Issue 117

In our first installment of this series we looked at the first step in getting a product to market: the initiation process. At this point the company has an idea of what the product is, what problem it is solving and the ways in which it will make customers happy. In some cases, those involved have some firm ideas of what it will do, what features and functions it must have, perhaps some clear idea of what parts and materials it should be made of, and even where and how much it could cost to make.

All of this is the result of weeks or even years of experimenting, testing new parts, and perhaps implementing new technologies, design approaches, software, you name it. Few products are built from the ground up; most are made on the shoulders of what has come before, but make no mistake, a lot of work has gone into getting here. Now it’s time to actually make something.

This is also the point where the process broadens. It will take many “shareholders’” work and approval to move forward. What drives this stage is the formal definition of the product, as embodied in the PRD or MRD (Product or Marketing Requirements Document).

This is not as straightforward as you may think. You may have defined all you could wish for in a product, but then there are those little considerations such as: what will it sell for and what will it cost to make? Who is supposed to buy it? How many of these folks are there? How will we reach them? What should it look like? How and where will we actually build it? How will we sell it? What about ecological, safety and other considerations?

Technical blueprints. Courtesy of xresch/Pixabay.

Each of these decisions will affect the other product parameters, and you now have to define your project down to the last detail to get the answers to the questions posed above.

The next step is to ask all the constituent stakeholders about the project. These can include possible customers, trade partners like retailers and distributors, professional reviewers, your competitors (though perhaps not directly), your sales staff, finance folk, investors, factory partners, parts suppliers, logistics services and industrial designers – essentially everyone who may be involved.

Asking all these questions is important in order to have confidence of some measure of success. A mismatch of expectations can lead to a failed product. The statistics on this are not good; far more products fail in the consumer electronics and audio spaces than not, and at worst this can cost the life of a firm and the dream of the person behind the product.

Potential customers can tell you what they like and don’t like about you and your competitors’ current products. Retail and distribution partners have insight as to what sells. They also understand the business side of things and their input on the proposed selling price, the perceived value and the number of potential customers will be important. Professional reviewers can sometimes sting with their criticisms, but their input is valuable in constantly pushing the edge. And while competitors will not likely disclose their approaches, you can find out what they’re doing by buying and examining their products and asking customers what they like and don’t like about them.

Internally you should have input from all company departments. Sales, your “feet on the ground” in the market, will tell you what is selling and what is needed. While sales teams may not have the expertise in product development that, say, engineering and production have, they know what they are going to need to actually sell the product in the real world.

The financial people will want to know how the potential product will contribute to the firm’s bottom line. How much profit can be expected, and what amount of capital and other expenses will be required to produce the new item? Businesses need to operate well and make profits to pay their employees and cover expenses. As finance asks these questions, it drives a lot of other effort into finding out what all the dreams, ideas, materials and approaches will actually cost. Estimates will need to be prepared and as real figures come in they will be compared to the estimates, and likely alter the original plan in many ways.

X-ray of a circuit board. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Emdee (talk).

As previously noted, the other functions of the company will also be called in for input on everything from figuring out how to ship the product to giving it a name.

Now we come to the areas that most people think of in making a product: the engineering and production. The road up to this point may have been rocky, with even arguments and insults tossed. For example, the person with the original idea may feel like others in the company don’t understand his or her vision or are trying to compromise it. But at this stage we have to expand the playing field yet again, as a lot of engineering disciplines will now come into play.

Although there are a few “renaissance” people in the world with a grasp of multiple disciplines, most new-product development requires a team effort, sometimes involving a very large and complex group. Depending on the product we may need expertise in mechanical engineering, circuit board design and layout, digital signal processing, RF engineering (for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or other aspects) power supplies, amplifier topology, acoustic engineering, driver design and more. Then there are considerations of testing and verification, designing for manufacturability, and safety, standard and environmental compliance. And this is not even a complete list. In today’s connected world you may also have to test that it properly interacts with and can be controlled by third party software, digital voice assistants and the like.

Do you have all these skills in-house? Often as not, even giant firms have to engage the services of skilled subcontractors.

On top of all this, the product needs to have an appealing and functional industrial design, which often requires the work of an outside designer or firm. The late and sadly missed Allen Boothroyd comes to mind. He not only created beautiful and useful products at Meridian Audio (along with Bob Stuart) and at speaker manufacturer KEF (where I had the pleasure of working with him), but also designed numerous other consumer electronics products from computers to coffee makers.

The Meridian Special Edition DSP8000 loudspeaker.

A great ID firm can really help, but realize they can be expensive. However, the results can be worth it. I worked with design firm IDEO on iPod speaker docks when I was at Altec Lansing. IDEO conducted an in-depth study to understand how and where people wanted to use their iPods and associated speaker docks. We gained invaluable insights – which resulted in the sale of millions of Altec Lansing iPod speaker systems.

The next step is to create a Bill of Materials, or BOM. Pricing of all the materials that go into a product is of course a major consideration, and the pricing may be affected by the quantities to be purchased, whether they can be bought “off the shelf” or have to be made, whether parts from previous products can be used, and other considerations.

If you are a small manufacturer this process is not so easy. You may end up buying in small lots with high prices with little idea of what volume price reductions you might be able to take advantage of if you sell more units than originally planned. One of the reasons that some of the most interesting and hand-built audio components and speakers cost so much is that parts cannot be bought at volume discounts.

In the case of parts machining, for example, there is a fixed set-up charge that is the same whether you order 10 parts or 1,000. Building a loudspeaker? If your sales volume is, say, only a few hundred speakers you may have no other choice but to go to a small cabinetmaker, as volume-loudspeaker OEM/ODM (original equipment manufacturer/original design manufacturer) factories rely on making large quantities in order to scale up their production lines.

A CNC (computer numerically controlled) machining facility. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Antoniusaw.

The industrial design of the product will call for various materials and finishes. These will be a costly aspect of the product – but often are the key to selling it. Keep in mind that items like gold-plated connectors may be considered an essential selling point, regardless of whether the designer considers them necessary for performance. And so it goes; all of the various parts needed must be sourced and priced. These all add up to the estimated BOM – and usually it is more, often far more, than planned.

This leads to another round of discussion (or argument) over what is really important to the success of the product. If holding the price is key, then everyone looks for compromise. For example: Scan-Speak speaker drivers are truly extraordinary, but so is their cost, so perhaps another alternative would do. Rosewood is beautiful, but there are less expensive and more sustainable options. Key parts may have been tested in the development and initiation phases, but now they will be scrutinized regarding which ones can and cannot stay in place. For luxury items, price is often the variable that changes – it goes up. (Which sometimes leads to expensive audio components becoming the subject of ridicule, but that’s another subject.)

A Scan-Speak 18M/8631T00 midrange driver.

The need to reduce costs can also lead to less-expensive marketing campaigns, smaller profits or other changes to the initial plan. None are easy choices, but consider: if no one knows about your product because of a reduced marketing campaign, then no matter how good it is, it may be passed by.

As the discussion and horse-trading continue the BOM may be more finely tuned and costs brought more into line. Perhaps production methods can be changed. One of the items we produced with IDEO needed to be strapped together in production in order to be assembled. It required special rigs and slowed down production a lot. Over time a better assembly method was put in place, which not only led to lower cost but better quality. This can be especially true in television manufacturing, which is one reason why their prices have fallen over the years.

And round and round we go, with each group (engineering, finance, sales, marketing and so on) bringing back their findings and their effects on practicality and cost. Ultimately a final decision is made where the product specs are set.

But even here, when we begin to pull the trigger, we are not done. Do all the parts and subassemblies fit together? Does everything work properly? The truth is, the product is still not final, but we have to get things going, so now we ask all the various departments to give us final parts lists, Gerber files (printed circuit board image files), lists of materials and everything else needed to go into the actual production phase.

We will run through this next gauntlet in the following article.

Header image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Hannes Grobe.

Sota Sound Inventions offers turntables ranging in price from the $1,250 Moonbeam IV (complete with tonearm) to the Statement Series Millennia Eclipse starting at $10,750. Sota was founded in 1980 by David Fletcher and Robert Becker as equal partners, with Rod Herman subsequently hired as a minority partner to complete the turntable’s package design and run the factory. The Star Sapphire was Sota’s first turntable to offer vacuum record hold-down, an option still available today. Sota later expanded their line to include speakers.

I interviewed Sota’s current owners, Christan Griego and Donna Bodinet, about the company’s history, philosophy and current product offerings.

About the name: Donna said Sota stands for “State of the Art” and was originally spelled “SOTA” in all caps, but is now spelled as Sota with conventional capitalization because younger customers say that, “in internet language, all caps means you are yelling.”

Don Lindich: My own experience with Sota goes back to the late 1980s when I was in college and a budding audiophile. There were two high-end dealers near my campus, and one sold Linn and the other, SOTA. I still remember looking in awe at that Star Sapphire with the SME V arm and Koetsu cartridge! I’m glad to see that both companies are still in existence and selling evolved versions of their Sondek LP12 and Sapphire turntables, but Linn has stayed under the same ownership and management while Sota has undergone changes. What can you tell us about these changes and the impact they’ve had on the brand?

Christan Griego/Donna Bodinet: In the beginning, David Fletcher and Robert Becker were the primary owners of Sota. In 1991 they retired and sold the company to Jack and Helen Shafton and later to Kirk and Donna Bodinet. Kirk went to Oakland, trained with the team and moved the manufacturing to Lemont, Illinois. In 1992 Kirk and Donna separated from the company, but operated as primary subcontractors until 1996. The company operated from 1991 through 1996, offering speakers and the Vanguard and Vanguard II CD players in addition to turntables.

Kirk continued to design with Jack Shafton through the 1990s. Kirk and Donna then operated Sota Sales and Service from 1996 through 2017, focusing primarily on manufacturing new turntables and servicing old ones. Christan Griego became involved in January 2018 and strives to push forward, continuing the legacy of Sota turntables’ precision engineering and unique design qualities.

DL: There are more turntable models and manufacturers in the market now than there were in 1982, when the CD was publicly introduced but vinyl was still the dominant format. In a world populated by entry-level to mid-range Pro-Ject and Music Hall turntables, VPI Industries spanning a wide variety of price ranges, all the way up to Clearaudio and other turntables selling in the six figures, where do you think Sota sits in this crowded marketplace? Is there a specific group of customers you are after, who you see as an ideal fit for the brand?

CG: We are now a Midwest-based turntable company that wants to focus primarily on quality manufactured turntables that are made in-house. We could make more profit by making products offshore, but we have gone from having 20 – 25 suppliers to now five or six. We are making everything in-house from domestically sourced woods and metals. Our first farm-to-turntable cherry trees were milled last month! The trees fell during a storm last year and we decided to start to take advantage of our local materials rather than buying from who knows where.

We’re excited about customers that want unique products that we feel have incredible musical pace and energy that are made from our new materials and electronics.

DL: Sota’s current model line starts with the Moonbeam for $1,250 with arm, all the way to the Millennia with vacuum hold-down for $11,950. Do you think there is a product that represents the “sweet spot” in your lineup?

CG: We feel that the Cosmos brings the performance of many other companies’ $30,000 – $50,000 tables to a price point starting at $8,500 (for the non-vacuum version). Many people don’t consider us when thinking about a turntable purchase because of our Midwestern sensibilities when it comes to pricing. We offer prices that are low compared to others, but performance that is spot-on.

I think the Cosmos is currently the best bargain in the industry. We also select wood cabinets that are incredible to look at, which we think matters when you are listening for hours. The standard finishes are American Cherry, American Walnut, and Light Oak, Dark Oak or Black Oak. Custom finishes include African Rosewood, Purpleheart, and Figured Maple. The custom finishes are commonly found on the Cosmos turntables. The Nova has a “select standard finish” which is a higher grade finish. A select standard finish could be Flecked Oak, which highlights the look of the wood, or Quilted Walnut. You can see what both look like with an internet search.

And, we also make available our Phoenix Engineering Condor Digital Power Supply, which specifically operates our three-stage motor, and our Roadrunner tachometer speed control. With this combination our speed control is 100 percent accurate, 100 percent of the time. The Condor is part of our Eclipse turntable package, with the Roadrunner an optional accessory.

DL: Even back in the late 1980s the Sapphire and Star Sapphire were considered state-of-the-art and on the top of any audiophile’s turntable shopping list. It has been 30 years since then. If someone purchases a brand-new Sapphire VI, what kind of improvements will they find compared to the original Sapphire, and how much better is the Sapphire VI compared to the original?

CG: With the Sapphire Series VI, in addition to all new electronics, our old 9-ply birch sub-chassis, while great-sounding, has been changed to phenolic resin materials. We have also incorporated an aluminum piano brace between the tonearm and bearing block. The old leaded sub-chassis has been replaced with environmentally sound materials that include stainless steel, aluminum, and bronze bushings in our new billet platters, machined from a single piece of aluminum, that are just coming to market.  The older-style cast platters are still utilized on restored tables, but the Sota turntable of 2020 and beyond is quite a different animal than the Sotas of previous years.

DL: Please tell me about your warranty and service policies, and what it is like to do business with Sota and your dealers. Do you have any special programs for those who want to upgrade or trade in their turntable towards a better Sota model?

CG/DB: We have a lifetime trade-in program that allows people to trade their old Sota turntable towards new equipment. We offer upgrading and updating for early series tables. These upgrades and updates can run the gamut from basic needs such as replacing springs or the bearing assembly, to best bang-for-the-buck with a budget-friendly wish list items such as new electronics or adding a magnetic-levitation platter, all the way to a full boat overhaul. Tonearm and cartridge support are also available through Sota.

We offer a two year warranty on new tables and one year on restored tables. If you talk to our customers you will quickly see they know us personally by name. We know our customers and their specific needs. This is the relationship we enjoy with them. We do not want our personalized treatment of individuals to change.

We are now growing our dealer base and supporting our dealers with more in-house training so that we can offer localized sales and service for all of our customers.

DL: I saw on your website that you sell “restored turntables.” This is quite rare for audio manufacturers, and reminiscent of the certified pre-owned programs from automobile manufacturers. Please tell me more about these turntables and your restoration process.

CG/DB: It was even more rare to offer this option back in the 1990s. When people trade in their older Sotas, the turntables are in a variety of conditions. Many times, there is not much we can utilize, but we use the best parts to assemble a restored table with upgraded electronic controls, new springs, new bushings and more. Replacing worn bushings in the platter itself can offer better tolerances on older restored tables. The older tables will still have the early series chassis as opposed to today’s better ones, but we can still offer a sweet-sounding table with new life that will perform for many years to come. We take pride in bringing people into the Sota family and this is a way we can do it without the price tag of buying a new turntable.

DL: I have heard about your motor upgrade program for VPI turntables. Can you tell me more about it and why VPI owners should consider having you do the work?

DB: The Condor Power Supply Unit (PSU) and Roadrunner tachometer combination is a great solution for many brands of turntables. We have Sota motor housings that have been used for older Benz Micro RX-2000 through RX-5000 series turntables. We’ve had people use the Condor speed control for VPI Prime, Prime Signature, HW19 and even other classic turntables.

The Condor is a great stand-alone power supply unit, but when you add the Roadrunner tachometer to it you get speed solutions to the third decimal point, tracking at 33.333 RPM compared to standard accuracy of 33.3. This means you can’t hear the speed corrections that are happening out at the third decimal point. It’s truly a remarkable leap forward at a price point that’s unprecedented. We want people to be able to afford more records to listen to at the end of the day.

The easiest solution is to just purchase the Condor, motor, motor housing, and Roadrunner from Sota. It comes assembled so all you have to do is plug it in, set the Roadrunner sensor, connect all the cables and the belt and you are up and running. This will also keep your factory warranty from your turntable manufacturer from being voided should you choose to have us replace your existing motor housing. We have done quite a few motor housing upgrades and we do nothing to compromise the integrity of the existing motor housing, or top plate if applicable so that if the customer should choose to go back to stock motors down the road (to sell their turntable) they can.

If a customer has a lathe and basic machinist skills they can even do the modifications themselves and we let people know every step it will take to get the PSU up and running. We recently shipped to Greece and the customer had a local machine shop do all his modifications.

DL: This is your chance to speak directly to the audience. Is there anything you would like to say to your current and prospective customers, and the audio world at large?

CG: We are so thankful to be around in 2020 and surviving in this pandemic.  Many people have been seeking out Sota to upgrade the performance of their audio systems during this time since so many audiophiles are on furlough or working from home. With extra time on their hands, many audiophiles are upgrading their turntables faster than we can keep up. It’s a good problem to have, and we look forward to having continued growth within this industry that has served us well for over 40 years. And, thank you to all for your support.

Sota Sound Inventions, LLC.
1436 Mound Road
Delavan, WI 53115
608-538-3500
E-mail: sales@sotaturntables.com
www.sotaturntables.com

How great would it have been to drink coffee with Mozart, share a pint with Brahms, or take a shot of Stoli with Tchaikovsky?  Just to sit around and talk about music or life. Unfortunately, I wasn’t around during the late 1700s to mid-1800s, nor would I likely have traveled in such rarified circles.

The closest I’ve come to spending time with music royalty – old school or modern-day – was playing a little billiards with Slowhand. Yes, the one and only Eric Clapton.

Living in Manhattan most of my adult life, it hadn’t been too uncommon to encounter a celebrity or two here or there. My apartment building was two away from The Dakota, the famed landmark building where John Lennon was tragically assassinated. I’d occasionally see Yoko (and bodyguard), and for many, many years on my way to work each morning I’d pass Sean Lennon heading to school. One bright morning I encountered another Dakota resident, Lauren Bacall. The late Ms. Bacall was walking her dog, and was dressed in a housecoat with rollers in her hair and a cigarette dangling from her mouth. So much for the indelible image I had of her and Bogie in Key Largo.

But let’s not digress any further.

One afternoon in the late 1990s a colleague and I decided to blow off work early and play a little pool. We headed up to Manhattan’s Upper West Side to Amsterdam Billiards, a joint with about twenty tables. Since it was mid-afternoon on a workday, the rather large billiard hall was empty.

Just as we’re in the midst of a couple of games, in walk two gentlemen, who set up a few tables away from ours. I’m a tad nearsighted, but I immediately noticed one of the men resembled Eric Clapton. I said to my friend (and no joke, my former colleague’s name is Derek, the pseudonym Mr. Clapton coincidentally took on while fronting the band Derek and the Dominos), “Derek, that guy looks like Eric Clapton…?” My friend, not being a refined music aficionado like me, and hardly enthusiastic about this potential sighting, just shook his head and quietly muttered, “I dunno.” Two seconds later I heard Eric’s English accent, which sealed the deal.

I tell my buddy, who is a far more skilled pool player than me, “I’m gonna walk over and challenge them to a game.” I casually walked over to their table and said, “my friend is kicking my butt; would you guys care to join us in a game of eight ball”? “Sure,” replied Eric.

As I signaled to my friend to join us, I put out my hand and said, “hi, I’m Stuart.” Clapton reciprocated and said, “I’m Eric, and this is Russ,” (Russ Titelman, Eric’s longtime producer).  Of course, I’m trying to play it very cool and nonchalant, but inside I’m going nuts. “Nice to meet you guys,” I replied.

(As an aside: years later I worked in sports and had the pleasure of meeting many famous athletes. Always a fun experience, but for me this Clapton encounter was on a stratospheric level.)

As we shook hands, Clapton had a very firm grip, no wimpy clasp from this guy, I said to myself, “wow, these are the tools of his trade,” just like a surgeon or a high-end carpenter. I’ve met some NFL quarterbacks in my time and when I shook their hands they were noticeably the size of oven mitts. Nothing remarkable struck me about Clapton’s hands, other than of course they obviously are quite nimble and full of dexterity.

I vividly recall setting up my first shot and my hand was shaking in disbelief that I was playing pool with friggin’ Eric Clapton. My mind’s eye immediately flashed to the first time I listened to classic Cream LPs like Disraeli Gears and Wheels of Fire. This isn’t someone who is just famous, this is a legend!  This is someone who I revered and respected musically for a very long time, as far back as his early days with The Yardbirds.

After a few minutes, I compose myself and ask Eric about what projects he’s working on, inherently acknowledging at that point I knew who he was. There were many, many things I would have liked to have asked him, but rather than come off as some psycho-fan, I remained respectful of both his privacy and space.

A couple of games into our challenge match, I was about to ask Clapton and his producer if they wanted a beer, trying to be polite and gracious. I stopped myself because I remembered Clapton was in recovery and likely didn’t drink. Of course, silly me, he could have easily ordered coke or an orange juice, but I stopped myself in fear of creating an awkward moment. Although Clapton was as natural and easy going as one could be, I was overly cautious about ruining the “vibe.”

Clapton actually had his own cue stick! I mean you wouldn’t expect Eric Clapton to show up at a gig without his own guitar, right?  He’s the consummate professional, though I did frankly get the impression that playing pool would not be a regular occurrence for him.  I said to Clapton, “I thought snooker would have been more to your liking,” a game developed by British Army officers in the 19th century that’s played on a different-sized table. Eric kind of laughed and acknowledged his cue stick was a gift from his pal Russ.

The four of us chatted and played pool for about an hour. You’d think someone of his stature might be standoffish or even a bit aloof, but he could not have been nicer. If only I’d had a smartphone or camera with me to immortalize the moment.

I wish I could tell you who won, but I have zero recollection of the outcome.

I’ve seen Clapton in concert many times – including his solo tours, the 2005 Cream reunion with Jack and Ginger at Madison Square Garden (third row), and the 2009 pseudo-Blind Faith reunion tour with Stevie Winwood, also at the Garden. He’s never disappointed.

In closing, I’d like to share that my pool skills have grown but, alas, they remain quite shabby.

Postscript: The aforementioned Sean Lennon has grown up and if you fancy early Pink Floyd or King Crimson, check out the Claypool Lennon Delirium, a little project Sean took on with bassist Les Claypool.

Header image courtesy of Pixabay/Stokpic.

It’s easy to dismiss the trombone as a backing instrument that carries the middle and lower voices in arrangements. At its worst, it’s a sluggish, blatting elephant. At its best, in the hands of a master like Bill Watrous, it has a rich, supple sound that brings a new perspective to jazz standards.

Born in Connecticut in 1939, Watrous started trombone when he was a kid, taught by his dad. He played in trumpeter/cornetist Billy Butterfield’s band in the late 1950s, and soon got a reputation as a skilled and reliable trombonist who could support top artists. In the years before Watrous started recording on his own, he was hired to perform with the likes of Woody Herman and Maynard Ferguson.

While he developed a penchant for bebop and was known for his grasp of bossa nova, Watrous never let go of the big-band swing roots of the standard repertoire, and he never shied away from using old-fashioned arrangements or working with old-school players.

He died in Los Angeles in 2018, having influenced two generations of jazz trombonists. Enjoy these eight great tracks by Bill Watrous.

1. Track: “My Way”
   Album: Bill Watrous Plays Love Themes for the Underground, the Establishment & Other Sub Cultures Not Yet Known
   Label: MTA
   Year: 1969

Walter Raim was an arranger and bandleader specializing in smooth 1960s lounge and space-age pop, both styles with heavy jazz influence. His band, the Walter Raim Concept, accompanies Watrous on this album. Also notable: The record is engineered by Phil Ramone!

“My Way” is one of several Sinatra-inspired tracks on this album. (Another cut worth hearing is Van Heusen and Cahn’s “September of My Years.”) Watrous is the Sinatra of the ’bone. He truly sings this melody. Granted, it’s hard not to chuckle at the goofy, overly busy arrangement, very much of its time, but any brass musician can learn about phrasing from Watrous’ performance here.

2. Track: “The Tiger of San Pedro”
   Album: The Tiger of San Pedro
   Label: Columbia
   Year: 1975

Watrous wanted his own group, and in the mid 1970s he formed the 13-piece Manhattan Wildlife Refuge Big Band, which plays on this album. The New York version of the group was short-lived, but when Watrous moved to LA he reconstituted it as Refuge West.

The title song is by trumpeter John P. LaBarbera, best known as a member of Buddy Rich’s band. His inspiration was a character from a Sherlock Holmes story, “The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge,” about a deposed South American dictator in exile. Hence the Latin jazz influence in the tune, which Watrous arranges with a light touch, allowing plenty of space for a string of virtuosic solos. Watrous’ own contribution – such lithe and flexible bebop figures that it’s hard to believe it’s a trombone – begins at 2:50.

3. Track: “Blue Bossa”
   Album: Watrous in Hollywood
   Label: Famous Door
   Year: 1979

Watrous made the move west in the late 1970s, and spent the rest of his life based in LA This album, one of several he did on the indie label Famous Door and produced by its founder, Harry Lim, features trumpeter Danny Stiles. For the occasion, Watrous put together a six-man band, calling it the Bill Watrous Combo.

“Blue Bossa,” which opens Side B, is a 1963 hard bop tune with a Latin feel by trumpeter Kenny Dorham; over the decades, it has inspired many great covers by McCoy Tyner, Art Pepper, and others. Watrous and friends relish the bop dissonances while maintaining the laid-back bossa-nova underpinnings. Joe Romano’s tenor sax solo at 1:15 is particularly thoughtful. Watrous has plenty to say when he comes in at 2:45.

4. Track: “Limehouse Blues”
   Album: Roaring Back into New York, New York
   Label: Famous Door
   Year: 1983

The Bill Watrous Quartet (Linc Milliman on bass, Ronnie Bedford on drums, and longtime collaborator Derek Smith on piano) was another of the trombonist’s gigging and recording ensembles.

“Limehouse Blues” is by lyricist Douglas Furber and composer Philip Braham, a British songwriting duo from the early 20^th century. The gentle be-bop reworking lays a foundation for some truly charming solo playing by Watrous, who somehow manages to keep his musical language both historical and modern.

5. Track: “Hey There”
   Album: Bill Watrous and Carl Fontana
   Label: Atlas
   Year: 1984

This album was part of Atlas Records’ series West Coast Jazz Today, which spanned 1980-1984 and included 30 recordings, many of them by big names such as Herb Ellis, Shelly Manne, and Monty Alexander. Bill Watrous and Carl Fontana pairs two great jazz trombonists. Fontana’s background was classic big band; he played with Woody Herman’s group, as well as those of Lionel Hampton and Stan Kenton. Once the big band era faded, he found work in Las Vegas.

The song list is mainly Broadway and movie musical numbers. “Hey There” was composed by Jerry Ross and Richard Adler for their 1954 show The Pajama Game. While it’s fun to hear the two masters exchange solos, the real highlights are the passages where the trombones play in harmony, a rare and satisfying sound.

6. Track: “How Deep Is the Ocean”
   Album: Bone-Ified
   Label: GNP Crescendo
   Year: 1992

The album Bone-Ified is a whole new Watrous quartet, with Shelly Berg on piano, Lou Fischer on bass, and Randy Drake on drums. The track list includes American popular standards plus a couple of original numbers by Watrous.

On his dozens of albums, Watrous consistently favored the music of Irving Berlin, probably for the simple, heartfelt melodies that acted like a clean canvas to decorate with improvisation. A good example is this version of Berlin’s “How Deep Is the Ocean.”

7. Track: “Blue Monk”
   Album: Live at the Blue Note
   Label: Half Note
   Year: 2000

Here’s another casting of the Bill Watrous Quartet, this time with Russell George on bass, Joe Ascione on drums, and Derek Smith on piano. The album, of a live show from 1998, is produced by Jack Kreisberg, founder of Half Note records, which he developed specifically to record shows from the Blue Note jazz club in New York City.

Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane originally recorded “Blue Monk” in 1956. Watrous’ version is much slower and more legato than the original, emphasizing the blues aspect of the tune, as opposed to the sly, disjointed interpretation by Monk. Smith gets in some impressive, percussive piano licks. Watrous’ solo starting at 3:48 demonstrates astonishing facility in the upper registers without losing the groove.

8. Track: “Lester Leaps In”
   Album: Kindred Spirits
   Label: Summit
   Year: 2006

Kindred Spirits is a collaboration with tenor saxophonist Pete Christlieb and the Gary Urwin Jazz Orchestra and is Watrous’ last solo studio album.

“Lester Leaps In,” by tenor sax master Lester Young, was first recorded by its composer with the Count Basie Orchestra in 1939. This high-energy classic, from the era when bebop was just starting to flavor swing music, is presented in a lively arrangement that features quotes from Gershwin’s “I Got Rhythm” to keep it rolling. Watrous’ virtuosity is as stunning as ever.

Header image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/John Dugan.

Did you hear the one about violinist Joshua Bell?

During part of an experiment conducted by The Washington Post in 2007, the Grammy nominee and best-selling recording artist played his Stradivarius violin as an undercover busker (street performer) at a subway station in Washington, DC. Of the more than 1,000 people who passed by, only seven stopped to listen. He collected just $32.17 from 27 people and an additional $20 from one person who recognized him.

Not a very profitable day for the talented violinist. Yet performing in public places for tips is often the first step on the road to success. As one post on the technology and social engineering site Hacker News put it: “Well, obviously it doesn’t matter how expensive your violin is, or how good you are at your music genre – it’s about how popular the genre/tune is…how likable you are plus putting on a good entertaining show, with emphasis on the ‘show’ part, e.g., not subtle classical skills.”[1]

From subways to airports, from fairs to shopping malls, buskers entertain tourists and locals all over the world. In some cultures buskers are considered a living curiosity; in others, just plain weird. The most familiar buskers include jugglers, balloon twisters, living statues (performers who stand motionless for hours before changing their positions), one man bands, singers, violinists, saxophonists and guitarists, but there are many other types of street performers people find diverting or unusual as well.

Busking[2] dates back to ancient times when local performers were needed to entertain the public but weren’t paid for their efforts because of their low social status. By the 13^th century itinerant minstrels were traveling from one place to another, and as late as the 16^th century entertainers were still needed (and still not being paid) for events like weddings, processions and fairs. It’s likely they accepted gratuities anywhere they could find a crowd, or were chased away by local authorities…something that still describes street performers today.

Most performers agree that busking is hard work. Tips are unreliable, the weather is unpredictable, no one gets paid for a day off, and there can be conflicts with other buskers competing for places to perform. When busking goes badly it can be emotionally taxing if there are bills to be paid. It can present challenges like having to pay fines for breaking local laws, dealing with angry shopkeepers whose stores are being blocked by entertainers, enduring unpleasant encounters with the public and – according to some British buskers – having to confront “borderline psychopaths” who, if you show them the money, will steal it.

So why busk? Some people do it to make a living (busking can be profitable) or supplement their regular income. Others find the activity itself rewarding: they like not having to follow a daily routine, enjoy the spontaneous interaction with audiences, appreciate the ability to perform what and when they want to, and benefit from the gratuities that might include food, beverages or gifts besides money. For those pursuing a career in the performing arts busking is a way to gain experience and develop a following. It’s an opportunity to present themselves in front of groups that wouldn’t have discovered them otherwise, and to meet people who might be able to provide professional bookings and contacts.

Celebrities who started as buskers include guitar and blues player B.B. King (who performed on the streets of Mississippi), singer Rod Stewart (who sang with a folk singer named Wizz Jones on the streets of London), comedians Steve Martin (busking on the banjo) and Robin Williams (performing mime in front of New York’s Museum of Modern Art), singers Justin Bieber (in Stratford, Canada) and Janis Joplin (in Austin, Texas), and actor Pierce Brosnan (of James Bond and Remington Steele fame) who started as a fire eater.

Busking brings to mind a performer with an open guitar case or a hat to collect tips. But the picture is changing: Now that most people no longer carry cash, a small but growing number of street performers are taking advantage of technology to earn money and boost their reputations. For example, they utilize contactless services where tips can be left by tapping on a phone or employing a card reader. In an article written for The Conversation, Daniel Bacchieri points out that “digital platforms are powerful tools capable of transmitting local artists to global audiences…All the world’s a stage and buskers can make it big in a connected world….In the past two decades the audience for street performers has grown from dozens to millions thanks to sharing on social media like Facebook and Twitter…[on] digital platforms such as YouTube…and streaming services including Spotify.”[3]

Is leaving a tip electronically in the spirit of busking? Many street performers say they would miss the tradition as well as the sound of coins dropping. According to Charlotte Campbell, who rose to fame as a busker in London, “There is a romantic thing about dropping a coin into a hat. That’s what people think they’re going to miss….But if people don’t have cash any more…There are only two options here – we either don’t have buskers or we drop a coin into a hat in a different way. We have to romanticize the tap on the screens somehow.”[4]

Dr. Paul Simpson, a professor of human geography at the University of Plymouth (England) has researched street performers and been a busker himself. He states that he, too, is skeptical about electronic busking. Although there have always been attempts to legislate, regulate, organize and restrict busking, part of a busker’s value “is the informality, the novelty, the excitement, the potential for unpredictability that [a busker]  can bring to urban life.” When Simpson was performing, the sound of a coin hitting a pile of change helped him get through the day: “If it was a chilly day…drizzle in the air, and you’d been [on the street] for hours, the sight of the coins inside your case gave you a sense of how you were doing. It was a material manifestation of appreciation. Because people don’t tend to clap or stop, it was the equivalent of a round of applause at the end of a song.” He wonders if the beep of a card machine would capture the same spirit in quite the same way.[5]

Whether accompanied by the sound of coins tossed into a hat or taps on a phone, buskers are performing their art just like they always have. Buskers are an important part of street life: They can bring people together, make dull places more exciting, and make people smile. Referring to music in particular, Bacchieri adds: “Street musicians are the producers of sidewalk melodies, the authors of the soundtrack of our cities. There is a unique interrelation between buskers and fans that occurs only in the streets, with no security staff, no VIP seats, or entrance fee.”[6]

_______

[1] “My Experience Busking in San Francisco,” Hacker News (June, 2016).

[2] The term busking was first noted in the English language around the mid-1860s in Great Britain. The verb to busk, from the word busker, comes from the Spanish root word buscar which means “to seek.”

[3] Daniel Bacchieri, “All the world’s a  stage – buskers can make it big in a connected world,” The Conversation (March 8, 2020).

[4] Sam Wollaston, “Where the streets have no change: how buskers are surviving in cashless times,” The Guardian (Nov. 8, 2018).

[5] Ibid.

[6] Bacchieri, “All the world’s a  stage — buskers can make it big in a connected world.”

Header image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Barney Moss.

Full disclosure: I am not a musician – I play no instrument (I can whistle pretty well, though). I did play the drums (in high school and college), and I’ve tried taking piano lessons, but… I am in awe of those who can conceive of a sequence of notes and then move their fingers over strings or keys or air holes to make those notes happen. And singing while you’re doing that – get outta here!

I suppose it’s possible that a guitarist might listen to the following selections and say, “I’m not that impressed.” Not having a musician’s perspective, all I can say is that these do it for me, and are among my favorite rock guitar solos of all time. Some are “over the top” frenzied, but others are (to my ears) melodic, well constructed contributions to the song. I’ve chosen to leave out obvious choices that are well known (David Gilmour’s solo on “Comfortably Numb,” for example). My hope is that many of you will come to appreciate some guitarists who might have flown under your radar. Entries are listed in alphabetical order as follows: Group/Guitarist ”Song Title” Album Title.

Camel / Andy Latimer “Ice” (I Can See Your House from Here)

Just to be clear, we’re not talking about Frampton’s Camel. This Camel is a British progressive rock band that’s been active since the early 1970s (with a number of personnel changes and an occasional break). I will do an article on them at some point. Original member Andy Latimer, whose expressive guitar work (and flute playing) has been the one constant throughout the band’s history, provides a beautiful extended solo on this track from their 1978 album. The quiet beginning gives way to a haunting electric lead that dissolves at the end into contemplative acoustic playing.

Colosseum II / Gary Moore “Am I” (Electric Savage)

Probably the best-known name in this list is Gary Moore, who played in Skid Row and Thin Lizzy. He put out solo albums and also worked with Greg Lake and Andrew Lloyd Webber (!). Colosseum II was a fusion band that evolved from the more jazz/rock-oriented Colosseum, featuring Jon Hiseman on drums. This cut is mellower than most of the others on the album, and Moore’s solo is exquisite. (Solo begins at 1:38)

The Dictators / Ross the Boss “Next Big Thing” (The Dictators Go Girl Crazy!)

Sometimes credited with starting American punk rock, The Dictators also had a great sense of humor, which is fully evident on this cut (as well as the album cover). The lineup was Adny (yes, Adny) Shernoff on vocals and bass, Handsome Dick Manitoba on vocals, Ross the Boss (Friedman/Funichello) on lead guitar, Scott “Top Ten” Kempner playing rhythm guitar, and drummer Stu Boy King. The album was produced by Blue Öyster Cult producers Sandy Pearlman and Murray Krugman. A subsequent lineup substituted bassist Mark Mendoza (who went on to join Jay Jay French’s band Twisted Sister!) and drummer Richie Teeter. Ross the Boss later formed heavy metal band Manowar. This track has a great hard rock riff. (Solo starts at 2:42 – at 3:05 it sounds like he’s hacking at the guitar with an axe)

Eno / Robert Fripp “Baby’s on Fire” (Here Come the Warm Jets)

An original member of Roxy Music, Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno (that’s his full name) recorded his first solo album in 1973 after leaving the band. He had previously collaborated with King Crimson’s Robert Fripp on an instrumental album called No Pussyfooting. Fripp is capable of playing solos with exquisite beauty as well as searing, angular tones. This is one of the latter – an incendiary solo befitting the title of the track. Don’t try to make sense of the lyrics – I once read that Eno often chose words for their sound rather than meaning. (Solo begins at 1:25)

The Posies / Jon Auer “Flood of Sunshine” (Dear 23)

The Posies are considered a “power pop” band. 1990’s Dear 23, their first album for Geffen/DGC Records, is an amalgam of folk, pop, and hard rock influences with very literate lyrics (when’s the last time you heard “nonesuch nomenclature” used to rhyme in a pop song?).

“Flood of Sunshine” starts with moody organ and acoustic guitar, and features a two-part, over-the-top, rising and falling solo toward the end. (I recommend listening to the whole track, but if you absolutely must skip to the solos, there’s a short one at 3:30 and an extended killer at 4:15 that takes a brief break before screaming back toward the end of the song)

Sadistic Mika Band / Masayoshi Takanaka “Black Ship (Fourth June)” (Black Ship)

I’m betting you don’t know the name, but if you were in audio/video stores in the early 1980s when LaserDiscs were the big thing, you might have seen a Japanese rock concert video used as a demo. That was Masayoshi Takanaka’s Rainbow Goblins Story. Before his solo career, he played lead guitar for the Sadistic Mika Band (that’s Takanaka in the shades rocking the white scarf on the album’s back cover). The third part of the title track to their album Black Ship has some searing guitar work. The studio version sounds better and is a little cleaner, but this live take is pretty faithful. (The solo runs through the whole video)

Al Stewart / Tim Renwick “Apple Cider Reconstitution” (Modern Times)

Al Stewart hit the big time with Year of the Cat, but I prefer Modern Times, the album that preceded it. Tim Renwick played the electric leads on both and put on a clinic for tasteful, well-constructed guitar solos on Modern Times. Nearly every track features gorgeous playing. Renwick was a member of Sutherland Brothers & Quiver, and has been part of the touring bands of Mike Oldfield, Pink Floyd, and Roger Waters, among others. (Solo is at 3:00 and there’s nice accompaniment through the end of the song)

Strange Advance / Simon Brierly “Home of the Brave” (2wo)

Strange Advance was a 1980s Canadian new wave act that had gold records in their home country. Their biggest single was “We Run.” I wish I could be certain about name of the guitarist doing this solo, but there are no fewer than seven of them listed on the album cover, including likely candidates Earl Slick (Bowie and others) and Domenic Troiano (James Gang/the Guess Who). However, Simon Brierly is the only one credited with lead guitar, so I’m going with him. This is one of my favorite screaming, over-the-top solos. (It starts at 4:42)

Unitopia / Matt Williams “Angeliqua” (The Garden)

Australian prog rock band Unitopia featured strong musicianship and impassioned vocals. Musical influences came from many places, including jazz, world music, and hard rock. This track covers quite a range, opening with atmospheric sounds and Middle Eastern-sounding vocals before launching into a very cool heavy riff, only to drop down into light, poppy vocals. There’s even a chaotic free-jazz freakout with organ and saxophone near the end, but the guitar solo that ends the piece transcends it all. (It starts at 8:40)

(Bonus play – here’s a guy playing along with the track, re-creating that solo)

Wishbone Ash / Andy Powell & Ted Turner “Sometime World” (Argus)

For my money, Wishbone Ash was one of the best, if not the best twin lead guitar outfit in all of rock (I know, I know – The Allman Bros., The Yardbirds, Steve Hunter and Dick Wagner with Lou Reed, – I said it’s my money). Their third album, 1972’s Argus, is far and away their best effort, and they got a lot of airplay with the track “Blowin’ Free.” Every cut shines. The two solos in “Sometime World” are quite different. Ted Turner plays an ethereal, very pretty solo in the first part of the song, and Andy Powell takes over to drive it home over a cooking rhythm section on the extended second half. Tasty! (Solos at 1:03 and 3:35/4:46 – dig the staccato run at 6:17)

Header image of Gary Moore courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/livepict.com.

They were Mod until they turned psychedelic. They were Small Faces until they became just plain Faces, only to become Small Faces again. This London-based band, started in 1965, is a case study in trying to nail down a musical identity. And they made a lot of great music along the way.

Ronnie Lane, who played bass guitar, started the band with guitarist/frontman Steve Marriott. They recruited Kenney Jones to play drums and Jimmy Winston on keyboard. Winston was soon replaced by Ian McLagan. The band’s name referred to the Mod slang term “face,” meaning a trend-setter or important person in the Mod scene; they added “small” because they were all fairly short men.

After less than a year of taking every gig they could get in and around London, Small Faces signed with Decca. With a set list steeped in R&B, a knack for songwriting, and Marriott’s emotive voice, they brought some high-quality goods to pop music. Their debut, Small Faces (1966) spawned several singles, two of which did very well in the UK: “Watcha Gonna Do About It” and “Sha-La-La-La-Lee.” But during recording sessions, the band felt Winston wasn’t pulling his weight – he had his eye on an acting career – so they brought in McLagan in his place.

From that first album, “Up the Wooden Hills to Bedfordshire” is a good introduction to Small Faces’ early style. The organ with its minor chords seems to be in a conversation, or maybe an argument, with the guitar and bass. The vocal line has a disjointed rhythm that could easily go with a completely different accompaniment. And the lyrics are a slightly weird take on ordinary life experience, delivered earnestly.

That debut was not originally released in America, so the second album, in 1967, was called Small Faces in the US by Columbia Records, but was titled There Are But Four Small Faces in the UK on a new label called Immediate. Given its role as a re-introduction, it’s not surprising that it shared many tracks with the first record. Among the new songs were two that would become Small Faces signature singles, “Itchycoo Park” and “Tin Soldier.” 

One non-single that appeared only on the second album was “I’m Only Dreaming,” written by Marriott. Two contrasting styles take turns in this unusual number. The song starts with a sweet, teeny-bopper romantic vibe, then explodes into a heavy R&B-inspired response at the end of each verse.

The last studio album that Small Faces made in their original lineup was a true classic in the history of concept albums, Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake (1968). With a title that parodied a popular brand of English tobacco, this record was as British as it gets; the Brits thought so, too, keeping the album at No. 1 for six weeks. The most distinctly British of its singles, the cockney-humored “Lazy Sunday,” was also the bestselling track. Not surprisingly, Americans didn’t respond to any of it. [Until later on, by a few – the album is now recognized as an audiophile classic. – Ed.]

Psychedelia has begun to play a big role at this point, infiltrating the wide range of styles represented on Side A. The underlying concept is restricted to Side B, where a theme unites the six songs telling the tale of a boy named Happiness Stan. The uniquely British monologist and linguistic experimenter Stanley Unwin narrates the proceedings, sometimes in English and sometimes in the language he invented.

Just for a taste, here’s “Happiness Stan,” a madrigal-like affair written by Marriott and Lane. That opening harp sets the mood most efficiently. The organ-like keyboard instrument is a mellotron, highly prized in psychedelic and progressive rock circles.

So, was this the official Small Faces groove that would define their sound? Not at all. It was at this point that Marriott left the band to form Humble Pie with Peter Frampton. Rather than disband, the remaining three musicians sought a new direction.

As it happened, the original line-up of the Jeff Beck Group had also blown apart, leaving Rod Stewart (I wrote a retrospective of his career in Issue 103) and Ronnie Wood available to collaborate with Jones, McLagan, and Lane. They settled into a five-man band, but the switch to the name Faces happened in stages.

Their 1970 album, First Step, was released as a Small Faces album in North America but as Faces in other markets. It’s interesting to hear the combination of Stewart’s distinctively breathy voice and Ronnie Wood’s funky bass against the Small Faces instrumental landscape. Here’s “Three Button Hand Me Down,” written by McLagan and Stewart.

Long Player (1971) includes two live tracks recorded at the Fillmore East in New York, and contains a wide range of styles, from Paul McCartney’s “Maybe I’m Amazed” to the twangy blues of “Bad ‘N’ Ruin.” The 2015 reissue added this live version of Robert Johnson’s “Love in Vain.” Stewart’s vocals ache almost as much as Lane’s bass, Wood’s guitar, and McLagan’s organ.

They put out another album that same year, A Nod Is As Good As a Wink… to a Blind Horse. Critics credited producer Glyn Johns with focusing this album, which again offers a variety of styles. Stewart even alternates with Lane on lead-vocal duties. With heartfelt emotion, Lane sings his own song, “Debris,” about a father-son relationship. The contrast of Stewart’s high voice as backup makes for an appealing texture.

Faces did one more album, Ooh La La (1973), which hit No. 1 on the UK album charts. Stewart told the press he hated the album, but by then he was ready to launch his solo career in earnest. His words hurt Lane so much that they served as the last straw for a musician who felt he’d lost control of his own creation; Lane quit the band. They toured for a while without him and made a couple of singles, but the end was nigh.

Or was it? Exit Faces, re-enter Small Faces! Lane was still out (apparently he tried one rehearsal, and that was enough), but Marriott came back, heading a line-up with McLagan and Jones, plus Rick Wills on bass guitar. After signing with Atlantic, they released their first of two albums, Playmates, in 1977.

An advantage of welcoming Marriott back was that he was writing new songs for the band. “High and Happy” is a nice example from this album, an upbeat R&B romp. The band, combining parts of their names into the moniker “Kemastri,” produced the album themselves. The choice to bring the drums to the fore makes a big difference in the energy of this song. Mel Collins, of King Crimson, sat in on sax.

The final album was called 78 in the Shade (1978), with the addition of guitarist Jimmy McCulloch, who had just quit Wings. But the record was a dud both commercially and critically. Soon Small Faces dispersed, leaving only the memory of an important and innovative voice in the early stages of British rock music.

Header image of the Small Faces courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Eight years ago, The Village Voice ran an article on the opening of The Eight-Track Museum in Dallas – a destination open to the public and a celebration of everything associated with this recorded music format. I hadn’t really thought about eight-tracks much over the years and was convinced that most people felt the same way. But did they? The article prompted me to do some digging, some soul searching, and walk just a bit down memory lane.

Sure, 8-track was the first practical way to play recorded music in your car. Great, that was novel. It was also interesting to learn that the format was invented by Bill Lear and developed in the 1960s by a diverse consortium that included RCA Records, Lear Jet, and the Ford Motor Company. In fact, in 1966 Ford became the first automotive manufacturer to make it available in all of their models. The commercial development of the eight-track tape, officially known as Stereo 8, by the consortium was all the result of someone looking at its predecessor, the 4-track tape, and asking, “what if?” The 4-track was introduced in 1960 and had quickly become a favorite at radio stations for use in playing jingles and ads. Again, jingles and ads – not high-fidelity music! Across the course of its 15-year lifespan that fidelity issue would remain a hurdle that eight tracks would never overcome. Ever.

So now a museum arrives to celebrate what exactly? Eight-tracks didn’t have any liner notes, no expansive cover shots to wow you or any spectacular packaging to gaze upon. Eight-tracks were plastic boxes with labels that never stayed fully glued to their surface. I guess none of this mattered because the news of The Eight Track Museum’s grand opening captured the attention of The Village Voice and likely thousands of other readers just like me.

Probably as no surprise to readers of Copper, my relationship with eight-track tapes began and ended with a car. My second car was a 1974 Ford Mustang that my Dad had bought from my cousin Caren and it came with a factory installed in-dash eight-track deck. This was in the mid- 1980s so by then the eight-track craze had long left town, replaced by cassettes and the Sony Walkman. I thought for sure that I’d never use the player. Its odd placement all the way to the right of the dashboard would simply become something of a novelty item that I’d discuss with every new passenger that jumped in and rode shotgun. Boy was I wrong! Almost immediately after taking possession of the vehicle it seemed like people came out of the woodwork to dump off old eight-track tapes that they had been gathering dust in their attic, basement or garage.

Within no time at all I must have had about forty of these things lying on the back seat and flying around the foot wells of the car. I had everything from Steely Dan’s Gaucho to Bread’s Greatest Hits to Neil Diamond’s live record Hot August Night. The sound quality and functionality of eight-tracks was horrible, but as a teenager I have to say that they were kind of indestructible and survived extreme summer heat, bitter winter cold, and random cold drink spills where they were almost entirely submerged in fluids. People sat on them, stepped on them, and I even mistakenly ran one over pulling out of my driveway. The tape still played even with a tread mark over its cover! I’m sure others have similar stories of how these tapes survived the harshest of conditions

But were those enough of reasons to build a museum? Time would tell. But that piece in the Voice held my attention and made me think about the one moment that eight-tracks were actually cool, really cool. It was a moment when the format was ten years old and on the verge of death, desperate for a lifeline. Eight-track found one in Panasonic, a company that actually made it hip to have a collection of tapes and tapped into what was supposed to be the format’s greatest benefit. From the start, the tapes were designed to fit in the back pocket of a pair of jeans. This ability to take music with you wherever you went was novel. Panasonic found a way to “bring it to life” as their ad slogan went, wherever you went, and portability became the eight-track tape’s hallmark.

In 1974 Panasonic introduced the now infamous Dynamite 8 Portable eight-track player. It was available in Detonator Red, Bomb Blue or Explosion Yellow. White and black versions were later added to the line. At this time the company also went to market with a long-lasting advertising tagline that spoke to their products’ innovation. “Panasonic: Just Slightly Ahead of our Time.” In some respects that was really true because the design of this player was something no one could ever have imagined. It didn’t look like a radio or a stereo component. It looked like a kids’ play toy. However, that’s where the innovation ended.

The Dynamite 8 was a very rudimentary piece of equipment. It had one speaker and played in mono. Unlike every other player in the market it didn’t automatically switch tracks. Instead, you had to hit the “plunger” that sat on top of the player and sink it like you were detonating dynamite to move from track to track. There was no headphone jack, no tone control, and while it ran on batteries (they always recommended that you use Panasonic’s “long-lasting Hi-Top batteries for more footloose situations”) it did come with an adapter that allowed you to plug it into power outlets in your home or car. These limitations didn’t matter! Kids went wild for this thing. This was officially the iPod of the 1970s. It made music portable and fun. There was no cooler audio device to be found on American beaches in the mid to late ‘70s. Not a one!

To further fuel excitement for the Dynamite 8, Panasonic wisely signed Jimmie Walker as a spokesperson. He was then starring as James “J.J.” Evans Jr. on the hit television sitcom “Good Times.” Panasonic’s print and television ads played off his infamous television retort, “It’s dy-no-mite!” By the late 1970s his ads began to include a new portable cassette player Panasonic had launched called the Take-N-Tape. This was also available in a variety of colors. In the spot Walker would welcome viewers with “My fellow music lovers! My music machines.” He would point out their features and then end with, “but what makes the Panasonic Take-N-Tape and Dynamite 8 so right is that they both sound like dy-no-mite! The campaign worked and helped accelerate unit sales beyond anyone’s realistic expectations. But it wouldn’t last.

One of the campaign’s final appearances was during the 1979 holiday season. His catch phrase got reworked for the holiday, suggesting that this year shoppers should “put a little dy-no-mite under the tree.” That Christmas one of my cousins wanted her parents to do just that. In the end they did and the player she chose was white. All of the relatives were let in on what the gift was going to be and were encouraged to give her eight-tracks as gifts. Her mom slipped everyone a list of tapes she wanted and I remember her getting JT, Running on Empty, Minute by Minute and other big hits from the late 1970s (but no Hot August Night! 😉 ).

I remember all of us being in her room watching her pop one tape in after another. She’d only play part of each song and bang the plunger like it was going to transport all of us into another realm. For many of the kids in her room it did. As I looked around at our cousins and friends everyone was looking that the Dynamite 8 in awe, probably hoping that they would be as lucky and find one under their tree when they arrived back home. Not me. Even then, beyond the cool design I couldn’t figure out what the big deal was. The sound was horrible.

Pretty soon after that much of America finally came to the same conclusion. The fate of The Eight-Track Museum was similar. It closed for good in 2015. Cassettes were smaller, didn’t have track jumps that occurred mid-song and the sound quality was just better. Some cassette players even looked pretty cool. But none would ever look again as cool as the Dynamite 8. As the portable format evolved the focus would be on making the players smaller and improving sound quality. The outward look and design of portable players was never again as “playful.”

Panasonic created a pop culture phenomenon that gripped the nation for almost five years. Today these players are not as easy to find as you might think – even if Panasonic did make a zillion of them. Refurbished models can command sales prices as high as $700. But the real “get” is a copy of that Jimmie Walker print ad. If you see one, grab it. Some framed ads are selling on eBay for up to $75, and in the infamous words of Jimmie “J.J.” Walker, that’s dy-no-mite!

Header image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/JC Haywire.

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 together three times and say, “There’s no time like 1969, there’s no time like 1969, there’s no time like 1969,” (or thereabouts) so we can compare the Golden Age recordings of the two greatest bands in rock history.

My apologies to Zep, Who, Floyd, Queen, Dead, Sabbath fans etc.

We are dealing with the actual pillars of all that really matters so sit back and enjoy this ride…

I can write about this stuff because I lived it, every day, in real time and devoured all the music, news, concerts and drugs all as a teenager who lived day-to-day waiting to be bathed in all things Beatles and Rolling Stones.

Those years, 1965 to 1972 (I was 13 in 1965 and 20 in 1972) formed my musical tastes and permeated my very DNA. This music is in me at a cellular level.

The Golden Age-quality recordings of each band, as defined by me (and I dare anyone to argue), go like this:

The Beatles

1965: Rubber Soul
1966: Revolver
1967: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
1968: The Beatles (the “White Album”)
1969: Abbey Road

The Rolling Stones

1968: Beggars Banquet
1969: Let it Bleed
1971: Sticky Fingers
1972: Exile on Main Street

Note:

The Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour (1967) is not applicable as it was a soundtrack EP in the UK and a compilation album in the US. The Beatles’ Let it Be (1970), not applicable as it was also supposed to be a soundtrack. The Rolling Stones’ Get Yer Ya Ya’s Out (1970) isn’t applicable because I’m saying live albums don’t count.

Let us begin…

1965

At first glance it becomes obvious that The Beatles understood themselves and their maturity as a band a bit earlier then the Stones. 1965 was their initial climb to immortality with Rubber Soul vs. the Stones in 1968 with Beggars Banquet. This is a very important distinction and at the time of these respective releases it is interesting to note that Rubber Soul (released in December 1965) contained all original songs and was up against the Stones’ December’s Children (And Everybody’s) which contained six covers and six original songs.

Both US albums were different in their track listings than their UK counterparts and December’s Children even had a different album title in the UK, Out of our Heads. As good as some of the songs were on December’s Children, including “Get Off of My Cloud” and “As Tears Go By,” they were just not in the same league with the best of our first Golden Age-level album, Rubber Soul: “Norwegian Wood,” In My Life,” “Drive My Car,” “Girl,” “Michelle” and “Nowhere Man.” This is not even close, which is why the Stones needed a couple of more years to find their footing.

1966

The Beatles strike again with Revolver and this time they wipe the floor with all comers. They take the musical directions of Rubber Soul into another dimension with songs like “Taxman,” “Got to Get You Into My Life,” “I Want to Tell You,” “Eleanor Rigby,” “Here, There and Everywhere,” “I Want to Tell You,” “Good Day Sunshine” and the mind-blowing “Tomorrow Never Knows.” No wonder Revolver is on the shortlist as one of, if not the, greatest rock album ever released.

The Stones, in contrast, deliver Aftermath. Tracks like “Paint it Black,” “Lady Jane” and “Mother’s Little Helper” show great leaps forward both musically and lyrically, but songs like “Stupid Girl” and “Under my Thumb” show the band’s misogyny is still the order of the day. However, at least it is a full-on all-original Stones album for the first time.

I will add this: I was 14 years old when I bought and played these albums to death. I can tell you that the Stones’ sexist view of women made an impression on me (and not a healthy one) but Lennon’s “Run for Your Life,” the ending song on Rubber Soul, really threw me for a loop. The Stones never talked about murder until 1969 with “Gimme Shelter!”

1967

The arrival of the Beatles Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, following Revolver just a scant 10 months earlier, just about demoralized every other rock band who thought they might have been making a difference. If Revolver wasn’t enough, Sgt. Pepper’s raised the bar so high that most other bands must have just waved the white flag. The Stones were, at the time, trying to make albums but were getting harassed by the UK police. They were getting arrested, getting high and getting distracted. But at this point, the Beatles were three albums into their Golden Age while the Stones were not even at the starting gate.

The Stones released two albums in 1967: Between the Buttons in January and Their Satanic Majesties Request in December. They both were hit and miss affairs in that the band were compelled to try to compete with Revolver and then Sgt. Pepper’s.

Between the Buttons is oft-times overlooked, although tracks like “Yesterday’s Papers,” “Miss Amanda Jones” and “Something Happened to Me Yesterday” stand out – barely.

Then in December comes Their Satanic Majesties Request, which was the first all Jagger/Richards production, and it really is a good sounding record with some great songs like “2000 Man,” “2,000 Light Years from Home” (both of these tracks sound like they easily could have been on Pink Floyd’s first two albums) and “She’s A Rainbow,” a song so good that it would fit on any classic Stones LP. This album has really gotten better with age and I enjoyed reviewing the 50th anniversary release for Goldmine last year.

But…it was not even close. The Beatles again took the year…with a sledgehammer!

1968

This is the year the Stones came to the table.

In November 1968 both the Beatles and the Stones delivered! The Beatles released their fourth Golden Age album: The Beatles aka the White Album. The Stones served up Beggars Banquet.

Imagine being 16 and walking to a local record store and buying both of these albums at the same time!

Both bands retired their psychedelic zoot suits and super hippy dreamy production for bare bones, stripped down to the raw emotions straight out rock n roll. The Beatles opened the White Album with “Back in the USSR,” the Stones with “Sympathy for The Devil.” Both drew an artistic line in the sand.

Friends, if I had to pick one desert Island Stones album then Beggars Banquet is it.

Every track is a winner. Every track delivers. The band is so good it’s criminal. This is the Stones album that I could listen to every day. This is the album that not only gave you “Sympathy for the Devil” but also  “Street Fighting Man,” “No Expectations,” “Dear Doctor,” “Parachute Woman,” “Factory Girl” and the killer final track “Salt of the Earth.”

This is the fully-realized Rolling Stones. An absolute perfect synthesis of blues, country and rock. Their first Golden Age album and it’s a stunner!

The Beatles’ White Album has 30 tracks that confirm why they became so great. Each so different but each so special. For me the standouts are “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” “Glass Onion,” “Happiness is a Warm Gun,” “Birthday,” “Sexy Sadie,” “Back in the USSR,” “Cry Baby Cry,” “I Will,” “Helter Skelter” and “Julia.” The evolution from “I Want to Hold Your Hand” just five years earlier to just about any track on this album is really, in retrospect, almost impossible to fathom.

Both albums need to be played in sequence from beginning to end. Such are the journeys they both take you on.

1969

This is the year that, for all Intents and purposes, the Beatles leave us with the ultimate farewell: Abbey Road in September, and the Stones come to the rescue with Let It Bleed in December. (Of course, the Beatles did record one more album, Let It Be, with tracks recorded from 1968 to 1970 but it was released in 1970 and was supposed to be a soundtrack album to the movie. It is not part of my Golden Age Beatles period.)

It is nearly impossible to talk about Abbey Road and Let It Bleed without talking about the (then) current events surrounding their releases. When Abbey Road (The Beatles fifth and final Golden Age-category recording) was released in September 1969, I was entering my final year of high school. I had turned 17 the previous July. If there ever was going to be a revolution in the US it seemed like it really could happen. Just months after Woodstock it seemed that the Vietnam War and the civil rights movements were about to collide in real social disruption. I was in the middle of it all. My high school was closing down almost every day because of student protests. So much so that I don’t think I attended a single day of school my entire senior year.

Abbey Road was my salvation that fall. Every day after school, (even if I missed class I went to the school and, when not involved in the student demonstrations, hung out outside) I took a bunch of friends to my parents’ house, got high and listened, over and over, to Abbey Road. Opening with “Come Together” and ending with “The End,” listening to the album felt like a giant page was turning in my life. The Beatles were leaving me! How could they? I had stood by them from January 1964 to September 1969. Every hour of every day it was me, John, Paul, George and Ringo. And now…they were going.

So much has been written about George’s two songs, “Here Comes the Sun” and “Something.” Both exceptional. So are “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” and the last track on side one, “I Want You (She’s So Heavy).” If that was all there was after “Come Together,” it would just about make any other band’s day’ but not the Beatles. The medley on side two after “Because”: and “You Never Give Me Your Money,” “Sun King,” “Mean Mr. Mustard,” “Polythene Pam,” “She Came In Thru The Bathroom Window,” “Golden Slumbers” and finishing with the epic McCartney-Harrison-Lennon guitar jam and Ringo’s drum solo in “The End,” is a tour de force of harmony, songwriting, production and passion, a timeless statement that the Beatles were the greatest rock band to ever walk this earth.

How fitting were the last lines, ”And In the end, the love you take/Is equal to the love you make.”

Beatles Golden Age record number five, over and out…how depressing.

But within a few short weeks, and with revolution feeling like it was in the air, the Stones come to the rescue and deliver their second Golden Age-worthy release: Let It Bleed, with quite possibly the greatest opening album track ever made: “Gimme Shelter!” This album is a stunner with songs like the showstopper “Midnight Rambler” and “Live with Me,” “Monkey Man” and the classic “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”

The Stones announced a tour stop at Madison Square Garden that Thanksgiving; three shows over the weekend including two evening shows and one rare Friday afternoon concert. I ran down to the Garden and bought tickets to all three of them. All featuring the New York debut of Mick Taylor. This was the Stones at full throttle, pure majesty. Yes, in fact, The World’s Greatest Rock and Roll Band.

And now, with the Beatles gone, the Stones could let loose without all that Beatles peer pressure.

1971

Dorothy…we’re still not in Kansas anymore and life continued into the 1970s.

The Stones came back with their Golden Age album number three: Sticky Fingers.

The album took nearly two years to put together but when it was finally released in the spring of 1971, it shook the world.

I was in Europe that summer, hippie backpacking all over Holland, France and the UK. When I got to London, “Brown Sugar” and “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking” seemed to be pouring out of every clothing store and rock-themed restaurant. It was a great summer to be in England. Other notable releases that summer were Who’s Next, Rod Stewart’s Every Picture Tells A Story and Curtis Mayfield’s hit single “Move on Up.”

Sticky Fingers, with that outrageous cover, really took the prize as Record of the Year to me. The track listing is monumental, including others like “Bitch,” “Sister Morphine,” “Wild Horses” and “Moonlight Mile.” The Stones’ writing was really getting sophisticated and the production by Jimmy Miller (as it was on Let It Bleed) was fantastic!

1972

The fourth and final Rolling Stones Golden Age release arrives: Exile on Main St. Of all the Golden Age releases, this is the most controversial.

Exile was not hailed as a great album when it was originally released in May 1972.

I remember buying it the day it came out but felt initially disappointed by the dense production. Also, I didn’t “get” the songs right away either. “Tumbling Dice,” the single, was a good, not great track and I wasn’t really getting off on it.

Then I saw them play many of the songs live on at Madison Square Garden on July 26^th. It was Jagger’s birthday party. When I saw and felt “Rocks Off,” “Happy,” “Rip This Joint” “Tumbling Dice” and other songs from the album was so blown away that the show quickly entered my top five all time concert experiences.

These songs had a power and force that, to me, defined the very nature of rock and roll. Raw, loud, visceral, sexual, dark and ominous. This in short was what the Rolling Stones always were. They were the anti-Beatles and Exile on Main St. was their Declaration of Independence and the proclamation that they deserved to stand on the mountain right next to John, Paul, George and Ringo.

As good as the Stones were in 1969, the shows in 1972 to support Exile were among the greatest I have ever seen and experienced.

The proof is a DVD of the movie called Ladies and Gentlemen: The Rolling Stones, filmed at the Dallas show about seven days after the New York show I saw. What the Stones did the night I saw them was elevate the experience of the magic of rock and roll to that of a spiritual tent show. Such was the impeccable force and excellence of the performance.

This is the reason why I can’t stand the garbage they are selling today. They are plain awful and follow a script of enormous ineptitude. All it is is a cynical cash grab.

They are worse than a tribute band who at least could get the arrangements right.

The Stones live in 1972 were everything that greatness in rock exemplified and I’m very glad to have been witness to it.

I learned to love Exile (despite its pretty terrible sound) and it was the last album by the Stones that I truly cared about. Yes, over the years they have had a track or two that was interesting but after Exile they never returned to that exalted level of majesty. It was their final Golden Age recording.

And in the end…who won?

For the Beatles, five Golden Age-level albums, for the Rolling Stones four.

But it’s not just the number, it’s the impact these records had on me as a musician regarding how and why I decided to do what I do.

It is a draw. Simply for this reason: each of these two bands gave me something different and totally unique. The Beatles morphed in front of my eyes, from 1964 to 1969, from a rock and roll cover band to a hit-producing pop band to the ultimate rock band.

The Rolling Stones, from 1965 to 1972, went from being a blues band to a pop band to a mind-blowing perfect meld of blues and rock while staying true to their roots.

I can’t imagine my life without either of them and that, my friends, says it all.

I got new tubes! No, really!

“Why is he telling me this?,” you wonder.

It’s where I got them and what they are that’s not insignificant, although a couple of you know this already.

First, a rewind: back in the Mesozoic era of the mid-to-late 1990s, my pal and yours, Harry Pearson aka HP, told me that whatever I did, I had to hear this gizmo from Genesis Technologies called a Digital Lens. It went between a transport, disc drive or digital output from a CD player, and a D/A converter.

A call to Paul McGowan and one was on the way. And there things get…confusing, sort of. You might know by now that the Lens (practically; it’s of course not technically a “lens”), corrected errors in the data stream coming from a CD transport or player.

I couldn’t hear much, if any, change. I asked Paul about it, who suggested that the tubes in my EAR G88 preamp that was in the system were old. (If you’ve been reading my columns you’ll know that I had Theta Digital gear in my system previously.) They didn’t sound like they were past their prime, but being a good audiophile, I started hunting around for tubes (12AX7s for the phono and 6DJ8s for the line section). Someone, maybe even Frank Doris, put me in touch with Andy Bouwman of Vintage Tube Services. [Possibly; I don’t remember for sure – Ed.]

Now, I’m a skeptic, and typically need a few experiences with something in order to overcome that. I don’t dig my feet in, but I do remain an Eastern-European-Ashkenazi-Missourian by type. I know that anybody can say anything, and they quite frequently do – so show me. And with tubes? You can’t be serious! Selling vintage tubes is an area ripe for false marketing and hucksters.

Andy was quite nice to deal with, though I can’t say he gave me a price break. I bought old New Old Stock Amperex “Bugle Boys.” And godd*m if they weren’t a significant improvement. But that’s not all they were. [For those who might not know, “New Old Stock” or NOS tubes are vintage tubes that have never been used. Since the internal workings are literally encased in a vacuum, they can be well-preserved if undamaged. – Ed.]

Cut to the present:

A few months ago the factory-supplied 7DJ8s in my PS Audio BHK Signature preamp started spitting. Time to replace them! But with what? I dug into my stash of tubes (or chubes, if you prefer), found a pair of the original NOS tubes I’d bought from Andy and installed them.

They were almost perfect.

Dead silent after a decade’s usage (I never turned the G88 off), sitting around for over a decade – and how old were they when I got them in the first place? But they were almost perfect. The very top end seemed a touch rolled off – image dimensionality wasn’t as obvious – but no noise, at all.

So I called Andy again, over two decades later, discussed the situation, and he told me he had a pair of NOS Valvo tubes from 1961. I’d barely heard the name Valvo, but I bought them – again, not cheap (but still less than $100 each) but, you know – quality. And despite my earlier experience, I was STILL skeptical.

But I’ve had them in the BHK now for about two weeks, and da*n – same as 20 years earlier: a beautiful liquidity, ambience for days, and silent as the grave.

Time to start putting a few bucks a week aside to do my amps. And maybe my healthy skepticism can take a little break.

Header image courtesy of Pixabay/Ingo Jakubke.

Remember Beethoven? Late in 2019 the classical-music world set out to celebrate a Beethoven Year, but then the pandemic got in the way. Has this become an odd moment to chat about, say, Beethoven’s Opus 95 (“Quartetto Serioso,” 1810)? Maybe not. Beethoven is remembered on a human level for his general irascibility, his go-it-alone tendencies, part and parcel of a life rooted in rebellion. Opus 95 is rightly considered a gateway to his epic Late Style: sometimes violent, often chaotic, it dares us to make sense of its behavior. What better time to bring up musical disruptions, great and small? (Composer Benjamin Pesetsky has written a really good short essay about this work; he quotes one of my heroes, Joseph Kerman, which makes it an even better read: click here.)

In the summer of 1811 Beethoven met Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 21 years his senior but one of the few people he considered an artistic or intellectual equal. After their encounter, the older man told a friend

His talent amazed me; unfortunately he is an utterly untamed personality, who is not altogether wrong in holding the world to be detestable, but surely does not make it any more enjoyable either for himself or others by his attitude.

To be fair, the years 1809–11 were scarred for Beethoven by illness, disappointments in love, and political upheaval (Vienna had lately suffered a second Napoleonic invasion and then a five-month occupation by the French). The composer retreated inward; his op. 95 quartet marks the first in a series of chamber works far more introspective than any of the heroic, large-scale “public” offerings of the previous years. Over a decade of silence would intervene before he issued more of his new “private” music.

Which brings us toward today’s Plus One, another of the unlikely counterparts I’ve suggested in these pages: Benjamin Britten (1913–1976). Britten’s string quartets are worth celebrating partly because they were conceived without so much as a backward glance at Beethoven’s legacy. Here’s why you shouldn’t think that odd.

We continue to celebrate Britten mainly for vocal music, for operas like Peter Grimes and Billy Budd, big choral works (War Requiem) and small ones (Rejoice in the Lamb; A Ceremony of Carols), song cycles, canticles, church parables. But he was an accomplished pianist, a keen violist, and an enthusiastic participant in informal music-making with friends. Britten scholar Donald Mitchell argues that he was also more active as a chamber-music composer than most of his contemporaries. According to Mitchell, even his vocal music—including the operas—aspires to chamber music’s conditions, especially its “concentrated, economical, and demanding” musical thought.

Britten published three numbered string quartets; these were preceded by a handful of student works including a charming “oboe quartet,” Phantasy, op. 2. There’s a lot to explore. Let’s begin at the very beginning, with the first movement of the First Quartet, Op. 25 (1941):

Perhaps you were struck, as I was, by the music’s overt preference for coloration and mood as opposed to what earlier quartet masters (Haydn, Beethoven) emphasized, namely dialogue and procedure (= narrative). The genre’s vaunted “conversations,” its spirited contrapuntal exchanges, appear to have been replaced by landscape painting! Figures eventually appear on the canvas, but priority has been given to sketching the scenery. (Should we blame Debussy, that supreme promoter of the pictorial?)

The analogy can be extended: whereas the protagonist of Beethoven’s quartets remains first and foremost Beethoven himself, we only “see” Britten indirectly in a work like this, as a clear-eyed observer of what is about to unfold. The three upper strings offer sustained, eerie chords suggesting a deserted seacoast at low tide; a plucked cello provides stark contrast in terms of movement, registral geography (high vs. low), and emotional subjectivity (is our observer wandering the beach alone?).

Fast forward: toward the end of his life, Britten accepted a commission from his friend the critic Hans Keller for a new string quartet. He had finished the last of his operas, Death in Venice, based on Thomas Mann’s novella, and may have wished to create a valediction of sorts for his career in chamber music. The Third Quartet, Op. 94 (1976) opens its fifth and final movement (at 17:20 below) with an echo of the colors and textures of the First Quartet’s first movement. By naming this passage a “recitative,” Britten frankly identifies the cellist as this scene’s principal character.

If you listen all the way through that final movement, you’ll experience yet another Britten specialty, the chaconne or passacaglia (= variations on a bass pattern or chord sequence), especially as it was employed by Henry Purcell (1659–1695). Beginning at 20:18, the bass pattern remains quite clear to the end of the movement. Incidentally, Britten said he derived this pattern from the sound of certain Venetian bells. Both the first and concluding movements of the quartet also feature thematic quotations from Death in Venice. Clearly Britten identified with Gustav von Aschenbach, his protagonist, and also with Gustav Mahler, who like Britten faced the prospect of death (in both cases, from heart disease) without despair but with—in his music at least—a measure of tenderness and warmth.

It remains to describe Britten’s Second Quartet, Op. 36 (1945) and the Phantasy.

Written only four years after the First Quartet, the Second nevertheless reveals a composer manifestly more confident in his powers. He had recently completed his first major opera—Peter Grimes, about a tormented, brutish fisherman and the grubby village he calls home; the opera subjects both to unforgiving moral scrutiny. The source material was George Crabbe’s narrative poem, “The Borough,” first published in (!) 1810. Some sense of nature’s powerful presence in the story may be gained from scene and interlude titles: “On the beach,” “A street by the sea,” “The storm,” “The Borough by moonlight,” “Fog.” There’s also a monumental passacaglia, meant as an exploration of Grimes’s tormented state of mind. The Second Quartet echoes that passacaglia with its own lengthy “Chacony”—a term borrowed from Purcell—beginning at 11:45 in the video below. (Its 20 minutes are broken into four sections to form a prelude, scherzo, adagio, and coda.) We could say that the first two quartets reveal Britten’s painterly and dramatic talents at play both before and after he brought forth Grimes.

(Compare Britten’s long Chacony with the second movement of Beethoven’s op. 95, which more freely alternates two structural devices, a simple descending bass line and a chromatic fugato; begin at 4:55 in the first video. Whereas Britten suggests a fateful progression of events—destiny of a sort—Beethoven’s refusal to settle on a compositional strategy suggests only his own restless spirit.)

The absolutely first thing you may notice about Britten’s Second Quartet, however, is its “calm expansiveness.” That from critic David Matthews, who likens it to Beethoven’s “Razumovsky” Quartet No. 1 (op. 59,  1805–6): there’s “no sense of being in a hurry.” True to a point, since both Beethoven and Britten employ stasis—pedal tones and other sustaining devices—at the outset (hear the Beethoven here). But in Op. 59, Beethovenian energy asserts itself immediately, and in Britten’s Second, watch out for what Britten does with the recap! (In the above link’s first movement, the development section begins at 2:14, the recap at 6:10, with slashing C-major chords.) There, the three successive “paragraphs” of the expansive opening theme are piled on top of one another (= stated simultaneously), generating a series of disorders that require a full 23 measures of C major at the end just to calm everything down (and then you’ll hear a Beethovenesque shrug at the very end. . . . ).

A surviving number of juvenile efforts indicate that Britten confronted the idea of creating a string quartet early and often. But his first chamber work of real substance, over which, Mitchell tells us, “Britten labored hard and long, continuously revising and rewriting,” was the Phantasy Quartet, op. 2, completed in 1932 with oboist Leon Goossens in mind.

As to recordings: Undoubtedly, historic performances of these works will have long since claimed some steadfast adherents. Among recent recordings, I strongly recommend a double-disc set of Britten and Purcell by the Doric String Quartet (Chandos), also available as a high-res download. The full range of Britten’s expression is brought out by these polished, enormously persuasive performances; to pair them with music by his favorite earlier English composer only enhances their value. They should provide you with hours of additional pleasure as you swim ever more deeply into Britten’s world.

I first responded to these works through an attractive series recorded by the Emperor Quartet for BIS. These have the advantage of including several juvenile efforts referenced above, plus a fascinating quartet reading of the Simple Symphony. And they are available in multichannel, although the digital source material is not always 24-bit.

We’ll save the endless topic of Beethoven quartet recordings for a later, proper discussion of the Beethoven quartets. It’s coming.

The first time I met performer Susan Morse was in the spring of 1969 at the Psychedelic Supermarket head shop on Las Palmas Blvd. We were looking at the cool posters and started talking about music. I mentioned I was working at the Music Revolution record store on Santa Monica Blvd (in West Hollywood a block away from the Trop). I was helping Les Carter, one of the first FM radio DJs, to get his incredibly hip record store started.

She told me she was in the show Hair and invited me to come see it. (Susan Morse would later participate in the Rocky Horror Picture Show movie and Jesus Christ Superstar and become a member of the Ohio Players.) Hair was on a limited run at the Aquarius Theater down on Sunset Blvd in Hollywood. Meat Loaf and Ben Vereen were also in the show. For those of you not of a certain age, Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical was a cultural sensation in the 1960s, with its countercultural stance, nudity and profanity – along with some great music.

That night I met her at the stage door entrance, and she escorted me to the lighting booth where I’d be watching the show – which was amazing. (You have to remember, Hair was outrageous and groundbreaking for its time) and afterward, I wondered if I should go backstage and say thank you or hello. I was not sure; I did not get a vibe from her. So, I went home for the night.

Early next afternoon there was a knock on my door and to my surprise, it was Susan. “Why didn’t you come backstage after the show?,” she asked, looking kind of annoyed. “You did not ask me to,” I sheepishly replied. “That is dumb,” she answered. “I am sorry. Do you want to get lunch?” “Okay,” and off we went.

We made plans to meet for dinner after the night’s show. Then we went back to where she was staying, the Landmark Motor Hotel on Franklin in Hollywood. It was a warm night and we decided to go swimming in the motel pool. Next thing you know, we were fooling around in the water and some doors opened to see what was going on. We weren’t making too much noise, but it was around 11 pm and all the rooms in the hotel surrounded the pool.

After a few minutes Janis Joplin came down from room 105 (where she would sadly pass away a few months later) to the pool with a bottle of Southern Comfort in hand. She offered us a drink and I took a slug; Susan declined and we went back to playing in the water. I think Janis was tired of sitting alone in her room and was glad to have company and be with people who would not bother her. she didn’t know my name but anyone who stayed at the Landmark was considered to be cool. Maybe she recognized me from backstage or from the one time we chatted briefly on Sunset Strip.

Susan, a New Yorker, was being put up as a weekly guest at the Landmark, not far from the Aquarius Theater. A lot of rock people would stay there, including Janis, Iggy Pop, the legendary Supermensch producer Shep Gordon and pretty much any rocker who was in town. The Landmark was one of the two low-rent rock and roll motels in Hollywood, the other being Sandy Koufax’s Tropicana Motel on Santa Monica Blvd in West Hollywood.

Sandy Koufax, the youngest player ever to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, bought the Tropicana in 1962 to supplement his Los Angeles Dodgers salary. Jim Morrison crashed there on occasion.)

The Trop had a great breakfast coffee shop, Dukes, that was street-level on Santa Monica Blvd. I would often see Rickie Lee Jones eating breakfast there. The Tropicana was the funkiest of all these two-star motels where touring musicians would stay, and was the victim of hard-partying rockers. You would not dare to go into the swimming pool – it was painted black and god only knows what was beneath the water’s surface. Yes, I had some interesting times in LA.

Next morning, Susan and I woke up and got dressed for breakfast. Frank Mills, Susan’s little dog (named after the song in Hair) had chewed all the elastic fasteners in my shoes. I was outraged, but Susan just laughed, and Frank Mills did not seem to be concerned either.

Things were going well between us, but the next week Susan was told to return to New York and join Hair’s Broadway production. It was an important gig and she had to do it. Heck, that was the whole point of her being an actress – she wanted to be on Broadway. She gave me her New York phone number, but because of the distance, the future did not look good for us. But she did leave a note in my apartment.

Life is strange though. About a month later my job at the Music Revolution ended and I was ready to return to New York anyway, where I was born and had lived most of my life. I got an apartment in the Murray Hill section of Manhattan. I settled in and called Susan, and left a message on her answering machine. Around midnight she called back. She was so excited! She could not believe I had moved back to New York.

The next day she told me to meet her at the theater around five o’clock after the day’s first performance. This time I was to come to the backstage entrance and ask for her. “Do you understand?,” she chided. After what happened in Los Angeles I deserved that, and I chuckled good-naturedly and affirmed her request.

The Biltmore Theater (now renamed the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre) was on West 47th Street just east of Eighth Avenue. I walked up to the backstage entrance and the security man knew I was coming. He hollered up the stairs for Susan and she came flying down the stairs. Big smile, kiss and hug. Nice. I knew she liked me, but this felt good.

She grabbed my hand and took me upstairs to the big community dressing room where everyone hung out. She introduced me to the “Tribe,” as the cast was called. They were friendly and welcoming. Shoot, I looked like I could be a cast member. Heather MacRae (Gordon and Sheila MacRae’s daughter), Susan and I went around the corner on Eighth  Avenue to the Haymarket (an industry hangout for Broadway performers and stage crew) for a snack. We got back to the theater around 7:30 and everyone went to their dressing rooms to change into their costumes for the second show.

In no time at all I had the run of the Biltmore. I could walk in or out of the backstage entrance at any time. I would watch the show from the side of the stage or orchestra pit and was treated as a member of the cast by cast and crew alike.

We got closer during the fall and were definitely a thing. In the winter some of the cast members were contacted by Bruce Sachs, a CMA (Creative Management Associates) agent. Actor Paul Jabara, then in Hair, was his client. Paul had introduced Bruce to some of the cast. A friend of Bruce’s, Jay Koenig, had an idea to do a show when Hair had days off, and play concerts in colleges in the Northeast. The show would be called Peace Parade and feature cast members doing songs from Hair as well as hits of the day. It would be good money. Susan instructed Bruce that I had to go along as part of the deal, and I could be part of the Tribe on stage as an extra.

The first show was in Canada. On what might have been the coldest night that winter we all met in Grand Central Station at 6:00 pm and boarded a train to New London, Ontario. The idea was that the train was going to be quicker, cheaper and more fun than a bus. It was a disaster. It was so cold the railroad had problems with ice on the tracks and frozen switches and the train trip took about 14 hours. Not arriving until mid-morning, we were all exhausted. But that evening we did the show and it was rather good. The students loved it.

The next morning, we woke up to a foot of snow on the ground. The cast revolted and refused to take the train back to New York. Jay had to buy us all tickets on US Air back to LaGuardia Airport.

Bad news: Susan tells me the Peace Parade tour is over. After one show. Jay is already far over budget and has lost a lot of money and decided to pull the plug. “But aren’t there more dates scheduled?,” I ask. “Yes, there are.”

Lightning strikes me. I call Bruce Sachs and say, “let me fulfill the dates. The talent (performers) will work with me. I can keep to a budget and bring in a profit. I will direct and produce the Peace Parade.”

He answers, “I don’t know you and you have never done this before.” I reply, “We’ll be equal partners and split the profit, and besides, I’ll do all the work and take care of everything.”

“Come on Bruce, what can go wrong? If it screws up it will be on me.”

“I am still not sure,” Bruce says.

“I say, let’s not leave the money on the table.”

A brief pause and he gives me a hesitant yes, but must confirm. Fingers crossed, but I feel confident the money is too good for him to pass up.

I call Susan and she tells everyone. They say they are all in.

As much as Susan seemed to love me, she was happy living at home in Queens with her parents. Not that it bothered me; they gave her a lot of space and she came and went as she pleased, so it was never an issue for us. It was just her thing. I never did meet her folks. Also, not that it came up, my apartment was just a studio and didn’t have enough room for her and Frank Mills. After hanging out or whatever I would drive her home on my motorcycle.

But things were definitely looking up!