Copper
Twisted systems
Revisiting The Youngbloods' Elephant Mountain
The Youngbloods – Elephant Mountain (RCA IMP6051) Released April 1969 by RCA RecordsRe-mastered 2023 by Kevin Gray at Cohearent AudioSourced from original master tapesPressed on 180-gram vinyl at Record Technology,...
Affordable High End: The Vanatoo Transparent On...
Lately, just about every audiophile I know has three systems: a reference system, an all-around house system, and a desktop computer system. The Vanatoo Transparent One Encore Plus is a...
Guitar Influences, Part Five: Mick Ronson
So now you are saying…“so how do you go from all these blues masters as influences to glam hero Mick Ronson?” Fair enough. As much as the Beatles were the...
Guitar Influences, Part Four: Albert King
I woke up a couple of weeks ago and realized that I dreamed that Albert King called me to tell me he was coming over to jam. As Albert died on...
Guitar Influences, Part Three: Eric Clapton
As common as it is to read statements from rock and roll musicians that “when I saw The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show, I knew I wanted to be...
Guitar Influences, Part Two: Keith Richards, Ch...
Keith Richards, Chuck Berry and…Mike Kagan? Yeah…I know. I can hear it now. Who is Mike Kagan? A legendary American (or British) wizard, unknown to most of the world except...
Guitar Influences, Part One: Mike Bloomfield
I have been asked on several occasions to write about the guitar players who have had the greatest influences on me. While I have talked about this short list in...
The Beach Boys’ Sunflower Revisited
1966: It was the best of times; it was the worst of times…for Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys. In May 1966 the Beach Boys released Pet Sounds, which is...
Boogie With Canned Heat: Thank You Henry
The first time I walked into the Fillmore East (located in the heart of the seemingly dangerous newly-named neighborhood the East Village on Second Ave. and Sixth street) was on...
Some Thoughts On AXPONA 2023
Above: The PS Audio crew and friends (from front left around the table): Mike Bechtel, Cindi Bechtel, Jay Jay French, Chris Brunhaver, Aaron Marrs, James Herod, Jim Laib (doing his...
Tár (This Is Spinal Tárp)… a Movie Review
In case you missed it, Cate Blanchett takes an Academy Award-nominated star turn in the movie Tár. She plays Lydia Tár, the first American and the first female conductor of the...
Jeff Beck: In Memoriam
No, there is no cute way to begin this one. There is no “another one bites the dust.” Not even a “somewhere over the rainbow.” I just don’t have it...
Can’t You Hear Me Knockin’?
Well, eh…no, according to my wife. A joke goes like this: My wife says to me, “You either have hearing loss or Alzheimer’s; you’re deaf and you don’t pay attention...
The Revolver Remix Project: Producer Giles Mart...
Jay Jay’s review of the Revolver remixes appeared in Issue 175. Producer/engineer Giles Martin, the son of original Beatles producer George Martin, speaks with Jay Jay here. Jay Jay French:...
Revolver Returns: Remixed and Reloaded, Part One
Is Revolver the greatest of all Beatles albums? Every time I am asked to write about new Beatles remixes, I’m confronted with the enormous task of listening to the entire...
First Look (and Listen): A Hi-Def Live Concert ...
I recently attended a press showing (and listening) session at the Beacon Theatre in New York of their new, recently-installed sound system, called Sphere Immersive Sound. It was touted as...
Dead & Company at Citi Field, July 15, 2022...
Very few artists command followings so rabid that, when anyone criticizes them, the band’s defenders come out in force. I have written critically about the Stones, Springsteen, Dylan, and the...
When Domestic Bliss is an Audio Miss
When you walk into my apartment you stroll past the art in the foyer, and a dining room table, and enter the living room. (It’s the photo above.) Look around....
The Lasting Memories of Hit Summer Songs
Another summer is now here, and I’m reminded about how, growing up, songs that were hits during the summers of my youth helped to define and more importantly remind me...
From Small Things, Big Things One Day Come
No, this is not a review of the great Springsteen-penned and Dave Edmunds-performed tune, although perhaps I will do an article on Dave Edmunds in the future as I just...
Nero Fiddles While Rome…
Sorry folks but I’m having a hard time thinking about the state of my current audio system or writing about music. The Russian attack on Ukraine has just about eaten...
Michael Jackson and MJ: The Musical
As Seen Through a Woke Prism As Copper is and should always be about the music, I want to say this up front. Looking at his career purely as a...
We’re Not Gonna Take It!
Can an artist really stop the use of their songs by politicians? As an artist and manager of the band Twisted Sister, whose music is recognized and sold around the...
Get Back, Let It Be and the Boredom of Excellence
It is almost a given that if you dedicate eight hours of your time to watching a Beatles documentary, you are not just a casual fan. The events chronicled in...
What Exactly is Classic Rock? Part Two
In Part One (Issue 143), Jay Jay talked with FM DJ Joe Rock of Long Island’s radio station WBAB, and asked the question: just how, exactly, do we define classic...
What Exactly Is Classic Rock? Part One
First, a note: Jay Jay’s book, Twisted Business: Lessons From My Life In Rock ‘n’ Roll will be out on September 21 on RosettaBooks. You can hear his podcast, The Jay Jay French...
A Tale of Two Systems...
...and a podcast announcement. I now have a podcast called “The Jay Jay French Connection: Beyond the Music,” available on the Spotify, Apple Music and PodcastOne platforms. On a recent...
An Appreciation of the Move
As the COVID epidemic winds down (hopefully soon) this time period will go down as one in which home entertainment (via Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO, Disney etc. as well as...
Where Were You When The Lights Went Out?
You probably wished you were hanging out with me…read on… Recently, as I was walking through an antique store in Geneva, New York, I came upon a box of old...
Islands In the Stream
In past articles I have referenced the differences between how my audio system sounds vs. the way my friend Ira’s sounds. My system is analog-based but also has great CD/SACD...
In Memory of Leslie West
Leslie West, like Albert King, just knew how to play one note with feeling. It sounds so simple. It isn’t. The guitar world was just dealt another blow in 2020....
Zen and the Art of Criticism
Who hasn’t walked out of a show, turned to a friend and said, “that really sucked,” or, “that was amazing!” Everyone has the capacity to be a critic. My recent...
Strawberry Fields Forever...and Ever
This article was originally published in Goldmine magazine, www.goldminemag.com, and appears here with permission. Goldmine has covered music collectibles and memorabilia since 1974 and features interviews, record reviews and other subjects of interest. 2020 is...
Stairway to Heaven
My friend Ira is a committed audiophile and we seem to make leaps into audio system upgrades based on an almost ping-pong effect of gear that travels between our two...
The Soul of Guitar Tone
As a guitar player for the last 55 years, hundreds of guitars have passed through my hands and I currently own about 60. When I was younger, I had no...
The Legacy of Eddie Van Halen
There are millions of guitar players. There are thousands of really good guitar players. There are hundreds of really great guitar players. And then there is an elite group very...
Workingman's Dead...at 50
First off, I am proud to announce two projects of mine that you may be interested in: I will start my own podcast in about a month. It will be...
There Must Have Been Something In the Water
If the Beatles never happened, if the British Invasion never occurred, then music fans around the world would more than likely never have been exposed to some of the finest...
(Going for) The Absolute Sound…for Less
Besides being the name of the legendary high-end audio magazine, the phrase and the magazine The Absolute Sound was created by the late Harry Pearson (founder of said magazine) in order to...
The Golden Age of the Fab Four vs. the Fab Five
The Beatles vs. The Rolling Stones. And the winner is… Now that I have your attention, we are going to pretend to be Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, click our heels...
Me and the Dead, Part Two
In response to reader jeffstarr who commented on my Dead article, “The Rocky Road to Unlimited Devotion” (Issue 114), he asked why I had to dislike the Dead just because I became...
Me and the Dead: The Rocky Road To Unlimited De...
My first book, Twisted Business will be published in the first quarter of 2021 through RosettaBooks. It is a business book/memoir. In it I go into detail about my life and the...
And it Feels Just Like...Starting Over
So, as I have written about and stated in numerous articles and interviews, my portal to music was laid down through a 4-inch speaker through a Blaupunkt tabletop radio around...
Donovan’s Muse: an interview with the Real Jenn...
For those who don’t know, Jenny Boyd is a former model and was a big part of the 1960s British rock scene. She’s also Pattie Boyd’s sister. (Pattie was...
Day After Day…
Day after day, alone (with a lot of media and a great spouse) on a hill… (What media gets me through these times.) Here I am, living in Manhattan on...
The High-End in the Time of Coronavirus
There is nothing like a virus that may take down western civilization as we know it to make one’s quest for a great sound audio system seem a bit…well…insignificant… And...
VPI to the Rescue
If you haven’t heard by now, VPI industries, headed by Mat Weisfeld, has, in response to the coronavirus outbreak gripping their home state of New Jersey, taken a pause in...
Bob Dylan at the Beacon Theater, November 27, 2019
All Along the MayflowerBob Dylan at the Beacon Theater, November 27, 2019 I am still on a writing sabbatical because I have to finish my first book [about the rock...
End of Summer Musings
How fast can the summer go? It seems like it lasts all of 2 weeks. So here I am, having returned to my renovated NYC apartment finally listening to my...
So You Think You Love The White Album?
Probably not as much as Rutherford Chang. This is how I first heard about a collection of the Beatles’ White Album: “Hey Jay Jay, there is a store somewhere that sells...