Issue 61

By now, it’s no secret that THE Show a few weeks ago was a mild bust. Too many events scheduled for the same place at the same time, etc. I went for a few hours, but again, the principle experience for me was the music. On the way down to Irvine and back, Neil Gader and I tapped our toes along with the Fabs. At the show itself, my favorite parts of the day were seeing a few old friends and listening to Dan Meinwald spinning Shakti’s “A Handful of Beauty” in Prana Audio’s room.

Oh! And seeing the Helius Designs Alexia turntable! I wish I could have heard it playing something good instead of — nah, I won’t say it. But we listened to it three times in a row.

One room I was very interested to hear but didn’t really have a chance to listen in was the Ryan Audio room. As soon as I walked in, someone read my “Press” badge, and pulled me right out of the room.

Guillaume Chalaron is a Parisian mastering engineer who has spent some seven years in search of his holy grail: an algorithm that straddles the difference between good digital and the best LPs. His goal is to give digital some of the sound of good analogue. He’s developed a process called “RootMasterSound”—and no, I’m not quite sure what that means.

He came by with a bunch of files and we did some listening. (He also was meeting with Bernie Grundman before and after he came here).

Let me first encourage people to go to his site and see what they  think.

The differences here were subtle, but they were also unequivocal. I’m not sure what words to use to describe phase, but M. Chalaron’s algorithm does something with it. The sense of space is, shall we say, “enhanced”. The edges of certain sound-fields were spread out and there was less clustering of images around my speakers. On certain recordings, there was also a clear bump in the very deep bass, one of the signs that made it obvious that something was different.

As I’ve written before, for usually better and occasionally worse, I find that the DirectStream DAC tends to diminish the difference between digital files, pushing everything, 44.1 or 192, up to a DSD-playback. Furthermore, these files all begin at the same resolution. So unless a pair of files is intended to demonstrate that — say 24- and 32-bit files — there’s little to no difference to be heard. But the phase difference, while subtle, is unmistakable — when you know what it sounds like.

Will anyone care? Time will tell. Even if he gets close to the sound of vinyl, it isn’t vinyl. It’s not the über-hep spinning piece of plastic with large, readable art. But for folks who care about sound first, it’s worth listening. I know I’ll be sending him a couple files to see what he can do with something with which I’m familiar.

While things are momentarily quiet in the audio biz itself, one monumental deal will likely change the landscape of media (including music) and business, forever.

Federal District Judge Richard Leon cleared the way for AT&T to take over Time Warner, throwing out the antitrust objections posed by the Justice Department. Approval of the deal, valued at more than $85 billion, is expected to trigger another wave of corporate mergers and acquisitions.

Communications companies like AT&T have in recent years increasingly claimed that lack of control over entertainment media puts them at a competitive disadvantage. Numerous potential deals have been on hold as the AT&T deal underwent 18 months of administrative and judicial scrutiny, and thousands of pages of arguments were exchanged by litigators. The first major deal expected to push towards closure in the wake of the AT&T deal is Twentieth Century Fox: a bidding war between Comcast and Disney for Fox is expected.

Expect to see plenty of 11- and 12-figure deals to appear in the near future.
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I admit to being perversely fascinated by the continuing saga of Sears, which is rather like watching a landfill fire: nothing happens for a while as the fire smolders, then flames flare up all over the damn place, seemingly without cause or connection.

At the same time that CEO Eddie Lampert has blamed Sears’ woes upon online retailers like Amazon, a partnership between Sears and Amazon was being developed where tires purchased from Amazon could be mounted at Sears Auto Service Centers, and Kenmore appliances would be sold through Amazon. Increased revenue from the service agreement with Amazon brought a rare uptick in Sears stock. Starting with 47 stores, the program will soon expand to another 71.

That “uptick”, incidentally, is almost inconsequential. From a historic low of $2.14/share on June 4th of this year, SHLD zoomed all the way to $2.78. At the time of this writing, shares are hovering around $2.66. Had someone purchased massive amounts of shares at bottom, a modest profit could’ve been realized in the short term—but keep in mind that just seven years ago, in April of 2011, shares were at $131.

Despite the unusual bit of good news for the company, the bloodletting continues: Sears announced that 72 more stores would be closed in an unspecified “near future”, and the company announced losses of $424 million in the first quarter, with same-store sales down nearly 12% from the same period last year, and overall revenue was down a staggering 30%.

On top of all his other unfathomable actions, CEO Lampert has announced his hedge fund ESL Investments’ intent to purchase Sears’ famous Kenmore brand and its home improvement unit, some of the few valuable assets the company has left. Over the last several years, a massive sell-off of real estate holdings, the sale of the Craftsman brand , and licensing of the DieHard brand have systematically stripped Sears of its hard assets.

It will be interesting to see what happens next in this bizarre saga.

Sweet summer! Calendar-wise, it’s not quite here, but musically it’s already available, via new recordings of two seasonal favorites. Also on tap: a masterpiece for all seasons, freshened through the efforts of eight young performers—because no rule says you have to limit summer listening to the musical equivalent of a citrus-infused IPA.

Felix Mendelssohn (1809–47) was just seventeen when he created his concert overture, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It’s a tone poem, not a prelude—you don’t need to follow with Shakespeare’s play. The music gives us everything: Oberon, Titania, and their fairies; Duke Theseus; two young couples in love; Bottom and his “Mechanicals.” Shot through every measure is the joyful sense of magic that children feel when they’ve stayed outside too long, lost in play with their friends, the moon rising and cool breezes blowing in the trees. Listen:

Seventeen years later, after Felix had written incidental music for the whole play, his sister Fanny wrote

Yesterday we were remembering how A Midsummer Night’s Dream was always present in our home; how at various ages we had read all the different roles, from Peaseblossom to Hermia and Helena. . . . We have indeed completely grown together with [it,] and Felix in particular has made it very much his own.

Now conductor Iván Fischer has recaptured Mendelssohn’s Midsummer magic, making it his own and ours too. Introducing his new recording of the (nearly) complete music (Channel Classics CCS SA 37418), he shares his secret:

No doubt fairies exist. Mendelssohn spoke their language well. . . .

Humans like this music. It entertains them. They are allowed to listen to this CD, too. However, we made this recording for fairies. They listen differently.

Okay, that sounds altogether too cute. But Mendelssohn did speak their language well, and Fischer amply demonstrates his own insight. Here are bits of the incidental music, beginning with the Intermezzo, in which Hermia, shaken after a nightmare, arises in search of her lover Lysander:

And here is the Notturno, meant to accompany the couples’ slumber before Puck doses them with his love potion:

Finally, a taste of the Funeral March for Thisbe and Pyramus in the Mechanics’ “very tragical mirth,” of which Fanny wrote, “It is just too much of an impudence to lay it before the public, as when Felix starts to improvise at the piano and cannot be persuaded to play properly.” (She did not share her brother’s sense of humor.)

Recently I auditioned a slightly more complete Midsummer, from Thomas Dausgaard and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra (BIS-2166) with the women of the Swedish Radio Choir. From a technical standpoint, it’s faultless. If anything, Dausgaard’s smaller forces play with tighter ensemble, and his cool-sounding Swedish females make their brief contribution with more sangfroid—and perhaps better line and balance—than Fischer’s ladies:

Even so, I prefer Fischer. Why? Must be the fairies.

Onward to another summer favorite: Vivaldi’s Four Seasons (in Italian, Le Quattro Stagioni). We are never at a loss for new recordings; staunch traditionalists can choose from at least a half dozen. Here, for example, is the opening of “Spring” (“La primavera”) from violinist Tasmin Little and the BBC SO (Chandos CHSA 5175), using modern instruments and a chamber orchestra. You’ll hear an approach that many generations of Baroque enthusiasts knew and loved:

On the other hand, there’s little truly staunch or traditionalist about Rachel Podger’s recent offering (Channel Classics CC SA 40318). She does it one-on-a-part, on old instruments, with her colleagues in Brecon Baroque, all of whom are bona fide HIPsters. Let’s hear some of “La primavera” in their hands:

I found elements in each performance that I liked. With larger forces, Little produced a more effective solo-tutti contrast and easily maintained good balance between bass and treble instruments. On the other hand, Podger’s smaller group emphasized the contributions of each musician and thereby sometimes produced busier, more exciting textures. One never got the feeling that Little’s BBC personnel had to make as much of an effort; maybe you like that sense of effortless command, or maybe you’d prefer to feel the individual energies in the band.

Now, to get pickier: much as I respect Podger and enjoy what she does, I don’t care for the way Brecon Baroque treats the last, longer note in the oft-repeated first phrase as an opportunity for a hairpin crescendo-decrescendo (the gentle swell that Leopold Mozart and others encouraged in their treatises). Here, it doesn’t fit the affect well. And I don’t like the way the continuo instruments (theorbo, cello, bass violone, and harpsichord) compete with the upper strings beginning at 1’06”: that is the section depicting “murmuring streams softly caressed by the breezes,” so it won’t do for the support staff to strum and saw away, oblivious to those who are actually attempting to murmur and caress!

You may well make a choice based on broader concerns. There’s a lot to be said for the spirit of a project, whether it’s Mendelssohn or Vivaldi.

Speaking of spirit, get a load of composer/saxophonist Peter Navarro-Alonso’s take on “Summer,” below. (It helps to remember that Vivaldi’s poem for this season emphasized relentless heat, thunderstorms, and buzzing gnats.)

You will have heard that Navarro-Alonso only begins with Vivaldi. Eventually he takes off on his own path, enthusiastically assisted by Alpha, his trio with recorder player Bolette Roed and percussionist David Hildebrandt. One pleasant thing about this music is that N-A doesn’t give a fig about demonstrating theoretical complexity or a unified, rational “language.” His generation of creatives in post-classical music are so over the over-emphasis on theory that had begun with Schoenberg and continued with Messiaen and his pupils.

Here’s a bit of N-A’s “La primavera,” in which he begins with his own material (influenced by Steve Reich, perhaps?) and only gets around to Vivaldi’s bird-calls later:

Incidentally, the string-orchestra contributions from Ekkozone, the other assisting ensemble, sound raw only because they’re amplified. The recording itself is nicely balanced, its percussion and woodwind contributions well caught, making a pleasant experience for audiophiles—especially those who find transient responses the best part of the meal. The album is called (of course) Le Quattro Stagioni, it’s from Da Capo (8.226591), and you can enjoy it even at the beach, although you may get sand in your $800 headphones.

Finally: Schubert, specifically his Octet in F, D803. You might well ask, what’s summery about that? I once read a story—I think—about the teenage Franz Peter Schubert and a carefree summer walking trip he took. When I tried to fact-check it last week, I soon realized that Franz P. was not really the sort of kid who kept a backpack handy. His summer excursions as a 20-year-old usually consisted of touring the provinces with baritone Michael Vogl, an older man who employed him as accompanist and promoted his songs. When not concertizing, Schubert gave piano lessons to Count Esterházy’s daughters at their summer home; read more here. (Schubert did occasionally go on working vacations with other friends, so feel free to imagine him ending some of those days at an open-air Heuriger, wine freely flowing, music as well.)

In the end, though, nearly all of Schubert’s “holidays” revolved around making and performing music. Let’s raise a glass to him just as he was, a dedicated indoorsman. All he really required of summer (or any other season) was a quiet room, a pen, and some music paper.

By the summer of 1824, the composer had finished work on the Octet and the “Rosamunda” String Quartet, D804. Like the “Trout” Quintet, the Octet can be classified as light music: it’s in six movements, four of them lyrical or dance-like; it was written in frank imitation of Beethoven’s Septet and designed for performance by skilled amateurs. All that lands it in serenade or divertimento territory instead of implying a “serious” genre like symphony or string quartet. Performers and marketers have regarded it similarly: my old Philips LP with the ASMF Chamber Ensemble shows Iona Brown and her colleagues lounging comfortably amongst leafy bowers somewhere in London (photo by Mike Evans). My beloved Hyperion CD with the Gaudier Ensemble, engineered nearly twenty years ago by Tony Faulkner, also shows a summer landscape (Christian Heinrich Achenbach’s A View of Lübeck), sheep grazing, farmers taking their ease on the banks of the Trave.

Now a provocative new recording of the Octet challenges all such convenient associations. Violinist Isabelle Faust has gathered some like-minded HIP colleagues to deliver a carefully curated new interpretation, emphasizing every nuance, each odd harmonic change or searching bit of counterpoint. They have not given us a “new” Octet, but they certainly make a case for its being serious music. A few overly precious moments aside, the music reaches our ears with new weight and feeling. Listen to the way they handle the stormy first section of the final movement:

For comparison’s sake, here’s that same patch from the Gaudier Ensemble, whose more restrained, Haydnesque reading I have enjoyed for many years:

And now just a couple of variations from the Andante, a theme-and-variations tour de force:

I don’t know yet whether I will live with Faust and Friends as happily for the next twenty years as I did with the Gaudiers for the last twenty, but I’m awfully glad to have this Octet with me right now. All things considered, its serious tone seems perfect for summer 2018.

Enjoy the season, and the music.

She was a head taller than everyone else, and moved like a real thoroughbred. If anyone truly belonged at Belmont, it was she.

I once owned a racehorse. To be more accurate I owned about 10% of her – the losing 10%. In an effort to get good health insurance I came across a consortium of businessmen who had discovered that the absolutely best health care in New York was through the New York Racing Association (NYRA). I’d also heard from others that most health insurance companies near me went through NYRA. To become a member, you needed to own a racehorse. So, they purchased a horse, joined up and after winning a few races, they bought another and another. It sounded like the perfect deal. All I had to do was buy in to one of their horses, join NYRA and get insurance. To join, I had to fill out various forms, allow them to do a background and credit check. I also had to go to the police to be fingerprinted. They have very strict rules, as horse racing has been known to attract less than sterling characters.

Being a member had its benefits. I could visit the stables and watch training any day of the week. On race days I could go into the paddock and talk to the jockeys. On my side of the paddock was the racing world with their owners, fast cars, parties and Jettly private jets. On the other side of the fence were the punters who paid two dollars to get in, but their common love for racing bonded them together.

I could also sit at the grandstand near the rich and famous. One day during practice I randomly sat on the grandstand and was told to move because the seat belonged to the DuPonts. The stables were pristine and it was a sheer joy to walk around them. Often I would talk to the trainers who explained that due to inbreeding and babying, thoroughbreds in the US were more skittish than their European counterparts.

Horses like peppermints, and I always carried some with me. Once I gave one to a horse and the trainer got very angry because the horse was going to race that afternoon. She stuck her hand deep in the throat of the horse and pulled it out. On another visit a siren went off and immediately everyone froze in place. This made good sense; a racehorse that often weighs over a thousand pounds and can travel of speeds faster than 40 MPH had thrown its rider and was barreling around the track. The errant horse rounded the track twice at full speed but eventually slowed down and came to a stop about 10 feet away from me.

When I bought into the horse (whose name I have deliberately forgotten) I was told that it would be a one-time purchase and the horse would pay for itself by winning a race or two. This was not exactly true. First the horse was sick; then it needed special food to build up its strength. Each occurrence was expensive. It then ran a couple of races but didn’t even place. The final straw was the bill for therapy. It appeared that our horse had forgotten how to be a winner and had to go upstate to Saratoga to some sort of boot camp for bewildered thoroughbreds. Enough was enough and I happily gave away my share and set myself free. On top of it all, due to some bureaucratic screw-up, I never did manage to get the health coverage I wanted.

The highlight of the racing season was the Belmont Stakes; following the Preakness and the Kentucky Derby it is the “final jewel” in thoroughbred horse racing’s Triple Crown series. On this day, the consortium always threw a party. Held on the side of the racetrack from 9 a.m. and continuing all day, it was a lavish event. The food was endless, the booze kept flowing, and horse owners invited friends and family to partake. The racing didn’t start until noon so most of us were loaded well before that. Security to enter the grandstand was tight and bringing in your own alcohol was forbidden. One year (yes I owned this loser for more than one season) a friend and I filled water bottles with vodka and snuck them in. It mixed well with coke. This was 2004 and Smarty Pants who had won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness, was favored to win Belmont and be crowned Triple Crown winner. This was an exciting day. The crowds were overflowing and the tension rose as the hours progressed towards the final race. I’m now convinced that Smarty Pants had a long talk with my horse, pre race, because he ran out of steam in the final furlong and came in second.

It was at the party the following year, 2005, that I met Erica. A head taller than everyone else, she moved through the crowd like a thoroughbred, out of place among this middle class group of owners. Tanned, strikingly fit, and emanating a raw beauty, Erica told me in conversation that she had biked from Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay to the Baja peninsula in Mexico, a distance of 5000 miles. A trained survivalist and ski patroller, she was currently in the process of planning a trip to Pakistan. After joining her Swedish climbing partner, and traveling by car and foot to the Skardu Valley, they were to climb a new route up the north face of Shipton Spire. This would involve scaling a shear rock face and hanging suspended for about a week. The base camp was at an altitude of 3,900-meters (almost 13,000 feet) so a few days of acclimatization were necessary. One sunny day dressed in a t-shirt and shorts, Erica went out for a stroll and disappeared.

Her parents, who I knew through a mutual friend, were frantic. All sorts of conspiracy theories emerged: Terrorists or the Pakistani Army had kidnapped her! Her climbing partner was involved! Through connections her parents contacted Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton, both senators from New York, who then contacted the Pakistani government to organize search parties. Two weeks passed before Erica was found dead, buried under an avalanche. The last word her family heard from her was a postcard written on her 27^th. Birthday. It arrived the day after she was reported missing.

Now that the first trailers have been released for Bohemian Rhapsody, a biopic about Freddie Mercury and the band Queen, the extraordinary song that the movie was named after is back to selling like firecrackers on the Fourth of July. By all means, download “Bohemian Rhapsody” and Queen’s long list of hits. But don’t ignore other interesting tracks that, although they never made the big time, help to define the band.

To be honest, this whole column could be devoted to the first two albums, Queen (1973) and Queen II (1974). Those collections not only preview what the four Brits would become over their 15 studio albums, but also give a glimmer of a path they might have taken.

The first album ranges from rock so heavy that it sinks (“Great King Rat”) to shimmering webs of imagination (“My Fairy King”). Somewhere in the middle, and a harbinger of guitarist Brian May’s introspective, nostalgia-themed lyrics, is “The Night Comes Down.” The originality of the intro alone makes this worth hearing, the way May uses running guitar lines as percussion. It could be heading toward a metal headbanging number (they were very into a certain young band called Black Sabbath at the time), but that’s the next surprise. This almost painfully brittle opening relaxes at about 0:55 into a lyrical melody, sung by Mercury. But underpinning the flowing vocal lines is the relentless tight march of May’s guitar, an effective emotional paradox.

 

Queen II finds front-man Mercury flavoring the band’s tone with his obsession with the fantastical. If you want to know what the multi-part, contrastive compositional style of “Bohemian Rhapsody” developed from, listen to “March of the Black Queen.”  But you’ll learn even more about Mercury from “The Fairy Feller’s Master Stroke.” It’s a rock song named after and inspired by a painting in the Tate Gallery. That’s Queen in a nutshell: somehow equally nerdy and hardcore.

Charles Dadd painted his jam-packed, ribald version of fairyland in the mid 19^th-century while incarcerated in a lunatic asylum. Apparently his madness spoke to Mercury’s; the song is as busy and frantic as its visual source. This video shows the elements in the Dadd painting as they come up in the song:

 

“Bohemian Rhapsody” was introduced to the world on the 1975 album A Night at the Opera, one of the most-analyzed records in rock history, so one I will skip over here. Queen followed up A Night at the Opera with an album that parallels it almost song by song; they even named it after another Marx Brothers movie, A Day at the Races (1976).

While May’s “The Prophet” on Night is less misguided (if not less pompous) than his “White Man” on Races, Roger Taylor makes a contribution to the later album that’s substantively more interesting than his fun but silly toe-tapper “I’m in Love with My Car” (released as the B-side to “Bo Rhap” and a significant hit of its own).

In “Drowse,” May and bassist John Deacon use mild distortion to create an underwater texture. It’s an ideal sonic environment for a song that’s basically about how good it would be to nap through life. Taylor is in rare, pithy form, wise and wise-cracking. His deadpan, understated delivery – normally his “singing” is closer to screaming – makes all the difference as he drops truths like “Thinkin’ it right / Doin’ it wrong / It’s easier from an armchair.”

 

The closest thing A Day at the Races has to parallel Opera’s “Bo Rhap” is “The Millionaire Waltz,” a lush, multi-movement Mercury creation. It shows off his admirable if idiosyncratic piano chops, a skill he lost interest in as prowling and voguing around the stage became the focus of his performance style. Mercury’s sweepingly melodramatic falsetto is backed here by more vocal harmonies –largely sung by himself– than producer Roy Thomas Baker could do with the 24-track analog tape, causing him to “bounce” each generation of 24 tracks down into sub-mixes (the technique used for “Bo Rhap” as well).

May’s waltzing guitar symphony in the middle of this cut is a glorious thing to behold.

 

The News of the World album (1977), beloved as much for its sci-fi cover art as it is for introducing the world to “We Will Rock You/We Are the Champions,” did very well in the U.S. While that famous pair of songs is still heard in sports arenas around the world, “Sleeping on the Sidewalk” never got much attention.

Brian May’s shyly snide takedown of the recording industry deserves a latter-day listen, both for its message and its construction. The opening guitar riff sets up a loping blues rhythm that carries this tale of a trumpet player swept up by record execs and then unceremoniously dumped. Queen had its share of problems with bad contracts in its first few years, but while Mercury always wanted revenge — listen to the songs “Flick of the Wrist” and “Death on Two Legs” to hear his fury – May seems to have longed for the time when they weren’t famous, or even signed, and could just go about the business of playing music:

 

Despite its name, the 1978 album Jazz contains no music in that genre. But included in its mix of wonderfully bizarre classic Mercury-penned hits (“Bicycle Race”) and perhaps the worst song Taylor ever wrote (“Fun It”) is a delightful gem by May.

“Dreamers Ball” relishes two of ʼ70s-era Queen’s best features, which the band allowed to slip away over the following decade. First, there’s May’s soulful, singing guitar lines in tight counterpoint, with as much lyricism and richness as a full orchestra. Starting in 1980, the “No synths” line Queen had proudly displayed on their LP jackets was a thing of the past. And once synthesized sounds came into Queen’s music, the role of May’s guitar changed as well.

And then there’s Mercury’s silky, supple voice, which he purposefully roughed up with cigarettes in the early 1980s because he liked the more macho sound it gave him. So, enjoy this last vestige of Queen’s more delicate nature:

 

Despite the changes in the band’s musical attitudes (not to mention their changing attitudes toward working together), they remained an ensemble with all original members until Mercury’s death from AIDS in 1992; Queen put out one last studio album in 1995, using archived material. Tune in next time for a look at their output beginning in 1980.

[And now for something completely different: at the heart of each and every one of Christian’s columns will be audio from his radio show in which he dissects and analyzes the featured song, track by track. I find it a fascinating process, and hope you’ll enjoy it—Ed.]

In May of 1978, Capitol Records released Bob Seger‘s 10th LP, Stranger In Town. This epic album was recorded in a number of studios throughout the States. Bob had spent time at Criteria in Miami; studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama; Cherokee and Capitol in Los Angeles; and Sound Suite in Detroit— all trying to get the album tracked and finished for release that summer. There was considerable pressure: his last album, Night Moves, had sold six million copies, and the label was MORE than hungry to match that success.

There are two bands playing on Stranger. Half of the tracks feature The Silver Bullet Band, and on the other half, The Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, a cadre of some of the greatest studio musicians of all time. Bob’s reason for this? He was, obviously, a HUGE fan of the Old School Sound of the records of his youth, but, sometimes, as he said, the band just needed to ROCK. The song “Hollywood Nights” is one of those rockers. The musicians playing on it are as follows:

David Teegarden – drums

Chris Campbell – bass

Robyn Robins – keys

Bill Payne (Little Feat) – organ

Drew Abbott – guitar

Bob Seger – guitar/vocal

The fellas in the band had decamped to LA to finish the tracking on a few of the tunes. Bob had been living in a rented house in the Hollywood hills for the duration of his stay. One night he found himself driving home, roof down, stereo cranked, blasting through the hills, a perfect Summer night, and the lyric “just came to him”: “Hollywood nights/ Hollywood hills/ Above all the lights/ Hollywood nights.”

And that, as they say, was that. When he got back to the rented house, he sat down to complete the lyrics. On a table in the room was the latest Time magazine with a photo of Cheryl Tiegs on the cover. Bob’s idea was to write the story of a boy from a small town coming to LA, meeting a girl like her, and getting caught-up in the whole ‘bizzaro thing’ of that world.

It’s absolutely fantastic. Mission accomplished.

The first stroke of genius with the song  was when David Teegarden decided to play TWO drum-parts. At the same time. Tracked separately. He went through the song once and then played against himself for a second take. Two completely different patterns. Two sets of drum-tracks. Same player. Brilliant.

The gallop that the entire song sits on is perfectly established by the beautiful cacophony of Teegarden’s playing. It is both anarchic and precise at the same time. Matched with the epic bass part of Chris Campbell, this “Engine Room” sets the pace for the track with a skyscraper-secure foundation. Campbell’s rolling, counter-melody-laced, bass part is the perfect counter to the Teutonic nature of the drums.  Inspired choices.

Next comes the simplicity of the guitar parts, proving less is more. This is, after-all, Rock’n’Roll! You don’t get to play with Bob for 9 albums if you can’t give him what he wants and needs, and Drew Abbott nails the gallop perfectly. And, lest we forget, Bob is no slouch on the ol’ 6-string either.

Robyn Robins’ piano part is the first hint that we get of the Gospel moving through this tune. He is also a lifer in the SBB and knows what the boss wants to hear. There are some beautiful choices being made. The song begins to stack together at this point. Each musician making choices to enhance and embellish, injecting their own perspective and personality, but holding tight to the purpose, as they serve the song with full intention. There’s NO fat on this thing.

And then…Bill Payne. Long time member of Little Feat, considered by many to be one of the greatest rock and blues players of all time. His organ track on this song is one of my favorite performances of all time. Detroit is a hard city. A tough place to live. And the church, and religion, and the Gospel music that it brought with it, are a source of comfort and pride in that place. Bill Payne takes us ALL to church in “Hollywood Nights”! It’s the moment when the song completely falls into place. It’s the setting that Bob needs to have in order to provide…

That vocal. Holy SHITE!. I can’t imagine that you have ever heard anything like it. Remember, as you listen, that this is a man writing an ENTIRELY fictional account of a relationship that NEVER HAPPENED! Between a guy, clearly based on himself, and a super-model, Cheryl Tiegs. All inspired by a photo on the cover of a magazine.

It’s absurd. He sings the words as if his life, and happiness, depend upon it. He tells us the story, the joy, the heartache, the magic, and we believe it. THAT is an artist. And that is, unfortunately, something that I find absent in much of the music I hear today.

Then, when the choir kicks in at the end…WE ALL BELIEVE! We all celebrate the tale and wish it had happened to us. And that’s the real magic in this song. It didn’t happen to ANYONE! Incredible accomplishment. Listen to the moments in-between the lyrics, the little “snatch breaths” that Seger takes in order to get out the next line. If it isn’t all one take, I’d hazard a guess that it wasn’t many. Bob Seger is a badass. Period. And if this vocal were the ONLY evidence presented, the jury would have no choice but to convict!

Here’s how it breaks down, track by track:

 

And here it is, all put together:

 

Ah, the good old days:

 

Stranger In Town proceeded to sell exactly the same amount as Night Moves. Six times Platinum. Six million copies. Other singles on this album? “Still the Same”, “Old Time Rock’n”Roll”, and “We’ve Got Tonight.” It’s a monolith of a record. Track-to-track. Check the video and then go back and enjoy the entire album. It’s one that deserves some time in your system.

But…don’t sue me if, like Bill Payne, you find yourself barreling along the highway, “Hollywood Nights” at 11 on the stereo, and you look down to find that you’re doing 100 miles-an-hour. That’s what that song is made for. You’ll have been hit by the Spirit.

Until next time.

cjh

As I threatened to do in my last column , I wrote a long review on power conditioners and power cords. What I left out of that story though, because I ran out of space, was the beginning of my tryst with power. It was in the Wild West, in the early 2000s. Back then, the forum of a certain British hi-fi brand was a lawless free-for-all where we could discuss that that most subversive upgrade of them all.

Before we go any further, if you know or can guess of what I speak, this is not an endorsement of an electric shock and fire hazard. Some “upgrades” go against electrical and commonsensical code, and if your melted lump of an amp is found in the ashes of your home with wrongly rated components, think about how—if you find it hard to talk to your regular friends about “lowered noise floor, greater detail, and bass definition”—you’ll find it even harder to explain it to an insurance agent. Or a judge. Or to the paramedic who ka-THUMPed  you back to life after you were electrocuted. “The dynamics were so stunning, my heart skipped a beat.”

I tried it, okay? Just for a little while. There was a forum member I’ll call RR who was a tweak preacher. If you wrote to him, he’d send you an envelope with a little baggy of illicit samples, a bunch of printouts with listening tests, endorsements, plans for dedicated wiring, and a CD of his test tracks. (One of those, a hard-to-find live recording of “Bird on a Wire” by Leonard Cohen remains one of our top favorite tracks ever, and one I’ve used to test the system for many years now.)

I was curious because the notion of improving the power supply to a system was new and exciting to me. I couldn’t imagine it would have much effect, but with so many people talking about it, I had to hear for myself. And this why the lawyers’ hammer dropped and all discussion about RR’s methods was immediately verboten. Today, you can’t allude to it in even the most cryptic terms without an administrator blowing a- well…

Here’s the problem. It worked. And I knew it was going to be good as soon as I turned on my system and the normally anemic thump through the speakers was louder and deeper. It was exciting. I was drunk on power. I know that the “wife came home and heard the difference without being told to look for one” story annoys a lot of people, but it is my truth. Without fully understanding what I’d done, she told me to not go back—the system sounded amazing. I was tempted, but I reluctantly reversed it so I could sleep at night.

But a switch had been thrown and I was now open to the importance of power, and have since found that few system changes are as satisfying. A power supply unit upgrade provided more than I expected. And most recently I heard what a good power cable can do.

These aren’t differences you notice only if you sit in the sweet spot and squint a certain way. This is the kind of thing where you’re outside throwing things for the dogs, the music is wafting out of the back door into your yard, and the dynamics make you go, “Wow, that sounds incredible”. It’s where you’re sleep-warm and bleary, and the wife asks you to turn on the house-favorite internet radio station, and the low noise floor makes you think (at least until you wake up a little more), “Dear God, is that a high-res stream?”

In fact, that low noise floor is apparent from the very first note, and if I may steal from my own review, it’s as if Scotty with a super-fast transporter is beaming everything up (or down?) into the soundstage.

I still have review equipment kicking around, and have a pretty crazy combination playing even as I type this. An all-in-one-music player (retail $1,995) connected to a $4,000 power conditioner via a $2,000 power cable. The power conditioner connects to the wall outlet via another $2,000 cable.

Of course I’m not recommending anyone pay for this combo. I’m just saying if I had a sheet over my audio rack, sat you down on my sofa, played you a few tracks, and then whipped off the cover like the worst magician in the world, I’ll bet a lot of money you would be astonished / dismayed / reduced to slightly manic laughter when you saw the audio rack was empty but for a black shoebox connected to my large floorstanders. You wouldn’t have expected big monoblocks for sure—you can hear the player puffing a little when things get heavy and complex—but the overall slam and definition would have got you imagining at least two or three shelves’ worth of gear.

Power delivery seems so straightforward—stick a conductor into a wall and receive. A toddler could do it. In that context, a designer of audiophile power products said to me, “When you want to push the envelope it just gets pricier and pricier because you are right at the edge of physics and what can be made. You’re buying very expensive one-off parts in low volume.”

“Right at the edge of physics.” I like that. It’s a good reminder of just how acutely sensitive our audio systems are and how much we take them for granted… not the electronic ones, I mean the “wet” ones between (and including) our ears.

[Reader Michael Dahlstrom sent in this pic of a power strip that he saw while deployed in Afghanistan—makes you think of that flaming tweak, no? —-Ed.]

“Knowledge increases by diffusion, and grows by dispersion”

– Daniel J. Boorstin

One thing that audiophiles regularly fail to grasp adequately is how a sound wave propagates away from a loudspeaker – or from anything else for that matter.  The light from your average flash lamp can usually be focused into a beam by twisting the housing, so it is easy to visualize how it is dispersed (the “dispersion pattern”), and also how we are able to control it.  In particular, we have all seen that although the light can be more or less focused on the target, there is definitely a limit to how much we can focus down that spot.  As we twist the focus ring to make the spot smaller, eventually it stops getting smaller and starts getting larger again.  Yet lasers, for some reason, are apparently able to emit in pencil-thin beams [although I have news for you – some of them don’t!].  These are all physical manifestations of the nature of dispersion, which governs how anything with a wave-like nature propagates.  And as with light waves, so it goes with sound waves.  And yes, it is possible to do very similar party tricks with sound waves, although that is not the subject for the present column.

When you sit in front of your loudspeaker, the sound projects straight out at you from the various drive units.  But some of it also projects out in other directions.  If it didn’t, then as you moved sideways from your listening chair the sound would tend to disappear altogether.  Think of it like a light bulb illuminating your listening room.  You’d prefer the light to come out in all directions.  If it didn’t, and instead projected a laser-like pencil beam straight down onto the floor, it wouldn’t do much of a job of illuminating the room.  In the same way, you’d prefer the sound from your loudspeakers to also spread out and fill the room.  So the question arises, how exactly does sound spread out – disperse from – your loudspeakers?  Let’s take a peek at the science involved.

The way most loudspeakers work is that they have a surface, usually referred to as the “diaphragm” which is made to vibrate back and forth.  In doing so, it causes variations in sound pressure to build up in the air immediately adjacent to the diaphragm.  Those variations in air pressure in turn give rise to sound waves that propagate away from the speaker, and the question we want to ask is “Where exactly do they propagate to?”  To answer that, we start by treating the overall surface of the diaphragm as a separate bunch of tiny little diaphragms which all vibrate forwards and backwards in unison.  Each of these tiny little diaphragms generates its own individual pressure wave (i.e. sound wave) which propagates away from it.  And if the area of the tiny diaphragm is small enough, then that pressure wave will propagate away from its surface equally in all directions.  In other words, just as much sound will radiate directly forwards as in any other direction.  It is the perfect unidirectional sound source.  You will often hear of such concepts described as an “ideal point source”.

This is the jumping-off point for dispersion theory.  Suppose we are sitting directly in front of a loudspeaker driver whose surface area we are considering as just such a collection of ideal point sources.  Ignoring room reflections, we will only hear those sound waves which radiate straight ahead in our direction.  And because we are directly in front of the speaker, the individual sound waves from all of those point sources will take the exact same time to travel from the speaker to your ears.  Now, you all know about the propensity of waves to cancel each other out.  If the peak of one wave arrives at the same time as the trough of another, then each will cancel the other out through a mechanism called interference.  But in our case, all those ideal point sources are operating in unison, and so they are all generating peaks at the same time and troughs at the same time.  And because they all arrive at our ears in perfect synch, all the peaks will arrive at the same time, and all the troughs at the same time, so nothing will cancel out at all.  Consequently, if you stand directly in front of the diaphragm of a conventional loudspeaker, the sound will always be at its maximum.

Now let’s move away from the center and stand off to one side.  In this case, one side of the drive unit’s diaphragm will be closer to you than the other side.  So the sound waves originating from the ideal point sources located at the nearer side of the diaphragm will arrive before those originating from the farther side.  This time delay means that the peaks from the nearer side can arrive at the same time as the troughs from the farther side, and so we have the possibility that they can cancel each other out.  In other words, if we are standing off to one side of the speaker, it is quite possible that we will hear less sound than we heard standing right in front of it.  This is dispersion at work.

But it gets more elaborate than this if we look closely enough.  The time delay alone is not enough to determine whether two waves will arrive in phase or out of phase.  You need to know the wavelength (or the frequency – the two are directly related).  For a long wavelength (low frequency) sound to end up out of phase you need a correspondingly longer time delay than a shorter wavelength (higher frequency) sound.  So for a high-frequency sound you only need to go a little bit off-center to encounter cancellation, whereas for a longer-wavelength sound you need to go further.  Eventually, when the frequency gets low enough that the wavelength of the sound is more than twice the diameter of the diaphragm, you can never build up enough of a delay to generate complete cancellation.

Of course the picture above is too simplistic.  It is an incomplete description to talk about sounds propagating from the farther side arriving later than those from the nearer side.  In reality the sounds propagating from all of the ideal point sources distributed across the whole surface area of the diaphragm will all arrive with their own individual delays, and the net result involves the summation of all of those individual sound waves, some of which will tend to reinforce each other, while others will tend to provide a cancellation effect.  It is only at the straight-ahead point where the sound waves originating from all of the ideal point sources will arrive in synch.  At all other positions there will be some degree or other of cancellation in play, and that degree of cancellation will be strongly frequency dependent.

There are, broadly speaking, three regimes that come into play.  At low frequencies, where the wavelength of sound is significantly larger than the diameter of the diaphragm, the driver will tend to approximate an ideal point source, and will spread the sound uniformly away from the speaker, regardless of frequency.  At high frequencies, where the wavelength of sound is significantly smaller than the diameter of the diaphragm, the dispersion pattern will tend to ‘beam’, like a flash lamp.  Then there will be the transition zone, where the dispersion pattern remains quite broad across the frequency band, but it neither ‘beams’ nor approximates a point source.

As it happens, these three zones also correspond very well to other zones which constrain the design of a loudspeaker.  In the low frequency zone, the ability to generate a good volume of sound requires that the vibration of the speaker diaphragm displaces a large volume of air.  If the diaphragm itself has a small area, then it has to be able to move back and forth by a correspondingly larger amount.  This creates its own problems, as there are practical limits on just how much displacement a given drive unit design can accommodate.  At high frequencies, where beaming gets to be a concern, we run into issues where either the diaphragm’s high mass or its tendency to flex get to be problematic, and in effect hinder the driver from functioning as a set of ‘ideal point sources’ vibrating in unison.  So practical drive unit design issues end up mandating that – at least for midrange and tweeter drivers – drive units end up operating in the region where there are strong frequency-dependent dispersion signatures.

There is one final dispersion-related loudspeaker performance issue to consider – the crossover region.  Consider, for example, the range of frequencies over which the midrange unit hands over to the tweeter.  The loudspeaker’s crossover handles this, divvying up the input signal so that each drive unit only sees those frequencies that it is intended to handle.  We like to say that there is a “crossover frequency”, above which all frequencies are directed to the tweeter, and below which all frequencies are directed to the midrange unit.  In practice, there is a gradual transition between the two, but that is not the key point here.  The crossover frequency, by its very nature, will be at the lower end of the frequency band which the tweeter is designed to handle, but at the higher end of frequency band that the midrange unit is designed to handle.  Therefore, to the tweeter it will be a “low” frequency, and will disperse widely into the room.  However, to the midrange driver that same frequency will be a “high” frequency, and will tend to project more directly forward.

To a first approximation, the total amount of sound energy generated by a drive unit will be the same, regardless of whether that sound is all beamed straight ahead, or distributed evenly in all directions.  So a beamed frequency will be more intense when measured straight-on than another frequency which is more widely dispersed.  Consequently, if a speaker has a nice flat frequency response measured directly in front of it, then it almost certainly won’t have the same flat frequency response in terms of the total sound energy projected into the room.  To the hapless speaker designer, this all adds up to a thorny problem, because the poor guy started off thinking all he wanted to do was design a speaker with a flat frequency response.  But which is more important – a flat frequency response measured in front of the speaker, or a flat frequency response in terms of the totality of the emitted sound energy?  And if there is a correct answer to that, how will it be impacted by the room the speaker is used in?

These are just some of the considerations that make loudspeaker design such an inexact science, and mean that its most skilled practitioners remain artists and craftsmen first and foremost.

 build up enough of a delay to generate complete cancellation. Of course the picture above is too simplistic. It is an incomplete description to talk about sounds propagating from the farther side arriving later than those from the nearer side. In reality the sounds propagating from all of the ideal point sources distributed across the whole surface area of the diaphragm will all arrive with their own individual delays, and the net result involves the summation of all of those individual sound waves, some of which will tend to reinforce each other, while others will tend to provide a cancellation effect. It is only at the straight-ahead point where the sound waves originating from all of the ideal point sources will arrive in synch. At all other positions there will be some degree or other of cancellation in play, and that degree of cancellation will be strongly frequency dependent. There are, broadly speaking, three regimes that come into play. At low frequencies, where the wavelength of sound is significantly larger than the diameter of the diaphragm, the driver will tend to approximate an ideal point source, and will spread the sound uniformly away from the speaker, regardless of frequency. At high frequencies, where the wavelength of sound is significantly smaller than the diameter of the diaphragm, the dispersion pattern will tend to ‘beam’, like a flash lamp. Then there will be the transition zone, where the dispersion pattern remains quite broad across the frequency band, but it neither ‘beams’ nor approximates a point source. As it happens, these three zones also correspond very well to other zones which constrain the design of a loudspeaker. In the low frequency zone, the ability to generate a good volume of sound requires that the vibration of the speaker diaphragm displaces a large volume of air. If the diaphragm itself has a small area, then it has to be able to move back and forth by a correspondingly larger amount. This creates its own problems, as there are practical limits on just how much displacement a given drive unit design can accommodate. At high frequencies, where beaming gets to be a concern, we run into issues where either the diaphragm’s high mass or its tendency to flex get to be problematic, and in effect hinder the driver from functioning as a set of ‘ideal point sources’ vibrating in unison. So practical drive unit design issues end up mandating that – at least for midrange and tweeter drivers – drive units end up operating in the region where there are strong frequency-dependent dispersion signatures. There is one final dispersion-related loudspeaker performance issue to consider – the crossover region. Consider, for example, the range of frequencies over which the midrange unit hands over to the tweeter. The loudspeaker’s crossover handles this, divvying up the input signal so that each drive unit only sees those frequencies that it is intended to handle. We like to say that there is a “crossover frequency”, above which all frequencies are directed to the tweeter, and below which all frequencies are directed to the midrange unit. In practice, there is a gradual transition between the two, but that is not the key point here. The crossover frequency, by its very nature, will be at the lower end of the frequency band which the tweeter is designed to handle, but at the higher end of frequency band that the midrange unit is designed to handle. Therefore, to the tweeter it will be a “low” frequency, and will disperse widely into the room. However, to the midrange driver that same frequency will be a “high” frequency, and will tend to project more directly forward. To a first approximation, the total amount of sound energy generated by a drive unit will be the same, regardless of whether that sound is all beamed straight ahead, or distributed evenly in all directions. So a beamed frequency will be more intense when measured straight-on than another frequency which is more widely dispersed. Consequently, if a speaker has a nice flat frequency response measured directly in front of it, then it almost certainly won’t have the same flat frequency response in terms of the total sound energy projected into the room. To the hapless speaker designer, this all adds up to a thorny problem, because the poor guy started off thinking all he wanted to do was design a speaker with a flat frequency response. But which is more important – a flat frequency response measured in front of the speaker, or a flat frequency response in terms of the totality of the emitted sound energy? And if there is a correct answer to that, how will it be impacted by the room the speaker is used in? These are just some of the considerations that make loudspeaker design such an inexact science, and mean that its most skilled practitioners remain artists and craftsmen first and foremost.

Despite appearances—and perhaps despite my self-description as a cynic—I try to be a live-and-let-live type. I am careful to NOT describe myself as “easygoing”; I once did so in the presence of my ex, and she laughed so hard I was afraid permanent injury would result.

To be clear: I try to let others be themselves, and I try to not hurt anyone, myself. The problem is boundaries. I have a very strong sense of them, and to my way of thinking, many others do not. Just as my dogs have a strong protective sense when someone broaches OUR SPACE, I become prickly when I am addressed rudely, presumptuously, or dismissively. But: my standards of what constitutes rudeness, presumption, or dismissiveness might be considered old-fashioned and hyper-reactive by some. I spent a lot of years in the South, and some of those old ideas about honor and dignity took root.

If one spends much time online—as I do, just by the nature of the biz—there are almost unlimited opportunities to take offense. I don’t mean in the sense of the meme, “Oh, NO! Someone is WRONG on the INTERNET!!” I mean in the sense of one’s work or life being slammed by a complete stranger, for no apparent reason. It is astonishing to me the lengths to which some folks will go to dump all over  anything on Facebook, or especially, on YouTube. The level of displaced anger combined with massive misinformation is truly frightening.

The great thing about social media is that it gives everyone a voice. Unfortunately, those voices often have only mean things to say.

I have always tried to be forthright in my online dealings, which does not necessarily mean that I’m goody-goody. If I think you’re an asshole and an idiot, my tendency is to say so, whether you’re online or directly in front of me. My rule is that I won’t say things online that I wouldn’t say to someone’s face, and I will only do so using my real name. My assumption is that most vicious online attacks are carried out only because the attacker is secure in their isolation, and likely, in their anonymity.

As the saying goes, “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth only results in a land of the blind and toothless.” Deep down, I’m not sure that an aggressive response—like the kind that comes naturally to me—helps to correct the behavior I found offensive. It’s likely to just cause the nastiness to escalate.

As a parent, I had to develop the habit of allowing a 10-count to pass before responding to comments or actions from my kids that made me want to rethink having had offspring. My kids will tell you that such restraint did not come naturally to me, nor was it consistent. But I tried.

Entering my seventh decade on Earth, I am trying to take a deep breath, and recognize the sad fact that nastiness is often just a symptom presented by someone in pain. I am trying to be kind and generous and all those other things that have historically made me roll my eyes. I am trying to be more Mr. Rogers than Mr. T.

I am trying.

And trying can be very trying indeed, if you follow. It wears me out and makes me more susceptible to a secondary, delayed outburst—the kind that baffles onlookers and calls my sanity into question even more than usual.

Y’know—this whole being a grown-up thing isn’t all it’s cracked up to be….