Issue 58

It was the best of times…

Scrap that.

I’ve written about my friend and mentor Richard Beers several times, starting ‘way back in Copper #7. While I despise the lingua franca of biz-speak, it would be accurate to say that there was a “power vacuum” in the audio show biz following his death. And, as always…nature abhors a vacuum (oops—apparently, I’ve said that before…).

To condense events that unfolded over many months: THE Show Newport was held June 3-5, 2016, and was the first Newport show following Richard’s passing. Most of the show-wrangling was handled by Richard’s former assistant, Marine Presson. By all accounts—including our own and that of Stereophile—the show was a success.

While at the show I heard reports that a group of local audiophiles/business folk were discussing the idea of a new and different LA-area audio show. There were rumblings that the Hotel Irvine had deemed the audiophile clientele of the show beneath their standards of beauty and spending (go figure), and that the hotel would opt out of its contract. If THE Show were to continue, it wouldn’t be at the Hotel Irvine.

In September of 2016, the new L.A. Audio Show (LAAS) was announced for June, 2017, sponsored by the LA-Orange County Audio Society, backed by financiers the Orion Group, with Marine running things. Meanwhile, THE Show, headed by Richard’s friend Maurice Jung, scheduled a show for Anaheim in September, 2017. I recently rehashed this history, and so won’t dwell upon the details too much.

Long story short: The LAAS held their first show near LAX, with generally lukewarm reports from both exhibitors and attendees. Exhibitors commented at length upon logistical issues, light attendance, and navigational nightmares which left major exhibits from Harman and Sony almost unseen. In early September, 2017, THE Show was canceled only weeks before the scheduled date, largely due to the illness of Richard Beers’ friend and heir, Beverly Harber. Beverly passed away that November.

Beverly’s death was sad, but the community consensus was that THE Show was gone for good, eliminating the dueling-show mess in LA, and leaving LAAS to stand alone. LAAS was announced for June 8-10, 2018, to be held at the Orange County Hilton that had once hosted THE Show. Simple, right?

Wrong.

THE Show announced that they would be back, the week before the LAAS, June 1-3, also in an Irvine hotel. The audio community was not pleased, and many vowed to stay away from both shows, let them slug it out, and side with the eventual winner. Most placed their bets on LAAS.

As Patriots fans know, sure things don’t always win. On April 18, 2018, Marine sent out a rambling, contentious email under the heading “Personal Note From Marine at LAAS” in which she stated that “…the LA Audio Show is mine and mine alone to steer towards collective success.” With indications of persecution and a spiritual awakening of sorts, the collective response of the audio community was, “what the hell was THAT?”

Two weeks to the day later, on May 2, Marine sent out an even more-peculiar email headed, “An Open Letter to the Industry. LAAS Cancelled.” You can read the full text here, and I’ll let you draw your own conclusions. Oh: if you click on the picture of Marine flashing deuces, you can read even more. And maybe even order a t-shirt.

On May 3, little else was spoken of in the industry, and THE Show wasted no time in pitching their show to those abandoned by LAAS.

If you’re interested in more details of the whole string of events, our friend Jason Victor Serinus wrote a thorough and fair account; Michael Fremer also wrote about the situation, with a classically prickly-Mikey take on it.

We’ll see how THE Show does. I have a feeling this bizarre story is far from over.

About half a year ago, in Copper #45, I wrote a bit about my system, and the seemingly neurotic doubts it aroused in me.

Well, OK — not seemingly. I wouldn’t be a true audiophile if I didn’t experience the periodic, gnawing urge to somehow make it better. But I do remember a time when I was incredibly satisfied with the system. It was a few years ago, when things were a little different at my house. The changes are not for the better, sonically. For one thing, I had the speakers farther out in the room, and we only had one couch. Where I sit was, and could be, much closer to the speakers. Let’s just say that the battle over wife-approval-factors has been utterly lost in this house. But the good news is, five minutes of moving furniture and speakers and things are, more-or-less, back in that old position.

It’s a very odd room — “mid-century modern” (to quote somebody else’s expression), built in 1959, with three walls of dissimilar materials –– stone, plaster and glass; and made doubly so by our insistence on its main function — the view — we won’t compromise it. So I can’t use the more-or-less obvious axis for the speakers: facing in from the large, floor-to-ceiling window. My solution was copped from Dan Meinwald — put everything at an angle. And it works pretty well.

The preamp then was a pure tube EAR G88, Tim deParavicini’s former top of the line; the turntable, Allen Perkins’ great Immedia RPM-2 with matching tone-arm. And no matter what music I played on the system, analogue or digital, it sounded exceptional.

That was the best that I had; that equipment, in that position. Holographic is one way to describe it: the speakers well and truly vanished. But things change; children grow up to be cowboys, etc. Nonetheless, I remember it. And I’m thinking of doing something kind of drastic to get back to it.What I hear — tinnitus aside — isn’t a lack of treble information, it’s a lack of transparency.

So the question I’ll put to any readers of this column is:
Have you ever re-soldered your speakers?

That’s what I’m thinking about doing. The woofers have been redone several times, as they’ve needed re-foaming over their 22+ years. But the midrange domes and the tweeters haven’t, and the crossovers, most definitely not.

Inspired (or irritatingly egged-on, depending on your take) by a recent “Paul’s Post” about doing a spring-cleaning, I’m thinking of going all the way. It sounds like an enormous pain in the tuches, and I’d have to be extremely careful to not mess with the dressing of the absorptive material in the cabinet, so I’d like to know, before I do it, if any readers tried it and had success with doing it. The mid-drivers and the tweeters don’t seem so scary, but the crossovers… yikes.

The speakers are a d’Appolito configuration pair made by my pal Richard Marsh, using Dynaudio drivers and his own crossover components. He had built a pair for himself, I heard them and asked him if he’d consider building another pair.  Part of his reasoning, he said, was to see whether or not he could improve on his pair by the internal dressing. He reported that he succeeded with mine, and so went back to redo his pair.

Just about anything can and everything does oxidize, for better and worse. So…

Anybody tried it?

[Ye Uncharitable Editor immediately responded: It’s the caps, stupid! You’ll see a piece on the upgrade of my Spica Angelus crossovers soon.–-Ed.]

[Copper‘s Dan Schwartz had a lengthy conversation with concert promoter/raconteur Rikki Farr at his office at Riva Audio.  Part 1 appeared in Copper #56; Part 2, in Copper #57. This is the third and final installment of Dan and Rikki’s chat. I hope you enjoy it! —Ed.]

D.S.: So – the Maoists and the draft dodgers at the Isle of Wight.  Did you..?

R.F.: Well, they’d just destroyed a festival in France, in Montpellier. They came in these luxury buses with their stencil machines…they had the money to come across on the ferry, and on the buses, and all of the cost – and their message was that music should be free. And they would give out these leaflets: “don’t pay – you don’t have to pay, you can go on the down…” Now a lot of kids just said, “Screw you!” and they paid.  If everyone had paid, that would have been a huge success, and we were then going to go and build a permanent site on what is now the Isle of Wight, but they just tore it down, they broke it….

D.S.: Why do you call them Maoists?

R.F.: Because the French guys referred to themselves as Maoists.  They were the ones with the red headbands.  But there was another faction run by a little guy who looks like Charles Manson The one who chipped Joni Mitchell’s tooth.  He was…I received a bullet. Kris Kristofferson and I were backstage, talking, and he was ready to go on, and I got a Coca Cola can with a note and a bullet. It said, “The next one’s yours.” That’s why in the movie, you see Kris going on stage and he says to me, “I think they’re going to shoot us.” And you couldn’t hear me saying, “Where would we go? There’s nowhere to go!” (laughs)

And that came through the microphone.  The crowd heard that.  He’d just finished “Bobby McGee” and he wasn’t really in tune, and his band wasn’t really together. And Kris – it wasn’t a good performance.  And the audience went aggro; the Maoists lit a fire, were setting fire to things, burning down…

D.S.: So they identified as Maoists?

R.F.: The Frenchies? Yeah.  And there was thing of, “music should be free.” And I got hold of  a couple of them and I said, “How should it be free?  This guitar has to be paid for.  This electricity.  The toilet you’re using.  Who cleans it?  The water you’re drinking.  Where you park your bus.  You can pay 10 pounds to come over here and 10 pounds go back.  You can’t pay 7 shillings and sixpence for 5 days of the best music ever assembled?”  “Ah, but music must be free!”

D.S.: I hope they’re happy.

R.F.: They’re not, they’re not.

D.S.: I mean, music is free, now – of course not – there’s the cost of producing…

R.F.: Yeah, but – it isn’t, really.   It’s just repugnant .  So when you listen to what I (said): “We built – we worked a year for you bastards.” That was at the Maoists – and they knew it, because they’d now got into the front area, the press area, and they were occupying it.  The press had moved out.  It was like, “We don’t want to deal with this.”

And they were spitting, and they were at the stage.  That one guy, who was an American draft dodger – looked like a real thug – I invited him onto the stage.  I said, “Hey, the mic’s yours.”  And he got up and made such a fool of himself.  You can hear the crowd just booing him.  “I was at Woodstock, man!  That was free, and it was love and peace!  This is a concentration camp, man!”

I’d already explained that the government made us put the wall there as it was a matter of sanitation safety.  That killed us; the cost of that.  We actually had no intention – there was one road in, we literally were going to put a pay desk at the far end, and people would come in and carry on down the road.  We were going to do it that simply.  The year before, we had, literally, scaffolding pipes with black screens.  Some people cut their way through and came in free.  But not many. From a sanitation point of view, we had to maintain the site. They made us put a solid wall there, and it was horrible.  I gave these guy the paint – big mistake.  I said, “Look, paint it – put some love and peace signs on it.” And then the Maoists put “Fascist Pigs” and “Kill the Pigs – Music should be free!”

D.S.: Seven shillings sixpence was 90 cents.  For five days?

R.F.: Yup. What we should have done was make it 5 pounds. And everybody said it was ridiculous.  Camping was free; toilets and water, food was subsidized.  We built 4 churches for the different religions, children were born…I mean, we had a city the size of Brighton.

D.S.: A pound a day wouldn’t have been unreasonable.

R.F.: No, no.  Absolutely not for that bill.

D.S.: So why did you pick 90 cents?

R.F.: Well, we felt the amount of people we knew the deal would come.  The one thing was – I was labeled a Communist by the government – a perverted Communist – they had a thing about me inserting a straw into my scrotum for sexual pleasure – that I’d never done in my life and never heard of since.  But I think it was one of those members of Parliament – God knows what they did up to.  You see the gay clubs they go to, where they get whipped over having their fish and chips by a girl in a leather skirt…

D.S.: Well, at least it’s a girl!

R.F.: (laughs) Well, sometimes you wonder.  The Boot and Flogger was a famous place where you’d gather the MPs and they’d all be hauled over and have their bottoms smacked before lunch! (laughs) The British are a strange bunch!

D.S.: There are certainly rumors like that!

R.F.: No, I’ve been there!  Really.  Remember, I had all the clubs in London.  The Boot and Flogger.  There’s so much scandals going on now…

D.S.: A scandal like that would be relatively harmless.

R.F.: Well, I knew Christine Keeler really well.  And Ward [?}]  also – I mean, his suicide and everything, that was just so – crazy. It was the sixties, for Chrissake. Everyone was discovering their sexual freedom.  Girls – you know, it was just an amazing era.  And it was born out of this music that was coming and it was tribal.  There was the Carnaby Street tribe.  The Soho tribe.  The Notting Hill tribe.

D.S.: So do you think people picked their tribes?

R.F.: I think they gravitated to where they thought they could be the most successful; where they thought their contribution would be meaningful.

D.S.: That’s really interesting – tribal.

R.F.: That term came to me with Newcastle.  Manchester came later, with Duran Duran and so on and so forth.  But Nottingham.  And then later on, Sheffield.  A lot of bands out of Sheffield. And a lot of hair bands, like Def Leppard and so forth.

D.S.: But tribal suggest that people identified with a tribe rather than coming from a place.

R.F.: Well, I’ll give you a for instance.  If you were at the Blue Boar, which was a cafe on the M1, on a late Saturday night, early Sunday morning, all the Four Temps [?] traders, which was the van de rigeur of the traveling vans and equipment – that’s what they scuttled all over England in – setting up and pulling down. Bags coming  the North back to London, bags from the South coming back up North, we’d all meet there for a cup of tea, and eggs and beans on toast…I tell you, if you’d thrown a hand grenade into the Blue Boar, you’d wipe out what is now the legend of British music.  And y’know, there were those going up to Liverpool, there were those going to Birmingham, those going to Sheffield, those going to Newcastle…and this was not dissimilar as I would say, from the way the British [follow?] their soccer teams.  They’re tribes.  They wander around, they go to huge lengths to travel…if they’re playing in Moscow, you’ll see 8,000 guys from Liverpool.

D.S.: Did you ever have any interaction with the Grateful Dead?

R.F.: I did, because of my relationship with The Tubes.

D.S.:  That’s the best example that I can think about of a tribe in America.

R.F.:  Yeah.  Very much so.  Well that – I would even go beyond “tribe” and say “cult.”

D.S.: Well –  and then you just make it bigger, and it’s a religion! 

R.F.: Yeah – absolutely.  But when you think of them, you identify with where they come from. The Bay Area.  So that’s what I’m talking about.  This is a Liverpool band, this is a Manchester band…and I think England, by its very nature, if you look at history, England was broken up into territories: the Sussex men, the Kentish men, the Yorkshire, the Welsh, the Devonshire…you can’t believe a country that has so many different accents. I mean, you can travel 400 miles and you go from top to bottom, and if an American goes the whole North to South, they can’t understand half the people they talk to – but it’s all English!

D.S.: I’m very glad for subtitles…when I watch Scottish films, you know?

R.F.: (laughs) So it’s – when everyone gravitated to London, and London became the hub, and if you could come to London and play, and sell out, and you could really have a following, that was the real…nobody really aspired to go to Liverpool and sell out a crowd of people there.  Gary and the T Bones went to Liverpool – packed – but you made it if you went to London and you could go to the Marquee – even though we were licensed for 540 people, we’d get 1500 there. I mean, it was the black hole of Calcutta.

D.S.: I remember.  Even in ‘86 still.

R.F.: Oh yeah. I remember it well.  Well, I sort of remember it – when I talk to someone like yourself, it becomes very pictorial in my thinking.

D.S.: What are you proudest of? Of everything you’ve done?

R.F.: My children.

D.S.: And what was the biggest disappointment for you?

R.F.: My biggest disappointment was the editing on The Isle of Wight.  It could have been…I mean, I understand he had to show the anarchy, but not make the whole film about the anarchy.  And I think that if you had taken the beautiful colors and things that they filmed, like Sly and the Family Stone waking everybody up at dawn to the sunrise –

D.S.: What did they play?

R.F.: I went to Sly, and he was so high, and there were mounds, like little mole mounds for miles around, of people sleeping. Occasionally a body would be wandering around to go to the bathroom or on a trip = but mounds and mounds of people.  And he went onstage, Jeff Dexter announced them, and I was that far from crispy. And he grabbed a mic and starts going, “Boom chaka laka laka, Boom chaka laka!” (hums “Dance to the Music”) and all of a sudden these mounds started to wake up. 20 minutes later, the sun came up and it was just magical.  “Murray, why didn’t you put THAT in the film?” “I’ll put it in the new film!” Well, Murray died.  Died few months ago, 4-5 months ago.  And he just called me two months before: “Let’s do it.”  And I said, “Do it – but let’s edit it right.”

My biggest disappointment is what  that film could have been – because the recordings are so good.  I mean, some of those recordings…

D.S.: How was it recorded?

R.F.:  You won’t believe this: it was recorded from under the stage with 4 Nagras.  That’s why we had dual mics. Roger Daltrey wanted a single mic, and I said, “No – have it.  We’re recording.” Well, The Who got 3 albums out of it!

D.S.: So – the Nagras were running one after the other, or were you running 2 and 2?

R.F.: We were running them in pairs – in stereo; they were mixed down later.  And some of those records are awesome! And considering the crudity and the way we were recording them…now, my wonderful dear friend, Charlie Watkins from WEM [Watkins Electric Music, British leaders in development of high-powered PA systems—Ed.], my brothers, the Floyd, and ELP with their new PA, everybody donated their PAs. And we just loaded them up and put them out…and then the Maoists were trying to tear the towers down. There was 10 tons and huge power.  They toppled those over, there’d have been mass deaths.  I was living on such tenterhooks from those idiots. And they had no clue what they were doing.

D.S.: They were just trying to disrupt?

R.F.: Well, you also had that other guy, a complete idiot: Mick Farren, who had a band – I can’t remember the name; they’re so unmemorable – I tried to give them dates and nobody would turn up.  Mick Farren and the Deviants.  Something and the Deviants.  And I put them on The Isle of Wight and the crowd just didn’t hear.  He was trying to be the MC and he wasn’t.  So I became the enemy and he was going to destroy me, and he did a cartoon of me as a pig…and I wasn’t a pig when I was getting him concerts and paying him, and putting him on the South Sea with the early Fleetwood Mac.

D.S.: I loved that early Fleetwood Mac.

R.F.: They were wonderful!  Now Peter Green…You’re talking about another favorite! I’m still good friends with Mick. In fact, he has a restaurant in Maui, and I visit him.  Actually, I got a ping from him asking when was I coming over again? I still have people whom I stay connected with from time to time. I don’t live in that vacuum where I have to seek out my past.  I’m so determined to rectify some of the treason that’s been done to the music by the new ways of playing music. And this is why my company, Riva, we’re getting so incredibly well talked about by the press and the industry. We’re starting to get some real recognition for bring back the real honesty of instruments and how they’re played, how they’re recorded, and the voices, and the nuance and the separation. We’re really taking off, and I’m surrounding myself with some really brilliant young people, who, frankly, are making me look really good. Not 100% deserved, but at least I was a compass point for them.

I’m 75, I feel 50, and I’m as happy as a man who’s right minded. Couldn’t be happier.

D.S.: Is there a field you haven’t worked in that you would like to have worked in?

R.F.: When I did the acting, I loved the acting. I found it a little boring – the filming was boring; when I did the reformation film for the Royal Academy…but apparently, I won an award for that film for best unknown actor, or something. Never followed it up, frankly. Took off to the trawlers to make some real money. But doing the repertory theater and The Little Theater in Lewis – and doing Dark Side of the Moon…

D.S.: So that was sort of a passion that didn’t get fulfilled?   

R.F.: I felt I was able to play a part, transform myself, and understand the lines – and completely not be Rikki. Of being this part.  And I don’t know if it was emotional or egotistical, or a combination – but having like – when I played the Golden Boy [1937 Clifford Odets play in which the aspiring-violinist protagonist destroys his hand boxing—Ed.] – and my father wanted me to be a violinist, but I’d been a boxer and I’d broken my hand – and I remember just the light on the stage, and how my trainer would help take off the glove…and my hand, it wasn’t broken; it was like this. But I was able to look at it and the audience felt it was broken – And I’d literally hear people gasping – and I realized I’d probably never play the violin again, for my father.  And it was – it made me feel that I was able to – it gave me a sense of power; in being somebody who I wasn’t. And giving people watching, in a live sense, it gave me – it was thrilling. And it took me quite a while, after, like Christine McNamara went on to have a great career. Peter Cleall, a great British television actor…we were all in this.  And somebody said, “C’mon let’s do more; we’ve got a lot of offers to do things.” My mother really wanted me to do it, but I….going into Kaiser Keller, cheap perfume, drunken sailors, prostitutes, and Bo Diddley was kind of where my heart was! (laughs)

D.S.: It seduced a lot of people.

R.F.: Yes!  And…I think I could have been quite good, with the acting. Only because I’d inherited my father’s fearlessness. You know, someone said, “You have half a million people at The Isle of Wight?  That’s double Dunkirk!” And I go, “Okay.”  And it was just blind ignorance.

D.S.: It hadn’t been done, so you didn’t know!

R.F.: You know, if people are constantly telling me you won’t do it, you can’t do it, whatever – it stirs something up in me – “Well why can’t you do it?” I mean, he – if he’d stayed in the coal mines, he’d be dead by 23. But he got out, went to all the local pubs, put the chairs in a circle, and said, “I’ll take on anybody.” Grown men, minors, shepherds – you name it. And that’s why they called him “Legs” Farr – ‘cause he’d dance and dance – because if they couldn’t knock him out in 3 minutes, they’d put the money in a hat – his brother, Doug would go collect the money – and he’d jab and duck and jab – and then one day, Joe Gess’  boxing came to town, and he signed up. He was too young to fight, but one day, a guy was cutting into the tent to get in for free. My father was there to sort of keep an eye on things. He bent him with a left hand and knocked him out.  Joe Gess said, “You’re ready for the ring.”  So that was “Kid” Farr, and he took on all comers.

One of the ironies was that his pit boss, who’d beaten him remoresely with a leather belt, got in the ring to fight him.  And he beat him and beat him – he actually got on top of him and they had to pull him off. And that wasn’t a fight – that was revenge. But he had to hitchhike to London for his first fight. He was sleeping in a haystack and his feet were tickling him.  He woke up to see a bull licking his feet! And he worked on the barges on the Thames to make enough money to go to training camp and then have his fights.

When he got into the ring with Hitler’s great Walter Neusel, who was on the posters for the True Aryan, and Goering and Goebbels were there, Ribbentrop was the and my father hated – this was before anyone realized what a swastika was, but they had them. My father and the Welsh were all seen as [?German term]. My father recorded the fastest knockout—[?inaudible] screamed. This was the days of the 3 oz gloves. He looked up, and there was Goering and Ribbentrop, leaving the royal box. And that’s why Hitler put my father on is death list.  He was going to have his Chancellery overlooking the bandstand at Green Park. That’s where he was going to have all the “hangers”. He was looking at Churchill and said, “I will hang him like a chicken from his neck.” And Churchill said, “I tell you, Mr. Hitler – some chicken, some neck.” (laughs)

[That concludes Dan Schwartz’s conversation with Rikki Farr. Thanks so much to Rikki, and special thanks to Christine McKibban at Riva Audio and Jim Noyd of Noyd Communications for arranging Dan’s chat with Rikki.]

Newnan, Georgia, is the little town I live in, just south and slightly west of Atlanta. It’s not so little—the census counted 38,000 of us in 2016—but it’s not so big either. We moved here twelve years ago to split our commutes, mine to Spelman in the ATL, my wife’s to LaGrange College further south. One of my Spelman colleagues had an acreage nearby; he kept horses for his daughters there. We thought, well, okay. There was a Starbucks inside the city limits, but no Whole Foods Market. Twelve years later, we have two Starbuckses and still no place to buy overpriced produce. For that we drive to Peachtree City.

What we do have: lots of new friends. Some of them sing and play instruments, some have horses. Some sing and play and have horses. Wait, that’s not quite right. We have one guitar-playing friend—he’ll be on tour in New England when you read this—whose new bride is a veterinarian, and she keeps horses, which she rides extremely well in competition. (For the record, neither I nor my wife ride to the hounds. Yet.)

Here’s what we also have in Newnan: Vinylyte Records. They started out two years ago in the basement of our guitarist friend’s music school but now occupy their very own hip renovated storefront on courthouse square. (Check out their facebook page.) It’s a welcoming space. Alongside abundant bins of new and used vinyl, Vinylyte offers a selection of starter turntables and vintage audio equipment. Plus, they share space with ace guitar maker/restorer “JB” of Brown’s Guitar Mill, plus they host Newnan Unplugged at least once a month; there’s a nice stage tucked away just behind the record bins. Newnan is the hometown of at least two genuine music celebrities, country singer Alan Jackson and classical pianist Charles Wadsworth. So you’ll forgive me for imagining that one of the youngsters planting her feet behind a mic at Unplugged may be the next Alan or Charley or Charlene. Newnan seems like an unusually diverse yet close-knit community, which—considering its own history and our nation’s current troubled state—is worth celebrating. A venue like Vinylyte is not just a happy accident. It’s needed; it represents.

I chatted with owner Jesse Yates right before and after Record Store Day this year. His story may ring a bell or two for you. Jesse started out as a collector. He kept lists of records he really wanted. Also lists of records he really, really wanted. A few times a year he would head to St. Augustine and buy stuff on his lists. When the internet came along, it proved a boon to collectors like him, as well as to retailers and ordinary citizens who had records to sell. Good times!

Then the vinyl resurgence really, really got underway. Eventually Jesse realized he could deal directly with labels, distributors, and aggregators of used product—and he wouldn’t ever have to drive to St. Augustine again. In fact, he could open up his own brick-and-mortar store on courthouse square in big-enough, small-enough Newnan. A Malcolm Gladwell-ish tipping point had arrived. Jesse’s store was brought to you because a critical mass of locals rediscovered their love of vinyl, and that attracted Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen (see Gladwell). So, Maven Jesse Yates leveraged his Connecting skills to become effortlessly great at Sales, i.e., connecting music lovers with more of what they’ll love.

It’s working. Vinylyte’s inventory continues to expand. They end every month in the black. Music lovers have a go-to spot where their tastes are respected and they’ll get good advice. Yates and company are helping create and sustain a community.

Jesse Yates, in Vinylyte Records.

He and I didn’t talk philosophy, though. We talked nuts and bolts. April 21 was National Record Store Day. In spite of local events that prompted other downtown stores to close, Jesse opened for business earlier than usual. At 8 a.m. the line already stretched around the block and down Jackson Street. He got some nice press for that, but he doesn’t think of himself as a hero. He just has, you know, values. Here’s a bit of our chat:

LS: Who do you get product from?

JY: I try to collect as many direct accounts to record labels as I can. Some of the majors, like Sony, Sony Legacy, and so forth, they make it a little hard. Then there’s WEA, which is friendlier, and under their umbrella there’s ADA, which handles distribution for a lot of independent labels. For most of the other records I’m looking for, I may have to go to a one-stop, so called because they handle everything. They’ll have the record, but their prices are higher. The markup on new vinyl is minimal, by the way. You do not have a big profit margin there. So I try to buy from labels, especially Matador, Sub-Pop, the other indies.

LS: Is the physical quality of the product linked to the distributor?

JY: The short answer is, not usually. I do have a connection to Quality Record Pressings, Chad Kassem’s production outfit; they supply Analogue Productions and other labels. Acoustic Sounds/Analogue Productions distributes both in-house recordings and many others. But ASI/AP/QRP is also distributed through ADA, meaning WEA, which is what we use! By and large, our customers shop for the music, not for “physical quality of the product.” Although they don’t want warped records, obviously.

LS: I have noticed that a lot of local bands offer LPs, but typically the mastering and vinyl quality remind me of, you know, the ‘70s.

JY: You need to remember, maybe their label does it for them, maybe the band arranges for production itself. When you have a strong local following, the important thing is to have vinyl available for that niche. It’s not an audiophile thing.

LS: Sounds like the landscape is shifting all the time.

JY: Label affiliation doesn’t matter as much as who’s distributing it. Radiohead is a perfect example. They were on Capitol/Parlophone: weirdly, we could get product directly from Parlophone but not from Capitol. Eventually they went back to their original label, XL, under the Beggars label group, handled by Matador. Our costs came down significantly once we were able to deal directly with them.

LS: How about something like Anouar Brahem’s Blue Maqams, on ECM? It made TAS’s Super LP List, and I didn’t even know it was out on vinyl.

JY: I think that’s UMG, another outfit that can be hard on dealers. We would probably have to buy ECM from a one-stop, which raises the price. And, you know, I understand the issues. Imagine you have 3,000 small shops, each ordering maybe two to five copies of a disc. A corporation that large, they don’t want to bother. They can’t afford to bother. Even with WEA, we have a yearly number we have to hit. If we don’t spend a certain amount with them, we don’t get to buy at all—although I’ve never had a problem meeting their minimum.

LS: Speaking of sales, you did pretty well on Saturday! What were your big sellers?

JY: The Johnny Cash box set was one. That was the Folsom Prison concert in its entirety. All Columbia had ever given people was one LP. But there were two full concerts, a bunch of guest artists, June Carter of course, Carl Perkins, The Statler Brothers. So, finally! In the box set you got four LPs of the concerts, and one LP of Mr. Cash and other artists rehearsing at the El Rancho Motel in Sacramento. And then the mono Pink Floyd Piper at the Gates of Dawn, that was a hot one. The Run the Jewels Stay Gold box, we sold out of that in like fifteen minutes.

LS: Anything surprise you about what people like?

JY: No, I think we’re startin’ to figure it out—I hope.

LS: That’s dangerous.

JY: No, no, it’s all geographical. This time was kind of weird, because of the publicity we got. People came from a considerable distance, which was great, but I was buying specifically for what we normally sell, as well as some of the more obscure requests that we got. But nobody really left feeling dissatisfied. Pretty much, we had something on everybody’s list. The quantities are the most nerve-wracking thing. Will I have enough? Will I have too much? It’s just a huge gamble. Part of the fun, but you can tie up a lot of money in inventory.

LS: It’s a nice experience, being able to come in here and go through all the bins. I can remember being in LA in the mid-70s and making pilgrimages to the Tower on Sunset. Impossible. Overwhelming.

JY: One of my favorite stores in Atlanta is Fantasyland, on Pharr Road. You’ll have a list, whether it’s in your head or however you’ve compiled it, of what you want, and the second you go through that door, it all goes away. Mind-blowing quantity. That’s why Discogs helps.

LS: What do you enjoy most, day to day?

JY: This may surprise you: pricing. I like figuring out what a record is worth. There’s a lot of research that can go into it, especially if that record hasn’t been logged on the Internet. Sellers can come in with some interesting stories. One conversation I don’t enjoy having is where I try to explain why I’m not going to spend $500 on your Sgt. Pepper. And I’m pretty well-versed on how to explain that. I mean, I certainly know why it’s not worth what you think, but I wish it was easier for you to understand that. Of course, I’m in the business of buying your record so I can make money from it on the back end. There it is. I’ll take you around the store, show you how things work. Maybe you’ll trust me enough to sell me your precious memory, and maybe not.

The 2018 AXPONA show has come and gone. In its new digs at the Renaissance Schaumburg Convention Center, the show has hosted more exhibitors than ever before. This year’s show featured seven hotel floors of exhibitors, and most of the major ballrooms and meeting rooms on the two lowest floors were occupied by the larger exhibits.

I would like to share a few of my highlights from the show.  AXPONA was crazy large this year, and I missed quite a few rooms despite trying to see as many as I could.  But, I still had a memorable and enjoyable visit to the show this year.  And I am happy to report that the demo music was much improved for me this year, compared to my critique in Copper last year.

The marketplace area was significantly larger, featuring new and used LPs, CDs/SACDs, cables, audio accessories, record cleaning machines, and room treatments.  I emerged relatively unscathed, and only two sets of interconnects and six records came home with me.

Exotic speakers never cease to amaze me.  It is fascinating to see the different technologies used to convert electrical energy into sound waves.  Dynamic drivers, electrostatics, ribbons, and even Walsh drivers (in a resurrection of the Ohms from years past) were all in attendance. MBL featured these, more reminiscent of flux capacitors:

 German company Göbel showed their Epoque Aeon Fine loudspeakers which use six 7-inch bass drivers and a midrange/high frequency transducer called a “bending wave driver” which extends out past 30kHz and provides high linearity and accuracy.  The sound was impressive in this room.

On display in the lobby was a row of Clearaudio turntables. Would they really miss that Innovation Basic (and TT5 arm) if I slipped it into my pocket?

 ELAC’s rooms at the shows are tremendously popular. Andrew Jones was demonstrating the newly released Debut 2.0 series of speakers in one room, and Peter Madnick was on hand in the other with the ELAC Adante AS-61 speakers, Alchemy amplification, Miracord turntable (gorgeous!), and Discovery Music Server.  Fern & Roby’s products sound superb, and have a handmade artisan quality to them that is evident in their designs. Their Tredegar turntable features a 65 pound cast iron plinth, 35 pound brass platter, and a tonearm partly made from wood.  One of my favorite rooms from last year made a return appearance. Precision Audio Video brought the Obsidian turntable (with Viper arm) by Continuum Labs, and featured Constellation electronics driving Martin Logan Renaissance 15a speakers.  

A new product introduction that really made an impression on me: Eikon Audio speakers, designed by Martin Logan co-founder Gayle Sanders. They utilize a Wavelet control unit which provides the function of a preamp, DAC, four-way crossover and DSP unit. This unit feeds each speaker via four balanced analog cables, allowing each speaker’s four internal class D amplifiers to power each of the four drivers directly.

The speaker’s response is adjusted automatically through a microphone during setup, and is corrected not only for frequency, but also for events in time (such as a reflection occurring, say, 80ms after the sound leaves the speaker). The idea is to provide a uniform wave launch, and the precise adjustment in DSP allows for very stable imaging and uniform bass response throughout the room. (You can literally walk around the room and the bass response remains evenly balanced.)

After show hours, Saturday evening’s blues revue featured the Corey Denison Band with special guests Demetria Taylor and Jimmy Johnson.

AXPONA outdid themselves this year with their largest show ever, and they are committed to the Renaissance Schaumburg for two more years. I am already looking forward to next year’s show, and I hope more of you reading this will consider attending. You’ll enjoy it!