Issue 63

For the last few years, investors have been somewhat cautious regarding new  IPOs (Initial Public Offerings of shares, as companies move from privately-held to publicly-traded). So far during 2018, however, a string of widely-hyped tech-y IPOs have seen post-IPO share prices go up in levels ranging from “a nice return” to “Holy Crap!” The skepticism regarding IPOs may be dissipating in the tech sector. As is true of almost everything: it’s cyclical.

As we reported recently  in Industry News, during the dotcom bubble countless companies that had never been in the black, went public—and when the bubble burst, many of those companies went away and investors lost billions. Skepticism prevailed for years, but now—we’re back there, with many analysts feeling most major stocks are grossly over-valued, and debt-laden mega-deals—think AT&T—are back, despite the recent failure of debt-heavy Toys ‘R’ Us and  major problems at Gibson.  Perhaps the phenomenal growth of Amazon in recent years  has made companies once again receptive to looking at companies that have never turned a profit—as was the case with Amazon for many years.

Which brings us to Spotify. While its growth has been impressive (over 160 million users at last count), it had accumulated $1.5 billion in debt before its IPO in April. The initial launch was not stunning: at opening, shares were offered at $165.90, and closed the first day at $149. At present, shares are hovering around $188 (up 13% from the listing price)  and the company’s capitalization is at an amazing $33 billion–making  founder Daniel Ek worth about $5 billion. Not bad for a company whose debt grows right along with its growth in users.

Dropbox is ubiquitous in business these days, and its IPO in March opened with shares offered at $21—making the company’s market cap $8.2 billion. A mere four months later shares are around $32—an impressive 52% growth. The company’s cap has accordingly grown to over $13 billion.

Docusign, also ubiquitous in business, was another April IPO like Spotify. Starting at $29, shares closed at $37 at the end of the first day of trading. Since then, shares have reached nearly $67, and presently hover around $55—an impressive 89% growth. Market capitalization is $8.7 billion.

Will Sonos be as successful? We recently  reported some skepticism on their proposed IPO in Industry News; in recent years the company has reported sizable losses. The company’s S1 filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission showed losses of almost $69 million in Fiscal Year 2015, over $38 million in FY ’16, and a mere $14 million in FY ’17, on revenue of almost $1 billion. In the 6 months since the end of FY ’17, things have improved: $13 million in profits on $655 million in revenue.

The lengthy “Risk Factors” section of the S1 includes a couple facts that are very troubling to this paranoid soul: all of the company’s products are built by a single contract manufacturer, and the Alexa voice-control technology utilized in Sonos products, developed and owned  by Sonos competitor Amazon, can basically be withheld from Sonos at any time—or, in the legal-speak of the S1, “These technology partners may cease doing business with us or disable the technology they provide our products for a variety of reasons, including to promote their products over our own. If these partners disable the integration of their technology into our products, demand for our products may decrease and our sales may be harmed.” Uh huh. Ya THINK??

Presumably, the company will put at least some of their 246 software developers to work developing proprietary voice-control software.

If you have never waded through an S1 filing, they contain a remarkable amount of information on the business, and often provide facts that won’t be found anywhere else. Sonos’ 180-or-so page filing is far from huge, as such things go—the company is, after all, still under a billion a year….

It’ll be interesting to see how the offering goes—and to see how the company looks a year from now.

First off, don’t look at the title and image above and think, “oh, great, Leebs is off on his midlife crisis—finally.”

For starters, “midlife” applied to me would mean I expect to reach 125. Right.

There’s no existential angst here. It’s just hard to come up with an image to illustrate an intangible concept. If the cosmos offends thee, imagine something silly and cryptic instead: say, David Lynch, or a box of Lucky Charms.

Here’s what prompted the title: I discovered a charming bit of gibberish on the website of an audio manufacturer. It certainly wasn’t the first time I’d discovered gibberish on the website of an audio manufacturer, mind you—but this particular example seemed pleasantly whimsical to me:

“Far far away, behind the word mountains, far from the countries Vokalia and Consonantia, there live the blind texts. A small river named Duden flows by their place and supplies it with the necessary regelialia.”

I was hoping that the manufacturer had something of mystical significance to say, but just couldn’t quite manage the leap to a non-native tongue. The ever-rational Malachi Kenney—audio nerd, programmer, political wrangler and occasional Copper contributor— dashed my hopes by pointing out that the text was just a chunk of Lorem Ipsum-ish boilerplate.

Damn.

I was looking for meaning, where there was none.

I think that’s a common human trait, whether it’s a blurry “do you see Abraham Lincoln, or the Mona Lisa?” puzzle, trying to decipher the behavior of a politician or a street-corner schizophrenic, or reading James Joyce. Even something like Lewis Carroll’s  “Jabberwocky”, consciously constructed of nonsense non-words, provokes the reader or listener into attempts at understanding. But where there is no meaning, there can be no understanding.

In the midst of the euphonious babble of  “Jabberwocky”, we struggle to get a sense of the senseless, in this case aided (or confounded?) by John Tenniel’s image of the beast, the Jabberwock.

Well, conversation might not be the word.

I was going to write a bit about my bedroom system. But on Sunday I had an encounter so bizarre that I have to write a bit about it. Eventually, I’ll get to the bedroom set-up.

On Sunday I went late to a party for my pals’ collective birthday, born a few weeks apart and together since college: a nice event, though burdened by the oppressive heat wave we’ve been enduring in LA. At the party, I set up shop, so to speak, on the piano bench that was in the direct path of the air conditioning, and arriving late as I did, I had no competition for the Seat of Privilege. Said seat was also in the path from the kitchen to the living rom, so anybody passing was handy to say hello. No complaints.

And there he found me. I assume he didn’t know anything about me and I forgot his name instantly (I do that, though — he’s not unique in that).  But the talk we had will last in my memory for quite a while.

In the last month or so, our Glorious Leader, Paul M., wrote in his daily blog about all the hysteria his postings to YouTube seem to stir up.  “Who”, thought I (and probably you, too), “would bother?”

Well, folks, I met one.

I told him nothing about me, what I’ve done or do, and it wouldn’t have been irrelevant to a conversation about like subjects with another person. But it was here. Once he figured out that I knew a little about the subject (I was familiar with an amp he wants to sell, an old B&K), he was off. (By the way, I’m not a complete idiot — I would have avoided him at all costs had I known. But once done, it was a brief glimpse behind the curtain.)

Our conversation started innocuously enough, with the B&K, although I’m not sure why he even brought it up. I was able to praise it, which made him happy. But then it took a turn south. He got into talking about Hypex modules, and how the amp he built with them is undoubtedly one of the best amps there is or could be under $10,000. He was surprised I knew what they were, of course. I made the mistake of bringing up the PS website on my telephone and showing him the Stellar line, by way of example that I was familiar with the concept of a Class D amp — and that was it.

A tirade began, and took me a few minutes to understand he was talking about Paul McGowan, and how he was one of the people who argue with Paul on YouTube — he was quite proud of that, of his being argumentative. He informed me that Paul (and Arnie Nudell, of course) knew nothing about speaker design. His proof was the IRS V, on which one can see the heads of screws around each tweeter ribbon. (Everybody knows that wave-guides are de rigieur for a functional speaker, said he.)

So I asked if he’d ever heard a pair. And of course he hadn’t. I asked if he’d ever heard a line source — no. I asked if he’d ever heard the Dead’s mighty Wall of Sound. Oh yeah, dozens of times. Where? I asked. Turns out he didn’t see them til long after the Wall.

“So you don’t really have any experience with listening to that kind of speaker?”

He didn’t need it — his dirt cheap Genelecs were good enough. And here is where the rubber hit the road, so speak: “Anybody can get used to anything, even mp3s,” was his ultimate statement. So why were we talking? And what about?

I saw my moment — a chair had opened up in the living room next to an old college friend, and I seized the moment and that chair.

Whew.

I wouldn’t say I exactly dodged a bullet — I certainly didn’t dodge it. But having survived the experience, I got some distance and spent the rest of the time chatting with my pal about his astronomy images.

It’d be easy to say, “The guy’s an idiot.” And yeah, maybe — but how many times has one of us struggled to communicate how something sounds using only words? We rely on the most imperfect medium to communicate, and so often it falls short — or we fall short.

I have Copper as a platform, which I earned by virtue of my having had The Absolute Sound as a platform, which I earned by, I don’t know — impressing Harry and Sally? [The late Harry Pearson and Sally Reynolds, of course—not Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan—Ed.] Something like that. What I’m getting at is this: Harry and Gordon Holt developed a language — how, I don’t know. From stone knives and bearskins, I think. All of us, as writers and as listeners, are walking in their shoes. We try to learn the language and use it as best as we can to communicate with each other. It’s the wrong medium, although it’s the only one we have.

Occasionally we encounter someone like this guy at the party who didn’t speak the language and thus we didn’t have the ability to communicate — him with me, or me with him. He assumes that we all hear the same thing. I argued momentarily that this wasn’t the case, until I saw his lack of receptiveness to that idea. A couple more attempts, and I perceived it as hopeless. It seems to me that we occupy, not rarified air, but an exclusive club — one that anyone is welcome to join. They only have to be willing.

Next time, I’ll struggle with the language to describe my bedroom system….

For the classical record industry, it’s gotten hard to tell whether these are the best of times or the worst of times. The CD revolution of the mid-1980s brought a temporary feast, as collectors—classical fans chief among them—replaced their LPs with little silver discs. That was followed by apocalyptic famine, by ripping and burning and general piracy that brought mainstream labels to their knees and did no big favors for the rest of us. “Consolidation” is too kind a word for what went on in the classical record industry from the mid-‘90s onward.

And yet: today’s classical marketplace offers more “product” to the faithful than ever before. Is it better? Yes! A reasonable portion of it is arguably as good as or better than what was available in the Golden Age, whenever that was. (Feel free to nominate your own G.A.; if you’re over fifty, it will undoubtedly have occurred for you at least thirty years ago.) Today’s best young performers can more than hold a candle to Serkin, Casals, Fürtwängler et al. (Well, maybe not Fürtwängler.)

The classical record business has proven to be remarkably resilient. That it exists at all defies logic, especially if you believe that business denotes profit-making enterprise. With few exceptions, no one in this segment of the industry is getting rich. (The old joke that begins, “How do you make a small fortune in ___?” certainly applies here.) Not only have classical labels survived, some of them seem to be flourishing. In the next few months, we’re going to check out a few of those labels. We’ll examine their individual missions, business models, strategies for coping with what lies ahead.

Let’s begin with Ondine Records and its founder Reijo Kiilunen. In autumn 1985, Kiilunen, fresh from Helsinki’s Sibelius Academy, was asked to produce a highlights recording from that year’s Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival, where he had taken on a number of management chores. It went well—so much so, that when the festival mounted Einojuhani Rautavaara’s opera Thomas, Kiilunen leveraged that recording’s success to launch a whole new record label. He called it Ondine, a reference to the seductive singing of a water nymph in Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit. Kiilunen produced and edited the first 50 releases himself; the rest, as they say, is history.

Since then the label has assumed national and international significance, acquainting music lovers worldwide with the best Finnish performers and composers, including iconic figures like Sibelius, beloved elder statesmen like Rautavaara (featured in over 25 Ondine releases), and younger folks like Magnus Lindberg (b. 1958), Kaija Saariaho (b. 1952), and Lotta Wennäkoski (b. 1970). In this role it received generous assistance at the outset from the Finnish Music Foundation (MES) and its predecessors, who utilized funds from Gramex and Teosto, including royalties collected on sales of blank tape (remember that?).

In recent years the label has intensified its collaboration with non-Finnish artists. For Ondine, as with other boutique operations, several factors encourage this. To begin with, major labels increasingly sign young artists to short-term contracts while they’re “hot,” dropping them once they record a backlog of standard repertoire—and just when they’ve gained the maturity to produce more interesting recordings. Also, cross-national collaboration in the recording studio models both European unity and artistic parity with the Big Three (Britain, Germany, France). And such collaboration mirrors the realities of 21st-century concertizing, in which trains and planes allow performers and audiences alike to hop from Hamburg to Paris to London—with stops in Helsinki or Amsterdam—in pursuit of musical adventure.

The Atlantic Ocean remains a bigger barrier than any EU border. Nevertheless, in 2005 Ondine ended the Philadelphia Orchestra’s recording drought with releases featuring the orchestra in its new hall. Back in Europe, the many longtime non-Finns at Ondine include Christian Tetzlaff, his sister Tanja, and Lars Vogt. Mr. Tetzlaff followed up his stunning 2015 recording of Suk’s Fantasy and the Dvořák Violin Concerto and Romance (ODE 1279-5) with a 2018 Bartók concerto album (ODE 1317-2). For Dvořák and Suk he partnered John Storgårds and the Helsinki PO; for Bartók he paired with Hannu Lintu and the Finnish Radio SO. So, there’s the Finnish connection: these orchestras and their conductors do Dvořák, Suk, and Bartók as well as any Czech or Hungarian outfit. Ondine helps spread the word.

Like Bartók’s other mature masterworks—the late quartets, the Concerto for Orchestra—his Second Violin Concerto wins us over by emphasizing varied, well-contrasted moods: its drama comes laced with humor, its lyricism with folk elements. Tetzlaff, Lintu, and the FRSO partner seamlessly (and passionately!) throughout. Yet I found myself even more drawn to No. 1, where their ability to bring out tender and vulnerable moments in the music is unsurpassed. Here is how it begins:

In 1907 Bartók fell in love with Stefi Geyer, a young violinist of considerable beauty and talent; the concerto was meant as a portrait of her inner and outer selves. What it actually reveals are a young composer’s hope and longing. In the preceding excerpt, we heard Bartók’s “Stefi” motive interwoven with intimate yet intense orchestral counterpoint; Tetzlaff and the FRSO strings merge with utmost sensitivity to convey its bittersweet emotion.

Shortly after cellist Tanja Tetzlaff and pianist Gunilla Süssmann scored a success with their album of Brahms Cello Sonatas (Cavi 8553270), and after Tanja and Christian had done the Brahms Piano Trios (ODE 1271-2D) with Vogt, Ondine asked Tanja and Gunilla to record Rautavaara’s complete works for cello and piano. The music’s technical demands and stylistic diversity made this a daunting assignment, but the results (ODE 1310-2) earned high marks. Here is an excerpt from Sonata No. 1 (1973/2001):

Vogt and the Tetzlaffs have continued their collaboration with a complete set of the Beethoven Piano Concertos plus the Triple Concerto, all featuring the Royal Northern Sinfonia, for which Vogt is Music Director. Their third and final release in this series, comprising Concertos No. 2 and 4 (ODE 1311-2), highlights its strengths. Listen to the easy spontaneity in the dynamics and phrasing of No. 2’s first movement:

Speaking of concertos, I’ve also enjoyed Ondine’s recent go at the Prokofiev piano concertos, which featured Lintu and the FRSO with pianist Olli Mustonen. Way back in Issue 5 of Copper I waxed poetic about Concertos No. 2 and 5. Here they are again, in beautifully detailed and rather more disciplined interpretations (ODE 1288-2). That works particular wonders for No. 2, a product of Prokofiev’s impetuous youth. Mustonen and Lintu take it seriously, imbuing the proceedings with added depth; it’s now my preferred version. (I’ve ordered the companion disc, with Nos. 1, 3, and 4.) Here is a bit of the Toccata from No. 5:

Last week I caught up with Reijo Kiilunen, and we had a chance to exchange views about the state of the industry:

LS: As the 21st century continues, what do you see as the two greatest challenges for companies like yours?

RK: The greatest challenge, past and present, has been the disappearance of physical retail. Digital distribution is replacing physical product, and that relates to the other challenge. First-rate musical performances are our main target, but so is first-rate recorded sound; we regard ourselves as a high-end label. From the beginning of the digital era, with MP3s, 99.9% of the audience has been satisfied with degraded sound quality. That has been a great frustration. During the past five years or so we have welcomed the development of various codecs offering high-resolution masters for downloading or streaming, but those sales remain a niche. In terms of money and volume sales, smart speakers seem to be the next big thing, but again those will offer poor sound quality. We cannot compromise our standards there; it’s what we always aim for, it’s who we are. So we need to believe that the (buying) audience who enjoy great sound will grow as time goes on.

LS: Which of your recent projects were favorites?

RK: I think Christian Tetzlaff is at the peak of his artistry. We have been very lucky and happy to work with him, and we have solid plans for the coming years, a good mix of concertos, chamber music, and solo. Lars Vogt is another key artist, great plans for him as well. His Beethoven cycle has been a delight. Lars and his orchestra still make me excited; he plays Beethoven with freshness and freedom, yet within the framework of tradition, never lapsing into eccentricity. In the same manner, Hannu Lintu—one of the great Sibelius conductors of our time—balances a concern for structure and detail in Tapiola (ODE 1289-5) yet still preserves the mysterious magic of the “Finnish forest.” No wonder that recording was an ICMA winner earlier this year. We are understandably proud of it. [I will highlight this exceptional release in an upcoming TMT – LS]

Is there a Finnish (or European) Model that would help North American labels? It’s premature to suggest any such thing. We’ll need to poke around more, looking at success stories in Britain, France, Sweden, the Netherlands and more, gathering data, considering needs, resources, and relationships. In the process, I won’t ignore the very real triumphs and advantages of the locals. Stay tuned.

In the 1960s, British storyteller-in-song Marianne Faithfull fascinated fans as much for her affair with Mick Jagger as for rather mystical voice and persona. As she heads toward her 72^nd birthday, she can lay claim to an utterly individual career; she doesn’t seem to have cared a rat’s rear end who or how many people understood her art. Faithfull, indeed – faithful to her own sound and vision.

Take a leap back in time to 1965, when she was first making a name for herself. Faithfull had her biggest successes with covers of other artists’ songs. Her hits of this sort included Paul McCartney’s “Yesterday.” But for our purposes, what matters is the B-side of that single, a song by Faithfull herself called “Oh, Look Around You.”

Her voice has a deceptive delicacy, considering the power and darkness she would reveal in her later work (think of her devastating cover of John Lennon’s “Broken English” in 1979). The melody is deceptive, too – sure, it’s in a mournful minor key, but this gentle, folk–like waltz doesn’t prepare you for that time when you finally stop swaying along and truly listen to the lyrics. It’s the kind of conversational poem that Schubert and Mahler had a taste for, vacillating between hope and despair: “Do you see the clear wave laughter / And the deep blue sea? … No, they tell me the blue sea / Has long turned to blood.” Despair always wins in this kind of song.

 

So, that’s where Faithfull began – a sweet voice coming from that sweet face framed with golden hair, with vast darkness beneath. But it didn’t take long for her more interesting edges to show, along with her sense of humor. She recorded “Crazy Lady Blues” on the country-leaning Rich Kid Blues album (recorded in 1971 but not released until ʼ85). The song had just been composed and recorded by fellow Brit Sandy Denny. Faithfull gives it an off-kilter tumble that evokes some old honkytonk after almost everyone has staggered out for the night.

 

And what’s she been up to since the days of miniskirts and Mars Bars? (Google it, if you dare.) Faithfull has never stopped writing, arranging, and recording, putting out a steady stream of releases in the past 25 years.

When she made A Secret Life in 1995, she’d been listening to a lot of classical music. She seems to have tried to pull off a more polished, orchestrated sound than she was usually known for. But that doesn’t compromise her essential darkness. This is some beautifully desolate stuff.

One highlight is “Sleep,” a collaboration with composer Angelo Badalamenti and poet Frank McGuinness (the threesome co-wrote other songs on the album as well). It’s not just the keening synthesizer chords in minor modes, practically a-rhythmical so that the song seems to float in their viscous harmony. It’s not just McGuinness’ grim lines like “It is best to find in sleep / the missing pieces that you lost. / Best that you refuse to weep / Ash to ash, dust to dust.” The true key here is Faithfull’s voice, which seems corroded by some kind of eternal struggle, a vehicle loaded with heavy wisdom we ordinary mortals will never be able to carry.

 

Faithfull changed course again in 2002 with the album Kissin Time. For this collection, she took a cue from crooners like Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra, who’d kept on top of their game and stayed hip with the next generation by collaborating with younger artists. But instead of mainstream pop stars, Faithfull chose people known for their independent musical thinking.

This includes the members of the British band Blur, formed in 1988. The resulting title song sports an irresistible, naughty groove. Much of the funkiness is courtesy of the instrumental riffs: the guitars of Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon, bass of Alex James, and drums of Dave Rountree. But Faithfull on lead vocals knows her way around a sexy rhythm and a lurid lyric:

 

The edgy collaborations continued on the 2005 album Before the Poison. Blur’s Albarn is back for more fun, along with top-notch songwriters Nick Cave and PJ Harvey. The terrifying title song, produced by Harvey, features Faithfull burrowing into the depths of her vocal range. That’s where she keeps the really creepy stuff buried. Then she brings it up an octave and lets loose some pretty hard rock.

 

For 2008’s Easy Come, Easy Go, Faithfull took the concept of collaboration with younger musicians to the next level. Again she brings in some artists to sing and play with her, but they’re doing songs written by other artists. Particularly compelling for its rich, jazzy arrangement is “Children of Stone,” a cover of a song by Philadelphia-based “psychedelic folk” band The Espers. Joining Faithfull in this hypnotizing but deranged number is Rufus Wainwright, soaring through several layers of the stratosphere with his floating tenor.

 

Faithfull’s most recent studio album is Give My Love to London (2014). While many critics have focused on “Mother Wolf” as the late-life answer to her 1969 song “Sister Morphine,” to me the album’s crown jewel is the harrowing “Late Victorian Holocaust.” The lyrics are by Nick Cave, whose style glorifies Faithfull’s like sunlight glinting behind the dome of St. Paul’s. Get in the Cave-Faithfull time machine and visit a ragged, passionate version of London past:

 

Keep making albums, Marianne. The world needs your dark truths and rough philosophy.

I have just read what is without hesitation the most … what is the correct expression here? … profoundly unsettling work of non-fiction that has ever passed through my hands.  It is called Command And Control, by Eric Schlosser, and was a finalist for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize.  It is really two books in one, with the two related narratives intertwined throughout.  One is a blow-by-blow account of an incident in a Titan-II nuclear missile site in rural Arkansas which occurred in 1980.  The other is a sanguine treatment of the challenges, both technical and political, brought about by the sudden emergence of nuclear weapons offering apparently limitless destructive capability.  The book is supremely well-written, and its cover displays the most epically irrelevant endorsement ever, identifying the author as the person who also wrote Fast Food Nation.

If I were to design and sell a high-end power amplifier, chances are it would fail to deliver against the highest standards of sonic excellence, in which case I might stand to lose any investment I made in it.  Which is too bad, but then again I couldn’t design an amplifier to save my life.  But what would be the worst case scenario?  I suppose an electrical fault could cause it to electrocute its owner, which would end up being pretty bad for me, but far worse for the late owner and his grieving family.  But all things considered, unless the poor dead owner was Kim Kardashian it probably wouldn’t make page 26 of your local newspaper, let alone the front page of The New York Times.

That’s not how it is with nuclear weapons, where the worst thing that could happen might be that we wipe out all of humanity.

I was born in the 50’s, grew up in the 60’s and 70’s, and emerged as a functional adult in the 80’s.  Throughout those formative years, the threat of nuclear annihilation was an ever-present backdrop, as were the political protests of the various anti-bomb movements around the world.  I clearly remember both.  I am just about old enough to remember the ominous quiet and the somber faces that were everywhere during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Nonetheless, we managed to survive all those decades without even a little bit of Mutually Assured Destruction.  None of the nightmare scenarios ever unfolded, and we’re all still safe and sound.  Well, I suppose some pretty worrisome regimes also have the bomb now, so we have that to fret over, but you get my point.  Those bombs may have been terrifying, but all that technology was developed by the smartest brains on the planet, and it turns out we were completely justified in having relied on it to keep us safe.  At least that’s how I felt about it, without having gone to any great lengths to be better informed.

Command And Control goes about setting that record straight.  It seems to me that no intelligent person would fail to benefit from reading it.

Coming out of WWII, the United States had already let the atomic genie out of the bottle, so although there was some serious discussion about whether or not to abandon – or even ban – atomic weapons development, that horse had for all practical purposes already bolted.  So the major questions were then two-fold … how to develop the weapons themselves, and how to implement both the strategic and political systems with which to operate and control them.

Schlosser’s book takes us through all of these issues and the various political machinations that adhere to them.  And he adds one more question – quite a biggie – that everybody in charge seemed to want swept under the carpet … were they safe?  He opens our eyes to the ramifications underlying that question.  But more than anything else, it is the political machinations – and particularly the power of the armed forces to set the political agenda – which jumps out of the page at you.  The central issue was that “the bomb” was nothing other than a weapon (nuclear power generation notwithstanding).  Realistically, you had few options for who would assume control over something that was 100% weapon and 0% anything else, aside from the military.  The military had evolved into what it was over a period of hundreds of years, and was, at least in principle, eminently suited for that evolutionary purpose.  The trouble was that stewardship over nuclear weapons was a purpose for which, at that point in history at least, it turned out to have been remarkably badly adapted.

As I mentioned, one half of Schlosser’s book is a blow-by-blow account of a serious accident that befell a Titan II missile silo in Damascus, Arkansas, in September 1980.  The Titan II missile was equipped with the W53 warhead, a 9-megaton H-bomb that was the most powerful in the US arsenal.  This is a straightforward linear drama that was adapted by PBS into a documentary for its American Experience series.  The documentary makes for as gripping viewing as the book’s reading, but even at 90 minutes long it can’t cover everything, and in particular it fails to do justice to the aftermath, and the blame culture of the Air Force in taking the easy route of assigning responsibility to the serviceman who dropped the wrench, rather than taking ownership of the institutional shortcomings that underpinned all aspects of the whole sorry episode.  You’ll need to read the book for a fuller appreciation of those issues.  Here is the PBS show, in its entirety, available on YouTube.

But it’s the other half of Schlosser’s book that, to my mind at least, made for the most compelling reading, and will leave you with the most indelible impressions.  There are so many profoundly shocking revelations that emerge from it, and here are a few for you to ponder, presented as cold-bloodedly as possible.  But I can’t recommend highly enough that you just go and read it for yourself.

Thule, 1968.

In 1968, a B-52 bomber, armed with four H-bombs, was circling over an early warning station in Thule, in northern Greenland.  The purpose of the warning station was to detect incoming missiles fired on a trajectory from the Soviet Union to America, over the North Pole.  The bomber had two purposes; the first was to keep an eye on the base at Thule.  If the Russians wanted to launch an attack on America, one of the first things they would need to do was to take out the early warning bases.  Therefore, so long as the B-52 could verify that the base at Thule was still there, it was a good sign that the USA was not under a missile attack.  However, the second purpose was that in the event a Soviet launch was detected, the B-52 was already half way to Russia, and could be immediately re-tasked with an offensive mission.  For this reason the bomber always flew armed with a full payload of nuclear weapons.

The B-52, as it happens, had dreadfully uncomfortable navigators’ seats, and this particular bomber’s navigator decided to address the problem by padding the seat with four rubber cushions.  Five hours into the flight the cabin heating failed, and rather than returning to base for repairs, the captain responded by diverting some of the engine’s heat into the cabin.  Unfortunately, the navigator’s rubber cushions blocked the vent, and since the engine air was seriously hot, the cushions caught fire.  The burning rubber created a huge quantity of thick black smoke, and furthermore it resisted all attempts to put it out with a fire extinguisher.  The crisis deepened, and the B-52 lost all power.  The crew bailed out, and the aircraft slammed into the ice, just seven miles west of Thule.

Bomb designers generally didn’t know whether nuclear weapons were “fail-safe” under conditions such as these.   There were (and are) practical limits to how much testing you could do to satisfactorily engineer safety features into a nuclear weapon encountering all manner of extreme failure scenarios.  Not to mention the fact that test ban treaties further complicated the whole matter.  So nobody could have said with any degree of certainly that a payload of four H-bombs would not go off if you slammed them into the ground at 600mph.  It was therefore a great relief that, as it turned out, they did not.

If the nuclear bombs had gone off, it would have taken out the entire Thule early warning station.  And a nuclear event at Thule, coupled with the loss of the circling B-52, would in turn have triggered an immediate all-out retaliatory strike.  The world as we know it would have been all over within 30 minutes.  Just like that.

NORAD HQ, 1960.

A group of business bigwigs with major defense contracts were given a tour of the NORAD HQ in Colorado Springs, during which the Executive Vice-President of Bell & Howell was invited to sit in the commander’s chair.  Above a huge panoramic map display, a number would flash in the event that a “situation” occurred.  Number 1 would flash if an unidentified object were detected travelling towards the United States, and the numbers would get higher as the threat level escalated, culminating at Number 5 indicating a 99.9% certainty that the USA was under attack.  As the Bell & Howell executive made himself comfortable in the chair, Number 1 began to flash, and the number rapidly began to rise.  When it hit 4, senior NORAD officers ran into the room, and as it hit 5 the executives were bundled out and put in a small office.

The commander in the room was a dapper Canadian, Air Marshall Slemon.  With only minutes in which to react, he asked his chief of intelligence “Where is Mr. Khrushchev today?”.  The answer came back, “Khrushchev is in New York, at the United Nations”.  Slemon kept his proverbial finger off the proverbial button, and, after twenty minutes had elapsed, with no Soviet missiles exploding anywhere, the three businessmen were released from their “office” and allowed to leave.

Without those three civilians being present – one of whom, Charles H. Percy, went on to become a Republican senator from Illinois – it is unlikely that the incident would ever have come to public attention.  In any event, the subsequent investigation showed that the false alarm was caused when the early warning station at Thule mistook the moon rising over Norway as dozens of long-range missiles launched from Siberia!  The official position of the Air Force remains that the missile warning had never been taken seriously, but Senator Percy disputed that account, and recalled a strong sense of panic at NORAD.  Either way, I’m just grateful that Khrushchev chose that day to beat his chest at the UN over American imperialist ambitions in West Berlin.

General Curtis LeMay.

One of the most accomplished and successful military leaders in US history, Curtis LeMay became – and remains to this day – the youngest four-star General in US armed forces history since Ulysses S. Grant.  From 1948 to 1957 he was commander of Strategic Air Command, and from 1957 to 1965 served as Chief of Staff of the US Air Force.  In the satirical 1964 movie Dr. Strangelove, the character of General Jack Ripper was famously based on LeMay.

Throughout the nuclear era, first under Truman, then Eisenhower and Kennedy, LeMay consistently and unapologetically advocated for a “first-strike” approach by the US using atomic weapons.  His approach was, from his perspective, an entirely pragmatic one.  In the early 1950’s, his argument to Truman was that the US still had a substantive lead over the Soviet Union in nuclear weapons, but the Soviets were known to be working on them.  Therefore, LeMay argued, the US should launch a first strike to remove that threat before it got off the ground.  Truman demurred.

Later, his position became that, since any exchange of nuclear weapons between the Soviet Union and the United States would result in the ultimate destruction of the United States, the latter’s only available strategy had to be to launch a totally unexpected first strike.  Fortunately, Eisenhower wasn’t buying it either.

Under the Kennedy presidency, with the world hovering on the edge of Armageddon due to the Cuban Missile Crisis, LeMay pressed for Kennedy to launch an all-out nuclear attack on Cuba, with the aim of destroying all of the Soviet nuclear missiles which were already there.  His analysis was that because the attack was on Cuba, Krushchev would have had no choice but to refrain from responding with a nuclear strike of his own, since such a strike would inevitably result in a full-scale American launch on Russia.  Once again, and one would have to say fortunately, Kennedy declined to accept LeMay’s advice.

The Hot Line.

In among the color-drains-from-your-face moments was … at least I thought it was … a single moment of dry humor.  At the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, communications of the utmost urgency had to be promptly delivered between the representatives of the antagonists, and there was no official communications channel with which to do it.  I’m talking about a physical channel, not an “Our man Chuck has a solid relationship with Yuri” type of back-channel.  Instead, urgent messages from the Soviet embassy had to be encoded by hand, and then given to a Western Union messenger who would arrive at the embassy on a bicycle!  Soviet ambassador Dobrynin later expressed his concerns with typically dry Russian candor: “We at the embassy could only pray that he would take it to the Western Union office without delay, and not stop on the way to chat with a pretty girl.”

The high drama of the Cuban Missile Crisis did result in the creation of the infamous “Hot Line” linking the Kremlin, the Pentagon, the White House, and Moscow’s Communist Party headquarters.  But unlike the red telephone handset beloved of the movies and TV shows, it actually comprised a more prosaic teletype machine that could exchange text messages quickly and securely.  Written statements were considered easier to translate, more deliberate, and less subject to interpretation than verbal ones.  Every day, once an hour, test messages were sent, alternately from Moscow (in Russian) and Washington (in English).

The “Hot Line” itself would not survive a nuclear attack, since its role was exclusively to aid in preventing one.

St James Club.

I had come to LA on a sales trip. I was new to the business and still trundling door to door with my Revolver Turntable. Los Angeles in those days had many high-end audio stores catering to the whims of the rich and famous; before computers and cell phones, people bought a lot of Hi-Fi.

For this trip, I was staying at the St. James Club in Los Angeles. My friend Alexis Arnold (now sadly deceased) from Naim Audio liked to stay there, and for a lark (an expensive one), I decided to book it for a couple of days.

The St. James Club was in a renovated art deco building on Sunset Boulevard. It was built in the 1930s and known as the Sunset Tower, and for a time many famous actors and gangsters used to stay there. It declined in the 1980s, but was restored to its former glory and re-opened in the late 1980s as the St. James Club–again an upscale hotel, again a mecca for movie stars.

I had an appointment to do a demo of my turntable at a famous store (name deliberately forgotten), and was to talk following a demonstration of a well-known amplifier and its well-known designer (both names deliberately forgotten). We were both meant to speak for around 20 minutes. After listening to this bozo lecture for around an hour the audience and I were going crazy. He droned on about this capacitor or that transistor.

“I love this product so much I could talk about it all day, but, if anyone wants me to shut up? Just say the word,” he actually said.

From the back of the room came this loud retort, “Shut up!”

Everyone turned to see who said it and I, not at all embarrassed, returned their gaze and smiled. Someone started to clap, and then everyone joined in. That’s when I began talking about my turntable.

The next day after checking out and waiting for my car to come, I asked the bellhop if anyone famous was staying at the hotel. He said, “Aren’t you a famous English actor?”

I smiled, gave him a tip, and drove off.

 

The Post Ranch Inn.

The Post Ranch Inn in Big Sur is serene, calming and discreet. It features yoga in the morning, stargazing at night, spa treatments galore and a fabulous restaurant. It’s the sort of place you would take your mistress. I took my wife.

The inn sports a massive heated infinity pool. It is set in the edge of the cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean and when the light is just right, the edge blends into the haze of the sea. My wife had gone off to the infinity pool and I decided to sit and read. Also reading nearby was a man in his mid thirties. Ever friendly, I started to talk to him. He was a bit surly but we chatted amicably for a while and then when the conversation lagged, he left and I continued to read. A few minutes later, my wife came over to me laughing. She said that standing in the pool was an attractive woman whose partner eventually joined her.

“Are you having a good time?” the woman had asked her partner.

“I was until that asshole started talking to me,” he had said.

“Which asshole?”

My wife started laughing again.

“That one!” the man had said, pointing to me.

 

The Mondrian.

”Rita, you gotta come down and see this.”

We were staying for a few days at the terribly chic Mondrian hotel on Sunset Blvd. in Los Angeles. This was 2002 and the hotel always smelt of fresh paint. Apparently, very early every morning someone applied a coat of white paint to the lobby walls to maintain that “look.”

One evening while hanging out in the lobby I heard a commotion and saw a line forming. There were photographers, press people and paparazzi. I joined the line out of curiosity and I was not disappointed: It was Liza Minnelli’s engagement to David Gest.

And there was Martin Landau and Michael Feinstein and Nancy Sinatra, wearing that really stupid hat she wore in the sixties (it did her no good). And there was Rodney Dangerfield and Larry King and Loni Anderson and Buzz Aldrin and Janet Leigh and Eve Marie Saint and Carroll Baker, and then this heavy-set, older woman appeared with a walker.

“That’s Esther Williams,” someone said, and my heart sank. Esther Williams? The star of all these ridiculous swimming movies in the forties and fifties? She looked so encumbered.

Someone said Michael Jackson and Elizabeth Taylor were coming but they didn’t show up (Later I heard that they were at the party but entered via a different door).  And then the main attraction appeared, Liza Minnelli and David Gest. His hair and eyebrows were dyed black and he had so much plastic surgery on his face that I had trouble focusing on it. Everyone was hugging and kissing but the levity seemed artificial. Maybe it was seeing all these aged actors, or maybe something else I sensed, but this was not a joyous event. We waited until the hubbub had subsided and went out for dinner. When we returned, the party had ended and there was Liza and her mate, in the lobby saying goodbye and they both looked miserable.

Their marriage lasted just over a year.

 

La Reserve.

Many years ago after inheriting some money we decided to visit France and stay at La Reserve in Beaulieu-sur-Mer. It is a magnificent hotel–ornate, located a few miles east of Nice on the road to Monte Carlo, and overlooking the Mediterranean. The rooms are lavish and ours had a wonderful view. When I first visited the south of France as a teenager I spotted this hotel and dreamed that one day I would stay there. Now that I was here, I did have some issues.

The day we arrived, the Internet wasn’t working so I walked into town to an Internet café. It was summer and I was wearing my usual: a polo shirt, shorts, and sandals. On my return, a man (who turned out to be the owner) looked me over and snarled in the most condescending tone,

“Monsieur, can I help you?”

More than a few of my fellow guests were annoying. There was a large Russian family with an entourage of about a dozen souls. They were noisy and crass; one of them was an American woman who was constantly on the phone booking first class airline tickets for this group. Then there was a very pretty Englishwoman with two annoying, spoiled children. She was there “for the summer.” In conversation when we told her of this lovely cafe in the town square where we ate breakfast she asked, “Do they take reservations?”

One morning in the lobby, I heard a woman talking with the Concierge.

“I am not happy.” She was wearing gym clothes.

“I’m sorry madam. What can I do to help you?” asked the Concierge.

“I like to practice ballet in the morning and the ballet barre in your gym is 5cm too high. I want you to lower it.”

The concierge probably wanting to murder this woman, smiled politely and said, “I’ll see what I can do.”

These were not my people.

The prices in the restaurant were outrageous. A club sandwich, white bread, turkey, bacon and mayonnaise was 60 euros ($75), but it did come with a handful of potato chips. Breakfast was 90 euros ($112). Because of these stupid prices we would walk into the town square and sit in one of the outdoor cafes and order a coffee, baguette with butter and jam and sometimes a croissant.  Sitting there looking at the outdoor market and smelling the scent of bougainvillea was sheer paradise. One morning, seated next to us was a woman with a bandaged finger. She spoke with an English accent. The bandage was large and I asked her what had happened. She told me that she had caught her finger in a car door and this brute of a French doctor had painfully removed the nail. I winced when I heard this, having experienced this myself.

“I’m so sorry to say this but sometimes when the new nail grows in, it’s not perfect and that has to be removed also,” I said.

“You’re a doctor, aren’t you?” she said, eyeing me.

“No,” I replied. “I’m a bullshit artist.”

“No, no,” she said, “I know a real doctor when I see one.”

 Many years ago after inheriting some money we decided to visit France and stay at La Reserve in Beaulieu-sur-Mer. It is a magnificent hotel--ornate, located a few miles east of Nice on the road to Monte Carlo, and overlooking the Mediterranean. The rooms are lavish and ours had a wonderful view. When I first visited the south of France as a teenager I spotted this hotel and dreamed that one day I would stay there. Now that I was here, I did have some issues. The day we arrived, the Internet wasn’t working so I walked into town to an Internet café. It was summer and I was wearing my usual: a polo shirt, shorts, and sandals. On my return, a man (who turned out to be the owner) looked me over and snarled in the most condescending tone, “Monsieur, can I help you?” More than a few of my fellow guests were annoying. There was a large Russian family with an entourage of about a dozen souls. They were noisy and crass; one of them was an American woman who was constantly on the phone booking first class airline tickets for this group. Then there was a very pretty Englishwoman with two annoying, spoiled children. She was there “for the summer.” In conversation when we told her of this lovely cafe in the town square where we ate breakfast she asked, “Do they take reservations?” One morning in the lobby, I heard a woman talking with the Concierge. “I am not happy.” She was wearing gym clothes. “I’m sorry madam. What can I do to help you?” asked the Concierge. “I like to practice ballet in the morning and the ballet barre in your gym is 5cm too high. I want you to lower it.” The concierge probably wanting to murder this woman, smiled politely and said, “I’ll see what I can do.” These were not my people. The prices in the restaurant were outrageous. A club sandwich, white bread, turkey, bacon and mayonnaise was 60 euros ($75), but it did come with a handful of potato chips. Breakfast was 90 euros ($112). Because of these stupid prices we would walk into the town square and sit in one of the outdoor cafes and order a coffee, baguette with butter and jam and sometimes a croissant. Sitting there looking at the outdoor market and smelling the scent of bougainvillea was sheer paradise. One morning, seated next to us was a woman with a bandaged finger. She spoke with an English accent. The bandage was large and I asked her what had happened. She told me that she had caught her finger in a car door and this brute of a French doctor had painfully removed the nail. I winced when I heard this, having experienced this myself. “I’m so sorry to say this but sometimes when the new nail grows in, it’s not perfect and that has to be removed also,” I said. “You’re a doctor, aren’t you?” she said, eyeing me. “No,” I replied. “I’m a bullshit artist.” “No, no,” she said, “I know a real doctor when I see one."

I used to be a moderator of a now-defunct Indian bicycling forum called Bikeszone. BZ, as it was called, was the epicenter of the burgeoning recreational cycling movement in India. People gathered online to plan rides, share knowledge, ask for advice, and fight. The “war thread” on road bikes versus mountain bikes for Indian roads forever changed us.

It was there that I encountered the Counter of Butterflies, or the anti-cyclist cyclist. There have been many versions of them on the forum and in my life afterwards, but the most notorious was the guy who would hijack every technical, training, or race discussion with comments on how stupid it was to be looking at numbers, obsessing about pedals or computers or power meters, and that cycling should be about just getting out there, with regular clothes and equipment, and “counting butterflies”.

The other common version of the anti-cyclist cyclist was the “Go Green” guy, the most clueless of whom would ride a bicycle on the weekend and brag about how they were “saving the planet”. While Go Green guys would occasionally jump on threads and point fingers at people who drive cars to ride their bikes (either to the trail head or the start of the regular team ride), on the whole, they spouted their inanities and smugness in their own little corners of BZ.

Neither of them is wrong. We shouldn’t forget the core reason why we ride instead of going to the gym or driving a car, and why we set up great stereos instead of streaming on laptops from YouTube. It is a worthy thing to derive enjoyment without thinking too much about the equipment. As for Go Green guy, when his message is stripped of hubris, it’s on the right track. If not planets, bicycles can at least help save cities or neighborhoods—they have advantages bigger than themselves.

Here’s my problem with Butterfly Counter. Because his agenda was essentially anti-agenda, he felt free to push it in everyone’s faces at every chance he got. When a thread on a forum is clearly titled “Which road pedals?” or “Which $2,000 DAC?” it’s rude, arrogant, and utterly self-absorbed to jump on there and tear people down because you don’t believe in clipless pedals or digital music. (If you’re not a cyclist, you should know that by a historical and etymological quirk, a “clipless” pedal is one that you actually clip into using cleats on the bottoms of your shoes.)

The other thing Butterfly Counter and Go Green guy always missed was that the most focused road cyclists on BZ were also the most likely to own several bikes, and ride in many avatars. One dedicated road racer owned a cheap commuter bike that he rode to work every day—in “normal” clothes and shoes. He didn’t own a car. The landmark for the house of another strong road cyclist was the SUV nearly buried under dust and leaves—he had carefully chosen where to live so as to not depend too much on the car (and obviously that worked better than expected). Two other racers regularly went on bicycle tours in the off-season—again with “normal” clothing—riding through beautiful countryside in France or Greece or Italy, counting baguettes, butterflies, and baths (Roman baths). Alliterate or die. I remember how I was once at the start of a time trail, where some cyclists had shown up wearing tennis shoes, and were riding mountain bikes with knobbly tires. The roadies encased in skinsuits and doing Suffer Yoga over aerodynamic bicycles, non-patronizingly welcomed and encouraged them, knowing that just showing up at a race start line (or any start line) was a win.

Similarly, I’ve been in houses where the vinyl collection threatens to fall and entomb you, and the turntable looks like the concert desk of Author and Punisher (sadly, not my observation—I stole it from a recent guest at a recent musical evening), and yet, the analog fiend to whom it all belongs is cheerfully recommending a digital streamer he loves, knowing that his questioner would not be interested in starting from scratch with vinyl. Or the house where the main system is a small Gaudi-esque city, but you’re proudly led to the garage where the dusty workspace system cost $300 but was assembled with care and pride, and sounds great.

The truly obsessed recognize that there are as many types of cycling or audiophilia as there are cyclists or audiophiles. They realize that context is everything. Their equipment is highly personalized, and set up not just for their physical and aesthetic requirements, but also for the very particular way they use it. For all that technology obsessed cyclists or audiophiles are talked about as being terrible prescriptive snobs, I rarely hear them pushing their agendas on the unwilling.

Consider in contrast the number of rides I’ve been on with anti-cyclist cyclists who tell me that I don’t “need” cycling shorts, and sneer at my cycling shoes and special pedals. Cut to the living room of every audiophile ever, where they’re regularly asked “Does all this really make a difference?” in a snide sort of way.

And so, we are at the receiving end of behavior that we’re accused of doling out. They’re judging us, but we’re not judging them. They are, in effect, more focused on equipment than we are!