Issue 209

I belong to a listening group that gets together to socialize and listen to music. We meet in each of our homes on a rotating basis. The host provides the playlist, wine, and food. When it is my turn, I usually make a playlist with a specific theme. In preparation for one of these sessions, I decided on folk singers as my theme. I created a much-too-long list of every folk singer or group whom I ever enjoyed, and was faced with the dilemma of selecting which ones to play for the group. I decided on familiarity as the main criterion and chose artists associated with the folk music revival of the 1960s: Bob Dylan, Judy Collins, Leonard Cohen, et al.

When I was done, I found that there were 21 un-included folk singers or groups, mostly artists from an earlier time. This led to my constructing a second playlist for my own enjoyment. This can be viewed as a “B-side” to the first one. I find that I prefer this second playlist and listen to it much more frequently than the first.

This is the last of a series of three articles discussing “the other folk singers.” (Previous installments appeared in Issue 206 and Issue 207.)

The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem

By 1956, the Clancy Brothers (Liam, Paddy, and Tom) and good friend, Tommy Makem, had all emigrated from Ireland to the United States and began performing as The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem. Initially, they were more interested in acting careers, with music as a secondary pursuit. In 1959, they decided to more seriously pursue their music and met with instant success, with bookings in New York, Chicago, and Boston. They are often credited with popularizing traditional Irish music in the United States.

In 1961, they performed on The Ed Sullivan Show and when another act failed to appear, Sullivan asked them to fill both slots for the show. All told, they performed for almost 15 minutes. They were then approached by John Hammond from Columbia Records, who signed The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem to a lucrative five-year contract. For their first Columbia album, A Spontaneous Performance Recording, they enlisted Pete Seeger to be their banjo player. That album received a Grammy nomination for Best Folk Album of 1962. This was followed by an acclaimed concert at Carnegie Hall and appearances on major television and radio shows.

While attaining great success in the United States, the group was mostly unknown to the rest of the world until a noted Irish radio personality, Ciarán MacMathuna, came to the US and heard their music. He returned to Ireland with copies of their albums, which received considerable play on his radio broadcasts. This led to a sold-out tour of Ireland. Worldwide fame soon followed. Of note was a command performance for President Kennedy in 1963. Partially due to riding the crest of the folk music revival in the US, the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem were highly successful through the 1960s.

In 1969, Makem left the group to pursue a solo career, replaced by brother Bobby Clancy. The heyday had passed. Various people were members of the group over the next 30 years until The Clancy Brothers finally called it quits in 1998. However, there were several reunions thereafter.

The Highwaymen

The Highwaymen (not to be confused with the 1980s country music supergroup with the same name) began at Wesleyan University in Connecticut in 1958. The group consisted of five freshman students, led by Dave Fisher, who was their lead vocalist and arranger. Their biggest hit was “Michael Row the Boat Ashore,” an old African-American work song that had previously been released by other folk artists. The Highwaymen’s rendition of this song sold over a million copies and reached number 1 on the Billboard charts. Their recording of Lead Belly’s “Cotton Fields” was another hit. They also helped popularize traditional folk songs such as “Big Rock Candy Mountain” and “All My Trials,” which would subsequently be recorded by many artists.

It should be noted that the five Highwaymen continued their studies at Wesleyan University while pursuing their music careers. All graduated in 1962. They had been dropped by their record label, United Artists, when a single they released in 1959 did not do well. However, the B-side, “Michael Row the Boat Ashore,” took two years to achieve popularity. As a result, their career reached a peak, with United Artists back on board and leading to appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show. Upon graduation from college, one member left the group to go to law school and was replaced by Gil Robbins, the father of actor Tim Robbins. The Highwaymen all moved to New York’s Greenwich Village where they began an extended engagement at the Gaslight Cafe.

However, a dichotomy existed in the folk music movement in the early 1960s. There were those such as the Kingston Trio and the Highwaymen who mainly wanted to entertain and there were others such as Bob Dylan and Phil Ochs who were more interested in political and social issues. History tells us that the latter mostly prevailed. The Highwaymen recognized that trend and started to politicize their music. But in 1964, all but Fisher decided to explore other paths, and enrolled in advanced degree programs at prestigious universities.

Dave Fisher moved to Hollywood and had a very successful career composing and arranging music for movies and television. He wrote over a thousand songs and also worked as a studio musician and singer. The others attained their advanced degrees and had productive careers outside the music business. The Highwaymen got together from time to time for reunion concerts and a couple of albums over the years. They last performed together in 2009.

Cisco Houston 

Cisco Houston. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/public domain.

Gilbert Vandine Houston was born in Delaware in 1918 and moved to California when he was very young. While in high school, he started playing the guitar and was greatly influenced by folk songs he learned from his grandmother. During the Great Depression, he left home with guitar in hand to travel and work odd jobs throughout the western United States. He adopted his chosen forename after visiting a California mountain community called Cisco during his travels. His repertoire of songs broadened substantially during a period when he was working as a cowboy. As his reputation grew, he began performing at clubs and on radio shows.

Houston returned to California to pursue acting. Shortly thereafter, he was introduced to Woody Guthrie at a radio station and they bonded and became close friends. He discussed that relationship in a booklet that accompanied one of his albums: “We traveled up and down California singing together in the fruit pickers’ camps and saloons. We shipped out together in the Merchant Marines during the war.” After World War II, Houston moved to New York and found himself mingling with Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and many other people involved in the folk music movement. When Folkways Records was established, Houston performed on two of their first albums. He also appeared in a Broadway show while in New York.

During the 1950s, Houston hosted a radio show and regularly appeared at colleges and in clubs. He recorded for several record labels and often was a guest on radio and television programs. He sometimes played the songs of his good friend Woody Guthrie. Houston also toured India with other folk artists under the sponsorship of the US State Department.

Throughout his career, Houston was criticized by people who said that his baritone voice was too polished and inappropriate for a folk singer. It didn't have that folksy twang. Of course, he disagreed: “Some of our folk song exponents seem to think you have to go way back in the hills and drag out the worst singer in the world before it's authentic. Now, this is nonsense...Just because he's old and got three arthritic fingers and two strings left on the banjo doesn't prove anything.”

Cisco Houston was a very intelligent person, so much so that most people didn't realize that he suffered from a rare abnormality that severely limited his vision. He died from stomach cancer at the age of 42. In his inimitable style, this is what he said shortly before he passed: “Well, nobody likes to run out of time. But it's not nearly the tragedy of Hiroshima or the millions of people blown to hell in the war, that could have been avoided. These are real tragedies…" 

Karen Dalton

Karen Dalton, nee Jean Karen Cariker, was born in Texas in 1937 and raised in Oklahoma. She dropped out of high school and by the time she was 21, had a son and a daughter and was twice divorced. Dalton left her children in Oklahoma and moved to New York in the early 1960s. She brought her 12-string Gibson guitar and long necked banjo (27 frets!) with her and became immersed in the Greenwich Village folk scene. Her 5-year-old daughter joined her shortly thereafter. Dalton played with some of the major folk stars at that time, including Bob Dylan, who sometimes backed her on harmonica. In Dylan’s 2004 memoir he said, “My favorite singer was Karen Dalton. She had a voice like Billie Holiday and played guitar like Jimmy Reed.”

Dalton married her third husband and they moved to Colorado for a couple of years. When that marriage ended, she sent her daughter back to Oklahoma and returned to New York to pursue her career. She exhibited a conflicting persona when it came to her music. On the one hand, she was fiercely uncompromising with record companies and band musicians, while on the other hand she was often a shy and reluctant performer. She had little interaction with her audience. She would frequently find excuses to cancel performances, preferring to just play music with friends at home.

In her entire career, she only produced two albums. Bassist Harvey Brooks played on the first, It’s So Hard to Tell Who’s Going to Love You the Best, and produced and played on the second, In My Own Time. The first was actually recorded while Dalton thought she was rehearsing. Neither album did well commercially. With the second album in 1971, Dalton made her most serious attempt at success in the music business. It is more polished than the first. (However, I personally, prefer the first.) It includes covers of well-known songs such as “When a Man Loves a Woman” and “How Sweet It Is (to be Loved By To Be Loved By You).” She also plays her banjo on several songs.

The album was followed by Dalton signing on as the opening act for a Santana tour. This turned out to be a disaster. The Santana crowd was not interested in the music of Karen Dalton. This was exemplified by an incident where her band was onstage but she never came out because the crowd was chanting for Santana. Her best effort for commercial success in the music business turned into the death knell for her career.

Dalton being compared with Billie Holiday is due to her singing style and, also, the tumultuous life she lived. You can hear it in her world-weary voice. She had lost two lower teeth when she was punched in the face during a fight between her live-in boyfriend and another man with whom she was having an affair. Dalton exhibited mood swings and was often deep in depression. She became increasingly addicted to drugs and alcohol, exacerbated by guilt from her abandonment of her children.

It is thought that the Band’s “Katie’s Been Gone” is an homage to Dalton. Ultimately, she faded into a life of drugs and poverty in New York City. Many years later, folk musician and good friend Peter Walker brought an AIDS-infected Dalton to Woodstock, New York where he cared for her until she passed away in 1993. She was 55 and had been battling AIDS for eight years.

I have regrets about certain deceased artists whom I never saw in person despite having had opportunities. Doc Watson, John Prine, and Karen Dalton come to mind.

The Brothers Four

The Brothers Four. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/public domain.

The Brothers Four met as members of a fraternity at the University of Washington in 1956. The name of the group is derived from the fact that they were fraternity brothers, not from being blood relatives. After 67 years, they are still led by original member, Bob Flick, and are one of the longest-lived music groups in history.

They turned professional as a result of a practical joke. A rival fraternity fooled them into thinking that a Seattle club was inviting them to audition. When they arrived at the club, the manager of the venue had no idea who they were but allowed them to perform a few songs. He liked what he heard and hired them. That engagement lasted through most of 1958 and gave them the opportunity to hone their act.

The Kingston Trio had a major hit with “Tom Dooley” at that time and the folk revival boom began. The Brothers Four headed to San Francisco and while performing at the Hungry I club, signed up with Dave Brubeck’s manager, who negotiated a contract with Columbia Records. The group’s first single was a failure but their second, “Greenfields,” rose to number 2 on the Billboard charts. It sold over a million copies and remained in the top 40 for 20 weeks. The Brothers Four were then in high demand and had concert engagements across the country. Their first album was released towards the end of 1960 and made it into the top 20.

1961 was a very good year for The Brothers Four. They had another hit, “The Green Leaves of Summer,” from the movie The Alamo which starred John Wayne. The song received an Oscar nomination and they performed it at the 1961 Academy Awards. An album they released that year reached number 4 on the Billboard charts. They also performed at President Kennedy’s inauguration.

In 1963, they recorded “Hootenanny Saturday Night,” the theme song for the ABC television series Hootenanny. However, the British Invasion and the emergence of folk-rock put an end to much of the success they had been enjoying. They still were able to get bookings at venues catering to older audiences who were not interested in electrified music or the protest songs that had gained dominance in folk music. However, the prime of their career had passed. The last album recorded by the original Brothers Four, A New World’s Record, was released in 1967. But they have endured and are still performing.

Patrick Sky

Patrick Sky, album cover.

Patrick Sky (born Patrick Lynch) was of Creek Indian and Irish descent and grew up in the ancestral Creek Indian region of Louisiana. Early on, he learned to play guitar, banjo, and harmonica and performed traditional folk songs largely learned from his grandmother. After attending college and serving a stint in the Army, Sky began to take his music career more seriously and began performing in clubs and coffee houses throughout the United States.

Sky found his way to Greenwich Village and became a stalwart in the folk music community. He developed friendships with Dave Van Ronk, Eric Andersen, and other folk artists. He also produced three albums for blues icon Mississippi John Hurt during this period. Sky wrote a number of songs and also performed traditional music. He was best known for his rendition of “Separation Blues.” A song Sky wrote, “Many a Mile,” was covered by quite a few folk artists.

Over time, Sky’s music became much more political and outspoken, influenced by the likes of Will Rogers and Woody Guthrie. In 1971, he recorded an album, Songs That Made America Famous, that was so controversial it was rejected by many record companies until finding a home with the fledgling indie label, Adelphi Records, two years later. This album featured satire on topics such as Christianity, anti-Semitism, feminism, and corruption. Political correctness be damned!

I saw Patrick Sky perform several times when I was a regular at the Cafe Au Go Go in the 1960s. However, my recollection of him was just a blur among the sea of great artists I experienced at that time. In researching this article, fond memories of his wry sense of humor and the boyish smile on his face began to re-emerge. I thoroughly enjoyed Patrick Sky back in the day.

Sky became disgruntled with the music business and stopped recording and performing for a while. He became interested in Irish traditional music and co-founded a record label dedicated to Celtic music. His focus turned to producing other artists. Sky later became a recognized expert on building and playing Irish Uilleann pipes. He also established a penny whistle manufacturing company while visiting Ireland.

Patrick Sky’s last album, Down to Us, was produced in 2009. It featured him on Uilleann pipes with his wife on fiddle playing traditional Irish music. He passed away in 2021 at the age of 80.

Pete Seeger

Pete Seeger. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Library of Congress/World Telegram & Sun collection/Fred Palumbo.

Pete Seeger was born into a musical family in New York City in 1919. His father was a professor of musicology and his mother a concert violinist who later taught at The Juilliard School. Seeger learned to play the ukulele at a young age and the guitar and banjo a little later. He attended Harvard University but became increasingly interested in politics and folk music and dropped out after two years. His father’s friend, Alan Lomax, hired Seeger to work at the Archive of American Folk Song of the Library of Congress. Seeger was soon a regular performer on Lomax’s weekly radio program and found himself mingling with the likes of Lead Belly,  Woody Guthrie, and Burl Ives.

In 1940, Seeger formed the Almanac Singers, a quartet that also included Woody Guthrie. They were often joined by other folk artists such as Lead Belly, Cisco Houston, and Josh White. Their songs regularly touched on anti-war, anti-racism, and pro-union themes. The Almanac Singers were active until 1943. They had abandoned their anti-war position, and Seeger went on to serve in the Army during World War II. He was trained as an airplane mechanic but was reassigned to entertain the troops with his music.

In 1948, Seeger (along with Lee Hays from the Almanac Singers) formed the Weavers. That group was discussed in a previous article in this series (Part One, in Issue 206). Their recording of Lead Belly’s “Goodnight, Irene” sold over a million copies and was the first folk song to reach number 1 on the popular music charts. All was well until Seeger and Hays were accused of being members of the Communist Party and were forced to appear in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee. Decca Records canceled the Weavers’ contract and deleted all of their recordings from their catalog. There were anti-Weavers protests at many performances. They disbanded in 1952 after being together only four years. The Weavers reunited in 1955, but Seeger left a few years later because he thought the group was becoming too commercial.

After the 1950s, Seeger mostly worked as a solo performer, occasionally with family members. He was very active in the civil rights protests of the 1960s. His arrangement of the old spiritual “We Shall Overcome” became an anthem of sorts for that movement. At the Vietnam Moratorium March on Washington in 1969 he led half a million people in singing John Lennon’s “Give Peace a Chance.” In the 1970s, he was instrumental in a program to clean up New York’s Hudson River. As late as 2009, he and Bruce Springsteen led the audience in singing Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land” as the finale to President Obama’s inaugural concert.

Seeger wrote or co-wrote songs that have become standards: “If I Had a Hammer,” “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” “Turn, Turn, Turn,” “Kisses Sweeter Than Wine,” and others. He became a fixture at folk festivals where he encouraged collaborative singing by the audience. Seeger was awarded a National Medal of the Arts. inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and received two Grammy awards.

Pete Seeger’s dedication and accomplishments never stopped. A few months before he passed away, he was singing “This Land is Your Land” with Willie Nelson, Neil Young, and others at a Farm Aid concert in Saratoga Springs, New York. He died at the age of 94 in 2014.

Conclusion

Most of the 21 folk artists discussed in this series were performing in the 1950s and early 1960s. As I researched these artists, some generalizations emerged. New York's Greenwich Village was the nerve center for the folk movement. During its 23 years on the air, The Ed Sullivan Show had an enormous impact on folk and other popular music. Many folk artists such as the Highwaymen, the Chad Mitchell Trio, and the Limelighters simply wanted to entertain. Others, such as Pete Seeger, Odetta, and Woody Guthrie were performing largely to promote social and political change. History tells us that the latter for the most part prevailed. The next generation, led by the likes of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Phil Ochs were sometimes called “protest singers,” with a focus on societal issues.

With that in mind, certain themes are apparent in the history of folk music. Liberal politics, anti-war sentiments, civil rights, and the plight of ordinary people were often front and center. Some folk artists developed associations with (Democratic) US presidents including Franklin Roosevelt, Kennedy, Clinton, and Obama.

I began this series of articles with Woody Guthrie and ended with Pete Seeger. This was intentional. Those two names appear over and over again when discussing folk music. Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, two giants in the history of our music!

Header image: Pete Seeger, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/public domain/Donna Lou Morgan, US Navy.

Over the next couple of issues or so, Copper will feature reminiscences by Paul McGowan, co-founder and CEO of PS Audio and Octave Records, which look back on the history of PS Audio as it celebrates its 50^th anniversary.

Part One: In the Beginning

50 years ago, in 1974, Stan Warren knocked on my door.

It was one week after he first listened to the phono preamplifier I had designed for the local radio station, KXFM. Following his excitement of how much better that prototype sounded than his reference Dynaco preamplifier, he decided it would make sense to start a company to manufacture that very circuit.

Stan was a man of action. He sold his van, scraped together $500, and approached me with his idea of starting an audio company.

"Sure! What would we sell?"

"The phono preamplifier you designed," said Stan.

"Who would buy it?"

"Audiophiles."

"What's an audiophile?" I asked, followed by, "what would we call our company?"

"Paul and Stan Audio. PS Audio for short."

And thus it all began, based on Stan's idea and his naming scheme. But, we needed a logo – a wordmark, a brand.

In the mid 1970s there were no computers on which one could design a logo or, for that matter, anything. Back then, if you wanted a design, you had two choices: hire an artist, or rely upon pre-made art. As we had zero money, we chose the latter.

Pre-made art came in a number of forms but the easiest to use were called dry transfers – basically, sheets of vellum with inked letters or images affixed to one side. To use the art or typography, you carefully placed the sheet where you wanted it to go, lined it up so it was level and in position, and then with a pencil-like tool, rubbed the vellum's top surface to transfer the bottom-impregnated ink onto a piece of paper or whatever medium you were using.

Back then, there weren't a lot of typography choices, but one of the few that looked distinctive, and we hadn't seen much of, was called Blippo Black. It was a typeface originally designed by Joe Taylor in 1969 and became the basis of the original PS Audio logo:

The AUDIO part was a more conventional Helvetica style and to kiss off the design, Stan suggested adding the upside-down symbol of a PNP transistor.

Over the years the logo evolved in an attempt to keep the brand fresh:

One of the last logos we came up with was in 1988, just before I sold the company to head out to Colorado and build loudspeakers with Infinity founder Arnie Nudell:

The new owners of PS Audio weren't too enamored with this simplistic style, so they went back to the 3D raised look and stayed with that style until Terri and I bought back our company in 1997 and launched the first Power Plants with this logo:

This was our brand for quite some time, until we started noticing that it became more of a stylized mark than an identifiable “PS.” In fact, we noticed more and more people who didn't even know what that stylized mark stood for and could not identify the name of the company.

Our takeaway from that experience was twofold: learning the value of a stylized mark, and the value of an identifiable name. We then combined the two into our current logo, which combines the written name with an identifiable stylized shape (a sine wave):

Today, we proudly display our logo as the embodiment of our brand promise: delivering high-value, high-performance audio equipment to people we think of as our Hi-Fi Family.

Header image: Paul McGowan behind some vintage and historic PS Audio components.

My mother was disgusted. “How can he exploit a young girl like that?" she exclaimed as she passed the newspaper. The headline read: "82-Year-Old Millionaire to Wed 22-Year-Old Model." It was accompanied by a photo. He looked to be about the same age as the Mississippi River, and she looked like a cheerleader in high school – the one who thought Mississippi was the wife of Mister Sippy.

I read the full story. Turns out he was an oil baron who saw her image in a magazine and was struck by her resemblance to a girl he’d lusted after in high school – the one with whom he could never get to first base.

Now he could afford to slide into home plate with a reasonable facsimile. So, he hired a private detective to track her down, wined and dined her at his mansion, and asked her to marry him.

She was from an economically devastated town in the Midwest where half the people were either pregnant or on drugs (or both), and the other half were in jail. She saw an opportunity to escape this grinding poverty by playing the role of spouse to an octogenarian who would likely spoil her like a grandpa for a few years, and conveniently expire before her 30th birthday – leaving her set for life.

"Seems like an effective survival strategy to me," I said to my mother.

"That can’t be real love"; she continued, "They are just into it for what they can get."

"I’ll bet this marriage is more likely than most to last 'till death us do part," I responded. "Maybe age plus beauty equals success."

"True love is a sacred emotion," she said; "It’s not a physics equation."

Her statement got me thinking about the nature of love. What is it exactly? I hit the psychology section at the local library to investigate the answer. My mother was right; psychology is not physics. Newtonian physicists all agree on the same precepts – the laws of gravity for example. But each psychologist seemed to have a different definition for love. This avenue of investigation looked to be a dead end until I came across a theorem by Julian Braebourne:

"People love each other to the degree to which they meet each other’s needs."

This statement perfectly explained the headline marriage. The 82-year-old man needed some arm candy and the young girl needed a means of escaping poverty. They married because they were able to meet each other’s needs.

Isn’t that the reason all people engage in relationships, I wondered, whether it be marriage, business, or friendships?

"Conversely," Braebourne wrote, "people cease to love one another to the degree to which they fail to meet each other’s needs.”

I applied this concept to our relatives. Some of them were no longer welcome in our home – so much for family bonds. I applied it to our friends. It didn’t take long to figure out what needs were being ignored in the troubled relationships. It occurred to me that the rocketing divorce rate could be ameliorated if people simply made more of an effort to meet each other’s needs.

Braebourne presented a corollary which read:

"Psychological bonds are created only when parties mutually meet each other’s social, emotional, or physical needs (singly, or in combination)."

This was a revelation to me. I’d never had any friends due to my crippling insecurities. My father was a character assassin who never missed an opportunity to take a shot at my self-esteem. Because he treated my siblings much differently, I’d come to believe that there must be some congenital flaws in my character, so I didn’t even try to make friends. (I learned decades later that he was not my biological father.).

Braebourne’s corollary gave me hope. Perhaps I could make friends simply by identifying and meeting needs, despite my congenital flaws. I pondered all night on the subject.

The next day, I didn’t sit by myself in the school cafeteria, I joined the "loser’s table" because they were the only ones who wouldn’t challenge my presence. One guy talked about his mini-bike problems; another just sat there looking down at his food. A girl lamented losing her sister to disease; another one talked about her love of baking.

I offered to help the guy with the mini-bike and the following Saturday afternoon, rebuilt his carburetor and struck up relationships with his brothers. I learned that the low-self-esteem guy also had an abusive father and we bonded by sharing our challenges. I attended the sister’s funeral where I met her family; her brother and I became friends. At my request, the baker started bringing her cookies to school and shared them with the other students at lunch. As a result, she made new friends and as a token of appreciation, brought me a "special bag" every Monday morning.

When it became obvious that people valued my engagement with them, my self-esteem soared. This belied everything the character assassin had taught me. It was a mind-bending period of change and growth.

I carried on in college. The first thing I did for the people in my milieu was to figure out what they needed and invest in their welfare. Often that involved little more than respecting and sympathizing with their woes.

My psych prof lamented the fact that he had to move to a different apartment, so I borrowed a truck and helped him. As one of the few students who owned a car at the time, I volunteered to chauffeur fellow students with me to concerts, shopping malls, or specialty stores in which I was interested. They often bought me lunch – me, one of the least popular kids in public school!

I had the best audio system in the grad apartment complex – an Empire 395 turntable, Marantz receiver, and large Wharfedale speakers with sand-filled enclosure walls. I invited those who showed an interest in music over to my place for Saturday listening sessions. Soon, the regulars included my psych prof and the school’s registrar. The crowd got so large, I broke it into smaller groups and cycled them according to their musical and pharmaceutical tastes (it was the Sixties). I became popular simply by meeting needs, despite my congenital personality flaws!

Not all people responded well. Some were suspicious of my motives. This bothered me so I mentioned it to my psych prof. "They crucified Christ and he was presumed to be perfect, Jan, so what chance do you have to please everyone? Don’t throw your pearls to swine."

Others took advantage of my magnanimity. I spent several days restoring a motorcycle to operating condition and never heard from the guy again. I had to learn to spit out the pits in order to enjoy the cherries.

After college, I landed my biggest accounts for International Paper Corporation using the same method. When I heard that the supervisor of an art department at a local college was unhappy with his reduced budget, I located a couple of abandoned pallets of mixed media in one of our warehouses on the East Coast. Then I offered them to him for pennies on the dollar. After that, the college ordered all their supplies from me.

In the cafeteria of a hospital account, I overheard a nurse lamenting that she just couldn’t afford a drum set for her young son. So, I contacted a musician buddy who happened to know of a used set and he arranged to get it to her. A few weeks later, her cousin called and asked me to drop over to talk about ordering supplies. That's how I landed the local distillery account.

By loitering in their head-office store, I learned that the CEO of a chain of auto supply stores had scored a deal on a used cabin cruiser, but he was distressed to discover that a new trailer was going to cost him almost as much as he'd paid for the boat. I spent all day on the phone (before the internet), found him a used one 1,400 miles away, and dropped in to tell him about it. He called the owner immediately and I had one of our trucks deliver it on a return run. He became my largest customer.

The challenge for me was not to "push product," as my boss urged, but to identify and meet needs. That resulted not only in new business, but also in new friendships.

When I saw an ad appealing for volunteers for the Big Brothers organization, I responded and a month later, made a commitment to the 8-year-old son of a divorced woman. For 10 years until he left for college, I took him on all sorts of adventures on my motorcycle.

I agreed to serve on the Big Brothers’ board of directors. In order to help finance the organization, I co-founded a local chapter of a service club called Optimist International, which grew very fast. That got me some media attention, which resulted in an offer to sit on the city council's Social Services Advisory Committee. Some of the members of the city council became friends and a year later, the city became my client. That wasn’t my intention; I just set out to help a kid in need.

When BMW stopped making simple air-cooled motorcycles in favor of heavier, more complicated ones, many owners felt abandoned (included me). I recognized the need for an airhead BMW club so I started one. It grew to be a national organization with over 3,000 members which hosted events in every state. The club was instrumental in forming many lifelong friendships. I enjoyed the events, camaraderie, and acclaim for over 31 years before finally hanging up my helmet.

20 Years ago, when the local audio club needed a new president, I volunteered. It’s a lot of work, but it resulted in another large circle of longstanding friends.

Despite a deep-seated lack of self-esteem which has never ceased to nag me, and my failure to internalize the lessons of Freud, Jung, Erikson, Frankl, etc., I lived a gratifying life simply by leveraging the principle of Karma: "What goes around comes around." By focusing on the needs of others, I satisfied my own.

Maybe that’s why it’s more blessed to give than to receive.

Courtesy of Clipart-library.com.

Header image courtesy of Pexels.com/Lamar Belina.

Audiophiles and music lovers alike have a special place in their hearts for classic jazz and standards, and Octave Records’ latest, Jazz Classics: 1950s from pianist/organist Tom Amend will be sure to delight with its inviting arrangements and stunning DSD sound quality. The album offers some of the most well-known jazz classics and standards of the 1950s, including “Easy Living,” “Take Five,” “You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To,” “Round Midnight,” and six others.

Jazz Classics: 1950s features Tom Amend on piano and Hammond B3 organ, vocalist Louisa Amend, Seth Lewis on upright bass, Braxton Kahn on drums, Gabriel Mervine playing trumpet, and Daryl Gott on alto saxophone. The playing is at turns passionate, relaxed, and always swinging. The sound is warm yet dynamic and detailed with extraordinary clarity, thanks to Octave Records’ Pyramix-based Pure DSD 256 high-resolution recording process, used with Neumann and Gefell condenser microphones and vacuum-tube Manley Labs mic preamps. The album was recorded, mixed and produced by Paul McGowan, with Terri McGowan and Jessica Carson assisting in the recording, mixing and production duties, and mastered by Gus Skinas.

Jazz Classics: 1950s opens with “You Go to My Head,” with Louisa Amend’s vocals sounding silky-smooth and inviting, a sound that hearkens back to a golden era of jazz recording, yet offers depth, texture and tonal character made possible by the remarkable fidelity of the Pure DSD 256 recording system. The instrumentalists on the track, Tom on piano, Seth on bass and Braxton on drums are in perfect balance with Louisa’s vocals and provide sympathetic accompaniment at every turn.

Tom Amend.

Next, the four perform a heartfelt version of “Easy Living,” then Louisa lays out and alto saxophonist Daryl Gott joins in for “Along Came Betty,” a gorgeous version of Thelonious Monk’s classic ballad “Round Midnight,” followed by a medium-tempo take on John Coltrane’s “Lazy Bird.”

Louisa returns to sing “Old Devil Moon,” with Tom switching to the deep tones of a Hammond B3. Tom keeps the jazz-organ groove going with Richard Rodgers’ upbeat “The Sweetest Sounds,” joined by Louisa, Daryl, Braxton and trumpeter Gabriel Mervine. Jazz Classics: 1950s concludes with instrumental versions of the legendary “Take Five,” featuring Gabriel and Daryl harmonizing on the melody and the quartet stretching out, followed by Thelonious Monk’s “We See,” and an easygoing version of Cole Porter’s “You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To.”

Jazz Classics: 1950s 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.)

Just as I was running out of things to write about for Copper, a mysterious gift landed on my doorstep. One day, someone left a large bag at the reception of my clinic. When I was able to get a minute after my morning session, I took a look and found about three dozen commercial four-track tapes. It turned out that the tapes were delivered by a friend who knows I am into reel-to-reel tapes. In fact, the tapes were given to him by a mutual friend, a conservatory-trained musician turned high-powered lawyer. Our mutual friend's father was a music lover and audiophile, and left his daughter a large collection of music, mostly LPs but also some reel-to-reel tapes. It was her father's passion that inspired her to train as a musician, but it was also due to her father's insistence that she ended up going to law school. Call it old fashioned Chinese paternalistic instinct. She has no means to play the tapes and gave them to my friend, knowing that he is an audiophile. My friend has no interest in getting into tapes and hence I received this manna from heaven.

My friend was only half correct that I am into reel-to-reel tapes. Both of my tape machines are professional studio models, designed to play two-track stereo tapes. In order to play four-track tapes, a consumer or prosumer machine is needed. The tapes I received are very attractive, mostly classical titles and box sets of operas. Most of them are highly-regarded recordings in both musical and audiophile terms. Having been convinced by Ken Kessler, through his articles in Copper, on the merits of four-track tapes, I bit the bullet and decided to invest in the equipment in order to play these tapes. In fact, I already had a handful of four-track tapes on my shelf, which I bought years ago. These are celebrated recordings that would have cost a fortune to buy on first-pressing LPs. One could buy the tapes in those days for about $5 each. I also briefly owned an Otari MX5050II prosumer machine equipped with both two-track and four-track playback heads, but gave it away due to a lack of space.

I would like to share my experience during this journey with readers of Copper, and I am convinced that even though the prices of the tapes have gone up in recent years, they still represent tremendous value as a source of audiophile recordings.

Just a quick primer on the history of commercial reel-to-reel tapes. These started appearing around 1954 with the advent of stereophonic recordings. Since the record labels had not yet found a way to reproduce stereo on LPs, the earliest stereo recordings were only available on tape. Initially, two mono playback heads were placed staggered side by side to play the two stereo tracks, which resulted in a small distance between the head gap of the heads. If these tapes are played with a stereo head, the two channels will be a few hundredths of a second out of sync. Soon, true stereo heads were invented, the so called in-line heads. The tapes were typically 1/4-inch wide, played at a speed of 7.5 inches per second (ips) and sold on 7-inch plastic reels. Each reel could hold a maximum of 48 minutes of program, roughly equal to one LP. The cost was very high compared to LPs, and only well-heeled and very serious audiophiles would buy them.

After a few years, the record labels introduced the four-track format. Each track is therefore half the width of the previous format, and the reel is flipped over and played back in the other direction after one side has ended. Halving the track width comes with a penalty of 2 dB of extra noise and slightly higher crosstalk (due to a smaller distance between the tracks), a small price to pay for a 50 percent savings on tape stock. The price of the reels became more affordable, but they were not big sellers even back then, especially after stereo LPs became available at a much lower price. Later, tapes that play at 3.75 ips were introduced to lower the cost further. These were mostly pop music and “best of” compilations of popular classical and easy listening hits. These tapes still sound better than cassettes, but the sound quality is too compromised to be taken seriously by audiophiles.

Four-track tapes continued to be sold until the mid-1980s. The quality improved over time, and some tapes produced in the late 1970s and 1980s were encoded with Dolby B (and rarely dbx) noise reduction. The tapes were copied on banks of specialized tape recorders in parallel, sometimes hundreds at a time, at high speed. All four tracks were copied at the same time, which means two tracks were copied backwards. Some people claim that it is better to copy tapes backwards, since the leading edge of transients becomes the trailing edge and is less demanding to reproduce. I have done quite extensive comparisons using professional tape recorders and copying at normal speed, but I could not hear any difference.

With the wide range of music formats available to audiophiles nowadays, including CDs, SACDs, streaming, high-resolution downloads, LPs (digital and analog), and even master tape copies, why bother getting into this ancient format at all? I think music lovers who appreciate the recordings made during the “golden era” of stereo recordings, roughly between 1954 and the mid-1970s, should take a look at this format. After all, many collectors still lust after the original LP pressings of recordings from Decca, EMI, Mercury, RCA, Everest etc., and will pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars for mint copies. Today, one can buy the tapes that were released at the same time as the original LPs for a fraction of the price of the latter. Bear in mind that when first released, the tapes cost at least three times as much as the LPs.

Let's take the famous recording of David Oistrakh playing the Beethoven violin concerto on EMI/Columbia (SAX2315), released in 1959, as an example. A near mint copy of the first pressing would cost more than £1,000 ($1,200). Even the later pressings cost at least $400. I managed to find a new old stock, still sealed copy of the tape for $100, while used copies in good condition would normally cost $50 or less. This price is already on the upper end of the range for classical tapes. Less-rare titles usually go for $10 to $30. Get them before others catch on.

Collectors of vintage records argue that the early pressings are superior to modern reissues because the master tapes would have been in better (spanking new) shape. After repeated use over the decades for reissuing LPs, CDs etc., many of these tapes have significantly deteriorated. Moreover, the original LPs were mastered under the supervision of the artists and producers, whereas the mastering engineers who cut the modern reissues often try to “improve” the sound to cater to the audiophile market, an issue I have discussed previously. Worse still, most modern LPs are cut from digital files, since labels are increasingly more reluctant to touch their irreplaceable master tapes.

The major disadvantage of vintage records is groove wear. Home audio equipment of that era was crude, and more prone to wearing down or outright damaging the record grooves. Early LPs in general lack consistency, and the state of the stampers when the LP was pressed makes a huge difference in sound quality. Contrary to folklore, the pressing information on the “dead wax” (the area between the end of the record groove and the label) is often unhelpful for choosing the best-sounding records. The only way to tell is by listening.

My impression so far is that four-track tapes tend to be more consistent in quality as long as they are well stored. This is not surprising as the whole production process involved less manipulations, and their target customers were more discerning than average. I have also noticed that there is less dynamic compression on tapes than on LPs in general, probably because some recordings were simply not reproducible by the record players of that era unless the dynamics had been reduced. This means the tapes often have a larger soundstage and sound that is more dynamic than the LPs.

This is not to say tapes are faultless. The biggest worry about old tapes is the “sticky shed syndrome.” The problem started after back coating was introduced in 1970 by Ampex, soon followed by other manufacturers. After 20 or more years of storage, the back coating compound can absorb enough moisture from the atmosphere to become sticky. When the tape is played, the back of the tape pulls off the oxide from the playing surface of the adjacent layer, and the sticky substance also gums up the tape guides, heads and rollers.

When the problem first emerged, Ampex recommended baking the affected tapes at around 130 degrees Fahrenheit for several hours. However, this temperature is outside the safe temperature range listed in the technical specifications published by Ampex themselves. I have seen other recommendations such as placing the tape on a bed of desiccant (silicon gel beads) inside an airtight container for a week, or storing under a hard vacuum for three days to “boil off” the moisture. These might or might not work, but should at least not damage the recording. Fortunately, none of the commercial four-track tapes I have come across has back coating.

Another problem is “curly tape," which is common with old acetate-backed tapes. All the tapes I own use Mylar backing, and I have not come across this issue, but some of the earliest two-track tapes might have acetate backing. A less-common problem is squeaking, which is caused by the degradation of the lubricant on the playing surface of the tape. These tapes need to be re-lubricated with silicone liquid before each play. Out of the 150 or so tapes I have listened to so far, only three needed lubrication. All three were made in the late 1970s, two of which were Dolby encoded. The color of the backing is also different from the older tapes, which leads me to believe that some manufacturers switched to a different (cheaper?) tape formulation around that time.

The most annoying aspect of analog tape for many people is tape hiss. The hiss is random noise (white noise) generated when the magnetic particles pass over the tape head. The characteristic of white noise is that the energy increases with the frequency (doubles every octave), a fact that comes in handy when designing noise reduction systems. The noise level is inversely related to the track width and tape speed. Therefore, the compact cassette (1/8-inch four-track at 1.875 ips) is much noisier than open-reel and requires noise reduction to be acceptable. 7.5 ips four-track tapes have an acceptable amount of tape hiss generally, as long as the full dynamic range has been utilized. However, if the material has been transferred at too low a level, the tape hiss can be quite distracting. LP noise is quite random (clicks and pops), whereas tape hiss is consistent, and can be “tuned out” by the listener. It can also be quite easily removed by noise reduction systems, which I will get to later.

There is an ongoing revival in open-reel tape, which started with the California company The Tape Project reissuing recordings in professional distribution format (1/4-inch, two-track at 15 ips) around 2005. The last commercially available open-reel tape machine (the Otari MX5050) ceased production in the late 1990s, and up until recently, audiophiles had to contend with buying second hand machines. A number of workshops have been buying up old machines for restoration and modifications to be sold as audiophile equipment.

New designs started to appear about five years ago, pioneered by Ballfinger, and I can count at least three brands of tape machines designed from the ground up (Metaxas & Sins and Analogue Audio Design being the other two) now available. However, none of these can play the four-track format, and their cost is too high for my purpose in any case. It therefore comes down to buying a second-hand machine. Aside from sound quality, the major considerations here are the availability of spare parts, reliability, and ease of repairs. The most popular machines for restorers include the Revox B77, the Technics RS-1500/1700, and various Tascam models. Buyers can find many choices on eBay, but the risk is that some of these might require a lot of work or even be unrepairable. Even though I enjoy repairing things, open-reel recorders are not simple and require special equipment and experience to properly align and regulate. I therefore decided to buy from a reputable workshop.

I ended up buying a Revox B77 for several reasons. Revox was the largest manufacturer of tape recorders in Europe for decades, and their professional machines, under the Studer brand, were standard equipment in many major studios. The B77 was their most successful prosumer model, intended for serious audiophiles, radio stations and small studios. Technologies that tricked down from their state-of-the-art professional machines were adopted, including the tape heads. They were basically professional recorders scaled down to fit into the home audio market, both price- and size-wise. The PR-99, their smallest professional machine, is a B77 with balanced audio electronics. Spare parts are still plentiful, and new heads are still manufactured. Upgraded reproduction and recording electronics based on modern electronic components are also available. Since these machines were sold in large quantities, supply is plentiful in the used market at very reasonable prices.

The author's Revox B77 tape machine.

The Revox B77 models are available with a number of options. The standard machine runs at 3.75 and 7.5 ips and the high-speed version, which was aimed at the professional market, runs at 7.5 and 15 ips. There are also low -speed and super-low-speed versions that run at one half and one quarter of the standard speed, respectively, mainly used as voice recorders. Some of these low-speed machines were run 24/7 and are pretty worn out. The head blocks have separate erase, recorder and reproducer heads in  their1/4-inch two-track or four-track versions. Most standard-speed machines on the market have four-track heads, whereas the high-speed versions have two-track heads. The B77 Mark 2 version has vari-speed control, but is otherwise identical to the Mark 1. Towards the end of the product cycle, Dolby B encoding/decoding was also available as an option.

The largest reel size that the B77 can handle is 10.5 inches. It has three independent direct drive motors, and the capstan is servo-controlled. Although it does not have tape tension control, it has servo-controlled electronic braking and tape handling is therefore very gentle. What it lacks when compared to Studer professional machines are the editing functions, although it has a built-in tape cutter. In stock form, the sound quality is already very good, probably better than any other consumer machines available at the time.

I decided to buy a machine from Nagravox, a tape machine specialist based in Australia. As the name suggests, they mainly deal with Revox/Studer and Nagra machines, and also sell new parts for repair and restoration. I chose to buy a high-speed machine and also bought an extra four-track head block. There are two reasons for choosing the high speed; the capstan motor runs at the same speed in all versions, with a different capstan diameter according to the version. The high-speed version therefore has the widest capstan, which gives better speed stability due to the larger contact area.

Moreover, I can just switch head blocks if I ever decide to play two-track master tapes with the machine. After all, the B77 is much more portable than my Nagra T.  My machine is a Mark 1, since I don't need variable speed. Mark 2 machines are newer, but as all the parts that wear out were replaced anyway, it doesn't really matter.

The key to restoring a B77 is to replace all the original electrolytic capacitors, since these will invariably fail in short order if they haven’t already. The motors were stripped and worn parts were replaced, as were the bearings. The heads were re-lapped and professionally aligned. The original audio electronics have fixed IEC1/CCIR or NAB equalizations; playing tapes with different EQ will therefore require swapping the circuit cards for these EQs. Upgraded audio electronics are available from Audvance and these cards are built with the latest components, have selectable EQ, and result in a 3 dB improvement in signal-to-noise ratio. In my experience, it is a major upgrade in sound quality and the next best thing to using outboard tape head electronics, which would be much more expensive and requires extra space.

The final cost for the machine came to around $2,800. One can spend a lot more, since new faceplates and casings in fancy materials, designs and colors are available from various vendors. There is even an available digital tape counter and remote-control board that replaces the mechanical counter and allows the user to control the functions of the machine with a smartphone, including a shuttle function that cues to precise locations on the tape, and a database that remembers the position of each track. The user can therefore jump to different songs with (almost) the ease of a CD player!

Having bought about 120 tapes since receiving the original batch from my friend, I can conclude that it is a most worthwhile exercise. For many beloved recordings, the tape turns out to be the most satisfying format, at a cost that is often less than what one would pay for a new reissued LP. Some of these tapes quite frankly leave their LP cousins in the dust.

In future installments of the series, I will discuss noise reduction, and review the best tapes in my collection, comparing them to LPs (original and reissue) and master tapes when available.

Another David Oistrakh four-track tape from the author's collection.

Header image: David Oistrakh, Beethoven Violin Concerto, four-track tape.

In Part One (Issue 208), I noted the fact that I’ve had more than 50 years of playing in rock bands, and during that time I’ve seen people make every kind of mistake imaginable, and some I couldn’t have imagined. Like the time when our band the Lines warmed up for the Go-Go’s at the club 2001 in Islip, New York. I decided I was going to wear sunglasses to look cool, and wound up falling off a high stage into the audience because I couldn’t see the edge of it. Luckily, the only things injured were my Telecaster neck and my pride. (I should have asked Eric Bloom for advice.) So, this series will talk about what to do…and what not to. This will not be a course on mastering a musical instrument, though aspects of playing will be talked about.

Why would you want to play in a band anyway?

No, seriously.

If you’re like most musicians I know, you want to be in a band because you love to play. In many cases, it’s because you have to play. It’s a primal urge that you don’t even think about on an entirely conscious level. Playing is what musicians do. (At the end of this installment I'll tell you how I got into it.)

Some people, especially those with good voices and/or who are gifted songwriters, can pull off a solo act. And today’s tech enables people to create fantastic-sounding music in the comfort of their bedrooms, as Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas O’Connell did for their hit debut album When We Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?. But most of us who want to play live are going to wind up in a duo, trio or band. There’s nothing like the dynamic give and take and endless musical possibilities of playing with other musicians, and feeding off the energy of the audience.

If you write original music, it goes hand in hand that you want it to be heard. Sure, you can upload your music onto YouTube and various streaming services – and as Richie Castellano of Blue Öyster Cult and the Band Geeks (who are on tour playing Yes music with Jon Anderson) once told me, in today’s world, if you’re in a band, you have to have a video or you’re nowhere. But if you’re like most artists I know, you want to play your original music in front of other people.

OK kids, we know that a big motivation for wanting to play in a band has nothing to do with music. Yeah, you want to meet girls, or guys. Especially in high school and college. How many of us musician guys learned how to play and joined a band as a way to meet girls when we were teenagers? Pete Townshend of the Who has said that he formed a band to “pull the birds”…and that at the beginning of his career, he still wasn’t pulling the birds. (I confess, neither did I. Maybe if I wasn’t such a dumb schmuck to some women when I was a clueless kid I would have had better luck, and I wish I could apologize to some of them now, but that’s another story.)

Most musicians I know want to get better. The best way to do that is to go out and play, so you learn the give-and-take of complementing other players and what it takes to create a coherent musical whole.

Here's another fundamental: Playing with musicians who are better than you is the best way to get better. Sure, you have to reach a basic level of competence to do that, but I can’t emphasize enough that playing with people who are better than you are will really push you to another level.

A corollary of asking why you’d want to play in a band is this: what are your goals? Most of the people I know on the local circuit want to do it for fun, make a little extra money (with the emphasis on little, and we’ll get to that in a future installment), keep their chops up, and enjoy the hang and have a fun night out. it's perfectly fine to be in a "dad band" or be a weekend warrior, and in fact this is where many of us wind up, replete with questionable wardrobe choices and expensive guitars and gear that gets aired out only at the local watering hole. (I will have much more to say about dressing for success in a future article.)

Or are your ambitions loftier? In that case, you may want to look at going semi-pro and getting into a working band that does casuals, corporate events and other gigs that can earn a nice part-time income. At the highest level, maybe you want to become a true professional and make your living by playing, although it must be said that if you want to do this, the odds will be very much against you. I’m talking, making it as an Olympic gymnast-level odds against you. And talent is only part of the equation. You need a fair amount of luck, and you generally need to not be an a-hole. I am told that you need to be ruthless if you want to get to the top, especially in scenes like in L.A., but I have no first-hand experience.

Even if you reach the A-level, you may have to supplement your income by giving lessons, getting a teaching degree, or doing other activities. Legions of former players have decided it’s literally not worth it. And being on the road is tough.

But don’t let anything stop you from trying to be a rock star if you really want to. So what if the odds are overwhelming? Some of us do get there, even if behind the scenes. I went to Hauppauge High School with Vince Giordano of Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks. A student from the high school near where I live performs on Broadway and became a contestant on RuPaul’s Drag Race. Another person I went to school with went to Hollywood and become a successful writer of film and TV music. My guitar playing pal and HHS alumnus Bob Palladino is an Emmy-winning production sound mixer for Saturday Night Live. And even if you don’t “make it,” you can always play on some level and find great reward in it. (In fact, not playing professionally is much less stressful.)

Never let anyone try to crush your dreams. They’re not you.

Words of inspiration from Tovah Feldshuh, written on a backstage wall at the Chapin Rainbow Stage in Huntington, New York.

******

So, what’s my story?

Some of my first childhood memories are of hearing songs like Bobby Darin’s “Splish Splash” and David Seville’s “Witch Doctor” coming out of my parents’ kitchen radio. I was fascinated in particular by the sound of the saxophone, then the main lead instrument in Top 40 rock and pop radio, and wanted to play it.

My elementary school would let students begin music lessons in third grade, but only on a limited amount of instruments. You had to be in fifth grade to take up a wind instrument. I wound up on viola but really wanted to play the saxophone. When I was old enough, I asked to switch instruments, but my music teacher wouldn't let me, because he wanted me to stay in the orchestra. Stubborn kid that I was, I quit the orchestra. For a few years I didn’t play an instrument at all.

In the early 1960s the emphasis started to switch from the R&B-influenced stylings of the saxophone to the electric guitar. You probably know what happened next, on February 9, 1964.

The Beatles blew my nine-year-old mind.

An entirely new musical and sonic world sprang forth. The psychedelic fuzzed-out sounds of the 1960s from bands like Iron Butterfly, Strawberry Alarm Clock, Blue Cheer and the Ventures left me dazzled. From that point on I was obsessed with the sound of the electric guitar. I drew pictures of guitars in my school notebooks (decades later, I found out that George Harrison did the same). I dreamed of owning one, but my very-old-school father was, shall we say, opposed. Meanwhile kids everywhere were forming bands in basements and garages. I wanted to be one of them.

For my Bar Mitzvah I begged my father for an electric guitar. He reluctantly agreed and got me a $29.95 Kimberly guitar and Bryan amp from the King George department store in Smithtown, New York. As my father told me years later, “I felt like I was giving heroin to a junkie.” He thought it would be the path to nowhere, a siren song for hanging out with freaks and druggies. (Well, as it turned out he wasn't entirely wrong.)

Yet he knew I loved the guitar, and he loved me, so, conflicted or not, he determined that I should learn how to play properly. A couple of weeks later I began lessons with Joe Marino, a noted area guitarist and bass player. Later I would study with Charlie Martone, another serious-musician Italian guitar guy. I went through the Mel Bay books (the Alfred books were for slackers!) and learned how to play “legit,” unlike most guitarists of the day who never learned how to read.

About two months after I started playing, three other neighborhood friends and I formed a band, Absolute Neon. (This was before The Absolute Sound started publishing. Weird synchronicity?) We first played at my parents’ party in the back yard around 1968 or 1969. I remember it distinctly. Later we played at a few high school events…and about a year later, broke up. The rest of the band got fed up with the drummer’s inability to keep time. Welcome to the world of being in bands!

I dreamed of becoming a rock star. I practiced to the point where I’d fall asleep with my 1969 Fender Telecaster, passed out on the bed with the guitar still plugged into the amp. I was insecure that I wasn’t good enough, or good-looking enough, especially since I was a skinny kid with psoriasis. (Only later, after seeing some rock stars in person, did I realize I needn't have worried about the skinny part.)

I joined the Hauppauge High School Stage Band because I was the only guitar player in the school who could read music. In college I joined a rock band, Third Hand, and at one point we were making enough money to enable me to pay my off-campus rent. (It was $75 a month, but still…)

After two years in college I wanted to quit so I could pursue music full-time. Back then, you had to be young to be in a rock band and I thought I was losing valuable time, and I seriously wanted to be a rock star. My father begged me not to drop out and convinced me that if I did, I'd regret it for the rest of my life. I came to see the wisdom of his thinking, though if I'd spent as much time in college studying as I did copying guitar licks off records and reading Creem and Circus, my grades would surely have been higher.

After I got my B.A. in the late 1970s a bunch of high school friends and I decided to form a new wave group, the Lines. We started out as a cover band but soon came up with a bunch of originals, and they were good. Thanks to our adept and energetic manager (who went on to become a successful music industry executive) we got a lot of gigs, including one at the legendary My Father’s Place on Long Island, where The New York Times Writer Andy Edelstein happened to be present and wrote a positive review. The noted music writer Wayne Robins (yes, the same one we're honored to have as a Copper contributor), also saw us early on and wrote us up in Newsday. We thought we had struck gold and were on our way to fame and fortune. In the next few years, we played a lot in the New York area.

We backed up a lot of name acts including the Ramones, Duran Duran (twice!), the aforementioned Go-Go’s (who we never got to meet because they had the nastiest management I’ve ever encountered, but that’s another story), Delta 5, Defunkt, Pearl Harbor and the Explosions, the Bush Tetras, Our Daughter’s Wedding, Paul Weller, Jim Carroll, and others I can’t remember. (I'll tell the story about sharing a dressing room with Madonna at some point.)

Yes, there was actually a club called Spit on Long Island, New York in the early 1980s, and our band the Lines played there with an Arista Records band called the A's. I'm sure we were all dressed punk or proper, period.

However, I was also working a tough 50-hour-a-week job. My life was at turns exhilarating and exhausting. I’d catch naps in my car during lunch breaks, and crash all day Sunday.

Eventually the band started having musical differences (welcome to the world of being in bands!), one of the members left, and at age 27, I couldn’t keep burning the candle at both ends and decided to quit. I was getting OD’d on life itself, as the song goes, and needed to make some serious changes. I quit hanging out in new wave clubs and stopped listening to the music (it started to turn to crap around 1983 anyway), quit smoking (I knew it was terribly bad for me, but it was such a stress reliever), cut back on my partying, and decided I was going to quit my job for a company I hated, and try for a career at writing, which, other than playing guitar, I considered to be my other real talent.

Happily, the writing thing worked out.

I was so burned out after my brush with almost-fame that I didn’t play a gig for 10 years.

But if you have it in you, you have it in you. In the 1990s I began to play parties and get-togethers, then started playing regularly in another band with a bunch of friends. That lasted for a number of years until one of the band members moved and the rest of us started to become ridiculously busy with our careers and the band inevitably fizzled.

For the past 14 years, I’ve played in a band called Grand Folk Railroad, and we do about 10 – 20 gigs a year, playing 1960s and 1970s hits and forgotten favorites, classic country, and originals. My hands are in good shape and I’d like to think my brain is too, though some of my peers may beg to differ. It’s getting harder to physically play, but my desire to do so still burns. After all, playing is what musicians do.

Header image courtesy of Pixabay.com/thekaleidoscope/Vishnu R.

There were a lot of secret musical weapons in the 1970s to help make that Southern California sound so special. Some of these artists weren’t always the headliners, weren’t always members of a particular band, but sometimes knew what the last thing was that was needed to make a song a hit. Singer/songwriter JD Souther is one of those people.

By 1979, JD Souther had already written hits for the Eagles, Linda Ronstadt, Bonnie Raitt, and James Taylor, while also delivering two albums for David Geffen’s Asylum Records. For his debut on Columbia Records, he assembled an A-list band – Waddy Wachtel on guitar, Don Grolnick on piano, Kenny Edwards on bass, and Rick Marotta on drums, with Danny “Kootch” Kortchmar also contributing on guitar, along with David Sanborn on alto saxophone, and Dan Dugmore on pedal steel and other guitars. The album also featured guest appearances from Tom Scott, John Sebastian, Jackson Browne, Don Henley, and other heavyweights. The result was You’re Only Lonely, JD Souther’s masterpiece.

JD Souther, You're Only Lonely, album cover.

Now, the nine-track LP returns for the first time in 35 years, and the CD and digital versions add two previously-unissued bonus tracks from the album’s sessions. New liner notes from Joe Marchese of online music site The Second Disc feature an interview with JD outlining the recording of the album, the all-star players, and why it is an important record to him and the fans who have supported it for all these years. It’s another impressive addition to the Omnivore Recordings string of re-releases that cast new light on long-loved artists.

You’re Only Lonely appeared at the end of 1979 and the title track raced to the top of  the charts. “You’re Only Lonely” spent five weeks at Number 1 on the Adult Contemporary charts and was a  Number 7 pop hit. The album itself was a critical success, hitting Number 41 on the LP charts. Billboard praised the LP as a “predominantly mellow, atmospheric collection of tunes…Souther’s guitar playing takes a backseat to his writing, with many of the tunes here among his best.” “You’re Only Lonely” and “Heartache Tonight” (co-written by JD, Glenn Frey, Don Felder, and Bob Seger) were both in the top 10 the same week. It was a good time to be JD Souther.

You’re Only Lonely contains JD’s versions of tracks previously recorded by Linda Ronstadt (“White Rhythm And Blues” from Living In The USA), Nitty Gritty Dirt Band (“The Moon Turned Blue” from Dream) and Nicolette Larson (“The Last In Love” from her self-titled debut album), plus “Trouble In Paradise,” the title track of the second Souther-Hillman-Furay Band album.

Copper caught up with JD in advance of his fall tour, which will reunite him with longtime collaborator Karla Bonoff. We talked about the making of this record, the magic the musicians brought to the music, and where he is headed next on his remarkable musical journey.

Ray Chelstowski: You had quite a line-up of musicians on this record, including Waddy and Kooch. It was a wealth of talent.

JD Souther: Both of those guys played on every album I’ve ever made. The only person who performed on the record who I hadn’t met before was Phil Everly [of the Everly Brothers]. I was trying to do the harmony parts on “White Rhythm and Blues” and make it sound just like the Everly Brothers, and Waddy said, “why don’t you call him? He lives right near here.” Waddy and Warren Zevon had been the band leaders for the last Everly Brothers tour. Wad got me on the phone with him and I didn’t know what to say. He had been one of my heroes since I was 13 years old. I told we were making a record and asked if he would come down and sing harmony with me. He said, “OK. When?” I heard Waddy say in the background, “tell him, tonight.” So, I said, “I hope this isn’t overstepping but could you come over tonight?” He said “sure, we’re just finishing up dinner. We’ll see you in about an hour.“

RC: Was there anyone that you wanted to have on the record that couldn’t make it work with their schedule?

JDS: No one said “no.” Most of them were people I hung out with anyway. In those days communicating with players was really easy. You might just be having dinner with a bunch of them and invite them to the studio. I knew lot of great players.

RC: It looks like everyone in the band was given a writing credit on the song “Fifteen Bucks.”

JDS: Well, the reason everyone in the band is named as a writer on that songs is because we were making it all up on the spot. We had been talking about Ike Turner and how he would fine some of his band members if they messed up on stage, and flash one of his hands three times which meant you were going to have that much pulled out of your check. Kenny Edwards and I were laughing about it and when I yelled it at the band they yelled it back. And I just started making stuff up and played for about 20 minutes or so and everybody liked it. So, I made sure everyone was a writer on it, which is unusual.

RC: “You’re Only Lonely” has been covered by a wide variety of acts. Maybe the most ambitious version is by the Taiwanese girl group S.H.E.

JDS: I love that record. It’s the greatest. It’s fascinating, and there’s even another Taiwanese version done by a guy. I think there are about 15 to 20 different covers of this record. It’s the kind of song that lends itself to it. It was nominated for a Grammy and I didn’t even think it was the kind of song that could be a single.

RC: It’s funny that both you and Glenn Frey were born in Detroit but it took Los Angeles to bring you together.

JDS: Isn’t that something?! It is actually incredible. I know all of these great artists from Michigan who I met somewhere in the West. Glenn and I not only share a birthplace, but our birthdates in November are only a few days apart. We met because Glenn came to California to see his girlfriend. I was already dating his girlfriend’s sister. So, the four of us were together a lot. The girls went home to Detroit for Christmas. Glenn and I had no money and lived a few blocks from Hughes Market in Hollywood. We stole a Christmas tree from the lot in the back of Hughes Market. We had no decorations for it, and our Christmas became us with this two-foot tree, playing the Beatles “White Album,” and getting completely plastered. We had a lot more fun when we were broke.

RC: You’re considered to be a prolific writer but your studio work is limited. With your new relationship with Omnivore Recordings, are there any projects on the horizon that may present new material?

JDS: There’s less than you think. I’m not as prolific as I’d like to be. I have over 50 masters in my storage unit, which is more than I had thought I had. What Omnivore wants to do is a package with all of the albums, with a book and pictures. Kind of a greatest hits on steroids. There’s a real market for this and I’m thrilled about that.

You’re Only Lonely Track List:

Header image of JD Souther courtesy of Jim Shea.

In the days before digital music, the primary medium for sound reproduction was vinyl records. Sure, there were some who preferred reel-to-reel tapes, but they were in the minority. The turntable was king, and it had to be properly set up. Any audiophile worth his (or her) salt owned at least one or two test records specifically designed for that task.

Over the years, I’ve collected a disproportionate number of such discs (it helped that I worked in record stores for much of my adult life, so I could obtain the ones I wanted at reasonable prices).

In the first part of this series (Issue 205), the focus was on test records issued by record labels themselves. In Part Two (Issue 206), albums from phono cartridge manufacturers were featured. Part Three (Issue 207) looked at records issued by speaker companies. Part Four (in Issue 208) included LPs from publications. This edition pulls from a variety of sources, including some albums that weren’t even meant to be played (read on).

Audio System Test Record (1977 – 78)

One of the companies providing initial competition for Mobile Fidelity in the half-speed mastering re-issue world was Nautilus. Their offerings were called “Superdiscs.” This piece of vinyl is touted as “The First Complete Audio System Test Record.”

From the liner notes: “Most ‘test records’ are designed by engineers to do exactly what the name implies: to test specific functions of a cartridge, tape deck, speaker, etc. Fully evaluating the results from such tests usually requires sophisticated testing equipment and more than a basic, layman’s knowledge of the tests, their purposes and the significance of the results…The Nautilus Audio System Test Record has been specifically designed to solve major problems that plague an audio system. No test equipment is necessary and the instructions are simple to follow. Your ears are the final judge in these tests, and the overall improvement to your system is audible and significant.”

Unfortunately, I bought my copy as a used record, and the original owner must have kept the instruction booklet, making it impossible to fully evaluate the claims on the back cover. Well, dang!

Soundcraftsmen Instructional Test Records (1976?)

Before tone controls became anathema to high-end manufacturers and listeners (we must retain the purity of the original recording!), graphic equalizers were enjoying a surge in popularity. The idea was that, through more precise adjustments of particular bands of frequencies, deficiencies in equipment and room acoustics could be mitigated.

Soundcraftsmen equalizers were considered one of the top consumer products in their category. Early models controlled fewer than 10 bands per channel, which still represented a level of adjustment well beyond the bass and treble tone controls found on most components of the time. Later models featured up to 21 bands (on one pro model, allowing for one-third-octave control). In addition to sliders which adjusted the frequency bands, there were master volume sliders for each channel.

In the 1970s, I owned a Model RP2212 (a ten-band unit), and used it primarily to tame a bit of bass boom. At the time, I had a Marantz 1060 integrated amp driving Altec Lansing bookshelf speakers. Equalizers were often misused by boosting a number of bands without a concurrent reduction in overall level, resulting in a louder output. When comparing the equalized sound to the unequalized sound, the former would be louder, and therefore mistakenly perceived as better. (All other things being equal, the brain will usually interpret louder as better.) I was always careful to compare the input and output signals at equal levels.

This album was supplied with the unit, and included the charts shown for recording and easy adjustment of the equalizer settings for various conditions (or even certain recordings).

Geo-Disc by Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab (1981)

Now we get to one that shouldn’t/can’t be played. This platter is exclusively for the setup and alignment of your phono cartridge. There are no audio tracks on it. If you were to set your stylus down on it while it was rotating (which it shouldn’t be), you could kiss that expensive bit of diamond “jewelry” goodbye.

The design is pretty ingenious, allowing for very precise alignment without any test equipment other than your eyes. The long ridge line to the right of the center hole should point directly to the center of the lateral tonearm bearing. The cartridge is to be moved forward and back to a position so that the stylus tip rests in the tiny white circle in the grid. Then the cartridge can be twisted, if necessary, until the sides of the cartridge are parallel with the gridlines. Lastly, the cantilever should be aligned with the shorter ridgelines.

Telarc Omnidisc (1982)

One of the pioneers in digital recordings, Telarc issued this two-disc set that was distributed by Audio-Technica. Side One is another “don’t try to play me” affair. It features a series of etched and labeled parallel lines on either side of a radial line. It calls for knowing some alignment positioning information that may or may not have been supplied with the user’s tonearm/turntable. In addition, one would likely have to take measurements from the arm bearing and/or the spindle, down to the millimeter. It is nowhere near as user-friendly as the Geo-Disc.

Side Two is comprised of 44 test signals, including a 1,000 Hz tone, pink noise, phasing tests, and even a silent track to evaluate overall system noise. It has strobe lines printed on the label for checking speed accuracy.

Side Three involves tracking tests, using excerpts from five Telarc classical recordings. Each passage is repeated four times, with each repeat being cut at least 2 dB higher than the previous one.

Side Four is labeled “Imaging and Music,” and features two musical passages. The first is the Fugue from Benjamin Britten’s “Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra,” with Leonard Slatkin narrating and conducting the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. The second is a performance of The Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations,” performed by the group Papa Doo Run Run (a band variously described as a tribute band or a California beach party band). [The latter cut is a tracking torture test – at a CES one time, an exhibitor played it and the arm literally leapt out of the groove. – Ed.]

The final installment in this series will feature PS Audio’s The Stereo, a test record with its accompanying book, along with a few older discs.

Copper has an exchange program with AAA (Analogue Audio Association) magazine of Switzerland (and other publications), where we share articles, including this one.

The Swiss author Ernst Müller is a profound connoisseur of the classical music scene, with a large analog record collection. In Issue 203 Copper presented his review of the Sibelius symphonies on LP. In issue 207 you can find his review of the legendary classical pianist Sviatoslav Richter. This article also discusses vinyl recordings. These can be found on the second-hand market, and most of them are also available as CDs. Ernst Müller points out the most important recordings of both symphonies at the end of the article.

Like Johannes Brahms and Robert Schumann, the German composer Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1809 – 1847) is one of the most important musicians of the Romantic period. Many record collectors have several copies of his Violin Concerto – probably the most frequently-recorded violin concerto – on their shelves. They may also have other compositions by Mendelssohn such as his String Octet in E-flat major, The Hebrides overture, and the overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream or the Third or Fourth symphony. These are the works that are probably performed most frequently in concert halls. The following article aims to arouse interest in the “Italian” and “Scottish” symphonies. This article only discusses recordings that have been released on vinyl records (LP).

The acceptance of Mendelssohn's music has fluctuated greatly over the past 200 years. Mendelssohn, who traveled to several countries, was a celebrated composer, conductor, pianist and organist during his lifetime, and was most acclaimed in England. Richard Wagner's anti-Semitic propaganda (see his pamphlet, “Judaism in Music”) was subsequently partly responsible for the disdain the composer Mendelssohn received. Around 1900, critics tended to regard Mendelssohn's music as formally high-quality, but musically as non-committal art. The Mendelssohn family was originally Jewish, but converted to the Protestant faith in 1816. During the National Socialist era, Mendelssohn's music was nevertheless considered Jewish and was not performed.

Five Symphonies

If you take a look at record and CD catalogs, it is obvious that the first two symphonies have received little attention. The First Symphony is the work of a 15-year-old and still strongly indebted to Viennese classicism. Although it has individual features, it was also held in low esteem by Mendelssohn himself. It was composed for a full orchestra and yet it is classified as a work that is still in the tradition of Mendelssohn's 12 string symphonies from his youth. Symphony No. 2 (Lobgesang) is a symphonic cantata. The fact that it is rarely heard in the concert hall or on media is partly due to the fact that it lasts over an hour and does not have the proportions typical of symphonies: the three instrumental movements, which last just over 20 minutes and which are not very imaginative, are followed by the good and long fourth movement, a hymn of praise for two sopranos, a tenor and choir.

Symphony No. 5, the so-called “Reformation” Symphony, is heard more frequently. The final movement features a chorale variation of Martin Luther's “Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott,” which gave the symphony its name.

A rather confusing comment on the numbering of the five symphonies: basically, the Third symphony is Mendelssohn's last. However, since the Italian and Reformation symphonies (Nos. 4 and 5) were only published posthumously, it is listed as the third in the catalog of works. The Reformation Symphony was composed in 1830 as the second of the five symphonies. However, as the composer shelved the work, it only appeared in print posthumously in 1968 and was thus given the number five.

Having the Complete Recordings is Not a Must

There were probably only four albums with the complete symphonies on vinyl. Is the best one from the late Sixties with Wolfgang Sawallisch and the New Philharmonia Orchestra? Sawallisch finds an adequate orchestral sound and a suitable arrangement for each symphony. In terms of sound, the recordings are fine (Philips SC71AX404, 4 LPs). A possible alternative is the set with Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic released on Deutsche Grammophon in 1973 (DG 2561 278/81, 4 LPs). For my personal taste, his Mendelssohn is mostly massive. However, the album received much praise when it was released and it is better-sounding.

Less convincing is the complete recordings by Kurt Masur with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra from the 1970s. This is the orchestra that Mendelssohn conducted himself from 1835 to 1847 (Vanguard VCS 10133/6, 4 LPs). It seems to me that these interpretations are uninspired. The woodwinds in particular, but also the brass, sound cloaked. Moreover, one has the impression that Sawallisch and Karajan had the better orchestral musicians at their disposal.

The recording by Christoph von Dohnányi with the Vienna Philharmonic has been released on three LPs (Decca 6.35700-1/2/3). The quality of the interpretations of the five symphonies varies. At least, one can be pleased with the quality of the orchestral musicians.

The question remains whether it is absolutely necessary to have the complete recordings by one conductor. Analog lovers who only own symphonies Three to Five and would like to fill the gap can look on the second-hand market for one of the two 2-LP albums with the first two symphonies with Karajan (DG 2721 107) or with Sawallisch (Philips 802 856/57 LY),

What is “Italian” about the Italian? – Symphony No. 4 in A Major, Op. 90

For many artists in the 19th century, so-called educational journeys were a desirable way of broadening their horizons. While Mendelssohn had traveled to the British Isles in 1829 – the “Scottish” symphony was written in this context – he turned his attention to Italy in 1830. And of course, Mendelssohn, like so many of the 19th century's education-seekers, had read Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Italian Journey and used this travelogue as a travel guide. And as befitted a German artist, Mendelssohn visited the almost 80-year-old prince of poets for two weeks on his way to Italy. Incidentally, Goethe was a fan of Mendelssohn. He was moved when this young man played the piano for him during his visit.

So, what is Italian about the 4th Symphony? There are no Italian folk songs in this symphony. There is nothing “authentic” about it; it does not depict a scenic backdrop. One could say that Italy is present in the work through its clarity and melodic light. A Mediterranean character can only be attributed to the two outer movements; the two middle movements are rather melancholy. Incidentally, it is very unusual that the symphony begins in a major key but ends in a minor key.

The composer began to conceptualize his impressions of Italy in this symphonic work during the journey. He only completed the work in 1832 and 1833. Mendelssohn's compositional style does not represent a break with the classical style of Mozart's time, but the inspiration is romantic in its orchestral timbres. Although the premiere in London was a triumph, the composer was dissatisfied with his work and withdrew it. It was only after its posthumous publication that the “Italian” became a hit as a symphonic work. 

Interpretations That Bring Joy

As always with my articles about LPs that were released during the vinyl era, I assume that readers have one or two records on their shelves and will be inspired to put them on again or, if interested, to look for them second-hand.

I would describe Mendelssohn as the master of the beginning. Who can resist the musical pull of the opening to the “Italian” (or, for example, the Violin Concerto, the Hebrides Overture, or the Piano Concerto No. 1)? Which interpretation would you like most to travel with?

In preparation for a comparison of interpretations, I put all the recordings available to me in front of me (I have 17 records, of which I selected 13) and decided to put them in a listening order. To start, I deliberately choose one record as a benchmark, one whose interpretation and sound I know to be quite good, but certainly not a “reference.”

So, there was the 1979 EMI recording by André Previn with the London Symphony Orchestra on my turntable. And lo and behold, I was very wrong. This is a fresh, articulate and rhythmically light interpretation. The dramaturgical concept is convincing, and the interpretation breathes magnificently. Previn succeeds better than others in articulating details that are a pleasure to listen to. It is also an ideal Mendelssohn record in that the B-side contains three wonderful overtures: The Hebrides, “Ruy Blas,” and that to A Midsummer Night's Dream (EMI ASD 3763 or 1C 063-03 625).

The next LPs I put on brought disillusionment. First there was the Philips recording with Wolfgang Sawallisch and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra (coupled with Schubert's “Unfinished” Symphony). Sawallisch is faster than Previn, but less gripping. The sound is not as good, although the label on my copy says “Hi-Fi Stereo” (835 035 AY). Next came the recording with Ernest Ansermet and his Orchestre de la Suisse Romande (Decca SXL 6166, released in 1965). Ansermet is slower than the two previous conductors. The sound is good, better than that of Sawallisch. The interpretation is broad; there is no Italianate tempo here. The whole thing is restrained, not gripping.

What about the 1962 recording by George Szell with the Cleveland Orchestra? This is a brisk interpretation with an unvarying (not to say somewhat inflexible) style. I don't get warm with it; it's a dry Italian. What also irritates me: the differences between loud and quiet passages are so strongly accentuated that they are tonally disconcerting. It seems as if Szell had instructed the sound engineer to “help” with the controls (Columbia MS 6975, coupled with Schubert's “Unfinished”).

One of the better recordings is that by Lorin Maazel with the Berliner Philharmoniker from 1960 (Deutsche Grammophon SLPM 138 684). It has the advantage of having Mendelssohn's Reformation symphony on the B side. Here we find a good tempo, a balanced and good interpretation, which is also a better one in terms of sound.

There are two interpretations by Leonard Bernstein: The one from the Sixties with the New York Philharmonic seems to me to be more significant. The tempo is moderately fast. The middle movements in particular have a simple, pastel-colored and poetic flow. In terms of sound, this LP is reasonable, but Bernstein's later live recording from 1979 with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra sounds better. As beautiful as this recording is, the poetry of the piece is (too?) much in the foreground and the temperament seems restrained (DG 2531 097).

A reference recording is the LP Decca SXL 6363, with Claudio Abbado conducting the London Symphony Orchestra in 1968. This disc, which contains the “Scottish” and the “Italian” Symphony, has an excellent sound, with an exemplary balance between woodwinds and strings. Hardly anywhere else can you hear so many details as in this recording, which is also gripping in terms of interpretation.

The LP by Otto Klemperer with the Philharmonia Orchestra from 1961 (Columbia SAX 2398) is also excellent in sound. My fears that Klemperer would choose tempi that were too slow were wrong. This is a balanced and good interpretation.

Not to commit sins of omission, I would also point to the 1958 recordings of the Fourth and Fifth by Charles Munch with the Boston Symphony Orchestra (RCA VICS 1293). The sound lacks brilliance, but the lively interpretation has vitality and shows that Mendelssohn's music can be humorous. Shouldn't we also mention the quite irresistible 1966 recording by Pablo Casals with the Marlboro Festival Orchestra (CBS 72523)? In this recording, however, the string sections are not very differentiated, and the Beethoven 8th coupled with it is not very satisfying. Even more important, however, is the following:

Food for a Mono Cartridge

When it comes to mono recordings, there are two by Italian conductors that are among the most important interpretations of all: first, that of Arturo Toscanini with the NBC Symphony Orchestra (RCA LM 1851, recorded in 1954, coupled with the “Reformation” symphony). The mixture of energy, light, sharpness and cantabile that the 87-year-old lends the score is hard to beat. Anyone who complains about the sober and dry sound of this conductor's recordings should listen to the recording made by his spiritual son Guido Cantelli with the Philharmonia Orchestra in July 1955. This is a crackling, warm fire and has bite (HMW ALP 1325 or Angel 35524, with Schubert's “Unfinished”).

How Scottish is the “Scottish”? – Symphony No. 3 in A Minor, Op. 56

A year before his stay in Italy, Mendelssohn visited the British Isles in 1829. After concerts in London, he traveled to Scotland. He wanted to visit places where Mary Stuart had lived and loved. Impressed by this and by the dark nature of the country, he was inspired to write the now popular Hebrides overture, and the Third (“Scottish”) Symphony.  It was not completed and published until 13 years later. What applies to the “Italian” is also valid for the “Scottish”: it is inspired by the landscape but is not based on Scottish melodies. One hears that the composer was inspired by different landscapes in both symphonies; however, the search for a literal location should not be taken too far.

Conductors That Inspire

Let me start by mentioning those recordings that I would put in the back row: With Kurt Masur and the Gewandhaus Orchestra, the quality of the orchestral playing leaves something to be desired and I miss a convincing interpretation (the recording is available on Eterna or Eurodisc). Charles Munch with the Boston Symphony Orchestra does not convince me either in terms of sound or interpretation.

In the later of his two recordings, Leonard Bernstein (here with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra) gives an interesting and somewhat sought-after, not to say mannered, interpretation. In this concert recording, released in 1980, Bernstein opts for rather slow tempi. (DG 2531 256). The earlier recording with the New York Philharmonic seems better, but its sound is less attractive; the strings come over the loudspeakers garishly. Here, too, Bernstein chooses a moderate tempo in the first movement (CBS SBRG 72572).

Herbert von Karajan with his Berlin Philharmonic captures the mood of the individual movements very well. A (likewise?) gentle beginning emphasizes the beauty – and the slow movement “sings” impressively. This is a successful recording from 1971 (DG 2530 126).

I was caught by an unexpectedly positive surprise for Peter Maag's recording with the London Symphony Orchestra from 1960. Maag and the excellent orchestra breathe freely and well. The style of the interpretation is convincing. This Decca SXL 2246 disc is also a pleasure to listen to. (I own it as a reissue.)

The recording of the same London orchestra with Claudio Abbado was made eight years later. Here, too, the development of the themes and design are convincing and the transitions are harmonious. The final movement is magnificent. Abbado's orchestra sounds beautifully jubilant, where many conductors become pompous (Decca SXL 6363).

Otto Klemperer presented a serious vision of beauty with the Philharmonia Orchestra in 1960. He takes the fast movements moderately, even in the last movement (vivacissimo) Klemperer remains on the slow side (Columbia SAX 2342).

The latest recording, which has been released on vinyl (there is no CD of it), is by Gustavo Dudamel and the Vienna Philharmonic. It is a live recording from December 2011 (DG 479 0083). The Viennese prove to be an excellent orchestra here, and there are many good moments. However, Dudamel is less-flexible with the score than Abbado or, above all, Maag. Sometimes there is a lack of tension, especially in the transitions.

A Brief Overall Conclusion

If you want the “Italian” and the “Scottish” on one LP, Claudio Abbado is an excellent choice, also in terms of sound. André Previn, Otto Klemperer and possibly Lorin Maazel are also good choices for the “Italian.” For the “Scottish,” I would clearly advocate Peter Maag and possibly Karajan alongside Abbado.

Header image: portrait by Eduard Magnus, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/public domain.

It’s almost impossible to fathom that when John Lennon set out to make his fourth solo record in 1973 he was only 33 years old. When you consider how much transformative output he had helped create up until that point, it’s hard to imagine that there would be so much more he had to share. Perhaps it was because at the time he was in the middle of a years-long deportation battle with US immigration that was tied to his anti-Nixon and anti-Vietnam war protests. He was a target, and that had always informed his best work.

Mind Games, his fourth post-Beatles album, began recording in August of 1973 in New York City’s renowned studio, the Record Plant. There, with a world-class group of musicians, Lennon birthed an album of self-reflection that explored themes of love, heartbreak, peace, spirituality, and social injustice. The band included his friend drummer Jim Keltner, who along with guitarist David Spinozza assembled pianist Ken Ascher, bassist Gordon Edwards, pedal-steel player “Sneaky” Pete Kleinow, saxophonist Michael Brecker, drummer Rick Marotta, and backing vocalists Jocelyn Brown, Christine Wiltshire, Angel Coakely and Kathy Mull.

Last month, The John Lennon Estate and Capitol/UMe celebrated Mind Games with the release of Mind Games – (The Ultimate Collection) deluxe box set, Mind Games – (The Ultimate Collection) super deluxe box set, and Mind Games (The Ultimate Mixes) 2-CD and 2-LP packages. The newly remixed and expanded Ultimate Collection editions offer an immersive, deep listening experience and in-depth explorations of this classic, and often overlooked, record. The deluxe box set ($168) features six CDs, two HD-audio Blu-ray discs, a 136-page book, and other items. The super deluxe set adds limited-edition reproduction artwork from John Lennon and Yoko Ono, plus books, posters, maps, badges, a word puzzle, I-Ching coins, and other items at $1,350!

The releases are fully authorized by Yoko Ono Lennon and produced by Sean Ono Lennon, who oversaw the production and creative direction. This definitive Ultimate Collection puts listeners in the center of the studio and explores the album’s recording sessions, from inception to the final master, through scores of unreleased outtakes, unadulterated versions, instrumentals, stripped down mixes, and studio chatter that reveal how these songs evolved and came to life. 

Yoko Ono Lennon says: “John was trying to convey the message that we all play mind games. But if we can play mind games, why not make a positive future with it – to be a positive mind game? ‘Mind Games’ is such an incredibly strong song. At the time, people didn't quite get the message because this was before its time. Now, people would understand it. I don't think in those days people knew they were playing mind games anyway.”

Mind Games – The Ultimate Collection offers six different unique listening experiences that are at once immersive and intimate. The brand-new Ultimate Mixes of the timeless album put John’s vocals front and center and sonically upgrade the sound. The Elements Mixes isolate and bring forth certain instruments from the multitrack recordings, to highlight playing that was previously buried in the original mix. The Raw Studio Mixes allow listeners to hear the recordings that John and The Plastic U.F.Ono Band laid to tape, mixed raw and live without vocals, effects, tape delays, or reverbs.

The Evolutionary Documentary is a track-by-track audio montage that details the evolution of each song from demo to master recording via demos, rehearsals, out-takes, multitrack explorations, and studio conversations. The Out-takes allow listeners to hear compelling different takes of each song, while the Elemental Mixes, a new set created especially for this release, lives somewhere between the minimalism of the Elements Mixes and the Ultimate Mixes, stripping the songs back to simpler arrangements bringing John’s voice forward, and without drums. An array of listening options are available on the Blu-ray discs, including high-definition, 192 kHz/24-bit stereo audio, and 5.1 surround and Dolby Atmos mixes.

All of the tracks have been completely remixed from scratch from the 15 original two-inch multitrack session tapes, using new 192/24 digital transfers. The Ultimate Collection includes previously unreleased out-takes plus additional never-heard-before audio from archival ¼-inch reel-to-reels, cassettes, and videotapes.

John Lennon’s writing process for Mind Games was nearly as quick as its recording, with Lennnon writing and working out a handful of new songs the week of July 16, 1973, just two weeks before going into the studio. Recording commenced August 1 and wrapped August 5 with overdubs taking place August 6-16. The mixing was done from August 21 – September 18, and the master tape assembly took place on September 19 – 21. The album was self-produced by John, with production help from Yoko, and marked his first solo effort without Phil Spector at the helm. It was engineered by Roy Cicala and Dan Barbiero, with some studio assistance by a young Jimmy Iovine, who started at The Record Plant as an assistant towards the end of the sessions.

Items from the John Lennon Mind Games – (The Ultimate Collection) deluxe box set.

Despite most of the songs being written just before they were recorded, the title track, “Mind Games,” dates back to 1970, when it had the working title of “Make Love, Not War.” John was inspired to complete the soaring pop song after reading the 1972 book Mind Games: The Guide to Inner Space, written by Robert Masters and Jean Houston, which stressed the tapping of our mental potential to effect global change. In the tradition of Yoko’s “Imagine” poems, it was suggesting “mind games” as a positive and creative idea.

Many of the tracks on Mind Games feature John chronicling his own life and the rocky relationship he was experiencing with Yoko at the time. The melancholic waltz “Aisumasen (I’m Sorry)” (“Aisumimasen” is Japanese for “I’m sorry”), is John at his most vulnerable, reflecting on his relationship and the remorse for the emotional pain he’s inflicted. A standout track, “Out The Blue,” sees John expressing his doubts over the couple’s separation as the song begins with just John and a gently strummed acoustic guitar, resembling his work with the Beatles, before the band and backing singers kick in and the song builds to a soaring climax with John singing: “Like a U.F.O., you came to me/And blew away life's misery/Out the blue life's energy/Out the blue you came to me.”

The lilting “One Day (At A Time),” sung by John in a rare falsetto and featuring a classic sax solo from Michael Brecker on one of his earliest sessions, is a song about enjoying the here and now and reminding us that “one day at a time is all we do,” while “Tight A$” is  a rollicking country rocker that includes some brilliant pedal steel playing by “Sneaky” Pete Kleinow.

At the center of Mind Games lies the “Nutopian National Anthem,” a brief, silent three-second repose. Nutopia is the imaginary country created by John and Yoko in 1973 during their immigration woes – a conceptual nation that exists only in one’s mind, without borders, founded on love and open to everyone.

Upon its original release, Mind Games sold reasonably well, peaking in the US at No. 9 on Billboard and No. 13 in the UK The track “Mind Games,” the only single released from the record, hit No. 18 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 26 in the UK. Although the album received mixed reviews in 1973, over the last 50 years it has become something of a cult classic among fans, and positively reassessed by critics. The Ultimate Collection casts a comprehensive light on a very tight recording session that produced songs that reflected some of Lennon’s most personal fears, hopes, and failures, with a musical focus that would soon shift. 1974 would bring the album Walls and Bridges, a documentation of his “lost weekend” separation from Ono and best defined by its single “Whatever Gets You Through The Night.” Lennon wouldn’t have this kind of creative clarity again until his final record, 1980’s Double Fantasy.

Mind Games finally receives the attention it so rightly deserves, and for avid fans, the depth of this collection and the journey it captures will play with their minds for some time to come.

Mind Games – (The Ultimate Collection) deluxe box set track listings

CD 1: The Ultimate Mixes (45 mins)

CD 2: The Elemental Mixes (52 mins)

Same track listing as CD 1

CD 3: The Elements Mixes (51 mins)

Same track listing as CD 1

CD 4: The Evolution Documentary (74 mins)

Same track listing as CD 1

CD 5: The Raw Studio Mixes (49 mins)

Same track listing as CD 1

 CD 6: The Out-takes (55 mins)

1. Mind Games (out-take, Take 7)
2. Tight A$ (out-take, Take 6)
3. Aisumasen (I’m Sorry) (out-take, Take 2)
4. One Day (At A Time) (out-take, Take 18)
5. Bring On The Lucie (Freeda Peeple) (out-take, Take 15)
6. Declaration Of Nutopia (out-take, Take 1)
7. Intuition (out-take, Take 12)
8. Out The Blue (out-take, Take 15)
9. Only People (out-take, Take 12)
10. I Know (I Know) (out-take, Take 22)
11. You Are Here (out-take, Take 5)
12. Meat City (out-take, Take 16)

Header image: John Lennon, Mind Games, album cover.

INXS: Kick
Analogue Productions, Atlantic 75 series

Hot off the Analogue Productions presses, the popular 1980s album Kick by INXS is one of the latest titles in the Atlantic 75 series, commemorating the 75^th anniversary of Atlantic Records. I was familiar with a few of the hits on the album and had owned it, but never gave it much attention, as the digital (CD) version was typical of the era – kind of harsh. There have been other versions on vinyl, but I haven’t heard any of them. This 45 RPM version, to borrow the album’s title, offers quite a kick. Of the titles I own in the series, this is one of the better-sounding ones. The tonality is nicely balanced, the brightness tamed just enough to take the rough edge off but still lively, and the bass is house-filling, the standouts being the hits “Devil Inside” and “Need You Tonight.” It’s a great, infectious record to have in the collection!

Sheila E: Bailar
Sony

Sheila Escovedo was already well known as a member of the talented Escovedo family prior to teaming up with Prince and recording as Sheila E. The family ties are evident here as well, with Sheila finally recording a proper salsa album. She not only includes per parents Pete and Juanita Escovedo on the record, but also welcomes guest vocalists such as salsa legend Rubén Blades, Luis Enrique, Gilberto Santa Rosa, and Gloria Estefan, among others. Sheila’s playing is on point or better yet, on fire, and the album is a mix of traditional Latino songs (like Tito Puente’s “El Rey del Timbal,” and Catalino Alonso’s “Anacaona” featuring Ruben Blades) and songs penned by Sheila and a host of collaborators. It’s not a 100 percent pure salsa album, as it also includes elements of funk and Latin soul. This is a great summer album! And the Sony pressing is actually quite good.

Ry Cooder & Manuel Galbán: Mambo Sinuendo
Nonesuch

This recent Nonesuch reissue is a fitting vinyl presentation of this excellent recording, with its quiet surfaces and well-balanced tonality preserving the music therein. Unlike an earlier Nonesuch vinyl release, this one is spread across three sides rather than four, with the fourth side being laser-etched with a variation of the cover art. The jacket is printed using a foil treatment. The album itself is notable, as it is the product of Ry Cooder’s earlier work in Cuba with the Buena Vista Social Club. While Galbán did not play on the 1997 self-titled album with the Club, he was part of the touring band and appeared on some of the group members’ albums. The album itself is a delightful mix of songs that defy categorization, as they not only include the great guitar interplay between Galbán and Cooder, they mix together pop/jazz/Latin genres including mambo, lounge, Hawaiian, and Cuban into a unique mix.

One treat is a playful cover of Pérez Prado’s “Patricia,” as well as a cameo by Herb Alpert on the title track, the spacy lounge treatment of “Los Twangueros” that the listener may imagine Esquivel had a hand in, and plenty of others with such a variety of sounds and styles that the album never gets boring.

Donald Byrd: Places and Spaces
Blue Note, Classic Vinyl series

This is an album that surprised me back in winter this year. I was looking through various Mizell Brothers productions and was playing through this album on Qobuz. Something about the song “(Fallin’ Like) Dominoes” sounded vaguely familiar as it started, until the song reached the chorus. Then it hit me – I heard this song countless times on our local jazz radio station, WJZZ, throughout my teen years. It was like revisiting an old friend, and I had to grab a copy once I saw it was available in the Blue Note Classic Vinyl series. While I was a bit too young to go to clubs at the time, apparently the leadoff track, “Change (Makes You Want to Hustle)” was a hit in the dance clubs back in the day, and it certainly sounds the part! Byrd even adds vocals towards the end of the song.

The rest of the record is filled with some tasty songs as well, like the title track and “Wind Parade.” Fans of soul-jazz and funk-jazz will enjoy this one (as I have – it’s one of my most-played Blue Notes)…while it’s also a good record to clear your house of any dyed-in-the-wool jazz snobs!

Deodato: Prelude
Music on Vinyl

Music on Vinyl has been reissuing a small number of CTI Records titles. This is a recent release in that series, pressed on colored vinyl (opaque green) and presented in a textured jacket. Eumir Deodato’s album Prelude was CTI’s best-seller, thanks to his charting hit “2001 (Also Sprach Zarathustra).” I have a used copy on hand, but was happy to replace it with a cleaner, new copy. If this is digitally sourced (which it very well may be – Music on Vinyl has always been vague about sources used), it would be hard to tell – the record still has a warm, inviting sound and quiet surfaces that beg for repeat playing. In addition to “2001,” the album also includes Deodato’s Brazilian/funk/jazz take on Claude Debussy’s “Prelude to an Afternoon of a Faun,” an original named “Carly and Carole,” and a cover of “Baubles, Bangles and Beads.” While it’s more commercial than some of CTI’s other albums, it is a representative sample of the kind of record Creed Taylor liked to make.

Rachel Z: Sensual
Dot Time Records

I’ve seen Rachel Z’s name in credits for years, and saw her as part of Peter Gabriel’s touring band back in 2003. I noticed this album, Sensual (her 13^th album), listed among new releases on Qobuz a few months ago and took a plunge on a vinyl copy. One thing that changes between the vinyl and digital versions is that the track order is rearranged – it’s somewhat disconcerting, to be honest. But otherwise, this record is a very nice contemporary acoustic jazz trio recording, thankfully meatier than anything the smooth jazz world has to offer as it also incorporates touches of folk, rock, and world music in its palette of colors.

Drummer Omar Hakim and percussionist Mino Cinelu fulfill the rhythm component, and a revolving cast of bassists include Mark Penman, Jonathan Toscano, and guest bassist Tony Levin (a pal from her days with Peter Gabriel). The album itself is both reflective and hopeful, reflecting on those who have passed in recent times (her parents, and her musical mentor and “jazz father” Wayne Shorter), while looking toward a better future. “With this record, this music, I hope people awaken to their connection with friends, with nature, with their dreams, with the power to create worlds,” Rachel Z says. My favorites from the album include “Inamorata,” “What I Fear,” “What About the Kids,” and the album’s title track, which musically summarizes her thoughts toward this album. Rachel’s album can be ordered from Dot Time Records on vinyl and CD.

Recent used-record find:

Lonnie Smith, Mama Wailer
Kudu Records

This album has been available on a questionable reissue label, but I took a wild chance on a copy found on eBay. This record is typical of many other records from this era where original pressings in very clean condition (rated VG+ or better) can cost well over $50, often a lot more. This was a case where other buyers probably judged a book by its cover, as the album jacket is not in good condition. But fortunately, after a couple of good cleanings, this turned out to be a really good player. The album itself contains only four tracks, the highlight being the Sly Stone song “Stand” that after a few minutes, sheds all resemblance of the melody and groove and turns into a side-long jam, including a riff that Lonnie Smith returned to many times over the years, punctuated by some of Grover Washington Jr.’s best soloing on record. If you can ever find one of these, it’s a keeper. And with my luck, Music on Vinyl will reissue it after I spent nearly a year looking for a playable copy that wouldn’t break the bank!

At NAMM 2024, Harris Fogel took a lot of photos. Well, he is a photographer after all. Part One of this picture-packed photo essay ran in Issue 208. Here are more thoughts prompted by the show, and photos featuring the people who make the world's biggest musical instrument trade show happen.

I’ve been thinking about the larger issues raised by the similarities and differences between consumer and professional audio. For most audiophiles, their love of equipment is related to playing back the music they love. It’s an interesting point, since the creative act of making and capturing music has a referential relationship to how it sounds when played back.

While a hi-fi audio show might have a fifty grand speaker on exhibit, matched by equally expensive audio components, it’s easy to forget that many of the best recordings were mixed using cheap speakers as a “reference” to hear how they would sound on car audio and other average systems. (To be fair, pro studios also have excellent main monitoring speakers.)

So, for me, this gap between the musicians, producers, engineers, technologists, hardware and software companies, mixing board manufacturers, and the final product that the consumer receives sometimes makes it seem like they’re miles away from each other. But maybe not. I’m currently reviewing an inexpensive FOSI V3 stereo amplifier. It’s a contemporary Class D amp, less than a hundred bucks, and it sounds surprisingly musical.

At NAMM shows, you see an amazing variety of gear, from absolutely drop-dead-gorgeous guitars to companies showing off high-quality connectors, and everything in between.

There are lots of studio monitors at the show, ranging from some that are only a couple of hundred dollars to high-quality powered speakers that cost tens of thousands. It’s interesting to me that most audiophiles wouldn’t dream of building their systems around the same speakers used to mix and master the music they listen to. Yet, those are about as close as you are going to get hearing the intent of the musicians, producers, and engineers.

I spent some time talking to Vince Treanor, who was the Doors’ road manager, and whose book Behind the Doors is essential reading for fans of the band. By today’s standards, the stacks of Acoustic amplifiers and PA they used in the 1960s and 1970s were quite crude. Yet today, incredibly sophisticated digital signal processors and room measurement and correction allow a stadium’s sound system to be tailored to an extraordinary level, and the same technology enables even a low-priced big box store’s home theater in a box to take advantage of software that equalizes a system’s in-room frequency response, compensates for time delay, and performs subwoofer bass management. The days of the Beatles at Shea Stadium, where no one could hear a thing (either the Fab Four or the fans) not only are long over, but the lines that used to be drawn between pro and consumer audio are more blurred than ever, and the crossover between stadiums, recording studios, and your living room is now a lot closer then we might have ever imagined.

To use a photography analogy, when a digital printer for photography is first calibrated, it’s self-calibrated or “nulled out,” which means it’s in a neutral, predictable state and has a linear response with no “bias.” The performance of such a piece of equipment is dependable and repeatable. Now, to really get the best out of a printer, you need to load it with the paper you plan to use and the inks you will use, and then print a test sheet, and see if it matches the source image on your computer. There are different tools, but they all boil down to printing a special pattern, measuring that pattern, then generating a “profile” for that specific ink/paper/printer combination. That profile represents a way to adjust colors on the fly, so that the printer matches your source image.

To bring this analogy to audio, calibrating a printer is like using a room measurement and correction system, like the Dirac, REW, or others. They generate test tones, a special microphone measures the output from the loudspeakers, and then the software figures out what it takes to bring the system to a predictable and reliable, calibrated “null state.” In theory, after that process, if you play some music, the system should reproduce it without coloration, bias, or frequency response changes.

The NAMM Show is where ideas like these, products, and technologies collide. In particular, the impact of Class D amplification was everywhere. I think the advent of high-quality Class D is revolutionizing audio amplifiers. While it’s apparent that fans of big, heavy Class A and AB amplifiers will probably never go away (and some of them are ideal for use with difficult-to-drive speakers), I think the day where amplifiers are sort of taken for granted is upon us. Where once I was raised by my kinfolk to consider the sound signature of the amplifier to be the most critical component in a system, next to the speakers, now I think that the age of not worrying about how amplifiers sound is upon us. They are just quickly becoming a given. I see this happening with Class D amplifiers, at NAMM and at audio shows.

Gabriel Antonini of DPA Microphones showed us some pre-selected microphone kits that are used when mic’ing live events. The kits we looked at were in the $12,000 range!

NAMM attracts people from many areas of audio. Here are Robert Eberl (European Motion Picture Association Association), Benny Bergman (Mac Edition Radio), and Daryl Sansevero from high-end audio show T.H.E. Show.

Claire Goh of Paper Citizen plays a customized Fender Mustang at the Roni Lee Rooftop Jam, an annual NAMM event.

Kat Lorme (left) admires the playing of guitarist extraordinaire Larry Mitchell as bassist Koko Powell adds accompaniment.

I never feel that volunteers and staff get enough love. Here at the Roni Lee Rooftop Jam are Brandy Toressi (handling the door, and band merch, an unidentified hotel employee, and Jan Caselli, partner and audience/VIP coordinator.

Megan Steiner (Pulp Vixen) Olivia Tosic, Koko Powell, and Becky Moon (Pulp Vixen) hang out at the jam.

Natalie Morrison of Yamaha Corporation of America enjoys the show with Heather Mansell Schroeder of Yamaha Music USA, and John Krivit of AES.

Here are Roxy Seeman, Case Newcomb and Kenji Nakai of Sonic Lodge Studios, with Mark Stebbeds (THE Company, LLC), Shania Huffman (dialog and sound editor), and Brian Gibbs (AES).

David “Dres” Miranda (Anomalin, LLC), Christian Eisenbarth (Fourth Perspective), Kevin Weichel (KrossfadeMusic LLC), Nathan Fleischer (KrossfadeMusic LLC), and Rachel Ludeman (Conservatory of Recording Arts and Sciences) pose outside of the Food Hall, a popular destination!

Ryan Gladieux (Fir Audio LLC), Larry Whitt (Atlantic Studios West), and Marcus Garcia (Fir Audio LLC), discuss IK Multimedia's AI, Machine Modeling software, said to be able to replicate the sound of any guitar amp, cabinet, or overdrive/distortion/fuzz pedal.

The amazing Cookie Marenco of Blue Coast Records is one of the world's leading engineers and producers, who does outstanding work in the DSD format.

Mixing engineer/producer/artist Dennis "Roc.am" Jones enjoys a moment with Dave Malekpour of Professional Audio Design, and recording artist J. Rose.

Now here's a group of industry heavyweights for you! Sony's 360 Virtual Mixing Environment (360VME) panel hosted engineers George Massenburg, Frank Filipetti, Ronald Prent, Chuck Ainlay, Will Chason, and artists ROC.am,and David Leonard, hold with Adam Weissler moderating. 360VME is designed to replicate multichannel sound via headphones.

Martin Ramone and Sankar Thiagasamudram of high-end headphones manufacturer Audeze share a laugh.

Roxanne Ricks and Gary Boss of Audio-Technica welcome visitors to their booth.

The mighty Case Newcomb of Hyde Street Studios flexes his audio muscles.

Trishes, who is a musician, writer, and co-host of the Hope & Hard Pills podcast, performs at the Gritty In Pink jam and party.

Hitmaking legend Debbie Gibson performs at the She Rocks awards, honoring women in music, shown here with Ariel Bellvalaire on guitar. Debbie Gibson made history at 16 with her Billboard Hot 100 chart-topper "Foolish Beat," as the youngest artist to write, produce, and perform a Number One hit, and she is still the youngest female to hold that record, for over 30 years. Gibson has sold over 16 million albums.

Here's solo artist and Bangles member Susanna Hoffs (center), with Joanna Goldstein (left) and Nikki Stevens (Fender Play).

You might think you're cool, but can you look this cool? Lorraine Lewis (Vixen, Femme Fatale) relaxes in the She Rocks green room.

Without volunteers, non-profits like She Rocks wouldn’t be able to exist. Here are Christin Taunton, an unidentified person, Aspen Aldama, Kay Phillips-Temple, Amber Phillips Temple, and Doug Hawkins.

Susanna Hoffs and guitarist Bill Bonk perform the Simon & Garfunkel classic, "A Hazy Shade of Winter," later also a big hit for the Bangles.

Emiko Carlin, organizer of T.H.E. Show, is also an accomplished musician. She's having a lighthearted moment with Eric Bertotti of NAMM.

Myron Floren would have loved this: Hohner had a large room dedicated to different instruments, including Latin music. Mexican norteño bands are hugely into using Hohner accordions.

Gathered together are Stacy Robin (singer, songwriter, percussionist, scientist, pet rescuer; Stacy Weitsman is the name she uses as a scientist), Janet Robin (2024 Grammy award-winning guitarist), and Sylvia Massy, winner of a 2024 She Rocks Groundbreaker Award and Grammy-winning engineer and producer.

Two guys with beards and long hair are holding the most magical substance on earth: Salmiak (salted black licorice), which came all the way from Sweden. They're Copper's own Harris Fogel, and Baskim Zuta of Sweden's ZUTA Group, manufacturers or great musical instrument pedals and amps.

Eric Emery seems to have happily spent his allowance on a few tattoos, and shows them off in the lobby of the Hilton Anaheim hotel.

Christian Santangelo of Yamaha mixing the the YouTube live feed for the Yamaha Grand Plaza Stage, one of NAMM's main live music venues. Because of limited bandwidth, the YouTube mix requires more compression and EQ than a normal broadcast.

Takashi Fujiwara and Alex Derycz are from LayficTone, a new headphones company from Japan that was exhibiting at NAMM 2024 for the first time.

Grammy-winning producer/engineer Jimmy Jam hangs out with Paul Peterson (Electro-Voice), and Paul Sidoti (Avid Technology).

We visited the Klawitter Design suite to listen to their new line of monitors. Here, Dindae Sheena (KRK Systems) and Keith Klawitter (Founder of KRK and Klawitter Design) are surrounded by various models.

Southern California guitar impressario Natalie “Nova” Toppo is throwing some fun around at NAMM.

The company formerly known as Monster Cable Products has became Monster, which now licenses its name to a variety of products, including cables for instruments, microphones, amplifiers, and more. This is the team that makes them possible: PJ LaMariana, Cody Chamberlain, Rob Bingham, Shannon Book (of in-ear monitor maker Westone Audio), and Christopher Grau.

David Bandrowski of the Deering Banjo Company is having a good time playing one of their new Goodtime banjo models (or maybe laughing at a banjo joke someone told him). It's made in the USA.

Header image: Lynn Sorensen, Sean McNabb, and Thomas Blug rockin' out at the Roni Lee Rooftop Jam. All images courtesy of Harris Fogel.

Even the armed forces news is amazed at the speed with which Navy veteran Zach Bryan became a music star.

He was still on active duty in 2020 when he went behind his barracks to make an iPhone recording of "Heading South," according to Military.com.

You may have heard variations of this story before: It went viral on You Tube and Tik Tok, and Bryan got an offer from Warner Music. Yet he is the least Tik-Toky artist I can imagine. Less than three years ago, in November 2021, the Navy – in which both of his parents, his uncles, grandfather and great-grandfather served – gave him an honorable discharge after eight years of service to do his music full-time.

He immediately went to war with Ticketmaster over the costs of attending his concerts, and released a live album from Red Rocks Amphitheater in Colorado on Christmas, 2022, with the title song "All My Homies Hate Ticketmaster." And he just kept on recording and seems to have never stopped.

His new album, The Great American Bar Scene (Belting Bronco/Warner) was released on the 4th of July. It served as my introduction to the full range of poetic storytelling that has allowed Bryan to smash genres and build an audience that has gone so far beyond his native Oologah, Oklahoma. His current tour sells out arenas and stadiums in Philadelphia, Boston, and Brooklyn. He sold nearly 40,000 tickets to two shows at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn last spring, and concludes the tour there December 18 – 19, 2024. It's called the "Quttin' Time" tour, and Bryan, who has hardly ever been interviewed at length, says he's retiring from the road.

Zach Bryan, The Great American Bar Scene, album cover.

But he hasn't defeated The Man, quite yet: Stub Hub is selling seats for his concert Wednesday, July 17 at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, in the mid-$400 and $500 range.

Back in the 1960s, when Bob Dylan, the Beatles, and so many others made rock lyrics more sophisticated than they had been, there was a debate among scholars and fans over the question: "Are rock lyrics poetry?" It's now a 60-year-old question, and my answer is, "sometimes, but that's not the point." A poem can be read on the page or recited; a song has to be sung.

Bryan knows the difference: He opens the album with a poem, recited in an Oklahoma flatlands accent that may be unfamiliar to many of us with accents from Long Island, the boroughs of New York, the neighborhoods of the Northeast. Which, by the way, are written about in The Great American Bar Scene like someone who knows his way around these parts:

If I'm lucky enough, I will get through hard things
And they will make me gentle to the ways of the world...

If I'm lucky enough, I'll get high and invite a guitar player over
And he'll play sweet notes until a New York City-rooftop sun rises

Bryan's cadence and delivery have few antecedents, but there is an interesting distillation of local nostalgia, living and loving hard, rhyme rhythms redolent of rap – if you're a 28 year old wordsmith today, it's part of your toolkit. But the best nostalgic songs summon Paul Simon, and the in-the-moment struggle songs can't help but being influenced by Bruce Springsteen.

All of the day-after-release reviews I tried to avoid reading mentioned Springsteen's understated but dramatic 1982 Nebraska album, and it's a valid connection. But I was bothered by the NPR writer who nullified the value of the review by referring to Springsteen as "The Boss." It's too cute, too familiar, and a cliché: most rock critics with any dignity avoid this nomenclature. Be your own boss, let Bruce be Springsteen!

Mr. Springsteen appears on "Sandpaper," the 15th of 19 tracks. Springsteen is just here to sing a verse and sing harmony on another, but it's not a stretch for him to meld voices with 28-year-old Bryan's reflections on where his life is now: "They've been trying to smooth me out/For 27 seasons now."

On the song "28," the person he's singing about "took a train to the south side of Boston"; it's not clear whether the song's protagonist went along, but the vantage point of the singer is Brooklyn, where "there's smoke seepin' out of the bar down the street/But we're home somehow."

There's another song that takes place in the New Jersey of "Nebraska," if that makes sense. The title, "Oak Island" is a fictional place with a saloon called Jay's tavern. The singer is a rail-tie worker (Bryan took the name from a rail terminal in Newark). "There's some boys out in Jersey that are calling me out by name/I got reason to believe I ain't bound for glory anyway." The singer may be protecting his brother by seeking out the bad boys first: "No blood in the mud I's raised in/Spent life on the run."

You may note the vernacular use "I's," a regional contraction for "I was." But it could also be "I is," more active than the past tense. Bryan is particularly interesting when using these idioms. "Like Ida" is about a couple taking different directions. "I'm halfway to Dallas, stoned out of my mind...'Bout full-time since you left me here to die last August." She's on her way to Nashville..."that sh*t just ain't my scene." It's a warning, because "They don't know ya' like ida." Like ida: Like "I do."

Similarly, one of the most affecting songs, the first single "Pink Skies," is about going back home for a funeral. (Maybe his mother's?) That Oklahoma vernacular is used to almost comic effect: "If you could see 'em now, you'd be proud/But you'd think they's yuppies." Present tense meets past tense again. "They's" is quite a word, if you've got the accent to get away with it.

You may notice that this, though marketed country and on the country charts as well as succeeding on the pop charts, is not a conventional country musician or singer. The instrumentation avoids steel guitar, fiddle, and the rest, and is not short on good guitar riffs, occasional ambient sound, yet it's not overpowered like high-density country rock. Bryan doesn't sing in a whisper, but his voice draws you close. That is part of his arena rock appeal, I think, that even if you're in the bleachers, you can hear him speaking to you. On You Tube, for example, many of the comments are from young men and women who have found Bryan's music a tonic for their PTSD, families with cancer, sadness, and depression. I'm told by a friend who lives in the real state of Nebraska that in Omaha not long ago, Bryan and his band went out and helped the clean-up after tornados hit the area. A reporter was shoo-ed away: they weren't there for the publicity. It's what they do.

Fans also identify with the strength-through-sorrow of "Bass Boat," about nostalgic but not always happy memories of fishing with his dad. Even with his arm around a lover, Bryan sings, "I'm a self-sabotaging suicide machine."

Oklahoma is its own country, not like Texas, not like Tennessee. Too young to be stuck in anyone else's bag, "Funny Man," about God, is much like the approach Paul Simon takes to talk about the Almighty. Another song, "Memphis; The Blues" (sic) is about a disappointing visit to Beale Street: "The thrill is gone so slow and easy/Won't you love me tender..." She does, and there's an erotic thrill when he says to his companion, "let your dress fall to the ground/We're the only ones left who love Otis in this town." The unconventional punctuation is understandable, because he needs this love, "like Memphis [needs] the blues." The featured guest on that track is youngblood country singer John Moreland.

Even John Mayer shows up for the not-quite-party, presenting his brief but effective Jerry Garcia grace notes on "Better Days." Bryan breaks form to go right to the anthemic party on ("wet, hot") "American Nights," and shows he knows how to play with rock history. Instead of driving his Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry," from "American Pie," he sings: "We snuck our Fords to the shore and drank a bottle bone-dry."

He name drops Springsteen's "State Trooper" on the title song, but also Johnny Cash's "Hey Porter." That's a nice mix. If music had DNA, "The Great American Bar Scene" would be the offspring of those two songs, and much more than that.

This article originally appeared in Wayne Robins’ Substack and is used here by permission. Wayne’s Words columnist Wayne Robins teaches at St. John’s University in Queens, and writes the Critical Conditions Substack, https://waynerobins.substack.com/.

Header image courtesy of Warner Records/Trevor Pavlik.

Rene Wiedner is an organizational sociologist at Warwick Business School, which is part of Warwick University in Coventry, England. He studies change processes in organizations and industries and the relations between work and technology. He began looking into developments in vinyl record manufacturing about 8 years ago.

As Rene notes, “what intrigued me was how a technology that essentially had been written off several decades earlier had been kept alive. I wasn’t interested in the vinyl revival and understanding why sales of vinyl records have increased again. I was interested in understanding how makers of vinyl records had kept going.”

To gain insight, I had a conversation with Rene.

Frank Doris: How did you get involved with studying vinyl record manufacturing?

Rene Wiedner: I had just finished my PhD at Cambridge University in 2015. I had always been interested in music and anything related. A good friend of mine is a recording engineer, living in London at the time. He was telling me interesting stories about what was going on in the world of vinyl. Around this time there was already talk about a vinyl revival, but I wasn't that interested in the revival per se. I was interested in some of his anecdotes about how there were issues with lacquer mastering discs and so forth.

I thought it'd be really interesting actually to study how this industry or this technology – I didn't even know what I was looking at exactly at this point – was kept alive in the digital era. I kept studying it for many, many years and it became more and more interesting over time.

Rene Wiedner.

FD: So you're studying the vinyl industry more from a, I don't know if sociological is the right term for your viewpoint…

RW: Yes. More from a sociological rather than a strictly economic or technological point of view.

FD: It seems like vinyl manufacturing has entered an entirely different paradigm from back in the day when the compact disc was supposedly going to kill it forever. Then, you had big companies and big pressing plants, and you’ve told me previously that now it's the opposite, with the industry shifting from large corporations to smaller vinyl-making operations. How did that happen?

RW: There has been a major transition and it is down to quite a few different factors. Back then, the big record labels owned their own pressing facilities and would actually make the physical products. In the 1980s and the 1990s, these companies were trying to outsource as much of that as possible and become purely marketing companies, This coincided with the advent of digital audio, where they were like, “well, why should we invest in all of these digital capabilities? Why don't we just outsource that to other companies?” So, the big companies just kind of exited production in general, not just vinyl record making, but production in general.

And it wasn't just the music industry. This was happening in other industries as well. This was a time when companies were being told to just focus on one thing and do it well, and if they didn't have to do it, outsource it. But there were a few small vinyl manufacturing companies even back then, and they're the ones that actually kept going. They didn't have the pressure to sell that off. You had some family businesses in the US but also across Europe, and in Japan that were either making records or somehow involved in the industry.

Some of those kept going because they never had to make huge volumes of records to stay alive. They could focus on a niche market. And I guess they had loyal customers, especially if they were located in a particular region where vinyl records were still valued. So, Detroit for instance, there was still some demand there, and in Germany and so forth, especially for electronic dance music.

But then what I found to be really interesting was that people actually entered vinyl record manufacturing when it really looked like it was going to completely die out. They took on the risk. To see somebody do that in an industry that everybody says is basically dead, basically people would think you're completely crazy, right?

FD: That's the audio industry. That's us!

Certainly, audiophiles kept the whole idea vinyl alive. I remember going to my first CES in 1988 for The Absolute Sound, and we were getting hammered by the mainstream audio press, who thought digital was “perfect sound forever.” I went around the show with Michael Fremer and couldn't believe the amount of undisguised hostility towards us. But audiophiles and DJs kept the vinyl flame alive.

You mentioned that innovations in vinyl making were happening around this time. I would have thought exactly the opposite.

US recorded music sales volumes by format, 1973 – 2023. Courtesy of the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America).

RW: Obviously most companies were trying to innovate in the digital domain, but other people were trying to repurpose vinyl records in some way. It was no longer for mass consumption anymore. It became more of a niche. That necessitated a different way of thinking about it. If you're not into mass production anymore, how can you then convert to small batch production, for instance? All the technology was designed for mass production. So people had to innovate and figure out how they could repurpose this stuff. And some of it wasn’t for audiophiles, by the way. I don't know if you've ever listened to an embossed disc…

FD: No.

RW: These aren't cut; the grooves are literally impressed into plastic rather than actually cutting the grooves into plastic. This had been rediscovered, by the way. From the 1950s onwards, there was a big transition to tape recording. Before that, you still had people recording audio using mobile lathes, doing field recordings with them, and there was a DIY community, but that kind of completely died out when tape machines came along. But decades later, some people rediscovered how to actually make discs using lathes that were more mobile, rather than the huge Neumann and Scully lathes, which are also very difficult to get your hands on.

So, people began looking for alternatives for making records, and found some of the stuff about embossing records back from the 1930s and 1940s, and tried to get it working again, but using new materials. Different types of plastic became available, and people started experimenting. There's this guy, Peter King, in New Zealand. He figured out a way to do an embossing technique using tungsten steel styli to emboss polycarbonate discs. The sound quality is not that great, but there’s now a community and a demand for it. It was taken up by other people like Mike Dixon (of Michael Dixon Vinyl Art) in the US, and they kept developing it further.

Audiophiles initially hated this other innovation that happened in the 1980s, which was DMM (Direct Metal Mastering). I've heard many people say that it's completely soulless and sounds awful. But it was a completely new technology at the time. They were still experimenting with it. CDs sounded horrible at the beginning as well. But from what I've heard, if you use DMM technology today, you can create a good-sounding record.

FD: I have a DMM that was done by Stockfisch Records – DMM-Dubplate Vol. 1 – and it's a metal disc, and it sounds incredible. If there's one thing I’ve found out in being in the audio industry, it's that you can't make assumptions, because so much of the final result and sound quality is in the implementation, as opposed to the technology itself.

Inspecting a DMM disc at Stockfisch Records. Courtesy of Stockfisch Records.

RW: DMM wasn't commercially successful when first introduced, but today it is. Big pressing plants are using DMM.

People often say that today, vinyl records are made exactly the same way as they were back in the 1970s. And to some extent that's true. But there are interesting variations. People began experimenting and were doing interesting stuff, and they had the freedom to experiment because nobody cared. 

FD: And obviously, records cut from digital masters weren’t a thing until the 1980s.

RW: And half-speed mastering isn’t exactly new. I don't know when they came up with it, but an interesting thing I learned is that to get the most out of half-speed mastering it is actually better to use the digital source. [I’ve seen a report of half-speed mastering being used as early as 1949, and Decca implemented it in the 1950s. it became an audiophile “thing” around the mid-1970s. – Ed.]

FD: You’ve stated that there is more life in declining technologies than we might expect. Another idea you’ve framed is the concept that focusing on an obsolete technology is the least risky thing a manufacturer can do, as demand can't really drop much further, as opposed to focusing on a new technology that could really just…

RW: Bomb. That was a quote from Steve Espanola, who runs The Secret Society of Lathe Trolls forum. He was a computer programmer, and he said that he always had to invent new programs and learn new programming languages, which became obsolete quite quickly, and he was always having to find the next thing to work on. Whereas he is now a Wurlitzer repair person, and that's the most stable thing he could find, because there literally aren't that many people out there who can do this work. The demand is not exactly huge, but it can't really drop much further. 

FD: I think people may be concerned that record cutting may be a dying art, but from your research, it seems like it's not.

RW: I mean, you have to be careful. If everybody starts doing it, then there's obviously going to be oversupply, and not everybody in the industry can then probably sustain that. And then it will have to become a hobby, because the commercial side of things doesn't work if there's too much supply compared to demand.

But the thing is, there are now opportunities out there for people to turn these things into hobbies, things that previously you would've said, “oh, well, you need a big company to do this.” You don’t necessarily need teams of experts today. There is a possibility to do some of this stuff that wasn’t imaginable before because of the existence of new technology. So my research is not just about moving away from new technology to just focus on the old. Sometimes it's combining old and new technology in new ways to actually preserve the old.

FD: For example, 3D printing is a boon in making parts that you just can't find anymore.

RW: There are people who use modern CNC (computer numerical control) machines, 3D printers, and things that have now become affordable even to people who aren't working in huge multimillion dollar corporations, for instance.

FD: When I used to be an industrial buyer, “sole source” was a phrase we never wanted to hear. Unless things have changed recently, there's now only one source of lacquers for record mastering because of the 2020 Apollo/Transco lacquers fire that destroyed that company’s manufacturing capability.

RW: It's true.

FD: That’s concerning. What happens if the remaining source has a problem?

RW: The saving grace is that at least there is DMM, which doesn’t require lacquers for record mastering. If for whatever reason, the lacquer source completely dries up, DMM is something people could try to fall back on at least temporarily to keep it going until another provider can fill that gap. So DMM, even though it was once written off as a commercial failure, could be the savior of vinyl records.

The people at Public Records (the remaining lacquer supplier, distributed by MDC) are super-friendly, by the way. I think they get a bad rap because people think they're this monopoly provider that is basically exploiting its monopoly, and it couldn't be further from the truth. Their small factory is in the Nagano Valley in the Japanese Alps. It's really a beautiful area, but not anywhere close to Tokyo or any other major city, I think. They've just kind of kept going. And they embody traditional Japanese values. It's about serving. I asked the CEO, “let's say if it's no longer profitable to make these lacquer discs, wouldn't you just stop doing them?” And the CEO said, “no, we would still continue to make them as long as there's one customer, because otherwise people would be sad.” In North America, we'd be immediately completely cynical and say, well, of course that makes no sense. But that is the Japanese way of thinking about it, which I find amazing.

To some extent the entire record pressing industry is reliant on two Japanese companies. One is this lacquer disc manufacturer (Public Records), which is a really small family business. And then there's another family business that makes the styli used for cutting records.

We're talking about lacquer cutting. For DMM cutting, realistically there are also not more than two suppliers of the diamond styli you need for cutting DMM discs. And one of them is basically a one-man show.

FD: Think of how many turntables and cartridges are sold, and it’s all made possible by the efforts of a few people.

RW: It should make people nervous, right? Yes. But the good thing is, so far the record making industry has survived because people continue to come into it. There are enough passionate people that given the chance they will dedicate their lives to this.

FD: You have mentioned that we need to change how we think about technological progress, and that it's not just the new replacing the old; it's about increasing options. Sometimes we think that the new replacing the old is literally the definition of progress. But you’re saying it’s more about increasing options. For example, solid-state technology didn’t push vacuum-tube technology aside for audiophiles and musicians.

RW: It's almost philosophical in a way. Vacuum tubes and solid-state are different. They are also to some extent interchangeable, which is, again, good in terms of resilience. If one of them should no longer exist, you at least have the other alternative. But not only that, they can serve different purposes. It's quite myopic to think that, oh, well, progress is just clearing away the old and completely adopting the new, whereas, if we think about it, some of these old things can still generate a lot of value. And really, we lose something if we just get rid of the old. People often say to me, oh, well, that's just nostalgia. And I don't believe it is. It's not a desire for the return to the old. It's appreciating that there is value in these different things and that we shouldn't take them for granted.

FD: You’re an organizational sociologist. You study behaviors. Did you get turned onto this whole vinyl thing by accident, or because you've been an audiophile?

RW: I think I've always had some kind of a resistance to the more narrow-minded view of what business and management studies are supposed to be about. For instance, that it's always about financial profitability, whereas in the vinyl industry, it obviously is not always about financial profitability. I think that's an important thing to recognize that even though businesses are there to be financially sound, to remain in business it's not always the objective to make as much money as possible, and that actually, businesses can serve a greater purpose. I think that's why I've been drawn to the arts and to music, because obviously you need businesses to sustain all this stuff, but it is, again, for some kind of greater purpose.

And I think you can see how emotional some people get about keeping an old technology alive. I've been tying this to ethics in a way, which is that I think it is inherently ethical to do something like this because it gives people joy. And the other thing is the aesthetic experience. That's another area that I've become more and more involved in my research: the whole topic of organizational aesthetics. For me, it comes down to these kind of questions about ethics and aesthetics, and in business and economics, the aesthetic dimension usually just goes out the window. Nobody cares about that, which is crazy because of course, life is about aesthetics, right?

A Neumann VMS-70 record cutting lathe. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/VACANT FEVER.

FD: Almost everyone I know in the audio industry got into it for a love of music, but as you say, you have to be able to implement it. If you're a musician and you want to make a sound, you have to have a guitar, which is made by a company that has to make a profit. But so many of the people who are in the audio and music industries are very passionate about it, and it's all intertwined.

RW: What you're saying is pretty much why vinyl records have been kept alive. If it had just been about people thinking about profitability, all of them would've exited.

Have you heard of Flo Kaufmann in Switzerland?

FD: Yes, of FLOkaSon, the disc cutting maker.

RW: He calls the 1990s the golden age of vinyl records, whereas for most people, that's the time of its almost quasi-death. And it was because that's when the people who were really passionate about it suddenly had the possibility to experiment with this stuff themselves. They literally went to junkyards in the 1990s to get some of these pressing machines, and even in some cases, possibly lathes, although I've heard different stories about whether or not lathes were ever really thrown into junkyards. But this is when you had these people cobbling together secondhand stuff, making it work, and just making records. I'm sure most of them sounded horrible, but that was part of the learning curve, and it was because of the passion. No longer did you have to have a deal with a label or broker, and the pressing plant, and a long bureaucratic, complex process.

FD: The concepts you talk about could apply to many things: that there is more life in declining technologies than you might think, and that diversification in technologies is good. Also, that you should think in terms of a lot of small providers to serve your needs, as opposed to one big monolith.

RW: Based on what I've learned about vinyl manufacturing, I'm now looking at other settings. We talked about Japan. They're still making katana swords, and that is also a very interesting craft that has been kept alive, and which demands extreme dedication.

Header image: the record sent into space on the Voyager spacecraft in 1977. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/NASA/JPL/public domain.

Tech publication Gear Patrol featured the aspen FR5 loudspeaker with the headline, “This Hi-Fi Speaker Offers $30,000 Specs for a Tenth of the Price.”

The article noted, “The American hi-fi maker, PS Audio, is best known for its high-end audio components – such as amplifiers, preamplifiers, DACs and music streamers – that are aimed at audiophiles with fairly deep pockets. Its line of loudspeakers, known as the aspen series, is no different. To date, it’s offered several sets of floorstanding speakers, ranging from the $10,000 aspen FR10 to the $30,000 aspen FR30. And now it's bringing some of those same technologies to a compact loudspeaker format.

Meet PS Audio’s new aspen FR5 stand-mounted loudspeakers. They’re the company’s smallest and most affordable loudspeakers.”

In The Absolute Sound’s 2024 Ultimate Directory to High-End Loudspeakers and Cables, the aspen FR30 loudspeaker is included in the $25,000 - $50,000 category in the article “The Greatest Bargains in Integrated Systems, Subwoofers, and Loudspeakers.” The FR30 is one of six speakers chosen.

As the article states, “We name the speakers that deliver the biggest bang for the buck, from $399 to $91,000.”

aspen FR30 loudspeaker.

Dagogo published a comprehensive review of the AirLens and DirectStream PerfectWave DAC MK2. The review stated, “I wish for my audio system to thrill me, not lull me to sleep. I become excited about a product that moves my listening sessions into uncharted territory of performance, and the AirLens with the MK2 were leading me onto new listening ground.” He also commented, “The AirLens and MK2 presented each piece of music as I wished, vibrant, information-rich, and highly engaging.”

Future Audiophile’s Greg Handy found much to like in his review of the AirLens. He said, “The AirLens is for audio enthusiasts who appreciate the magic of high-performance music streaming…PS Audio recognized who their customers were by…addressing…noise and jitter issues from causes including computers, the internet…and they nailed it.”He concluded, “Nothing I have auditioned to date has rivaled what I experienced with the PS Audio AirLens, especially when mated to their Stellar Gold DAC. My goal now is to figure out how to keep the PS Audio AirLens in my system, because I don’t want it to go back.”

PS Audio AirLens.

Header image: PS Audio aspen FR5 loudspeaker.

Scene from a Japanese audio store in 2006. We wonder what those prices would be like today! Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Tomer Gabel.

Here's one of the many bizarre albums in the editor's collection. Getting Through is an album of hearing tests issued in 1971 by Zenith Radio Corporation. It even has a track that simulates what you'd hear if you had hearing loss. Your editor hasn't had the nerve to play this record yet.

Here's the back cover. The record also comes with an explanatory booklet, which includes the comment, "Amazing, isn't it? Sure, a man with this hearing aid might not be able to tell his wife's voice from his brother-in-law's, but at least he'd be able to understand what they have to say. I'd settle for that, wouldn't you?" Guess the technology has come a long way.

 LED lights may be more efficient, but they sure don't look as cool as this crazy contraption. Radio Electronics, May 1956.

This is a rare Reussenzehn Tube 66 vacuum-tube amp from the 1990s. That has to be one of the most beautiful logos ever. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Hannes Grobe.

Here's the amp without the tube cage. Almost nothing about the amp is available online. Thomas Reussenzehn was a noted German maker of custom amps for guitar and audio, and also worked on guitars. He sadly passed away, but some information is available on the Reussenzehn website. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Hannes Grobe.

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 This cartoon originally appeared in Issue 157.