Copper
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Some Old Jazz Guy: Exploring Michael Franks, Pa...
“A few years ago we were playing the House of Blues in New Orleans (a perennial stop for us). I left after the sound check to hunt down some vegan...
Loudspeaker Phenomena – The Result: A Gap
Copper has an exchange program with FIDELITY magazine (and others), where we share articles, including this one, between publications. A good hi-fi system reproduces an incredible amount of detail: a...
Reconsidering Conductor James Levine
Great artists and thinkers are no stranger to controversy. Richard Wagner, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot and Roald Dahl were all rabid anti-Semites. Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Norman Mailer – among others...
Engaging and Enthralling Music for All: Talking...
Dr. Sean Olive is a Senior Fellow, Acoustic Research, at Harman International. He has extensive expertise related to perception and measurement of sound quality, and oversees Harman’s corporate R&D acoustics...
A Road Rally for Lemons: the 2023 Rocky Mountai...
“Don’t die.” “Lemons Rally is not a race!” “Obey all traffic laws.” The rules of a Lemons Rally, a spinoff of the 24 Hours of Lemons racing series, are fairly...
Desert Island Discs? Pfft! Here’s a Real Challe...
I have to think that most our readers are familiar with the concept of “Desert Island Discs.” The premise is to make a list of albums (usually 10) that one...
The Return of Tower Records: Welcome Back, You’...
At a time when institutions and entities we cherish might disappear, the rebirth of the Tower Records brand is especially welcome. Since the company’s Chapter 7 liquidation in 2006, I...
You Don’t Know What You’ve Got ’Till It’s Gone:...
It seems to me that in recent years the lyrics to Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi” have never been more relevant when looking through the lens of musical instrument shop...
Beyond Face Value: The True Cost of Ticket Pricing
Not so long ago, businesses lived and died by the price tag, that sticker affixed to an item served as a contract between the customer and purveyor. But what if...
CTI Records, Part Six: The Keys to CTI
Keys – keyboards, and their players – play a big part in CTI’s many recordings, both as sidemen and as musicians featured on their own CTI or Kudu albums. Here,...
Confessions of a Tube Collector, Part Two
In Part One of this series (Issue 183), I discussed the history of the of the vacuum tube. Since it all started with the development of the diode, we might...
Remembering Producer Phil Ramone, 10 Years Later
The 10th anniversary of the passing of Phil Ramone at the age of 79 is upon us. A giant of the music industry, he was at the helm for a...
Eccentric Records (and How to Fix Them)
We are talking here about physical, not psychological or emotional, eccentricity (that could be a whole ‘nother article). In Issue 184, fellow writer (and parts fabricator extraordinaire) J.I. Agnew wrote...
Last of the Free Birds
Lynyrd Skynyrd began in 1960s Jacksonville, Florida. For those unfamiliar with Florida, Jacksonville is about 20 miles from the Georgia border, a few hours’ drive from Alabama, and a quick...
Confessions of a Tube Collector, Part One
The vacuum tube (or thermionic valve in British usage) is probably the greatest invention of the 20th century. It heralded the beginning of the information age, an event as significant...
Desert Island Discs? Pfft! Here’s a Real Challenge
I have to think that most our readers are familiar with the concept of “Desert Island Discs.” The premise is to make a list of albums (usually 10) that one...
Don Leslie’s Whirling Dervish Speaker Contraption
There are a few gentlemen in particular who deserve strong recognition for the development and evolution of several modern-day musical instruments. Included in this distinguished group of instrument makers are...
CTI Records Part 4: Sax (and Violins)
Like any jazz record label, CTI Records was no stranger to saxophone players. The label had its share of talent, from established names such as Stanley Turrentine and Paul Desmond...
Ulrike Schwarz, Jim Anderson, and Their New Par...
Soprano saxophonist/composer Jane Ira Bloom’s Picturing the Invisible: Focus 1 recently garnered a Grammy nomination for Best Immersive Audio Album. Produced and engineered by multiple Grammy winners/nominees Ulrike Schwarz and...
Clickbait Articles Belie Reality: The Vinyl Man...
New trade advocacy group, the Vinyl Record Manufacturers Association, is establishing best practices and standards Two recent online articles ushered in the new year with headlines that the vinyl boom...
Lounging with In-Ear Monitors, Part Three
In our previous two articles (Issue 180 and Issue 181) we have briefly considered some of the factors which may affect the sound quality of in-ear monitors, aka IEMs, in-ear...
Lounging with in Ear Monitors, Part Two
There are so many in-ear monitors (otherwise known as IEMs, earbuds, earphones, or in-ear headphones) in the marketplace, how can one navigate the minefield of IEMs which are out there?...
My Favorite Yes Album: Drama
When I bought Drama (1980), my first Yes record, I wasn’t aware that it marked an end of era as Jon Anderson, the iconic voice of Yes, and Rick Wakeman...
Home Entertainment Formats Over the Past 50 Yea...
Technological advances in the 1970s brought unprecedented conveniences for consumer home entertainment that continues a half century later in the digital age. Further examination of the machinations that ultimately gave...
Dig This: Philadelphia’s Vibrant Vinyl Scene
I spent a lot of time in Philadelphia when I was a graduate student at Rutgers University. It was an easy trip from New Brunswick, New Jersey to central Philly...
Exploring CTI Records, Part 2: The Subsidiaries
CTI Records had been an independent label for only a year when Creed Taylor began creating subsidiary labels. While a couple of these subsidiaries were very limited, the Kudu label...
Tim Riley’s Best Albums of 2022
Country-pop surges, even as Shania Twain and Margo Price stare January down. And as beleaguered as culture feels for the Next Great Consensus, the variety feathering so many different year-end...
The Life and Times of a Sony Audio Engineer: Ta...
I first had the pleasure of becoming recently acquainted with Aston Sharman, when I stumbled upon his intriguing boutique, Vintage Technology Workshop, tucked away in the UK’s historic Barbican area...
Nearly $400 Poorer, Here Are My 2022 Black Frid...
File under, “inside the head of a Record Store Day consumer.” Since 2014, it’s been like clockwork. Twice a year I download the Record Store Day (RSD) upcoming titles list...
Exploring CTI Records, Part One: 1969 – 1971
At the end of the A&M 60th anniversary series in Copper (in Issue 176)I featured recordings released as a collaboration between A&M Records and Creed Taylor’s CTI imprint. This CTI...
Some Holiday Music Favorites
I might be a bit of an outlier. I typically don’t play Christmas music all that often during the holidays, since we are bombarded with it daily from November 1...
Stuffy Shmitt: Portrait of an Artist
In the 1990s I worked at the North Star Pub in Manhattan’s South Street Seaport, a stone’s throw from the East River and in view of the old Fulton Fish...
The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Is Not Rock and Roll
The full telecast of the November 5, 2022 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (RRHoF) induction ceremony is now available on HBO – all four hours of it. Although I...
London’s Klooks Kleek: A Sixties Music Breeding...
1960s British music aficionados are likely familiar with many of the era’s historic music venues, including London’s Marquee Club and Saville Theater. Devout Beatles’ fans are likely to include in...
A Look At Ravel’s Works for Orchestra
One of the popular mantras in audiophilia is “garbage in, garbage out.” This is meant to say a piece of equipment is only as good as what comes before it....
A Most Dedicated Record Collector
If someone offered you $30,000 for just one out of the 20,000-plus records in your collection, would you sell it? Not Joe Bussard. If you aren’t familiar with the name,...
The A&M Records Story, Part Nine: CTI Records
This is a special installment in our A&M 60th Anniversary series. While it is out of chronological order with the rest, its unique circumstances allow us to hand off the...
A Visit to The University of Rhode Island Guita...
I first heard about the University of Rhode Island Guitar Festival during our annual fall trip to Narragansett in 2021. My wife and I like to make one final visit...
A Trip to Eindhoven’s Philips Museum: Like a Ki...
Ever since my grandmother Edna gave me a transistor radio for my birthday in 1964 just in time for Beatlemania, I was mesmerized by gadgets that emanated sound. By the...
There’s No Flop in MoPOP
On a long-ago eighth grade school trip to New York City, my classmates and I watched a beautifully restored 35-millimeter print of Citizen Kane on the big screen. The 1941...
New Classical Recordings: Igor Levit's Tristan,...
Igor Levit – Tristan (Sony, 2022) Emanuel Ax, Leonidas Kavakos, Yo-Yo Ma – Beethoven for Three, Symphonies Nos. 2 and 5 (Sony, 2022) 19439940142 Igor Levit, Tristan, album cover. Even...
In Memory of Ramsey Lewis
Three Grammy Awards. 80 albums. Five gold records. A National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master. Artistic director for the Ravinia Jazz Festival. Mentor for up-and-coming musicians through the Ravinia’s...
Retail Therapy
I never trained as a psychologist. Instead, in my retail career I maintained an open mind, had probably more patience then than I do now, (but not that much less),...
Classical Music for a Desert Island, Part Three
Part One and Part Two of this series on desert island classical music albums appeared in Issue 172 and Issue 173. To recap: this list reflects my taste. Yours may be entirely different....
The History of A&M Records, Part Eight: Hor...
In 1975, A&M Records established a subsidiary jazz label called Horizon Records. John Snyder (who had previously worked with producer Creed Taylor) was the label’s creative director, and left in...
The Golden Decade for Popular Music…The 1950s?
I belong to a music-listening group consisting of five people who get together once a month. Everyone gets a turn to be the host who provides the playlist, wine, and...
Long Live Rock
For a while now, I have been thinking about how classic rock will look in its last stages. Artists are quickly aging, and surviving members of the great old bands...
The Best of CES Awards
On the top floors of 30 Rockefeller Center sits the Rainbow Room. It’s a lovely restaurant and sometimes event space that offers a breathtaking view of Manhattan. It even has...
Classical Music for a Desert Island, Part Two
Part One of this series on desert island classical music albums appeared in Issue 172. To recap: this list reflects my taste. Yours may be entirely different. In fact, it’s very...
The History of A&M Records, Part Eight: Jaz...
Like almost every well-known record label, A&M Records also made some forays into the jazz world. Some would be more of a relaxed style of pop-jazz, while others would come...