, these strips can be installed on curved surfaces or integrated in unconventional layouts.

A Dione flexible speaker strip.

A second unusual application of our speakers is 3D audio:

• Our Proteus 2.0 is a hi-fi demonstrator for a powerful and futuristic speaker array based on USound speakers. It allows for 360-degree audio thanks to 40 (or 80) Ganymede MEMS speakers placed along three arrays, plus a traditional electrodynamic woofer.
  
  
• Taygete 4.0 is a headphone demonstrator which enables authentic 3D sound thanks to 16 MEMS speakers and an electrodynamic woofer in each cup. It includes a unique patented algorithm which allows real-time 3D sound. It allows several interesting applications such as stereo enhancement, sound source positioning, and surround mapping (e.g., 5.1 and 7.1 audio).

Another very special application is for medical equipment. We are currently working with well-known companies which design and manufacture products for precision medicine, such as for MRI machines. Thanks to the unique feature of our speakers to be 100 percent ferromagnetic-free, they are the only type of speakers currently available on the market able to be integrated into MRI-compatible headphones.

Above: examples of headphones for use in MRI machines.

FD: Those kinds of headphones would be beneficial. I've been in an MRI machine and it can be stressful, and the ability to be able to listen to music during the procedure would be very comforting. Also, instead of having the automated voice almost yelling at you to hold your breath and stay still, it would be much more pleasant to hear somebody speaking through headphones, not a loud robot voice yelling in your face.

AG: And this also represents an ideal solution for people who are claustrophobic and might have panic attacks while staying for prolonged times inside an enclosed space. Thanks to this type of application, doctors can comfort the patient by talking or giving instructions through your headphones. This could be a game changer for many people requiring an MRI scan.

By the way, since we are talking about medical applications, I would also like to mention our latest product, called Anthe. It’s a true wireless system with hearing aid capabilities, featuring a USound Conamara speaker and Tarvos amplifier. Anthe is a 2-in-1 audio module which can be used as a normal TWS to stream music and make phone calls but also to enhance a speaker(s) voice during a conversation for people with low to mild hearing loss. Thanks to a dual integrated microphone and a proprietary algorithm, it also allows environmental noise cancellation (ENC).

FD: A lot of Copper readers are older and hearing aids and hearing impairment have become tremendous concerns. A product like the one you’re describing would be of great interest. How has the reaction to MEMS been in the marketplace?

AG: We have several customers interested in this product, either as a ready-to-use design or as a reference to develop their own TWS. I think this market will strongly increase in the next years, and product like this one will become quite useful and requested by more and more users.

In general MEMS speakers represent a booming market, which is quickly expanding, and it is estimated [that it will] cover up to 50 percent of the TWS market already by 2025. This rapid growth can be explained by the continuously increasing demand for smaller, lighter, and more efficient loudspeakers, without compromising sound quality. The applications are not limited to TWS or OTC hearing aids.

Some customers [have] asked for our expertise to design high-quality earbuds for audio enthusiasts or audiophiles or in-ear live monitors for stage musicians. We also have projects where our speakers are used for ultrasound applications. The variety of applications where our products can be used is really high, and creativity plays also a big role when finding solutions and designs involving MEMS speakers.

FD: Can you scale up the number of drivers to make a home audio speaker?

AG: Sure, but some considerations should be made in this case. Due to their low size, MEMS speakers are not able to radiate sound in the very low audio range when used in free-field conditions. Also, due to their tiny surface, the amount of SPL they can produce is limited. This means that several speakers might be needed to achieve the desired loudness and that they should be paired with a dedicated woofer to reproduce low frequencies. Furthermore, using several MEMS speakers also means using additional amplifiers.

The Proteus 2.0 loudspeaker system.

FD: When we talked in a previous conversation you said that your manufacturing yield (the percentage of good versus defective parts that come off a production line) is very good. With conventional drivers, the yield can be a lot less, which makes the MEMS drivers more cost-effective. I think a lot of readers wouldn’t even know that’s an issue in speaker manufacturing.

AG: This is correct, Frank. Our speakers’ production can quickly be ramped up to satisfy customer demands and we can reach very high yield (> 96 percent). As previously mentioned, they can achieve an extremely high repeatability (low part-to-part variations), below 1 dB in over the full bandwidth. This type of spread is unique; you will not find it anywhere else.

Furthermore, the final unit testing process has also been extensively improved. Conventional speakers are tested by sampling a certain percentage of units off the production line. This means that only a subset of the whole lot of speakers is tested and evaluated, and then is used as a representative sample of the final product. This process can of course lead to overlooking faulty components or not detecting poorly-performing batches. On the contrary, based on MEMS technology, USound speakers offer all the benefits of semiconductor-style batch manufacturing. In particular, I am referring to a proper full-scale testing coverage during production: this means that 100 percent of our speakers undergo a functionality test (acoustical and electrical) at the end of the production line and that 100 percent of production lots are traceable. Basically, what you get is exactly what you read on the data sheet and, if some speakers have a not-expected performance, we can easily trace back to the corresponding manufacturing batch and identify the problem.

FD: Is this related to the machinery you use?

AG: Not really related to the machinery, but to the process. Thanks to the semiconductor-style batch manufacturing, USound MEMS speakers provide an easier integration into the manufacturing process compared to traditional loudspeakers, as they can be directly mounted to a PCB or flex-PCB via reflow soldering or conductive glue. This allows the manufacturer to use fully automated assembly lines with pick-and-place machines so that the final product can be assembled with integrated electronics on a single production line. Since the amount of manual labor needed is reduced, the final manufacturing cost is reduced.

All images courtesy of USound.

If at the age of 13, you are so good at guitar that actor/”Blues Brother” Dan Aykroyd gives you the nickname “Monster Mike,” it must mean that musical fame is inevitable. That sure was the case for Mike Welch. The career that followed established Welch as one of the most sought-after sidemen in the world of blues. While he’s spent the majority of his time with New England-based Sugar Ray and the Bluetones, Welch still found time to record with Shemekia Copeland, Ronnie Earl, Danielle Nicole, Duke Robillard, and Johnny Winter. Welch left the Bluetones in 2017 to focus on his partnership with Mike Ledbetter, which led to countless nominations and awards in the blues genre.

Over the past few years Welch has battled long COVID, a condition that found him spending almost all of 2022 wondering if he would ever play music again. Fortunately, fellow musician Kid Andersen, and guitarist/label owner Mike Zito gave him the inspiration he needed to change course and make what he considers to be the most personal album of his career.

Nothing But Time dropped last month. It was recorded at Kid Andersen’s Greaseland Studios in San Jose, California. Backed by an all-star band that includes two-time Grammy winner Jerry Jemmott on bass, Welch and company deliver an album of material that sounds fresh, vibrant, and of the moment. Even when he covers legacy artists like Buddy Guy and Robert Johnson, Welch takes on these versions with ease.

Perhaps the great surprise on the album is Welch’s cover of the George Harrison song “I Me Mine.” It demonstrates a sense of daring that comes from years performing on the road, and from months battling a debilitating disease.

Copper caught up with Welch to talk about what it’s been like being part of the Gulf Coast Records family, what Kid Andersen brought to this project as a performer and producer, and how Welch’s battle with COVID has changed his outlook, his approach, and ultimately, his music.

Ray Chelstowski: Gulf Coast Records is on a roll. What excited you the most about becoming part of this label roster?

Mike Welch: I’ve known Mike Zito (label founder) as a musician for a long time and every interaction has been warm and positive. He was just someone I wanted to be working with. This record is a bit of a comeback because I’ve been sick for a long time with Long COVID. So I knew that when I came back I wanted to work with people I could trust because it was going to require a leap of faith.

RC: How did you know that you were physically ready for a return?

MW: The interesting thing is that I’m still figuring a lot of that out as I go. The thing I knew was that I needed to come back, and that even if it was a physical struggle it was going to be untenable continuing to not play. I also knew that I had a record in me and it was really Kid Andersen who pushed me to get out and make it. Then when the label was willing to get behind it and put it out, it made me realize that now was the time. 

RC: How did you approach this record? Were these songs that you had in hand or did they come out of new writing sessions?

MW: Some of these songs have been around for a long time. In fact, [there are] a few I have recorded with other bands, albeit those versions are substantially different than the [ones on Nothing But Time]. When I first decided to make the record I was suffering from a case of writer’s block, so that’s why I decided to revisit some of these songs. As soon as I did, I started writing new songs as well, and now I’m much more in the flow of being a present-tense songwriter. While I don’t have concrete plans for the next record, I’m still writing more, and regularly. That has me really excited about what’s next because I know that I’ll have plenty of material at hand when I’m ready.

Monster Mike Welch. Courtesy of Jo Welch.

RC: What did Kid Andersen bring to the project production-wise, and did you consider having him play guitar?

MW: That actually never came up. And Bob Welsh, who played keyboards on the record, is a phenomenal guitar player as well. He’s played both [instruments] in Elvin Bishop’s band. It got to the point where I ended up asking my drummer if he could play guitar better than me, because I found myself surrounded by really good musicians who also play guitar.

In terms of production, Kid and I come from the same musical base, and [because of that], so many things can go unspoken about how things should sound. That allowed me to trust that he had a handle on all of these sonic decisions so that I could concentrate on playing and singing. Although this is the first record I’ve made in some time where I didn’t handle production, I feel as though it’s the most personal record I’ve ever made. Part of that is because I could trust Kid with all of the things that are usually minor distractions from the actual process of expressing yourself. That allowed me to be much more present in my performance.

RC: What did you like most about recording at Kid’s Greaseland Studios in San Jose?

MW: As a musician, Kid’s really good at setting up headphone mixes [in the recording studio] so [that] it actually sounds like the record you’re going to be playing on. He also had some tricks set up where I could be singing live in the room with my own mic and not have to worry about sound bleeding into other instruments. A lot of the record includes live vocals and that’s good for morale and keeping folks inspired. He’s just very thoughtful and ensures that things sound natural.

RC: Did you use any special gear on this record?

MW: Well, the studio is in California and I live in Boston so I was flying in, which meant that I only brought one guitar, and a few pedals. On “Walking to You Baby,” I used the Japanese reissue Strat with a USA Custom Guitars neck and Lindy Fralin pickups that I’ve had since 1992, through Kid Andersen’s vintage tweed [Fender] Bassman that he keeps at his Greaseland Studio. [The Strat is strung] with Curt Mangan 9-42 [gauge] strings. Kid keeps multiple cameras in the studio for live streaming purposes, and we were lucky they captured this live-in-the-studio performance that we added horns to later.

RC: You cover Buddy Guy and Robert Johnson on the record, which seems natural. But you also covered George Harrison.

MW: I’m a huge Beatles fan. That’s how I got into music, and I got it in my head about a year ago that “I Me Mine” would work as an Otis Rush-type blues shuffle. It seemed so obvious that I actually Googled it to see if a million bands had already covered it, and it seems that no one has. I had a moment where I was certain that Eric Clapton had to have recorded it. But figuring out the approach to that song alone unlocked a bunch of different angles for the entire record.

RC: You come directly out of a very specific New England kind of approach to the blues. But you’ve really developed your own sound as a solo artist.

MW: That’s really nice to hear, although I can hear all of those influences in every note. I did spend 15 years or so playing on and off with Sugar Ray and the Bluetones, so that will be in my blood, regardless of what I choose to do with the rest of my life.

Header image courtesy of Jo Welch.

I have to think that most our readers are familiar with the concept of “Desert Island Discs.” The premise is to make a list of albums (usually 10) that one would take if stranded on a desert island, forsaking all others (assuming, of course, that there was a sustainable means of playback for said albums). 

For me, and many others, it is a daunting task – paring one’s collection down to the 10 core works of musical art that could, hopefully, satisfy one over the remaining years. I would prefer to be given the option of creating 10 album-length compilations, therefore providing a much wider range of performances, but that’s cheating. 

What if, instead of 10 discs, you could only take one? Are there any albums in your collection that could hold up over innumerable repeat plays, one that would provide lasting satisfaction the rest of your life? I’ve thought about it, and I think I have a few that, for my musical tastes, would qualify. I surprised myself, in that, despite the fact that progressive rock is my favorite genre, my selections do not include any in that style, nor are the candidates any of the influential albums from my youth. In this article I will focus on the third of those choices. The first, Bellybutton, by Jellyfish, was featured in Issue 183. The second, Answers to Nothing, by Midge Ure, was described in Issue 189.

I think that, for me, to hold up under such challenging conditions, an album would have to incorporate the following elements: 1) a reasonably wide variety of moods and styles, 2) arrangements that are complex and interesting, and 3) high-quality engineering and production sufficient to satisfy my audiophile idiosyncrasies. A lot of records would qualify if two out of three were enough, but all three?

October Project, Falling Farther In, album cover.

A third album that checks all the boxes for me is Falling Farther In, the second album by October Project. I don’t expect that many of you are familiar with them, but I think they deserved wider recognition. Although their first album is filled with beautiful music, the sound is a bit murky. The production (by Peter Collins) and engineering (by David Leonard) are vastly improved on Falling Farther In, their second and final album with lead singer Mary Fahl.

The group had its beginnings in New Jersey, with the teenage collaboration of lyricist Julie Flanders and keyboardist/vocalist/arranger Emil Adler composing songs together. Vocalist and keyboard player Marina Belica was Julie’s roommate at Yale. Guitarist/vocalist David Sabatino met Adler at a New York City jam session. Flanders then brought in Mary Fahl as a vocalist. Percussionist Urbano Sanchez chose to remain a sideman, despite being offered membership in the band. Other musicians contributing to the album include bassist Michael Visceglia, drummer Craig Thatcher, and guitarist Marc Shulman.

They released their first two albums in the 1990s before being dropped by Epic records and disbanding. In the early 2000s, Adler, Flanders, and Belica re-formed and recorded an EP, Different Eyes. A tribute album, October Project Covered, was released in 2006 featuring a number of lesser-known indie artists. It wasn’t until 2015 that a full album was recorded by the new incarnation of October Project. The Book of Rounds, consisting of 21 vocal rounds, was quite a departure from the sound and style of the earlier recordings. The music was composed by Adler, with lyrics by Flanders.

Getting back to the album at hand, Falling Farther In opens with “Deep As You Go.” Chiming guitars provide an introduction before Mary Fahl’s vocals take over. Strings and percussion follow, building to a full ensemble piece.

“Something More Than This” features another creative arrangement and Mary’s passionate singing. As one might surmise from the title, there is a definite sense of yearning.

“Sunday Morning Yellow Sky” has a very catchy rhythm and fine harmonies.

The opening lyrics to “Adam and Eve” are “Only ever really one story, a boy and a girl, and a dream of the world.” The emotion in Mary Fahl’s voice is palpable.

“Johnny” tells of a small-town boy with aspirations.

Although the intro is moody and slow, “Funeral in His Heart” becomes one of the album’s most driving, up-tempo numbers.

A spacey opening belies the power to come in “After the Fall.”  

“One Dream” starts with a bang before settling down into a groove. This is another track that expresses a deep longing.

“Dark Time” is the most overtly religious of the tracks. The instrumentation and arrangement are as compelling as anything on the album.

The title track opens with very slow percussion and builds to the kind of furious crescendo that makes you think it’s the final number, but no.

The last track, “If I Could,” has the feel of a lullaby, letting you down gently after the energy of the previous song.

My conclusion about Midge Ure’s Answers to Nothing is equally applicable to Falling Farther In:  “The album’s rich arrangements, crisp production, and overall clean sound serve the songs well. If I had to, I could live with just this album for a long time.” 

As a special bonus, here’s a beautiful rendition of “Return to Me,” a song featured on their first album. This is a live solo performance by Mary with the backing of the Youth Orchestra of Bucks County. If this doesn’t make you a fan of hers, nothing will.

Sometimes you’ve got to love the comments section on these videos. Among the nearly unanimous comments praising her for her singing voice, there’s this: “… when I die, I want to come back as her diaphragm.” Let’s assume he’s talking about the one that draws her breath.

Header image: October Project, Falling Farther In, back cover.

Looking back on it, Maebe's self-titled debut still hits hard. In fact, it's so fresh and deeply invigorating with each listen that it's hard to believe that it's been three years since its 2020 release. What's more, it seems all but incredulous to think that Maebe's maestro, Guitar World's digital editor-in-chief and all-around masterful guitarist Michael Astley-Brown has not only followed his debut up but bettered it with the just-released Rebirth. Relive. Repeat. – and by a large margin.

"Since the release of the first Maebe album, my confidence has definitely grown," Astley-Brown told me. "I put the first album out, but I had no plans to promote it. And then COVID happened, so I just went, 'Right, okay. There we go; it's there and done. It exists in the world.' I felt like I had done what I set out to achieve, but didn't really know where to go from there."

He continued, "But since then, my confidence has built up to where I felt like I did things this time around that I didn't know I was capable of during the first album. [And] I had to put a band together [to do live shows and promote the album], meaning that Maebe would no longer be a solo project in the future. So, I really wanted Rebirth. Relive. Repeat. to be my definitive statement as a solo artist."

Rebirth. Relive. Repeat. album cover. Photo courtesy of Olly Curtis.

Making his definitive artistic statement couldn't have been easy, especially since he lives a dual life as a journalist and musician. As Guitar World’s online editor, he deals in words daily, making his choice to steer Maebe into exclusively instrumental waters all the more poignant.  

"That definitely factored into the thinking," Astley-Brown laughed. "When I get home, I don't really want to read stuff anymore. So, I think my music is borne out of that mindset. That, and I realized pretty early on in my teenage years that while I can sing a bit, I can't sing well enough to where anyone would want to listen to me (laughs). The good thing is Maebe will never have the problem where people say, 'Oh, I love the band, but I can't stand the sound of the vocals.'"

Still, the task of ruddering Maebe through the harsh waters of today's musical landscape has fallen solely on Astley-Brown's shoulders. While that's undoubtedly been difficult, giving up some of future creative control may be equally challenging.

"It's a slightly scary thought," Astley-Brown admitted. "But I don't think I ever thought I'd find a group of guys who would be so dedicated to learning the material, be open to feedback, and bring ideas in to improve things. The guys in the band speak the same musical language as me, and that's been very gratifying after doing this alone."

Thinking about the uncharted waters ahead, he noted, "I'm confident in the rest of the guys. I feel like I've gotten as far as I can working as a solo artist. I'll continue to be the primary songwriter in Maebe, but I'm excited about the idea of collaboration. I think some outside influence can only benefit and make it an easier process for me because it's difficult making this kind of stuff on your own. I'll go insane if I keep on that way. I think it will be a move filled with healthy, creative debates that will result in an evolution."

Using his trusty Fernandes JG-40 guitar, Astley-Brown is intent on fearlessly pushing the soundscape of guitar-driven music forward. He has pushed his vision to a space he once thought unreachable. Where Astley-Brown's sonic adventures take him from here remains to be seen, but the Maebe faithful will be gleefully going along for the ride.

Michael Astley-Brown. Photo courtesy of Ellie Rogers.

Astley-Brown is aware of the challenges ahead. "Getting the first album out was very much about, 'Can I do this?' And when I look back, I am a bit frustrated I didn't have more physical [media manufactured], which is why I'm doing a proper campaign for the new record. But it is hard for smaller artists, and it can be frustrating. It can [also] be a little demoralizing."

"The scary and frustrating thing for me fundamentally is that this is where my savings are going," he continued. "I'm paying to have physical media produced. And we’re usually breaking even or even taking a loss on every show we play. It's hard to build this up. You've got to be absolutely driven to do this. It's got to be your calling."

He concluded, "But I didn't do it for a really long time. I was doing cover band stuff, playing weddings, and things like that, but I always felt something was missing. And this is what it was. But it wasn't until I made the first Maebe album that I knew that was the case. And now I can't live without it. It absorbs all my time, stresses me out, causes anxiety, and makes me feel overworked and exhausted, but I can't live without it. I absolutely can't. And whether anyone hears it or not, I will be making music because I've just got to do it."

During a break from the action, Michael Astley-Brown talked with Copper for a track-by-track rundown of Rebirth. Relive. Repeat.

"Hello, It's Been a While"

In some ways, I wanted "Hello, It's Been a While" to be a bridge between the end of Maebe's first album and Rebirth. Relive. Repeat. It was always intended to be an intro piece that felt like tentative first steps back into a full album project. The goal was to almost take the listener on a journey that starts off with an almost insecure, tentative feeling. It's that same feeling you get when you're seeing someone for the first time in a long time, and you need to rebuild the connection. Or maybe it's like reconnecting with someone you've had a relationship with but didn't end on the best of terms.

The song feels like a wave of emotion with a climax toward the end, which humanizes the track. That's where my head was, but it came together quickly. It's one of the more straight-up rock songs on the record, but I still wanted it to have the extreme of [going from] super quiet [to] super loud, crash cymbals going everywhere, which was very much inspired by a band from Manchester, U.K. called Oceansize. I feel "Hello, It's Been a While" is a state of intent: "Hey, we're going on a journey. This is the first leg. Hold on."

"Rebirth. Relive. Repeat."

This goes back to when I interviewed Tim Henson of Polyphia. At the end of the interview, I asked him, "What's the future of guitar music?" To be fair, he wasn't feeling well, nor was he in the best spirits, but he said something to the effect of, "I hope guitar music dies a painful death." And I recall that when the article went online, a lot of people were shocked by it. But I didn't find it argumentative, rather more of a persona he was taking on at that time that he's since dropped. Still, it left me feeling inspired because I agreed with the idea that guitar music, just for the sake of guitar music, should not be a thing. It needs to make a statement, not just be a vehicle to show off.

So, that's what "Rebirth. Relive. Repeat." is about: making a statement. What Tim said drove me to push my playing and writing into different areas. There are new territories that I'm exploring as a guitarist that I haven't gone through before. But it was also about having fun and being honest throughout that process. It's an example of me evolving as a player and a human being. And once again, this moody song takes the listener on an epic journey.

"50 Words for Bro"

This track was inspired by my conversation with Tim Henson as well. At the end of that interview, I was like, "Okay, right. How far can I push my guitar playing?" I challenged myself to make fast riffs with a lot of interesting notes while still making it musical and memorable. And Polyphia does a lot of that, but what I was really going for was a happy Tool song (laughs). I did a sort of Adam Jones triplet thing but then tried to see what would happen if I put it in a major key and built an entire riff around that.

And I must admit – that song is really f*cking hard to play live, but it usually goes down just fine. The song's general vibe is pretty upbeat, and then it turns into an almost Smashing Pumpkins kind of Siamese Dream thing halfway through. But the title, "50 Words for Bro," is inspired by the idea that your friend group, or tribe, can have different names for things and each other. And those names really do influence your understanding of the world. I like that idea of when you're so close with someone that you can use any word as a term of endearment.

"Tautology"

This is absolutely one of my favorite songs on Rebirth. Relive. Repeat. It's one of the tracks that came about through my use of a baritone Telecaster, giving it a gentle yet dark sound. That influenced my writing as I was putting the song together. That vibe dates to a conversation I had with Jeff Buckley's guitarist, Michael Tighe. I asked him what he learned from Jeff, and he talked about how great Jeff was at casting a spell over an audience. And so, I really wanted to achieve that with my music by not being so schizophrenic.

I wanted to create a sonic landscape where the listener could lose themselves in the music. It became about making something cyclical that would basically eke out over many minutes. And that's where the word "tautology" comes in, which essentially means when you use a redundant word in a sentence. I come from a linguistics background, and I'm always curious about language anyway, and I was happy to find a word that related to how I felt about this song. In my editorial life, tautology might be considered a bad thing, but I embraced that ideology by having a song that alternates between sections, creating an ebb and flow.

"Harsh Realm"

As far as Rebirth. Relive. Repeat. goes, I feel this song is the definitive statement. That's why I made it the first single. It's got hooks, heaviness, and even some goofiness in a few places. But it's also got some stupidly trendy bits, which were off-the-cuff, but I kept them in. When I improvise my solos, if I'm feeling it, there's a nervous energy throughout them. And a lot of times, I end up going into like a Kirk Hammett [lead guitarist for Metallica], shreddy-type place. I don't know why, but it's always this sort of Master of Puppets type sh*t that comes out of me (laughs).

But this song is also a great example of me as a guitar player because it starts with my favorite chord, E minor 7. That's the one I'm usually playing first when I pick up the guitar, and I wanted to build a song around that. So, I built a progression out of that, and everything else fell into place from there. I love the math rock sections, but it's also got a big [Joe] Satriani-style hook in the chorus section, and then hits like a sledgehammer a la Deftones or Thrice. It's got a lot of heaviness to it, but by using some ambiguous chords, it's still light and playful enough to install a sense of optimism.

"You Are the Host Now"

The title of this came about during the pandemic when everyone was on Zoom all the time. So, if somebody had connection problems or didn't want to speak, they'd leave the meeting, and I'd be left alone. And when they left, this notification would pop up saying, "you are the host now." And I was like, "Oh, my god, that just feels so creepy." It was weird, but I found the phrase so evocative. So, I quickly wrote it down before they returned to the call and thought, "one day, there will be a song that will fit this weird mood."

Later on, I was messing around with a bassline that felt like something from Radiohead's In Rainbows, like a rejected song or something (laughs). So, I started tracking it, and through that bassline, I came up with chord progressions that felt logical to me. But this song felt like another big trap where I said, "right, we're just gonna marinate in this groove, and then I'll bring the heaviness later on before I leave you with an ambiguous ending." It felt like a milestone to be able to do something like that because I never would have attempted it on the first record. It's the sort of thing that can only happen through the growth of confidence, being more comfortable with space, sustained notes, and resisting the urge to shred.

"Malaise"

This is the oldest song from the album, meaning that it was around before the first Maebe album came out. I see it as pushing the early Maebe template to the extreme. It's my attempt at doing a proper epic. But it felt akin to Frankenstein's monster because I bolted it together with so many different sorts of elements. It builds slowly throughout, which makes sense because I was in a pretty low place emotionally when I wrote it. I wanted it to illustrate the idea of being trapped within a feeling you can't escape, like climbing halfway out of the slump, only to slide back down into it again.

It's sort of like the feeling of climbing only to find that you're deeper than ever, almost at the bottom of a pit, and then the pit collapses, and you plunge a little bit deeper again. It's got that vibe, and then there's this super dark outro fadeout. I remember that after I decided to include "Malaise" on the album, I was [thinking], "man…this is so convoluted," but I just loved its vibe and emotion.

"Stay Together for the Cats"

If you're of a certain age, you know this is a play on Blink-182's "Stay Together for the Kids." Being part of that generation, they were a formative influence on me. I grew up playing Tom DeLonge's riff from that song. It has a great melody, and I find it very distinct within Blink's catalog. But as far as my song goes, that came about while I was married, and it was clear the relationship was not working. We reached a point where there was no going back, and things were over. So, things were falling apart, but I still had to go to work and review a guitar, and I picked up this Ibanez and [thought], "This thing sounds great."

It had beautiful clean tones, and while I was messing around with it, the opening line for what would become "Stay Together for the Cats" just came out. It was so sad, and because I was emotionally fragile [at the time], it moved me to tears while I was playing. I [thought], "Okay, I'm not ready to do anything with this now; let me record it on my phone and I'll come back to it later." One day, I did revisit it, and was able to turn one of the lowest moments in my life into something that's [maybe] not positive but tangible and moving. To get it on Rebirth. Relive. Repeat. felt like a major achievement.

"Far Enough/Catastrophize"

This was another song where I grabbed the baritone Telecaster, was messing around with it, and this sort of came out. I like that it taps into a similar place that "Malaise" does in terms of that total sense of despair, [of] not being able to escape, and feeling like you're trying to outrun an awful feeling. But it's also got this sort of acceptance. "This has gone far enough and cannot go on any further." But the dualist aspect of my brain [thought], "You're just catastrophizing. [Things] isn't that bad at all." It's brief and basically acts as an intro to "Monolith," but [with] its own vibe.

"Monolith"

I love Seattle grunge, and this song, via the baritone Telecaster, really taps into that part of my musical lineage. The main riff of "Monolith" is indebted to the riff from "Mailman" from Soundgarden's Superunknown album. It's got that same sort of feeling, but still, a different sort of vibe. I basically wanted to make it like the nastiest Seattle post-rock song that ever existed (laughs).

I love making nasty, almost sludge metal riffs, and doing that here was a lot of fun. To have those dynamic shifts and then run off into a sort of Radiohead thing and a wacky System of a Down, Deftones style breakdown…it felt like the combination of my heaviest influences coming together as one, taking the Maebe sound to the extreme by amping it up. I knew it had to close Rebirth. Relive. Repeat.

Header image courtesy of Ellie Rogers.

A 1986 interview for the Kinks' overlooked Think Visual

I was delighted to find the printed Q&A from an interview I did with forever-Kinks leader Ray Davies in 1986. For those of you who are new here or just coming back, newspapers and magazines rarely ran question-and-answer interviews in those days. We used the Q&As as the structure of a feature story.

My problem now was trying to remember what Kinks album Davies was promoting. The folder just said, "Ray Davies/1986." I checked the Billboard Top 200 Albums list and found the Kinks' Nov. 1986 release Think Visual, their debut for MCA after a successful run at Arista, never got beyond No. 81 on the chart.

I called my friend and colleague Tom Kitts, author of Not Like Everybody Else, an academic biography of Davies. He sent me over a paper he had done called Think Visual: The Kinks vs. the Music Industry, from the journal Popular Music and Society (Routledge) published online Dec. 12, 2006.

Ray Davies, mid-1980s. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Yves Lorson.

Kitts wrote: "While Think Visual is a strong album, musically and thematically, it is a dark record, a subtle concept album about one of Ray Davies’s favorite themes, the music industry and its effect on the performer." The title of the album seemed sarcastic to me. The record business was in the throes of its co-dependent relationship with cable channels MTV and VH1, and Kitts noted that none of the three videos Davies directed for songs from the album made it into rotation at those essential channels. Davies, he said, wanted to make videos for an audience, not a demographic. In the 1980s music biz, demographics were destiny.

I gave a fresh listen for the first time in more than 35 years to Think Visual, and the first thing I noticed on Spotify was how few people streamed anything on it. Songs that I liked, such as "Natural Gift," which is delivered in an almost Lou Reed deadpan, has 25,575 streams; "Working at the Factory," which Kitts sensibly interprets to be about the music business: "the corporations and the big combines/turned musicians into factory workers on assembly lines’’ with no ownership over their creations, a little over 53,000 streams. A half pence in relative royalties for the entire album. It has to be among the Kinks’ most overlooked albums. Not great, but good much of the time.

The Kinks’ song "Welcome to Sleazy Town" is about a midwestern American city (Kitts' research says Cleveland,), attempting to gentrify, and by doing so, losing some grit and danger, but also character and flavor. I was most likely working off an advance audio cassette of Think Visual when I met with Davies, but the consistent inconsistency of his career and that of the Kinks made for an easy conversation. In fact, known for his moodiness, Davies was surprisingly optimistic. And his observations about cultural and social moods seem as relevant today as they were then.

Wayne Robins: The album is about a culture reliant on videocassette machines.

Ray Davies: The whole thing with the song "The Video Shop," the reason I developed the story, is that the man in the shop gives the people much more than videos. His videos have a special quality to them that allows [people who watch them] to be better people. In other words, use the tools to your advantage, and don't become a zombie. Switch off the TV, and be selective. That's the good side. I think there's a tendency of people to become solitary.

WR: "Natural Gift" is very positive and uplifting, at least for a Ray Davies song.

RD: It is in a minor key.

WR: But it does reflect a certain optimism, or at least comfort?

RD: If you can spread optimism, that's the best disease to spread. The best, most positive thing is optimism. I guess negativity is too easy now, everybody's too worried now. Every day, there's some new crisis.

Humor is very important to me. I laugh a lot more than people imagine I do. I get a lot of fun out of watching people. I spend a lot of time watching and studying them. Going back to films, the films I do will be about people, the way they act. I'm very optimistic about people. It's just the machinery that bothers me.

WR: The corporate machinery.

RD: Yeah. People turning into their jobs.

WR: Doesn’t that happen with rock musicians too?

RD: I've seen it happen to a few people I've known. They become, they believe what they read in the papers, they become their image. I think everyone has the right to create their own image. If they want to believe it, that's fine. There comes a time when it will burn you out. It nearly happened with me. I caught a cold or something, got very sick, and while I was getting better I decided I would step out of it occasionally and look at it fresh. I've seen a lot of people get burned out and a few of them die as a result. Rock and roll is very all-consuming if you want to go all the way.

WR: Do people overstate the importance of rock and roll?

RD: It's a very individual thing. Everyone can buy a record, put it on, and they get to listen to it in their room. When you get through making an album, pressing it and playing it for record companies, doing publicity, in the end, it's a guy singing a song and a person sitting in a room listening to it. It's a very personal thing.

I don't think rock and roll has gone astray, or that it's any more than it is. A lot of people put importance on it. People [think that] without rock and roll, they'd be complete casualties. It makes people believe, believe there's a singer out there, or a band, going through the things that they are going through. I get a lot of that from fans who relate to all the stuff I write. I'm sure other bands do as well.

So I don't think you can emphasize its impact too strongly. It's made the most incredible impact on the world, more than any other energy, in the last 25 or 30 years.

WR: The Kinks’ personnel is mostly intact?

RD: No. Drummer Mick Avory left the band about 18 months ago. He plays on one track on the album, "Rock and Roll Cities," which Dave [brother Dave Davies] brought to me. He played me the demo, I thought it was really good. I said we should do it, but try to keep the drum in. He said, Mick did that. So we left it.

Bob Henrit [formerly of Argent] was just settling in after a year. It takes a long time to learn the repertoire, and learn the telepathy on stage. It's just a very difficult thing, it's like someone coming in to do a play without a script. And you have to pick it up as you go along.

WR: Lasting as long as the kinks have is some kind of accomplishment. What has kept the band alive and together over the years?

RD: I'm not sure. I don't know what the Rolling Stones would say, because they're the only other band that has been around longer than we have.

I think it's that unity. That sense of when you are together, it's the best way of playing that particular music. There's a camaraderie with the band that is very special. It's like a successful football team. It's great to play on it.

When you have the bad times, the famine times, you work harder to help each other out. It's a team effort, although I'm the person who does most of the writing. People focus on me because I'm the most creative member. But with Avory, he was a mainstay, a leveler. It's a blend of personalities. I'm not sure how long it will go on for, but I'm very happy doing it. I'm very happy with the record, and I can't think of anyone I'd rather play it with.

WR: You make is sound like one big happy family, but you and Dave Davies were known for…

RD: Being brothers?

WR: Yes. Are things better between you?

The Kinks. Ray Davies is on the left, Dave Davies is on the right. Courtesy of BMG.

RD: No, those sort of relationships get worse, actually. I think we try to be sensible, and adult about it. But…he was playing on a hit record when he was 15 at a time when rock and roll was some weird thing people did, it wasn't the kind of thing people did professionally. So, it's a tremendous adjustment we had to make, and people who knew us. It's a weird kind of job, and it makes emotions work in very strange ways. We're still basically brothers who don't get along, but we work together and we try to do what we do as well as we can. Obviously, if there's a flare up, or personality conflict, it's the worst possible thing, working with a relative. It's awful, but there we have it, and it's worked out quite well.

WR: For a long time, you were writing songs about middle class and blue collar people. What do you think about people like Bruce Springsteen and John Cougar Mellencamp finding it such a productive topic right now?

RD: Mellencamp? When he toured with us he was just John Cougar. What happened? He always used to work very hard. He even rehearsed right after sound check. They used to rehearse in the dressing room with all their instruments. Their success is due to that, they struggled quite hard.

WR: What do you think of these artists finding success in writing about the blue-collar worker?

RD: What's that?

WR: The "common working man. "

RD: Where I come from, working men don't have collars, they don't have shirts. It's all very noble, very nice, very marketable.

WR: Do I hear a trace of disdain there?

RD: No! It's very marketable. Hey! Let's stand up. Let's clench our fists, man! Speaking of "Born in the USA," it was a well put-together campaign. Credit that to the writer, he's been writing that kind of thing for a long time. Someone like John Cougar, in the shadow of someone so monumentally successful, it's always difficult. He's like a guy who wrote when William Shakespeare was writing. He [the other guy] also wrote some very good plays. [Back to Springsteen] He's come around at a time when the industry can market something like that. It's mega-mega successful, and people can relate to it.

Ray Davies (with bow tie) and the Kinks, early 1970s. Courtesy of BMG.

WR: In the last year rock discovered its social conscience with benefits for Live Aid and Farm Aid and Amnesty International. Do you see that as a positive in our culture, or is it marred by expediency and self-interest?

RD: It's a very good thing to raise money, do fund-raising. It's just that, all the self-congratulation people are doing, patting each other on the back, I think it's all a bit sick, personally. I do like the people who are not rock stars, who work very, very hard at Amnesty International, and for famine relief, who do not get known. And they'll keep doing the work when the other people have gone on and pursued their recording careers. I don't want them to be forgotten. But it's a great way of using this machine to raise a lot of money very quickly. That's alright: It's a good exercise.

WR: You have mixed feelings about "the machine" – is the rock and roll biz machine one you’re now comfortable working with?

RD: I don't feel comfortable in any system. You should function in a system, but always question it. Once people stop doing that, that's when you have dictatorships. That's why you should always have two parties. I would never accept any system, even if it favored me, or helped me. I'm not trying to be negative, with music or politics, but you've got to question the motives. Because it's very easy to get corrupted, and be corrupt.

WR: What did you think of Van Halen’s version of "You Really Got Me? "

RD: Yeah, I liked it. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would...It's just the fans, when we do it at gigs, come up and say, "we really like the Van Halen song you do."

This article originally appeared in Critical Conditions, the Substack blog of Wayne Robins, and appears here by permission.

As I mentioned in my review of T.H.E. Show SoCal 2023 in Orange County, California (Issue 191), after every show I cover, some of my fellow San Diego Music and Audio Guild members want to know which system was best. This is a loaded query, like – which restaurant or movie is best. It’s entirely dependent on the tastes of the consumer and their state of mind. Both tend to change over time.

In college, I listened primarily to folk music. I bought an Empire 398 turntable with a Shure cartridge, a Quad 33 preamp and 303 monoblocks, and a pair of Wharfedale speakers with 12-inch woofers. I replaced the cone tweeter with a Philips dome, and was in audio heaven for a couple of years.

An Empire Troubadour 598 turntable similar to the Empire 398 B. Jan owned. Courtesy of eCoustics/Eric Pye.

Quad 33 preamp. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Greatarti.

Quad 303 power amplifiers. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Michael KR.

When a graduate apartment became available, I had a much bigger space. In college, more space means party time. So, I swapped my Wharfdales for an Altec Lansing Voice of the Theatre system. It was great in a room full of drunken dancers, but almost unlistenable for critical listening. That was OK while I was a graduate student, because other than Saturday night, I had no time for anything except work anyway.

Just before graduation, I got an offer for my entire system that I couldn’t refuse, so I sold it to pay down some of my student loan (at that time, the thought of student loan forgiveness was unheard of).

Big sound: vintage (year unknown) Altec Voice of the Theatre product literature.

During my early working years, I bought several low-budget systems before getting a pair of Celestion Ditton 66 speakers. I coupled them with a Sansui AU-717 integrated amp, a Thorens TD 125 turntable with an SME arm, and a Grace F9E cartridge with ruby stylus. This was an exceptionally good system for the day and I had it for many years. Although the system I have now is better, I wish I’d never sold that one.

When I moved into a house with a 1,200 square foot living/dining room area, I bought a modern version (for the time) of the Altecs; four Sound Dynamics speakers with 15-inch woofers and machined aluminum horns. I placed one in every corner, and powered these 95 dB-efficient speakers with a pair of 200 watt per channel Soundcraftsmen Pro-Power amplifiers.

Thorens TD 125 turntable. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Jacques.

That allowed me to throw the best monthly parties in town (no, I hadn’t matured much since college). 50 to 60 people used to show up including everyone who was anyone in this small prairie city. This included my dentist, mechanic, chiropractor, two motorcycle store owners, the proprietor of the town’s biggest hotel, a couple of lawyers, some media personalities, and a few members of the city council. That was a good thing because they were very good at calming down the police whenever they came to the door.

Which system was best in this group? Overall, the Celestion system. It was great for rock, but was also terrific for folk, classical, and fusion music.

Strictly for parties, however, the horn speakers were better. They cut through a crowd of people without as much high-frequency loss. Different tools for different jobs, different strokes for different folks.

When SDMAG members ask me which system I liked best after an audio show, the answer doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best system for them. So, I always ask:

"Well Larry, how big is your listening room? What kind of music do you prefer? At what volume do you listen? What’s most important to you, soundstage, resolution, dynamics? What’s your budget? What constraints does your wife place on aesthetics?

You live downtown in a two-bedroom apartment? Your budget is $10K for the whole system? Your speakers must be no bigger than the microwave? OK, I don’t think 'which system sounds best’ is the right question for you. The speakers we voted 'best sound of show’ are 7 feet tall and cost almost $100,000. 

Why don’t you ask me some more relevant questions?”

Header image: Grace F9E phono cartridge. Courtesy of LP Gear (www.lpgear.com).

1966:

It was the best of times; it was the worst of times…for Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys. 

In May 1966 the Beach Boys released Pet Sounds, which is generally considered among music critics as the high-water-mark for the band. It seemed that, although not a huge commercial success, it inspired envy and even fear among critics and the band's musical contemporaries.

The Beatles were blown away, Pet Sounds being among Paul McCartney's favorite albums and spurring the Fab Four into famously creating (as the story goes) Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band as their response. Interesting, as Pet Sounds was the Beach Boys’ response to the Beatles’ Rubber Soul album.

Thinking back to those times, we, as young music consumers were watching the behemoths in the music biz grapple with the emergence of the long-playing album as the real rock music art form, while at the same time knowing that a hit single was still required to take one's career to the next level..

None other than Bob Dylan’s sound man in 1966, Richard Alderson, (the husband of one of my oldest friends who personally related the story to me) was in London with Dylan (he was Dylan’s live sound engineer for Dylan’s entire 1966 world tour) and The Beatles as they all listened to Pet Sounds for the first time in Dylan’s hotel room. Alderson told me they all stunned by the beauty and sheer complexity of the album.

The Beach Boys in the mid-Sixties. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/public domain.

However, that was in 1966.

But in less than a year, Los Angeles was no longer the exclusive home of The Beach Boys’ surf music, the Mamas & the Papas, or the Monkees. L.A. was now full of serious rockers (read: album artists): the Doors, Buffalo Springfield, and Arthur Lee’s band Love.

If you really think about it, as much as the Beach Boys are one of the greatest bands that America ever produced, there is a world of difference as to their relevance in the years from 1966 to 1970.

In England, from 1966 – 1970, the Beatles would release a new single or album and the rest of the British rock world would race to catch up. There were dozens of amazing artists coming out of Britain at that time and just when it seemed that a new song, band or album would take the throne, the Beatles would release another 800-pound gorilla of a record which put everyone in their place.

This is my way of saying that as long as the Beatles were releasing new Beatles music, everyone else was (and remained) in awe.

Not so with the Beach Boys in L.A.

1967 reshaped the U.S. music world.

San Francisco gave us The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service, the Steve Miller Band, Moby Grape, and Janis Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding Company.

1967 brought us Jimi Hendrix.

According to all the press I could find at the time, Crawdaddy magazine (Rolling Stone had just started to publish) the Beach Boys, led by Brian Wilson, were ready to unleash their response to Sgt. Pepper. The gauntlet had been thrown and we as the collective rock audience was waiting for:

Smile.

The album never came.

What we can all see clearly now (with 55 years of hindsight) is that the tour de force “wall of sound”-type production that was the hallmark of Pet Sounds suffered the same fate as producer Phil Spector’s finest creation: the Ike and Tina Turner song “River Deep – Mountain High.” Both of these superb pop masterpieces were released in May of 1966 and both essentially crashed and burned, sending both Brian Wilson and Phil Spector into deep depressions.

Pet Sounds was no Sgt, Pepper in its commercial and artistic impact. Where Sgt. Pepper featured studio tricks and innovations that continue to reverberate to this day, nobody really re-entered the “Wall of Sound” concept until, in 1977, the Meatloaf/Jim Steinman monster operatic album Bat Out of Hell.

What the lack of commercial success for Brian Wilson and Ike and Tina Turner told these musical giants was that the pop music world had seemed to pass them by.

The opening of the Fillmore East and West in the late 1960s and the rise of FM radio (which was a rejection of the Top 40 hit record format) laid waste to many hit-single-driven artists.

Weird to think about it now, as Pet Sounds set the stage for what appeared to be the Beach Boys’ transition to the album format just 12 months earlier. 

In 1967, the Beach Boys entirely fell off my radar and were replaced by Vanilla Fudge, the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, The Doors, Jimi, Procol Harum, Jethro Tull, B.B. King, Albert King, Muddy Waters, the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Iron Butterfly, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and Led Zeppelin… (fill in the rest from your favorite list if you were fortunate to have lived through those times).

The only time the name of the Beach Boys entered my consciousness between 1966 – 1970 was during the Manson murder press coverage in 1969, when it was reported that Charles Manson had befriended Dennis Wilson and that the Beach Boys might have recorded some songs written by Charles Manson.

I think that I thought that was pretty weird, but I also had read many stories about the seemingly mythical L,A, neighborhood of Laurel Canyon, which brought together the likes of members of the Monkees, the Mamas and The Papas, the Doors, Jimi Hendrix, John Mayall, Mick Fleetwood, Joni Mitchell, members of the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, and the Beatles in what seemed like to me, a 17-year-old New York musician, as some kind of rock and roll fantasy camp experience that I could barely fathom except to understand some kind of universal respect among all these seemingly disparate musical geniuses.

Four years came and went.

And then one day in the spring of 1970, while I was jamming with some local musicians in a second-floor apartment on 92nd Street off Broadway in Manhattan, a weird thing happened. The windows of the apartment were wide open (the music we were playing filled the street) and a limo was driving up past the building and stopped in front.

When we looked out the window, it looked like a rock star was getting out. The person walked into the lobby and started to push the doorbell buttons seemingly randomly. When he hit the button for the apartment we were in, the mother of the brothers whose apartment we were in answered in her very broken English. (She was Nicaraguan, as were her sons who, however, grew up in New York City and spoke perfect English). She ran into the living room shouting, “Beach Boy downstairs, Beach Boy downstairs!” The door opened and who walked in but the band’s Bruce Johnston. He was in town for a B.B. King concert and the driver just happened to drive up our street.

We sat there pretty stunned. Finally, Louie Echeverri, one of the brothers who were renting the apartment, handed him a bass guitar and asked him to play “Good Vibrations” and then “Help Me Rhonda” to prove that he was, in fact, a member of the Beach Boys.

Remember, we were all 16 or 17 at the time.

This was the first realization to me that the Beach Boys were still a band.

In my mind, as cool as that was to witness, the summer of 1970 was dominated by the release of Workingman’s Dead.

I was living on Fire Island that summer with a couple of nascent Deadheads (long before there was ever a term to describe us) and the new albums by Hendrix, the Doors, Johnny Winter, the Dead, Moby Grape, B.B. King, Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Santana etc. had overtaken our listening hours.

But…I had a friend named Jeff Pulin who worked at a legendary New York record store, Sam Goody (which also sold stereo equipment – he sold me a pair of JBL 100s). He worshiped all the music I did but was obsessed with the Beach Boys and convinced me to buy a copy of their then-latest release, Sunflower.

I bought it and, before I put it on my new stereo (Dual 1019 turntable with a Shure V15 cartridge, my new Dynaco Stereo 120 power amp and matching PAT-5 preamp, and the JBL 100s) I read the back of the album jacket (as we all did back then).

The Beach Boys had left Capitol Records and were now on Warner Bros. (a very serious rock label). There was a paragraph written by Mo Ostin, the president of Warner Bros. Records.

Mo Ostin had been written about a lot in the rock press. He ran Warner Bros. Records and was considered a legend. He had signed the Grateful Dead and guided the careers of Jimi Hendrix, Van Morrison, Joni Mitchell, Sinatra, CSNY and Sammy Davis Jr. to name a few.

The fact that he just signed the Beach Boys (and gave them their own record label, Brother Records) really impressed me.

I took the album out of the cover and placed it on my new rig.

Out poured some of the most beautiful music I had heard in years.

It was the Beach Boys for sure, but with a sophistication that I did not expect. I realized that the music that had taken over my world was not oriented in the way that only the Beach Boys could do.

The bands with the best vocal harmonies to release albums during this time was Crosby, Stills and Nash and CSNY.

No doubt they were great, but just as no duet could ever sound like the Everly Brothers, no other musicians/vocalists could sound like the Wilson brothers. The Beach Boys also had a secret weapon: Mike Love. His nasal whine matched the brothers perfectly and when you added Al Jardine and Bruce Johnston, you had a revolver shooting six bullets.

Where Pet Sounds was essentially a Brian Wilson solo album, written and recorded while the band was on a European tour in 1965 – 66, Sunflower was truly a group effort.

The opening track, “Slip on Through” led off the festivities with its off-time intro, followed by the gigantic multi-layered vocal power of “This Whole World.”

“Add Some Music to Your Day” is quintessential B.B.

There are 12 tracks and each one flows into to the next. While it is true that we listened differently in those days (playing the whole of side one into the whole of side two) there was a natural flow which said to me that not only were the songs great, but care was taken as to the arc of the presentation.

The whole band was present and the lead vocals were all shared, and none of these leads was “less than,” Just another flavor maintaining the consistency of the whole.

I lost my original vinyl copy of Sunflower many years ago and recently bought the SACD version from Acoustic Sounds, along with a half-dozen older classic Beach Boys albums.

Playing Sunflower brought back such great memories of 1970.

I then started playing Pet Sounds again. I found vinyl of both a stereo mix as well as a remastered mono mix in my collection.

So much had changed in the four years between these two albums were released and it's not like the Beach Boys hadn't released other albums during that time. They had, and I even had some in my collection (to my surprise) that I had never opened!

1970 however, signaled the end of the Beatles, and the deaths of Jimi, Janis and Jim.

It was a very interesting time. CSN&Y were the biggest American band that year.

1971 was going to unleash Who’s Next, Every Picture Tells a Story, Sticky Fingers, Led Zeppelin IV, the Doors’ L.A. Woman, and Bowie’s Hunky Dory.

But somewhere in this sea change existed this little bit of leftover innocent Americana.

Something that at the time hadn’t been heard in years, and maybe that was what was so fresh about it.

Critics may never replace Pet Sounds on the pecking order of the greatest of all Beach Boys albums. I understand that. But Pet Sounds signaled the end of the bombastic orchestral “wall of wound” era that began (in my consciousness) in August 1963 with the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby” and ended in May 1966 with “River Deep – Mountain High” and Pet Sounds.

Sunflower, in contrast, signaled a new beginning.

Sunflower signaled that the Beach Boys were back.

Enjoy listening to it this summer. I have, immensely!

Jay Jay can be heard on his podcast, The Jay Jay French Connection: Beyond the Music, on Spotify, Apple music and PodcastOne.

Header image: The Beach Boys' Sunflower album cover.

Copper-veneered speakers from Copper reader Mike Van Hoe…it’s a natural combination! In Issue 188 we featured Mike’s copper-clad, custom-built loudspeakers. Well, he didn’t stop with one pair. Here’s the second set of speakers, built using Enchantment veneer covering from BasicCopper.com. We’ll let Mike tell the story:

When you build anything you need to think the whole process through and have a plan. Veneering with copper is actually a pretty straightforward process, very similar to wood veneering. There are several tutorials on YouTube.

One of the most enjoyable parts of the veneering process is picking out the veneer! Before you start applying it, make sure your cabinets are grain-filled and sanded as near to perfect as you can get. Imperfections have a way of biting you in the end. Make sure all the crossover and speaker terminal wiring is complete and attached. It should all be screwed or glued in before start. You don’t want to be digging inside your cabinets after you have veneered them.

I built the cabinets from MDF using plans supplied by the Creative Sound Solutions (CSS) website.

I stuff the open driver holes with crumpled up newspaper before I start. I measure the copper sheets, in this case BasicCopper.com’s Enchantment style (see the ariicle's header image above), to be a little wider and longer than the cabinet – at least 1/2-inch or so on each side. You can use scissors, a utility razor, or tin snips to cut the copper. Gentlemen, do not use your wife’s good scissors! That was mistake number one for me.

Apply contact cement on the copper and the cabinet separately, using a roller. Let them dry for a few minutes. Once the contact cement is just dry, line up the veneer and smooth it on, starting from one end, and smooth it on using a scraper with a rounded plastic edge until you get to the other end. You must be very careful and precise when you line up the veneer. It helps when there are two people to do this because once the two surfaces touch each other it is...well…GAME OVER. They are cemented together permanently. Elbow grease and patience is a must.

The wood pieces for the enclosures.

The scraper and roller used to apply the copper veneer.

As you use the scraper to smooth the veneer, you must press down and squeeze out any air bubbles and make sure the copper and cabinet are well-bonded together. Start in the middle and work to the sides. There are lots of instructional videos out there in YouTube land.

For these Enchantment-veneered speakers, I used Creative Sound Solutions (CSS) 2TD-X MTM kit, which includes all the drivers and crossover components needed. I went with the option where all the speaker components were supplied. These were a little tougher to make than when I used BasicCopper.com’s Wildfire veneer and Audio Nirvana drivers from CommonSense Audio. Why? I only veneered two sides on the Wildfire speakers. I veneered three sides of the Enchantment speakers, which was much more difficult. I had to build a jig to keep the veneer away from the cabinet, thinking I could apply the copper by myself. This was mistake number two.

Crossover components from the Creative Sound Solutions kit.

When I had everything prepared I set the veneer on top of the dowels in the jig and started applying the veneer starting in the middle of the top of the cabinet. I told myself not to panic when I realized that this was not something that could be done by myself. I immediately called my neighbor and told him I had an emergency! He ran over and he held up one end of the veneer while I applied it. I removed one dowel at a time and flattened the veneer to the cabinet using my scraper.

I waited a day or so for the contact cement to cure. After that it was just a matter of trimming the edges. Trimming is something that must be practiced before you attempt it, unless one of your buddies owns an HVAC company (like my friend Christopher). Not practicing the technique would have been mistake number three.

Gluing and clamping the cabinet.

The dowels used in the fabrication jig.

After the trimming I used a file to knock down any sharp spots. I then painted (using a roller) several coats of DuraTex (at least five) speaker cabinet coating on the front, back and bottom. The DuraTex covered the edges of the copper, resulting in a nice transition on the edges. I then wrapped the copper part of the speakers with multiple layers of kitchen cellophane (Glad Wrap or similar) Then I soldered and screwed in the drivers.

At some point in the process they start to look like speakers.

They're taking shape...

Wrapping the speakers after veneering.

Then came the most terrifying part: will the speakers even work? Did I wire the crossovers correctly? Did I maintain polarity correctly? Was this going to be mistake number three?

The results were absolutely KILLER! They sounded amazing and also looked pretty cool! I spent dozens of hours building them and they were well worth the result. 

After a couple of years, I’ve noticed a that few air bubbles have appeared. Still worth it? Heck yeah!

Almost there...

And all that hard work pays off.

Header image: the Enchantment raw copper veneer sheets from BasicCopper.com.

When it comes to the past 35 years of soul music, much of the sound and style has been shaped by producer and musician Raphael Saadiq. While his influence in the studio producing stars like Erykah Badu and Mary J. Blige might be the more visible part of his career, Saadiq has been creating his own music since the 1990s. Over the past 15 years he has also become a pioneer of sound-production techniques.

The Oakland, California native was born in 1966. As a child he learned bass guitar and sang gospel. He was barely 18 when he was hired as the bassist for Prince’s backing band, led by Sheila E. That was when he changed his name from Charles Wiggins to Raphael Wiggins. Following that tour, he and a brother and cousin started an R&B band called Tony! Toni! Toné! (aka the Tonys), which enjoyed big success for almost 10 years.

The Tonys’ first album, released in 1988 by the Wing offshoot of Mercury records, was called Who? It was produced by a couple of friends from the Oakland area, Denzil Foster and Thomas McElroy, who were soon to become the sought-after R&B production team, Foster & McElroy. An important ingredient of that duo’s secret sauce was the use of new jack swing, the application of hip-hop rhythmic techniques to soul music.

The lead single from Who?, “Little Walter,” hit the number one spot on the R&B charts; the album itself went gold. The album-only song “Pain,” written by the band, is typical of the romantic side of the Tonys. Lots of drum machine and smooth, sexy vocals. The soloist is Dwayne Wiggins, Raphael’s brother.

In the mid-1990s Rafael changed his last name to Saadiq – Arabic for “Man of the world” – at the height of the band’s fame, partly as a signal that he had ambitions beyond Tony! Toni! Toné! By that point he had a strong foothold in producing what marketing teams had started to call “neo-soul,” a term that amused Saadiq. “It’s just soul,” he told one reporter.

The Tonys’ next album, Revival, sold even more widely, beyond just the R&B market. They followed that with Sons of Soul in1993, producing it themselves. It’s fair to say that the Tonys’ importance lies in their integration of old-school and new effects, equipment, and instruments. There was turntable scratching in the same songs as an acoustic horn section, and programmed drum tracks playing under upright bass.

As the name implies, Sons of Soul is meant to draw attention to the roots of that genre in the 1960s and 1970s. It also finds Saadiq (still billed as Rafael Wiggins) writing some songs on his own. One of those is the sleek and funky “I Couldn’t Keep It to Myself.”

After one more album, House of Music, the Tonys called it quits in 1997. Saadiq’s career continued to grow. Among other projects, he ended up in the R&B supergroup Lucy Pearl along with En Vogue’s Dawn Robinson and A Tribe Called Quest’s Ali Shaheed Muhammad. It was a short-lived idea: their only release was called Lucy Pearl, which came out in 1999.

In 2002, Saadiq struck out on his own as a performer. So far, he has made five solo albums. He had enough of a reputation to sign with Universal Music for his debut, Instant Vintage. At its core, Instant Vintage is gospel, but it also draws on jazz, soul, and funk. The song “Blind Man” is a good demonstration of all these traditions blended into a heartfelt, philosophical lyric. 

Unhappy with the sales of Instant Village, despite its Grammy nomination for best R&B album, Universal dropped Saadiq. His response was to go indie, starting his own label, Pookie Entertainment. The only album he made on that label was 2004’s Ray Ray.

Saadiq didn’t have to wait long for big corporate music to come knocking again. For his third solo album, he signed with Columbia Records. The Way I See It, from 2008, was a labor of love for Saadiq and engineer Charles Brungardt. Both of them were passionate about exploring retro recording techniques, defying the push to make music sound more technologically advanced. As usual for a Saadiq album, however, the old is mixed with the new. The vocals and drums were recorded through dynamic mics and their sound filtered through ProTools and FilterBank (an equalizer plugin) to make them sound vintage.

Saadiq and Brungardt focused on recreating the Philadelphia Soul and Motown sounds. That meant bringing in a lot of musicians to play the dense arrangements essential to classic soul. Saadiq himself, besides singing and producing, played bass, drums, keyboards, and sitar. Among the styles they paid tribute to were New Orleans jazz (“Big Easy”) and both Latin and doo-wop, combined in the song “Calling,” which features Mexican ballad singer Rocio Mendoza.

The Way I See It was a surprise popular hit, and critics loved it for its carefully-crafted sound production. Sticking with both Columbia and Brungardt, and bringing in Paul Riser for horn and string arrangements, Saadiq’s next album was Stone Rollin’ (2011). His goal this time was to recreate the raw sound of live performance.

Brungardt replaced the tube compressors and preamps from The Way I See It with solid-state equipment for Stone Rollin’. He upped the gain on Saadiq’s guitar amps, influenced by production trends in indie music, which favored a DIY or “bedroom pop” sound. Among the album’s most important sonic elements is Saadiq’s work on a Mellotron, an electronic keyboard/synthesizer popular in the 1960s, which uses magnetic tape to play analog samples, which can be altered in pitch and color.

Jimmy Lee is Saadiq’s most recent album, released in 2019. The title refers to Saadiq’s late brother, who died of a drug overdose (one of four Wiggins siblings who died young of various tragedies). In fact, most of the album’s songs focus on deep-seated societal ills like addiction and mass incarceration. Jimmy Lee is also distinctive for the scaled-down studio presence. No horns and strings this time, and only a few extra personnel for drums (Chris Dave) and multiple synthesizers.

Despite the darkness of the topics, Saadiq has not lost his musical imagination. He has always been an artist of contrasts. The jagged rhythms of “Something Keeps Calling Me” provides a surprising but effective complement to his smooth-soul voice. He may not like the term neo-soul, but this is a new approach to the genre. Rob Bacon provides the heartfelt guitar solo.

Saadiq is currently preparing for a reunion tour with Tony! Toni! Toné! As for recent producing efforts, he worked on the album Renaissance by Beyoncé. And the score he composed for the HBO series Lovecraft Country was nominated for an Emmy award.

Header image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Rama.