Issue 143

In Part One of our interview (Issue 142), cellist Jo Quail discussed her creative processes, and what has inspired her unique approaches to playing the cello and composing. Here, we explore how she is able to produce such diverse qualities from her instrument, and she tells about new projects in the works, and more.

Russ Welton: How have you developed your sound over the years?

Jo Quail: The way I play, my musical language, has certainly evolved as I develop as a cellist and composer, and has become richer as I understand much more from a psychological perspective. Or perhaps more accurately, rather than understand, it’s a case of realizing how much more there is to uncover! Either way, as we discussed before, it’s a combination of technical maturity and personal belief, I guess.

On a practical basis, I use a lot of scordatura [altering the standard tuning] in my work, and I love close harmonies, [and] unisons that microtonally drag away, and I use this often. I also love space in sound, and in music, and that’s something that appears quite frequently in my own compositions, either harmonically or in terms of placement of notes, percussion [and so on]. I think this approach informs most of what might be considered “recognizable” in my sound. I know when I first started to write and perform solo, I didn’t think about space in sound, and now I do, a lot.

RW: You have a great spirituality in your music. In what ways has this, along with your classical and rock influences melded together?

JQ: This is a big question. Personally, I find that the experience of live music creates an exchange of energy between the artist and the audience, and because of this exchange of energy, a wholly separate energy is invoked.

When it comes to melding genres, music is music. There is as much power in John Tavener’s Svyati as anything I’ve experienced on a festival stage, it’s just the instrumentation and delivery that’s different.

I have very defined personal spiritual beliefs that are not borne of traditional religion, and I wonder if music is perhaps able to explore spirituality in a more multifaceted way than other art forms, but I have not studied this in depth; this is just my own experience.

One of the things I love in metal [music] is the power and intent experienced in texture and tone, and these are aspects I incorporate into my music. When I want to convey something with great weight, or a shapeless power within the Earth’s core, I may draw on conventional textures, that is, overdrive or distortion or equivalent, and make the color with this effect, obviously working a lot to shape the sound the way I want it. I write a lot of music exploring the cardinal energies of earth, air, fire, water and spirit, and I find exploration of archetypes a continuous source of inspiration in music.

Jo Quail. Photo courtesy of Simon Kallas.

RW: Which composers and musicians are your greatest references for inspiration and why so?

JQ: Evolution again – the theme of our discussion! It’s a revolving door of composers and musicians who inspire me, and it could be something as simple as one aspect within the sound of someone’s voice, or the particular arrangement of a track or song that makes me listen repeatedly. Kodály’s Sonata for Solo Cello is an example of how to write beyond brilliantly for solo cello, and the vast capabilities of the instrument (in the right hands, I can’t play this very well!). Bartók and Kodály worked a lot with folk music and I love the modality of these melodies; I use this at times in my work. It’s an openness of sound that is less easy to obtain from standard Ionian or major/minor scale work. Messiaen’s “Louange à l’Éternité de Jésus” from the Quartet for the End of Time is something I continuously return to, so achingly beautiful, perfection in creation.

Trent Reznor would be an obvious example to state too. I’ve arranged some Nine Inch Nails for cello quartet, and translating the electronics [of the original] into something playable on acoustic cello has enabled me to get right in to the center of his compositions. I’m a little late to the party but I recently was introduced to the music of [singer] Ghostemane – “Hellrap” is one I’m listening to constantly at the moment. It is the development of the vocals, the range, texture, it’s brilliant. I [also] learn a lot from the various sessions I do, live and recorded, and I am always inspired in one way or another by the artists I work with.

RW: Tell us about your cello!

JQ: It’s made by Starfish Designs in Fort William, Scotland. Dave Shepton is the incredible craftsman there. I went to visit Starfish to try out their electric cellos, some 12 years ago I think, maybe more actually, I tried both four and five strings (I prefer four strings) and went to see how I felt, though I knew in my heart that I would commission Starfish for my cello.

Each Starfish instrument is essentially a bespoke creation. Dave measured my ‘normal’ cello and created my electric with approximately similar dimensions, neck length and so on, and that makes a huge difference. He also made a modification on the fingerboard at the end to accommodate some of the extended techniques I use (particularly bowing behind the hand) and this adds so much to my cello both practically and aesthetically.

Starfish make harps now. I believe their range of cellos and violins have been out of production for some years, but given that each instrument is bespoke that’s understandable really.

My stand is entirely bespoke, and was created by Kev Boyss, who is a master blacksmith here in London. My first cello stand (I stand to play) was made from a keyboard stand and served me well but I needed something a little more appropriate. I went to see Kev four years ago with my cello, explaining what I needed and that it couldn’t weigh more than 5.5 kilos and had to fully come apart to fly with and so on, and he worked a miracle!

RW: What equipment do you use to most faithfully reproduce the tones you intend to present?

JQ: When I write and perform my solo electric cello pieces I use two pedals by Boss – the GT-100 multi-effects pedal and the RC-300 Loop Station [looper pedal]. I’ve always used Boss pedals, though I’ve upgraded over the years. I like the multi-effects unit because of ease of programming for live performance, given that I routinely alter the signal chain to create some of my sounds. The RC-300 Loop Station can handle my multiple layers [of live overdubbing] and has great functionality, allowing me to synchronize or not within its three loop channels (and [it does] much more than this) and be as free as is possible within this framework.

When I record, I use Cubase Pro 10.5 [software] here at home, [and] Pro Tools usually in larger studios. Whilst the sounds begin life on the GT-100, they naturally evolve (again!) in a studio setting, and I sometimes then return to the source sound and manipulate it to recreate what I made in the studio setting.

I always work live with my Cosmic Ears in-ear monitors; they are the best available and give the greatest clarity of sound. I will model most of my sounds using these [as a reference] too, then put them through a bigger rig just to check how they behave in this setting, but it’s [usually] minimal adjustment that’s needed.

RW: Tell us about your recent work with Maria Franz and Christopher Juul of Euzen.

JQ: Maria and Chris are dear friends of mine, and I’ve supported them when they [perform as] Heilung on several occasions. When they invited me to record for the next Euzen record I was hugely honored and highly intrigued – Euzen being a very different beast to Heilung. Maria and Chris are two people at the absolute top of their craft as composers and artists, and recording for them is an experience I shall treasure for all time. It was a Herculean effort to navigate both Brexit and COVID regulations – full marks to them for their organizational skills – and getting to Denmark in the first place was a win!

We spent four highly intensive and hugely enjoyable days in the studio, recording multiple cello parts across 11 songs. The parts Chris had written were sometimes challenging, always beautiful to play, and suited so well to my way of playing. He also has a great manner of direction, using lots of imagery to convey how he wants the parts performed, and it made the session very easy to translate from the dots on the page to the sounds and energies they both envisaged.

RW: You have recorded in so many studios. Which have been your favorite to record in and why?

JQ: I love them all; they are all unique and represent a period of time for me that is as clear as a photograph when I hear the record. One of my favorite studios is certainly Maria and Chris’s studio – Lava Studios Copenhagen. It is both cozy and spacious, the great drum is omnipresent, wide-spreading, [and] all the furniture for the hardware in the control room has been lovingly crafted by hand. It just feels like a good place to be. Before recording the Euzen record I first went here to rehearse with Myrkur a couple of years ago, and then I wrote and recorded all the cellos here for her Folkesange album which is such a beautiful masterpiece.

I regularly work with producer James Griffiths here in the UK, and we have worked in large and small spaces, and makeshift and professional studios, and each record has been a unique experience. I’ve a huge soft spot for Wick Studios in Brunswick, Melbourne, [Australia]; I’ve used these rooms for my preproduction on a few tours, recorded some ad hoc sessions and talked life and the universe with the crew there into the small hours. For me, it’s as much about the producer as the space we are in. I need to feel a connection with the producer, and when we are on the same wavelength it doesn’t matter how fancy the space is; we can find the music wherever we are.

RW: How do you most enjoy listening to music at home and how do you set up your hi-fi equipment?

JQ: I have a Bang and Olufsen system in my music room, and my husband has a vintage TEAC system and amplifier with Pioneer speakers that he prefers. However, and I probably shouldn’t admit this to you (!), generally we listen to music in the kitchen through a standard Bluetooth speaker, nothing fancy at all. We invariably have music on, and usually it’s things our daughter likes to listen to. She is nine, so it’s a kaleidoscope of change, usually good pop thankfully! Music, outside [of] my music room, is for the accompaniment of cooking and arts and crafts! I spend a lot of hours each day forensically listening to the innards of sound, so when it comes to relaxing, just give me a straight 4/4 with a sing-along chorus, please!

Photo courtesy of Simon Kallas.

RW: Who would you most desire to perform with and who would you put in your own supergroup from the past or present?

JQ: I put my dream team together for the cast of [my upcoming album] The Cartographer. I wrote specifically for these musicians and they are all so brilliant, I can’t wait for you to hear this record. Aside from this, I’m very lucky to have worked with some incredible artists in my career so far, and I look forward to what the future holds. I’m very excited about sharing a stage with Wardruna next year as support. I would love to write and perform with a taiko [drum] ensemble – I saw a great concert years ago at the Southbank Centre and this sound forever changed my musical world. If Steven Wilson was ever to be looking for a cellist I’d get straight in the queue. I would have loved to have met maestro János Starker, the great cellist and teacher. He would be in my supergroup for sure.

RW: What is your next project?

JQ: I’ve just finished producing The Cartographer and this will be released in April 2022. I was generously granted funding from the PRS Foundation (Women Make Music Performing Rights Society) for this recording – which was another COVID achievement, getting an ensemble of 15 together in between two lockdowns.

I will be recording my solo acoustic cello works in one volume later this year, which will be supplied with the sheet music, and I’m currently working on a short film and a new electric cello album. There’s lots going on behind the scenes, including a really exciting collaboration!

I hope things will continue to move in a gentle and positive fashion, and the magic of live performance can return to our stages and our lives at the earliest moment. Thanks so much for chatting with me.

Header image courtesy of Simon Kallas.

August 6 – 8 was the weekend of the 2021 Hong Kong High-End Audio Visual Show, organized by Audiotechnique magazine. This show has been an annual pilgrimage for local audiophiles since 2003, except for last year when it was canceled due to the Coronavirus pandemic. It has become the largest show of its kind in Asia, and it normally has been attended by many audiophiles from Mainland China, who would make the trip specifically for the show, as well as by manufacturers and other audio dignitaries from all over the world.

Because of the stringent restrictions for inbound travelers (only Hong Kong residents are allowed in from some countries at the moment), we all missed our friends from abroad this year. Also, locals are staying home for the summer due to the onerous quarantine requirements required for re-entry, yet the show still seemed to be well-attended.

The show went from Friday to Sunday for three full days. I decided to sneak in during lunchtime on Friday, and found the line for tickets literally a mile long. In fact, they had to open up an exhibition hall just to accommodate the people waiting in line for tickets. I estimated that it would have taken me more than the one hour I had, having skipped lunch, just to get to the ticket booth. Fortunately, I had a letter from Frank Doris identifying me as a writer for Copper, and I managed to get a press pass in short order. (However, I didn’t get the free SACD that they produce every year for the paying public.)

After getting through the entrance, there were more long lines just to get onto each exhibition floor, and still more lines to get into each room. Other than having to scan the LeaveHomeSafe app and to wear masks, there seemed not to be any social distancing measures. There were individual rooms of different sizes on two floors for the larger distributors, and a large hall space with rows of booths for the smaller guys and individual brands. In years past, there were live events in the theater with  singers and bands, but not this year.

I managed to get into several rooms on Friday, but there were so many people that it was hard to hear anything at all. There are always guys (I saw perhaps a handful of ladies attending the show) who insist on giving their opinions on whatever is being demonstrated, and making sure everyone else can hear them. There were also people talking on the phone, which I could understand, since they would never be able to get back in if they had to leave the room to take a call. I have given up on assessing the sound quality of systems during these shows, and I just make a note of anything interesting and follow up at the dealers’ showrooms afterwards.

I have trouble keeping track of all the new equipment coming onto the market. My general impression is that everything is getting larger, heavier, more glossy and more costly. The amps I saw during the show made the high-end amps of my youth (Krell KSA 200, Mark Levinson ML20 and so on.) look like midgets. There are amps that might be mistaken for small refrigerators. There seems to be more US$40,000-plus turntables nowadays than there were turntables available when the LP was still the mainstream music medium. The Infinity IRS V loudspeaker system was jaw-droppingly expensive when it was first introduced, but it now seems so ho hum. Pretty much every loudspeaker system in those big rooms in the show cost more, even after inflation has been taken into account.

My friend commented that hi-fi has become jewelry for men. I wonder how it is possible to sustain business, given the large number of brands and models on the market, especially since most young people prefer to use earbuds to listen to music via streaming. One answer is China, which is adding more millionaires (and billionaires) each year than anywhere else. This is the real reason why the Hong Kong show has become the largest in Asia. The cost of accommodating these gigantic amps and speakers in a typical Hong Kong apartment, the most expensive in the world by far, would dwarf the cost of the equipment itself. We are not the target customers for these distributors.

I decided to skip Saturday since it is usually the busiest day, and returned to the show first thing on Sunday morning, when everyone else is in church. Seriously, Hong Kongers tend to be late risers (at least on weekends), and most of the good stuff like the limited-edition LPs are long gone by Sunday morning anyway. On the other hand, the stuff nobody wants gets discounted on Sunday, which suits me fine, since I don’t follow trends.

I actually managed to talk to a few people and listen to several systems in the relative calm. I estimate, as readers can see from the photos, that about half of the demonstrations used LPs, and the other half digital. Sadly, I did not hear any open reel tapes used in demonstrations this year. Someone had an Ampex ATR-102 with Aria electronics and a large Otari in one of the smaller booths, but they were not playing. In years past, Chad Kassem of Acoustic Sounds came with Chris Mara, who brought along his restored MCI tape machines (see J.I. Agnew’s interview with Mara in Issue 139). They held demonstrations playing Chad’s Analogue Productions master tapes, and that sounded great. Tim de Paravicini also brought along recording artist Lyn Stanley one year so that we could compare his tapes and tape machine with the real thing. This seems a world away now, and sadly we may never experience it again. I guess tapes are still too much on the fringe for the mainstream audiophiles here. LPs are again very popular, with many new audiophile titles of Chinese artists being released, but surprisingly, there are a lot of new CDs available too.

A long line to get to the ticketing booths on Friday.

Another long line to get onto the exhibition floors.

A recently-manufactured Western Electric 300B tube, available again.

The new Thorens TD 124 DD turntable has arrived. I will arrange an audition hopefully soon.

Earbuds as fashion statements.

Diptyque Audio magnetostatic loudspeakers. Only on static display, but if they are as good as Magneplanars, I would love to hear them.

McIntosh partnering up with Sonus Faber. The sound reminded me of the road trips in my uncle’s old Cadillac during the 1970s. My cousins and I cruised along comfortably, nestled in the plush backseats, gently bouncing along the highway to Disneyland. Nothing exciting, but very calm and relaxing.

What is it with this green glow? The MC275 already looks gorgeous as it is.

There was plenty of vinyl for sale.

This was the first time I came across Franco Serblin speakers. This gentleman founded Sonus Faber, hence the family resemblance. After leaving Sonus Faber in 2006, he founded his namesake company and developed these speakers, called the Ktêma, in 2011. Sadly, he passed away in 2013, but his company lives on. These speakers are in fact four-way, with two 9-inch woofers hidden at the rear of the speakers vented sideways with a waveguide. I found them very impressive. The sound was refined, musical and with excellent imaging capabilities, thanks to the narrow profile at the front. They projected a large-scale soundstage for their size.

This was the first time I encountered a pair of Tannoy Westminster loudspeakers at a show (a friend used to have a pair at home), and the model here was the Royal GR. They were partnered here with Esoteric electronics from Japan. I find Esoteric electronics to be rather cold and soulless, and the Westminster tends to be on the warm, slow and fuzzy side. I had hoped they would match well, balancing out each other’s shortcomings. Someone in the audience unwrapped a new SACD he just bought at the show and handed it over to be played. He kept crumpling the plastic wrap in his hand, making an annoying crackling noise throughout the demo. Worse still, the sound was way louder on the right channel and nobody noticed until I pointed it out about three minutes into the demo. They then proceeded to try and diagnose the problem, at which point I left the room. The little that I heard confirmed my view on Esoteric.

I found this room to be the most impressive at the show. The photo shows me with Edward (left) of Avantgarde Hong Kong, and Charles (right) of Kondo Japan. I heard the Kondo Ginga turntable with the IO-M cartridge, SFz silver step-up transformer, GE-10i phono stage, G-1000i preamplifier, Kagura 211 parallel single ended monaural power amplifiers and the Kaiser Acoustics Kawero Grande loudspeakers (the larger pair in wood finish). Although the speakers are not outrageously huge, they weigh 500 pounds each. Apparently, the enclosure is made with an extremely dense wood/rubber sandwich. They employ RAAL ribbon tweeters, which I had once contemplated using, and are loaded with horn waveguides. The internal cabling uses Kondo silver cables, and so I deduce they were developed to partner with Kondo electronics.

I hate to think how much all this cost, but the sound was exceptional. Edward put on an LP of Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon, an album I am very familiar with. The sound had the relaxed liquidity, effortlessness and naturalness of a truly great system, whereas many other ultra-expensive systems in the show sounded as if they were trying too hard. All of this was achieved not with monster 3,000-watt amps (examples of which were playing in the room next door), but 50 watts of Class A tube power.

3274: These Cessaro horn speakers looked very interesting, but I did not manage to get in (there was a long line of people ahead of me) while this system was being demonstrated. The focus of the discussion seen here was on the Arya Audio Labs AirBlade 180 supertweeters (on top of the white speakers). They apparently have 180 degrees of dispersion and significantly enhance the spatial cues in a recording.

Fyne Audio was started by several Tannoy ex-employees who developed their own version of the dual concentric driver. I have been curious to audition these, but I did not get in to hear them due to the long line.  I was allowed to take a photo though.

Best deal of the show? This three-meter pair of gold loudspeaker cables can be yours for only US$80,000. I thought this could be a good investment in this era of QE infinity, until I realized they are only gold-plated, not solid gold.

These Jadis JA200 Mk II power amps sounded wonderful. A friend had a pair of the original JA200 until the day one of them decided to put on a fireworks display. Whenever I see a pair of these powered up, I try to stay as far away as possible.

All photos by Adrian Wu.

Before Stanley Clarke, most jazz fans thought of the bass as an instrument that kept the rhythmic and harmonic foundations of the music together, and maybe got the occasional solo. Clarke changed that, becoming a headliner on his electric bass and helping the genre of jazz fusion to find a wider audience.

Born in 1951, Clarke started on the violin, but his hands were too big to play it. There was a double bass lying around the Settlement Music School in Philadelphia, and he claimed it. Soon he was obsessed, and after high school he enrolled at the Philadelphia Musical Academy, dreaming of joining the Philadelphia Orchestra. But along the way, he fell in love with jazz.

After gigs with Stan Getz, Horace Silver, and others, he met Chick Corea, who piqued his interest in the new sounds of jazz fusion. In 1972, the two men formed the band Return to Forever, which gained Clarke his first of five Grammy Awards. At the same time, Clarke started his solo recording career, a courageous move for a bassist. That aspect of his studio work led to three more Grammys.

He founded his own group, the Stanley Clarke Band – twice, actually, about 25 years apart. The first iteration was in 1985, yielding one album. Then he re-formed it with a different lineup for The Stanley Clarke Band album, and his fifth Grammy.

Although his recording output has slowed in the past decade, Clarke did some excellent work in 2019 on the soundtrack of Halston, the dramatic series documenting the career of the fashion designer. It stars Ewan MacGregor and is currently streaming on Netflix.

Enjoy these eight tracks by Stanley Clarke.

1. Track: “What Game Shall We Play Today”
   Album: Return to Forever
   Label: ECM
   Year: 1972

This was the first album Clarke made with the band Return to Forever, his project with Chick Corea. The group has re-formed for albums and tours over the years, most recently in 2011. Corea died in early 2021, making it likely that Return to Forever has played its last gig.

Besides Corea and Clarke, the original band included Joe Farrell on flute and soprano sax, Airto Moreira on drums and percussion, and Flora Purim on vocals and additional percussion. Max Eichner’s touch at the sound board should not be underestimated; he had a major impact on normalizing a particular sound for jazz fusion. All four of the tunes on this album were written by Corea, including the coyly funky “What Game Shall We Play Today,” which rolls along on Clarke’s rhythmic dance.

2. Track: “Journey to Love”
   Album: Journey to Love
   Label: Nemperor/Atlantic
   Year: 1975

Corea makes an appearance on one track of Journey to Love, but it is 100 percent a Clarke album. A major difference between this and the Return to Forever aesthetic is the presence of a nine-man horn section. Clarke tends to stay to the jazz end of the fusion spectrum.

But he’s also keenly plugged into the rock scene. The title track features the solo guitar work of British master Jeff Beck. Clarke’s smooth yet carefully shaped electric bass line creates an ethereal atmosphere.

3. Track: “Dayride”
   Album: Modern Man
   Label: Nemperor/Atlantic
   Year: 1978

Jeff Beck returned for the track “Rock ‘n’ Roll Jelly” on Modern Man, and another fundamental rock artist made an important appearance on several tracks: Steve Gadd. He wasn’t at the drum kit, but just handling cymbals.

You can hear Gadd’s work particularly on the synth- and horn-driven “Dayride,” with Mike Garson on keyboards. This is a new version of a piece originally recorded with Return to Forever. Besides his ever-dependable bass, Clarke demonstrates his imaginative gifts as an arranger on this track.

4. Track: “I Just Want to Love You”
   Album: The Clarke/Duke Project
   Label: Epic
   Year: 1981

Another of Clarke’s fruitful collaborations was with R&B and fusion singer, songwriter, and pianist George Duke; The Clarke/Duke Project was the first of three studio albums they made together, followed by the Live in Montreux 1988 on Jazz Door Records. A Grammy nominee, this first duo album also sold well as a cross-genre release, hitting the No. 7 spot on the Billboard R&B charts.

The huge string section is surprisingly well-balanced, never too heavy handed, even if the keyboard sound is annoyingly tinny. The twangy bass part on the Clarke-penned “I Just Want to Love You” makes it the best track. That’s Clarke singing along with Duke, and he also plays the guitar solo before the final chorus.

5. Track: “Heaven Sent”
   Album: Time Exposure
   Label: Epic
   Year: 1984

Beck and Duke came back to the studio with Clarke for Time Exposure, which also featured Ernie Watts, a saxophonist equally comfortable in blues-rock and jazz, and singer Howard Hewitt. Clarke plays a whole host of instruments, including three kinds of bass – bass guitar, piccolo bass, and tenor bass – and various drums and synthesizers.

The R&B tune “Heaven Sent,” composed by Hewitt and American arranger Denzil A. Miller, Jr., multi-tracks Clarke’s array of basses, which have an intricately percussive effect against Hewitt’s smooth voice.

6. Track: “Bassically Taps”
   Album: If This Bass Could Only Talk
   Label: Portrait
   Year: 1988

One of the highlights of the overall outstanding If This Bass Could Talk is the contribution by tap-dancer extraordinaire Gregory Hines, who uses his feet as rhythm on a couple of tracks.

“Bassically Taps” closes Side B. There’s a big lineup of studio personnel on this album, including big names like saxophonist Wayne Shorter and trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, but they’ve all gone to grab lunch. This track is a bare-bones duo of Clarke on bass guitar and Hines on a wooden floor, two masters experimenting and playing with syncopation and timbre. It’s simply thrilling.

7. Track: “I’m Home Africa”
   Album: East River Drive
   Label: Epic
   Year: 1993

Because Clarke’s passion is to bring the bass into the limelight, it’s not unusual to hear a guest bassist playing along with him on his albums. That person is often Jimmy Earl (best known these days for his work with the Jimmy Kimmel Live! band), who appears on East River Drive.

Unlike some of his colleagues in the jazz world, Clarke has not focused a great deal on creating music that evokes traditional African sounds. One exception is the rousing “I’m Home Africa,” co-written with Earl and pianist Steve Hunt. It’s an interesting combination of polyrhythms, acoustic percussive instruments, different types of electronic bass as percussion, and pre-recorded sound samples.

8. Track: “Hair”
   Album: 1, 2 to the Bass
   Label: Sony
   Year: 2003

As impressive as his other albums’ guest rosters are, Clarke truly outdid himself on 1, 2 to the Bass. Even Oprah Winfrey is involved, reading a prose-poem over the music on “I Shall Not Be Moved.”

Among the fun offerings here is the song “Hair,” from the musical of the same name, in a wild and over-the-top twangy funk arrangement. It’s an unfettered celebration of the bass, with some clever horn arrangements to boot, plus a rocking guitar solo by Joe Satriani, who played for a short while with Deep Purple. The vocals are by Clarke and Amel Larrieux.

Header image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Andreas Lawen, Fotandi, cropped to fit format.

The best-fitting suit is a well-tailored one. You likely would never expect to try on a garment in a store and have it fit perfectly, if taken randomly from just any hangar displaying your size. You appreciate that the tailoring process adds value and yields a better fit and comfort. The other side of the coin is that you may be content with grabbing whatever garment is on offer, throwing it on and being satisfied with a one-size-fits-all experience. If you do, it’s reasonable that you would have to put up with the limitations of a tight-fitting seam or longer arms than you may prefer. The cool thing, though, is that tailors do exist who can measure us and perform a fantastic service.

Our listening rooms also benefit from tailoring, and yet, although this too may be obvious, how many of us have taken the measurements of our room’s frequency response and then made adaptive changes accordingly? (I’m sure some have, but not anywhere near a majority). In a previous article, “Standing Room Only” (Issue 139), we examined the reality that rooms have a “personality,” or sonic characteristics, especially in the bass frequencies, which are defined by their dimensions and their standing waves. These create room modes, areas in the room where frequencies are cancelled and reinforced. So, rather than getting frustrated with the limitations of our room, it can be good for us to look at the room’s personality as a foundation on which to build our subsequently tailored sound to our advantage.

All rooms have influence over the sound of our systems, so how can we achieve a “best-fit” scenario from our listening rooms? With careful measurements – with or without the aid of measurement software – and by investing some time in making adjustments, we can make vast improvements, and without hiring an installer or audio specialist.

Any room with four walls will be subject to three main sets of sound wave propagation (and reflection): front to back, left to right, and top to bottom. These are axial room modes, which involve standing waves that travel along two parallel surfaces. (There are also tangential room modes, which occur between two sets of parallel surfaces, and oblique modes, where all six room surfaces are involved, but these modes are weaker in their effect.)

To some extent, by moving the speakers further from the back wall by a few feet (or if you don’t have enough room, try a shorter distance), this can greatly diminish the effect of problematic standing waves which may be created along the front-to-back dimension. This can be particularly effective for managing the bass response in small rooms, especially from around 30 Hz to 150 Hz.

The smaller the room, the higher the frequency of its standing waves, and so, for the majority of us with small rooms, this means that we are subject to the effects of standing waves from around 150 Hz and below. Larger rooms may be affected from about 90 Hz and below. Eventually, once the room is sufficiently large enough, the low-end frequencies that are affected dwell within a range that is well below 20 Hz and of less concern because you can’t hear the effect of the standing waves. (In larger venues such as auditoriums and theaters, they occur at such low frequencies that we are never going to hear their impact.) Also, the bigger the room is, the closer the frequencies of the multiple standing waves that occur in the room, which will make less overall negative impact on the sound.

As we go up in frequency, it can become easier to hear differences in how the sound is being affected by the room. We can more readily identify where the areas of bass cancellation (nodes, or nulls) are in smaller rooms by listening for them, because their frequency range lies in a more discernible area of human hearing.

Room measurement software such as REW Room EQ Wizard (covered in “Subliminal or Sublime Bass?” in Issue 138) can be especially useful, but you can also use any number of online utilities to calculate where the nulls in your room will be located.

One way to overcome the sonic disadvantages of standing waves is to use multiple floorstanding loudspeakers, as discussed in a previous article, “Sub Missive,” (Issue 137). However, this is an impractical solution for most of us who use two stereo speakers. On the other hand, adding one or more subwoofers can be a practical solution for achieving extended bass response. Being able to specifically place one or more powered subwoofers where or near where the room’s null frequencies occur can be an effective way of overcoming the bass-robbing effects of the null. What we want to achieve is a result that sounds good to our ears, with a more-even bass response being enjoyed in multiple seats in our listening room.

(Subwoofers have an additional advantage – they lessen the low-frequency power demands placed on the main speakers. Many stereo speakers can even “bottom-out” – or reach the limit of their woofer excursion if driven hard – and at a higher frequency than their stated nominal value. By giving the responsibility of bass frequency reproduction to a dedicated sub and locating it very specifically in the room, this can radically start to transform the way your room behaves and is not to be underestimated.)

I’ve seen two schools of thought regarding whether to place a subwoofer right in the middle of a null, or at either side of it. Placing a sub in the middle of a null can result in achieving greater linearity – a smoother overall in-room low-frequency response – but at the expense of losing output (volume). On the other hand, placing the subwoofer on either side of the null effectively “breaks it up,” and also creates a more even bass response. Then, if you  place additional subs to break up the nodes of additional frequency null points in the room, it is possible to further improve linearity without necessarily losing as much bass volume.

It should be noted that placing a single subwoofer in a corner of the room is a common technique, because it’s a convenient locations for many people, and also because the sub will massively excite the room as a result of the boundary gain/reflections from the wall, which will maximize the subwoofer’s output. However, this may not give the smoothest in-room frequency response, so complimenting it with an additional sub for eradicating 50 Hz nulls can be effective in achieving greater low-frequency linearity.

All this is well and good, but how can you find where these nulls are in the first place, and then, what do you do about them?

It is possible to identify where nulls may be occurring without software, a microphone or room analysis programs. Take a test CD that can play a continuous 50 Hz tone, for example, or play or download a 50 Hz tone at this link. 50 Hz is a typical null frequency that many rooms are dogged by. Play the tone while moving your head from left to right at different distances back from the speaker, and you will notice the locations where the volume of that frequency drops. The places where this occurs are where the nulls occur.

Look at the butterfly wings as in our illustration below. The white line represents the waveform of the sound coming from our speakers. The butterfly’s body represents the null point where there is the least change in the audio signal. The butterfly’s wings represent the areas where there is the greatest change in audio signal happens. These are on opposite sides of the null and are represented one positive and one negative side of the audio waveform.

Image courtesy of Pixabay.com.

Placing the sub on either the positive or negative side of the null allows the sub to gain a better “grip” on that 50 Hz frequency and the null is all but vanquished. This method alters the amount of pressure on either side of the null, disrupting the standing wave reinforcement and preventing it from manifesting. It’s almost like creating more of an up and down pistonic action at that point, thereby reducing the audibly-noticeable fixed-point nodal effects. The room will have less “control” over that null point.

This is why using up to four (or more) subwoofers in multiple positions is so effective in eradicating other nulls which also occur but at different frequencies – and at different distances from the speakers within the room. If you listen to where these different frequency nulls are occurring, and place a second sub near these locations on either the positive or negative side of the nulls, you crush the null out. This greatly contributes to making more of the room respond with improved seat-to-seat listening position consistency.

Ideally, the key to best identifying the nulls is in using measurement software and a room mode calculator app, but if you don’t have access to or the ability to use these, you can still achieve great audible results by listening carefully to where the nulls occur with just your ears and placing a sub to the positive side of one frequency null, and, if you have multiple subs, by placing another along the negative side of another frequency’s null.

In the next installment we’ll cover some specifics of subwoofer placement.

In the consumer packaged goods biz, it’s common practice for manufacturers to reposition brands as “new and improved.” We’ve seen brands like Tide, Jell-O and Bounty do this time and again. (The irony is “new and improved” is an oxymoron, but don’t tell the suits over at Procter & Gamble.) It isn’t too surprising that similar marketing tactics are successfully being deployed in the music biz. The reissuing of classic rock LPs is sort of a Marketing 101 spin on “new and improved,” though done with language that’s a bit less crass.

We’ve seen lots of classic rock 20-, 30-, and 40-year anniversary reissues, only to be surpassed more recently by a few 50-year anniversary releases. Since 2009, Steven Wilson (producer, solo artist, Porcupine Tree) has received the most notoriety from his work remixing classic rock LPs, and deservedly so. Wilson’s remixed albums from King Crimson, Jethro Tull, Yes, ELP, Chicago, Roxy Music, Tears For Fears, and Gentle Giant, all generally available in streaming and physical formats.

In interviews describing his approach on remixing, Steven Wilson said, “I’m working from the very raw sources upward. My process is to load up the multitrack analog tapes alongside with the original stereo mix (side-by-side). I’m literally listening in five-second chunks, comparing the original mix and my new mix. With Blu-ray or 5.1 surround sound, I’m creating a more immersive 3-dimensional version. It’s like cleaning the Sistine Chapel, taking off layers of grime.” Wilson relies on isolated tracks that contain no reverb, EQ or compression.

Wilson also noted having “spirited” conversations with Robert Fripp (King Crimson), Ian Anderson (Jethro Tull) and Greg Lake (Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Crimson) about remaining true to their original creations. The guys evidently wanted to “fix” a few things. Wilson told them in no uncertain terms the goal was to clean up, not reinvent, their original recordings. “Your fans would accept nothing less,” he said.

I’ve questioned the value proposition on some reissues, particularly when there’s limited upside in material and/or audio quality. Remember, demos are considered demos for a reason, though it is interesting to hear the evolution of a track or an LP. Is a reissue today primarily about accessing technology that wasn’t available at the time of an album’s creation? Are there legitimate opportunities for sound enrichment? Or is most of this a head fake, and more about the Benjamins?

The answers to these questions are nuanced and varied. In assessing the value proposition on a reissue, I generally take into consideration three things:

1) What is the quality and the type of source material available to a producer/engineer?

2) What are their goals and objectives?

3) How respectful are they to an artist’s original creation?

By far the most critical variable is the source material. If a remix relies on the original analog multitrack tapes – that are in good condition, with lots of isolation between tracks – then that will pique my interest. If a CD digital master is used to produce a 180-gram vinyl reissue, well, for me that’s a sonic head fake with considerably less value.

The folks spearheading these projects carefully characterize their work as “reimagining” rather than “improving” an LP, demonstrating linguistic creativity and a skill for controversy avoidance. But let’s face it, when you’re talking about the third or fourth time a recording has been reissued, in a variety of formats, its appeal is likely more for fanatics than everyday music fans.

In theory, you can see how modern-day post-production using cleaner, isolated tracks can potentially be beneficial. In the 1960s, when state-of-the art recording technology was limited to 4- or 8-track analog, engineers frequently had to “bounce” tracks – combine two or more tracks to make room for additional tracks – which lead to sound degradation from multi-generational mixing.

King Crimson’s In the Court of the Crimson King (1969), one of my all-time favorite LPs, was originally an 8-track recording. The album’s production was a bit experimental with lots of layering with Mellotron, sound effects and other instruments added, leading to a number of “bounced” tracks. In the album’s original mix, drums, guitar and bass are essentially third-generation copies, creating some sound degradation, hiss and harmonic distortion.

Wilson remixed both the 40^th and 50^th anniversary reissues of In the Court of the Crimson King. Said Wilson, “The 40^th was one of my first classic album projects, so while I think that mix is pretty good, I was happy to revisit it with the benefit of 10 years’ experience. I think the new mix (the 50^th) is a significant improvement and more faithful to the 1969 mix, done at 96/24 resolution.”

The sound on both reissues to me is quite stellar; though pardon my cynicism in asking if there’ll be a 60th Anniversary reissue? Does the law of diminishing returns apply with each successive release? Which brings us back to the Benjamins. There indeed is a market for this stuff among fanatics, but it’s likely not insatiable, especially if there’s only marginal gain with each consecutive reissue.

Giles Martin, son of legendary Beatles producer George Martin, was responsible for remixing the 50th anniversary releases of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), The Beatles (1968 – better known as the White Album) and Abbey Road (1969).

The earliest Beatles LPs were produced using a museum quality 2-track recorder, with 4-track introduced in ’63 with “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” Only in ’68 did the Beatles begin recording in 8-track, which utilized wider and higher-quality audiotape.

For most of the Beatles’ recording years, the primary listening devices for music enthusiasts were car radios and transistor radios, with an occasional living room console sprinkled in. The standard for the era, therefore, was to finish an LP in mono, not stereo. Producer George Martin spent three weeks on the mono mix of Sgt. Pepper, and three days on the stereo mix, indicating its far lesser importance.

With the Beatles 50^th Anniversary reissues, Giles Martin had access to both first-generation analog tapes, and his father’s meticulous notes. As a result, there’s “purity” in the mix that wasn’t technologically available when these albums were originally produced. Giles was also doing double duty with these reissues, needing to remain true to both the Beatles’ and his father’s legacy. “You’re challenged by this weight of expectation,” he said, “but the joy is actually just finding how great Geoff Emerick’s (sound) engineering was, and how great my dad (George Martin) was as a producer.”

When you’ve listened to a favorite song or album for decades – presumably hundreds of times – a type of confirmation bias sets in, either consciously or unconsciously. When large or even modest changes are introduced, they can be confusing, hard to process and disruptive to listeners. There is dissonance, even when the familiarity and repetition of a well-known song or LP delivers a certain level of comfort.

The 50th Anniversary reissue of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s Déjà Vu (1970) on Rhino Records includes the album’s original tracks, plus thirty-eight unreleased demos, outtakes, and alternate takes, spread over four CDs and one LP. (The deluxe edition has five LPs, at an everyday low price of $249.98.) All LPs are produced on 180-gram vinyl remastered by Chris Bellman, relying on tapes from the original 1969 sessions recorded at the famed Wally Heider Studios. The original vinyl release was engineered by Bill Halverson and mastered by Al Brown. In between those two releases, Classic Records in 2005 released another Déjà Vu reissue on 200-gram vinyl remastered by Bernie Grundman.

So, if you’re keeping score at home, the original Déjà Vu LP (1970) was mastered by Al Brown, followed by a Bernie Grundman vinyl reissue and then another by Chris Bellman. The Bellman and Grundman vinyl masters were cut on the same lathe and cutter head, though the sound of the two releases is quite different. How’s that possible? During the mastering process, an engineer can easily play with the EQ –  the amount of amplification at the low, medium and/or high ranges – and significantly affect an LP’s end-product sound.

With the 50^th reissue, each CSNY band member had input on the selection of tracks, outtakes, demos, etc., but no input on the mastering process. It’s also been reported that Neil Young yanked some bonus material featuring his voice from the set.

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young Deja Vu 50th anniversary edition.

David Crosby, who sold off his ownership rights to the band’s catalog to music majordomo Irving Azoff, said this about the 50 Anniversary release of Déjà vu: “I’m happy about it, but I don’t have a dog in that fight, really. I sold (my rights to) the piece.” Which begs the question: if an artist sells off his or her rights, does a new rightsholder have an obligation to remain true to an original recording, or is anything and everything fair game? Are there creative, moral and/or ethical considerations that come with third-party ownership?

Interestingly, with CSN’s debut album, Crosby, Stills & Nash (1969), all three vocals were recorded on a single track, not individually, thereby minimizing some EQ options in mixing and mastering. According to Nash, a goal with the first record was to “take three voices and turn them into one,” done naturally and without electronic manipulation. That wasn’t the case with Déjà Vu, as each band member’s vocals were recorded separately; though the album’s entire production often has been described as “chaotic.”

Jimmy Page, keeper of the Led Zeppelin flame, had this to say about his band’s reissues: “I have to (get involved). I couldn’t suffer from anything but the best possible reissues. It’s all done from the original 1/4-inch tape. It’s all analog sources.” He further added that he was troubled by the detail and nuance lost with MP3 compression.

And then there’s the mastering process, which introduces even more variables and subjectivity. Mastering is done to complete and finish the mix to a specific format, whether it’s LP, CD, SACD, Blu-ray, 5.1 surround sound and so on. When you add another set of ears to the process – the mastering engineer’s – the end-product sound can change even further.

In sum, I think the sound on most recent classic LP reissues that I’ve listened to is quite good. There’s perceptibly more clarity. CSNY’s 50th Anniversary reissue of Déjà Vu seems to have been done with great care and consideration. The Beatles remixes are also good, but given the archaic technology available with the band’s early recordings (less so with Abbey Road), there was the potential for Giles to really “stretch out” in remixing and remastering, which, of course, would have opened the door to even greater scrutiny of his work. In my opinion, Giles struck a nice balance.

If the trend on anniversary reissues continues, and each subsequent release only delivers marginal gain in content and/or quality, then that’s a bit disconcerting and potentially exploitative of purchasers. Of course, some fanatics may view any and all releases, at a minimum, as collectibles.

So what are your thoughts on some of these reissues: real value or sonic head fake?

Addendum: A reissue of George Harrison’s classic triple-LP All Things Must Pass (1970) was released a week or so ago. This 50th anniversary project was overseen by Harrison’s son Dhani. The LP’s original production was spearheaded by producer Phil Spector, who incorporated his famed Wall of Sound approach to the recording. For quite some time, George evidently believed the original album was overproduced, with way too much reverb. Dhani Harrison approached the remixing of these LPs with that concern in mind, in addition to adding a slew of bonus material. In my opinion, this reissue is a classic example of overreach and too much reinterpretation. The remix is a radical departure from the original 1970 release. Far too much of Spector’s Wall of Sound is stripped away in the remix, while George’s vocals throughout are way too hot. The remix lacks the depth of the album’s original release. I found it immensely dissatisfying.

A lot of people turned to binge watching during the pandemic lockdowns. Although I wasn’t binging, I did take the opportunity to check out a number of documentaries about bands, events, and people associated with the music industry. Almost all are available on DVDs from Netflix, and/or through streaming on Netflix or rental from Amazon Prime. Here are three that tell about record executives, engineer/producers, and artist managers, three that focus on studio musicians and backup singers, two that cover influential recording studios, one about The Beatles’ fan club manager, and a new one showcasing a series of huge concerts in Harlem’s Mt. Morris Park in 1969. All are highly recommended.

Tom Dowd & the Language of Music (DVD)

Tom Dowd (1925 – 2002) was a legendary engineer and producer for Atlantic Records from the late 1940s all the way into the 2000s. Prior to his career in recording, he studied nuclear physics, and was involved with the Manhattan Project while in his late teens. This is a fascinating look at one of the giants of music production. It seems that every artist with whom he worked had the utmost respect for him, and the list of artists is staggering, from John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie, and Ornette Coleman, through Aretha Franklin, Willie Nelson, Cream, Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Allman Brothers, Rod Stewart, and many more.

This is a great music documentary, but it appears to be currently unavailable in full for streaming or purchase (as new), although bits are viewable on YouTube. I saw it years ago, and I was later given the disc as a present.

Atlantic Records: The House That Ahmet Built (DVD)

Narrated by Bette Midler, this was part of the PBS series American Masters. From Ahmet Ertegun’s youth growing up in New York as the son of a Turkish diplomat, sneaking into jazz clubs, to reaching the heights of the recording industry, this is a fascinating story. Ahmet (along with his brother, Nesuhi) created an independent record label focusing on jazz and R&B artists in the 1940s. Their first big client was Ray Charles. Songwriting giants Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller played a significant part in the label’s success, along with Jerry Wexler and the aforementioned Tom Dowd as engineer/producer. As with Tom, it seems that all of the artists on the label had respect and love for Ahmet. He was also a co-founder of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. (I couldn’t find a trailer video for this one, but, trust me, it’s impressive.

Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon (DVD)

If you watch this, you’ll find that the description in the title of Mike Myers’s documentary about Shep Gordon’s career as a talent manager/agent is not hyperbole. The famous people attesting to his goodness as a human being include Michael Douglas, Steven Tyler (Aerosmith), Sharon Stone, Tom Arnold, Sylvester Stallone, Mick Fleetwood, and many others. The opening sequence of comments alone is really impressive.

Shep tells incredible stories about the rock and roll world, going back to meeting Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix when he first came to California as a young man. He just sort of fell into the business of managing acts (Jimi said to him, “you’re Jewish, aren’t you? You should be a manager.”) In addition to working with clients as varied as Alice Cooper, Groucho Marx, Teddy Pendergrass, Gipsy Kings, Anne Murray, Pink Floyd, and the Dalai Lama. He became a restaurant and liquor promoter later in life. With his help, Sammy Hagar (Cabo Wabo Tequila) and Willie Nelson (Old Whiskey River Bourbon) launched signature labels. He was also in the forefront of the celebrity chef movement, promoting Emeril Lagasse and Wolfgang Puck.

Gordon is living out his retirement in Hawaii, where he entertains visitors and neighbors (including former Warriors’ basketball coach Don Nelson). He also wrote a book about his life, They Call Me Supermensch. I came away from this film wishing he was in my life, and I’d bet that you would, too.

The Wrecking Crew (DVD/Amazon Prime rental)

By now, most of you have heard of this shifting conglomeration of LA session players. Once again, the list of records on which they played in the 1960s and 1970s is mind-blowing. From the “Wall of Sound” of Phil Spector’s productions through ”MacArthur Park” and an incredible number of other hits, the chances that you’ve never heard these players in action is almost non-existent. They played on albums by Frank Sinatra, the Monkees, the Byrds, the Mamas and the Papas, and the Beach Boys, among countless others. Several of the “members” went on to solo careers, including Mac Rebennack (Dr. John), Glen Campbell, Leon Russell, and Sonny Bono. Drummer Hal Blaine and guitarist Tommy Tedesco were mainstays of the group.

There are lots of interviews with the musicians themselves along with the stars for whom they played. Tommy Tedesco’s son Denny directed the film. (For more about this legendary group of musicians, check out WL Woodward’s article in Copper Issue 135.)

Standing in the Shadows of Motown (DVD/Amazon Prime rental)

Whether or not you are a fan of the Motown sound, this documentary, narrated by Andre Braugher, is an incredible look at another group of unsung (pardon the pun) musicians. Although it predates the documentary above, an alternate title for this one could have been The Detroit Wrecking Crew. It features the key players backing up the many hit groups that came out of Motown. They called themselves “The Funk Brothers.” It is said that they played on more Number One hits than the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Elvis Presley, and the Beach Boys combined!

Keyboardist Earl Van Dyke was a sort of ringleader for this collection of musicians, most of whom were recruited from the Detroit jazz and blues scene by Motown founder Berry Gordy. The rhythm section of bassist James Jamerson and drummer Benny Benjamin influenced players around the world. There are wonderful stories being told about the sessions, and featured throughout are tracks from a reunion concert with the surviving members, augmented by horns, backup singers, and guest vocalists (including Ben Harper, Bootsy Collins, Chaka Khan, Joan Osborne, Gerald Levert, and others).

20 Feet from Stardom (DVD/Amazon Prime rental)

Backup singers are the focus here, only a few of whom went on to solo success despite having world-class vocal chops. Among those featured are Darlene Love, Patti Austin, Claudia Lennear (“Brown Sugar”), Tata Vega, and Lisa Fischer. Merry Clayton, probably best known for her screaming background vocals on “Gimme Shelter,” tells an amazing story of how that performance came to be.

Darlene Love is probably the most famous of all, having sung many of producer Phil Spector’s hit recordings that were credited to The Crystals and others. Her trio, The Blossoms, did backing vocals for artists ranging from Buck Owens to Frank Sinatra to James Brown. They even took a turn “sounding white” on Bobby “Boris” Pickett’s “Monster Mash.” Interviews include commentary from the stars for whom they toiled, such as Bruce Springsteen, Sting, Mick Jagger, and others.

Muscle Shoals (DVD/Amazon Prime rental)

The most artistically filmed of all of these, Muscle Shoals relates the history of two recording studios (Fame and Muscle Shoals) in a little town in Alabama that went on to become destination points for major artists.

Engineer and producer Rick Hall founded Florence Alabama Music Enterprises with Billy Sherrill and Tom Stafford in 1959. When Hall took over in 1960, he moved the business to Muscle Shoals and shortened the name to FAME Studios (a most serendipitous acronym). Hall was driven to succeed, having overcome a dirt-poor upbringing and a period of homelessness. He assembled a studio band of young, local white musicians who had an uncanny knack for finding “greasy” grooves. More than a few Black artists who went there to record because of the sound were taken aback to see that the musicians who been responsible for the funky playing on tracks by Clarence Carter, Wilson Pickett, and others, were white.

Jerry Wexler (with engineer Tom Dowd) recorded Aretha Franklin’s first album for Atlantic Records there. Wexler later took the musicians (who became known as the “Swampers”) to New York, a move that eventually led to the band deserting FAME Studios to open their own, rival studio back in Muscle Shoals. They went on to great success, but Rick Hall just went ahead and found a new batch of players and continued to make hit records, earning a Producer of the Year award in 1971.

There are, of course, lots of artist interviews ranging from Keith Richards to Jimmy Cliff and others.

Sound City (DVD/Amazon Prime rental)

This one also ranks high on my list. Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters/Nirvana) produced and directed this look at the rise and fall of the Sound City recording studio. Although the Van Nuys (Southern California) facility was unassuming from the outside, and more than a little dumpy on the inside, there was magic being created. The list of major albums recorded at Sound City includes Neil Young’s After the Gold Rush, Tom Petty’s Damn the Torpedoes, Fleetwood Mac’s self-titled album, Cheap Trick’s Heaven Tonight, Nirvana’s Nevermind, and countless others.

Part of the film focuses on the custom Neve 8028 recording console (one of only four) that contributed to the sound of the studio. When the studio closed, Grohl bought the Neve and installed it in his own recording space. Although we don’t know what he paid for it (he has said he would have paid $1,000,000), the original invoice from almost 50 years ago was a not inconsequential $78,000.

Grohl does a great job telling the story. There are lots of interviews with artists and engineers, including one with Mick Fleetwood where he relates how Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks came to be in Fleetwood Mac. A good amount of recording session footage is included, as well.

Good Ol’ Freda (DVD/Amazon Prime rental)

I suppose, technically, this is not a music documentary – it’s about the woman who ran the Beatles’ fan club for ten years, but you needn’t be a Beatles fan to enjoy this one. It’s the story of Freda Kelly, who, as a teenager in the early 1960s, became involved with the band (never romantically). Her story, which she had kept to herself for decades, is amazing. She is a sweet and unassuming woman with an incredible recall – you will find yourself smiling along with her as she tells of life with the Fab Four.

Summer of Soul

This one’s showing in theaters and streaming on Hulu now. In 1969, the same year that Woodstock took place, there was a six-weekend concert festival in Harlem’s Mt. Morris Park that drew 50,000 fans each week. Each weekend had a different focus, from gospel, comedy, blues, Latin jazz, soul/pop, to jazz. Featured artists included Nina Simone, Stevie Wonder (who does an energetic drum solo), The Fifth Dimension, Sly and the Family Stone, Hugh Masekela, B.B. King, Gladys Knight & the Pips, David Ruffin, Mahalia Jackson, Moms Mabley, Ray Barretto, Abbey Lincoln, and many others.

It has been called the “Black Woodstock,” but it seems that very few people beyond the attendees were aware of it. The 3^rd Annual Harlem Culture Festival, as it was known, was professionally filmed, but the footage languished in storage for 50 years, until Ahmir Khalid Thompson (“Questlove” from Jimmy Fallon’s house band, the Roots) resurrected it. The sound and video are quite good. Archival footage from the turbulent time is interspersed with the concert clips.

I think you’ll find more than a few of these to be worth watching. I thoroughly enjoyed every one.

Part One, Part Two and Part Three of J.I. Agnew’s look at the Telefunken M15A tape machine ran in Issues 140, 141 and 142. His series on the M15A concludes here.

One of the few remaining users of the Telefunken M15A in a professional setting is Mike Papas, a mastering engineer at XL Productions (www.vinylrecordproduction.com) in Australia, who has put together a disk mastering system consisting of Neumann’s complete package of the 1970s including a VMS-70 lathe, a Neumann Disk Mastering Console and the MT-75 console with the Telefunken M15A preview head tape machine. The disk mastering console is the typical console you’d expect, with EQ and so on. The MT-75 is the Neumann furniture console for the Telefunken M15A chassis. A preview head tape machine is used for cutting records to disc. The preview head enables listening to what’s on the tape before the signal goes to the cutting lathe, enabling the pitch/depth control system to automatically adjust the pitch and groove depth according to whether the signal is louder or softer.

Not only does Mike cut lacquer master disks for vinyl record manufacturing, but he recently also set up his own electroplating laboratory, to process his lacquer cuts and create the metallic stampers that are needed to press the records. What follows is his story of how he got started in this industry and how he chose the Telefunken M15A as his mastering tape machine.

J.I. Agnew: How did you get into cutting records?

Mike Papas: A fascination with sound. The fact you can get full-frequency sound from scratching a groove into a disc fascinated me, so I took a job at the RCA Records plant [in Australia] during my holidays. Once I saw their Neumann disc mastering system I was hooked. I had started [working] with a mono Presto 6N, followed by a couple of older Neumann stereo lathes, and received training from some experienced disc-mastering engineers, so I felt I was ready to tackle the world. I just needed a professional disc mastering system that could equal what was already out there.

Mike Papas with his Telefunken AM15A preview head tape machine.

JIA: Why the Telefunken M15A tape machine as a source to cut from?

MP: I eventually bought RCA’s disc mastering system, which was a complete Neumann system – it’s what you [would get] when you asked Neumann to supply a fully-integrated plug and play system, and it included an M15 in Neumann’s MT75 console. Being the only M15 in Australia and totally unknown, it was sometimes frowned upon, but it never chewed a tape, missed a beat or failed to impress. [My] new studio is modeled on the finer German studios so it had to be an M15 again, except this time it’s an M15A with tape speeds of 15 and 30 ips. I think it’s important to offer 100-percent full analog cuts even though there isn’t a high demand at present.

JIA: Where did you find the preview-head M15A? There’s not many of these around!

MP: You’re quite right. I found it by coincidence in England. It had been converted to a regular tape recorder and was missing all the parts for preview, which were impossible to find. Our friends at GZ Media in the Czech Republic, who have a few M15 preview machines, came to the rescue and made the sliding tape delay bar. The preview head block was found in Germany and the missing [electronics] cards were found in Holland. It took two years to find all these parts to restore the preview function [of this machine].

JIA: Is there a story behind your Neumann lathe?

This VMS70 was owned by CBS Sony Australia, where it cut the cream of the CBS and Warner Music catalogs up until 1991. (Their second disc mastering room had a Scully/Westrex system). It sat in a glass display case in the foyer of the Sony CD factory for 27 years as part of their museum of antiquated machinery. They wouldn’t sell it, so I bought one from Europe. Soon after, Sony closed the CD factory and offered us the lathe. I liked its history and the fact it was a one-owner machine that hadn’t been tampered with, so I couldn’t say no. It needed a lot of work after sitting idle, and our engineer, who has decades of experience with every Neumann lathe from VMS66 up to VMS82, still spent about forty days servicing it and it’s absolutely beautiful.

The preview-head version M15A in the Neumann MT-75 console.

JIA: How did you decide to also do the record plating in-house?

MP: It’s great to cut lacquers and send them off to the plating shop but as you can’t play a master lacquer disc, you can’t know what you’re sending out. Having the technical knowhow from way back, it was a no-brainer for us to do plating and [also have the ability to] service the increasing number of new pressing plants that don’t have this facility. By playing the mothers, we can be certain that the subsequent stampers we’re sending to our customers are perfect.

As you know, the freshly cut lacquer disc has a spring-back effect. Not only is lacquer removed from the disc [when cut] to form the groove, but the lateral motion of the cutting stylus exerts sideways pressure on the lacquer, which just wants to spring back to where it came from, altering the geometry of the groove. The lacquer is [actually] in motion from the time it’s cut, so it’s advantageous to plate it immediately. A maximum of 72 hours is recommended, but we generally do it within a few hours and we like the fact the lacquers don’t have to be transported anywhere and subjected to heat.

Mike Papas in his Mastering Studio with a Neumann VMS-70 lathe, transfer console and preview head tape machine.

JIA: What are the challenges in plating?

MP: We have what are probably the most advanced plating systems, which are PLC (programmable logic controller) controlled so everything is monitored and kept within a very strict process window, which alleviates the usual challenges. The systems are smart enough to send you a text message when the stampers are done or the filters need changing, but they won’t actually change the filters (the filters are for the electrolyte solution in the galvanic baths) for you which is an unpleasant and very messy business. Motivating yourself to do that is sometimes the biggest challenge!

An unexpected challenge was to source a good stamper-centering machine capable of a super low 10-20 micrometers of eccentricity. While this low eccentricity is not necessary for records and it  takes a few extra seconds [to perform the process], we do it because we can, and I don’t like the off-center records we see today. EMI Records’ specified tolerance for eccentricity was 50.4 micrometers (the width of an unmodulated groove) so anything less than that is no doubt better.

[Author’s note.: Once a lacquer master disk is electroplated, it is discarded, and the disk’s center, as produced by the lathe, is lost. The stampers need to be centered again, by optical means, and a new hole punched in the middle, larger than the hole on the final record, to allow the stamper to be securely clamped onto the molds of the record press. Eccentricity on the final product causes a once-around change in speed and is usually caused by inadequate stamper centering.]

Record stamper centering equipment.

JIA: You are currently handling all the manufacturing stages of turning a master tape into a stamper. What’s next?

MP: Like anything in life, nobody knows what’s next. We’ll just keep doing what we love doing and servicing the ever-increasing number of new pressing plants. We plan to double our plating capacity in the next twelve months and go from there.

Header image: Mike Papas holding a stamper made from one of his lacquer master cuts.

The number of successful bands that have lasted at least twenty years and never changed personnel is very small. Garbage is one of them. The band is also rare for originating out of the vision of producers who also happened to be musicians, and not the other way around.

Butch Vig, Duke Erickson, and Steve Marker had all been in bands previously, but in 1993 they were making their living as producers and engineers in Madison, Wisconsin’s burgeoning indie rock scene. With Vig on drums and lead vocals, Erickson on guitar, bass, and keyboards, and Marker on guitar and keyboards, they were almost happy with the sound their new group was making. It was just the vocals that weren’t working. Then they heard the Scotswoman Shirley Manson singing with her band, Angelfish, and they knew she had what they lacked. She joined Garbage in 1994.

After floating a test single, “Vow,” on the Mushroom UK label, their debut Garbage (1995) made it onto the Billboard 200, released in the US on Almo Sounds. In the studio, the band went out of its way to make the tracks seem crafted, not live. They took techniques from hip-hop and techno as well as the old Motown and Phil Spector “wall of sound” philosophy to create a thickly layered sonic world. Besides “Vow,” the album led to hits with “Queer” and “Stupid Girl,” the latter co-written and Joe Strummer and Mick Jones of The Clash.

A special edition released only in Japan included an exclusive track called “Subhuman.” It provides a good demonstration of both the amalgam of textures – a combination of new acoustic and digital sounds with integrated samples – as well as the punk-inspired, grrrl-rock attitude present in Manson’s voice.

Unlike many artists, Garbage has never been one to pump out albums annually. They didn’t begin recording Version 2.0 until 1997; it was released the following year. As they had since their formation, they did most of the studio work at Smart Studio in Madison, which they equipped with a 48-track digital system and state-of-the-art Pro Tools. Analog was just not their scene, as the album title implies.

Originally called Sad Alcoholic Clowns, this record doubled down on the sonic style of their debut, and Manson’s lyrics were more morose and biting than ever. Vig contributed some interesting percussion sounds by playing his drum kit in an abandoned factory. You can hear it on the single “I Think I’m Paranoid” as well as the album-only track “Hammering in My Head,” with its blood-pumping beat, owing as much to disco as to The Chemical Brothers.

Despite coming out only a few weeks after 9/11, Beautiful Garbage (2001) did reasonably well on the charts. One of its most innovative aspects is external to the recording and producing: Manson wrote a blog during the year it took to create the tracks, keeping the fans up to speed on the process. While posting frequent video updates on Instagram or TikTok is a standard activity for artists now, at the time this was very rare. It showed both an appreciation for the fan base and a prescient understanding of the power of the internet for making promotion seem personal.

The album title refers to the band’s attempt at a new sensibility, more melody-based, and with inspiration from the harmonies and arrangements of girl groups in the 1960s. The instrumental texture is just as dense but somehow less intense than on the previous two albums, with the drum and guitar parts allowing for breathing space. While the record has a more fluid sound, that is not to say there was less manipulation going on in Pro Tools and other tech. For example, an EBow is drawn across the strings of Erickson’s Les Paul guitar on “So Like a Rose.” It’s impossible not to wonder if Radiohead had its opening chordal rhythm in mind when they recorded their 2007 song “House of Cards.”

Now signed with Geffen Records, Garbage released Bleed Like Me in 2005. This one took almost two years to make while the band dealt with some personality conflicts and figured out what it was going for with this new project. Eventually, they settled on a move away from electronica and toward a standard rock quartet sound. They also sought out some help with production on the track “Bad Boyfriend,” turning to John King, famed as half of the Dust Brothers team that worked with the Beastie Boys. Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl also played drums on that track. Another successful single was “Why Do You Love Me.”

Vig, who was still the primary producer, decided to try more of a live, raw sound, with less digital manipulation. You can hear this approach on the album closer, “Happy Home,” which starts with a grunge-inspired repeating, repressed eighth note pattern but explodes at the chorus. The extreme contrast feels real and organic.

It was another seven years before Not Your Kind of People (2012) was released on the band’s own label. They had cut the tour for Bleed Like Me short; everyone was ready to stop. Manson wanted to dip her toe into acting (she landed a recurring role on the Fox series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles). Vig was much in demand as a producer for major groups like Foo Fighters and Green Day. Erickson, also a producer, focused on more arcane acts and got involved in running the British label Lo-Max. Markey spent his time writing film scores.

While the top-selling singles were “Blood for Poppies” and “Battle in Me,” one of the album’s most interesting songs is “Sugar.” The syncopated pattern in the rhythm makes the 4/4 meter break down as 1-2-3 1-2-3 1-2, giving an illusion of an exotic time signature. It also marks a return of the electronica and wall-of-sound approach from the early two albums. The melody is limited, so the song’s development happens in the arrangement and production. There’s a lot of Siouxsie and the Banshees in this song.

Strange Little Birds came out in 2016. It’s theme, as detailed in the promotional material, was hardly new to the band: darkness. Not surprisingly, Manson was the engine driving that theme. At the same time, the production doubled down on the wall-of-sound environment, allowing for “darkness” to coalesce into a planetary atmosphere.

It’s not an easy listen, but it’s worth the effort to focus on the lyrics as well as the overwhelming texture on songs like “Blackout.” A nod is due to their longtime mixer, Billy Bush, for the excellent sound.

Kudos to any artist who managed to record and release a work in these pandemic times. But the fact is that much of the material on No Gods No Masters (2021) was already baking in the musical oven for a few years. All the primary recording was finished just before COVID-19 restrictions set it.

The album’s lyric focus is on unpleasant social realities of all stripes, from racism and misogyny to drug abuse; while commentary on society certainly crops up on their earlier songs, this is the first time it became an overarching theme. The best of those songs is the most personal. Munson wrote “This City Will Kill You” about her time in Los Angeles, its ironic mode intensified by the lush arrangement.

You never know when Garbage will have something new to contribute, but it seems a safe bet that more of their songs will eventually show up. Slow and steady truly does win the race.

Header image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Paul Anderson.

In Issue 117 I wrote a feature about turntable manufacturer SOTA Sound Inventions, focusing on their history and philosophy as well as their current company direction and product line. After the article was published I was invited to review one of their turntables. I chose their Escape, as it is one of their newest models and promised a high price-to-performance ratio. Part of SOTA’s Urban Series, the Escape starts at $1,550 for a turntable with a Rega RB220 tonearm, Condor Power Supply Unit (PSU) and a 1-inch acrylic platter. The sample I tested had several upgrades, notably the Rega RB303 tonearm, a thicker acrylic platter and the Roadrunner speed control unit, for a total of $2,050. A pre-installed Ortofon 2M Blue cartridge brought the package price to $2,289.

The turntable arrived in a medium-sized box and was very carefully packaged. Looking at the component parts, it seemed as if assembly would be complicated, but it was not. Three spiked feet screw into the phenolic resin plinth and the spikes are placed on three (included) ceramic pads to avoid damaging furniture, and to provide further isolation from vibration. The pads are concave so the points naturally find the center and stay in place. The platter slipped firmly over the bearing, which was of very high quality. The Condor PSU and Roadrunner attach to connections on the back of the turntable with heavy cables, and the Condor PSU and Roadrunner connect to each other. If you plan on buying the Roadrunner I recommend you purchase it when you order the turntable, so SOTA can install everything for you and deliver the turntable ready-to-go. Without the platter, the system is lightweight and has a small footprint, but once placed on a stand it feels solid and sturdy and proved to be quite resistant to footfalls.

For the review system I used Polk Audio Legend L100 and Ohm Walsh Tall 5000 speakers, and a Cambridge Audio Azur 851W power amplifier and Azur 851E preamplifier. The phono preamplifier was a Music Hall PA15.3, a fully-discrete phono preamplifier I have had great success with and which was price-appropriate for this turntable and cartridge combination.

I usually wait 10 or 20 hours before forming impressions about the sound of turntables and phono cartridges, given the need for break-in and fine tuning before they sound their best. However, the SOTA system impressed from the very start and needed very little in the way of adjustment once it was up and running, a testament to the fine job done by SOTA prior to shipping.

SOTA’s Escape website product page makes note of an “astonishing soundstage,” and that was one of the things that first captured my attention. Few turntables I have used delivered the huge, wide, and detailed soundstage that I heard, with such a palpable sense of space. Listening to studio-recorded material such as the Discovery album by the Electric Light Orchestra, I really got a sense of the producer’s intent as the instruments and music materialized in space, conveying the message of the music. The strings at the beginning of “The Diary of Horace Wimp” had great sheen and transparency, and the driving percussion on “Don’t Bring Me Down” had outstanding definition and depth, all from a relatively modest cartridge. Wind instruments shined as well, as I played some of my old Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass LPs, with trumpet notes showing a great deal of tonal color and fullness that made the instruments seem as if they were present in the room. The turntable had a smooth, wide tonal range that was perfectly balanced from top to bottom, and dynamics were impressively strong, resembling a direct drive turntable in that regard. The hefty platter likely played a role in this.

I collect soundtracks, and one of my favorites is from the 1960 film Spartacus, an outstanding epic of the time with a masterpiece of a soundtrack by Alex North. As I noted in my review of the London “Decca” cartridges in Issue 135, the turntable excels at providing insight into the producer’s and composer’s intentions, and does a fine job of conveying emotion as well. “Love Theme” from the Spartacus album was reproduced with both the romance and a hint of sadness suggested by the melody, with a lovely ebb and flow to the music that was never distracting. An important reason for this is due to the pitch-perfect speed control of the Eclipse Roadrunner paired with the Condor PSU.

The Roadrunner tachometer synchronizes with the Condor PSU to monitor and control the Escape’s platter speed, providing correction down to 1/1,000 of an RPM. Once the platter is rotating at speed, the Roadrunner and Condor are highly effective at keeping the speed stable, and I rarely saw it move much off of 33.33x, with only the last digit (one thousandths) showing any variation. The Eclipse Roadrunner sells for $350 on its own and if you order it with your Escape turntable, SOTA will pre-install it for you, a convenience that makes it worth ordering at the same time. The Roadrunner undoubtedly contributed to the Escape’s fine sound, with pitch-perfect tones and a driving beat that had my toes tapping to the music.

While the starter Escape package for $1,550 represents good value and an excellent platform to build on, the performance of the unit I tested was so stellar that I recommend getting the $2,289 package and being done with it. The Ortofon 2M Blue has never sounded better in my listening room, and even with the modest Music Hall phono preamp the system was competitive with my personal system of a $1,699 Technics SL-1200GR turntable, $649 LP Gear The Vessel R3SM cartridge and $1,399 Graham Slee Accession phono preamp, which together cost almost $3,800.

Despite the large difference in cost I could not choose one as being clearly better, and only by adding the $1,600 London Super Gold cartridge to the Technics did I consider the sound to be clearly superior – though this brought the system price up to almost twice that of the SOTA package, and an exotic cartridge like the London changes the equation to the point where comparisons are meaningless. The SOTA Escape clearly punches above its weight, and is sure to find a lot of friends among belt-drive turntable aficionados. SOTA’s lifetime trade-in program promises lasting value as well.

How much did I like the SOTA Escape package I reviewed? I liked it so much that I did not want to let it go, and I purchased the review sample rather than send it back. It now graces my listening room and I am continuing to enjoy the wide, expansive soundstage and toe-tapping rhythm every day.

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

Header image by Don Lindich.

First, a note: Jay Jay’s book, Twisted Business: Lessons From My Life In Rock ‘n’ Roll will be out on September 21 on RosettaBooks. You can hear his podcast, The Jay Jay French Connection: Beyond the Music on Spotify, Apple Music and the PodcastOne channel.

Recently I was driving out to the Hamptons and got stuck in traffic on the Long Island Expressway. This nightmare, which I’m sure many of you have experienced, was referred to by Dan Ingram, former drive time jock on WABC, of the most famous AM stations in the US, as the Long Island Distressway.

This, however, gave me the opportunity to FM station-hop in my rental car.

The station that came in best was the venerable FM music station WBAB.

When Twisted Sister was a bar band in the mid-1970s to early ’80s, both WPLJ and WBAB used to compete with each other to promote many of our local shows. Both stations played pretty much the same AOR (album-oriented rock).

WPLJ disappeared as a rock station years ago but WBAB is still going strong. While WBAB plays rock, it plays very specific rock – classic rock. Its tagline is, “Long Island’s Only Classic Rock Station.”

I have friends at WBAB and so I decided to listen. The drive out took nearly five hours. (The drive back to Manhattan took about two and a half hours because I left very early in the morning.)

Seven hours of listening to WBAB gave me some insight as to the classic rock radio format – and left me with some burning questions. The biggest was, when you consider the Mount Rushmore of bands played on classic rock radio – the Stones, Floyd, Who, Zep, Queen, AC/DC, Police, Lynyrd Skynyrd – how come I didn’t hear any Beatles, without whom none of this music IMHO would have ever been created?

Where does the era of classic rock begin? Where does it end? Who makes the cut and why? What is and isn’t classic rock?

I needed to know, so I contacted one of WBAB’s most well-known jocks, Joe Rock, who is also a very close friend. Here are some excerpts from our interview, with more to come in Copper later.

John French: For starters, please give me some history of the evolution of the format known as classic rock.

Joe Rock: There were two stations that I listened to growing up, WBAB-FM and WNEW-FM. While I was in high school, it was BAB more than WNEW. Post-high school, it was WNEW more than BAB. Then, WNEW deteriorated and went away [as a rock station].

JF: When did the idea of classic rock become more than just an idea, and as a specific marketing concept?

JR: I’d have to say post-1980.

JF: When did it become, “This is now going to be called classic rock and it’s going to be a broadcast form?”

JR: That’s got to be a little bit more mid to late ’80s.

JF: Was there a day, a month, where they said, “This is it. We’re the new classic rock,” or something like that?

JR: This is where you can hate me when I say this. I’m significantly younger than you.

JF: Ouch! Okay, thank you, Joe Rock. Now I’m going to go find somebody I can actually talk to and relate to.

JR: (Laughter) I graduated from high school in 1984. So, I wasn’t working in the industry yet. I wasn’t paying attention to those kind of things. The best way to explain it is that a lot of what we’re going to talk about is the difference between genre and format, because they are two completely different things. To give you an example, Mötley Crüe. When Mötley Crüe came out in the ’80s, they were a metal band. Today, they are a classic rock band, because times have changed. That’s where the shift happened, in the ensuing years. I probably say that by the time Dr. Feelgood, which was the Crüe’s best album, was released in 1989, that’s when [stations were] starting to become classic rock, [rather than] being rock stations, or AOR [album-oriented rock stations]. It stopped being, “oh, we’re going to play all these album cuts,” to “no, we’re going to be like pop stations play the hits.”

JF: How do classic rock stations define classic rock?

JR: It’s got to be at least 20 years old. Then in some ways it’s subjective. “Okay, it’s 20 years old, but does it fit the station?” Part of that is going to depend on where you’re located in the country.

JF: So, for example, a band like Sevendust is 25 years old, but they don’t fit the description, correct?

JR: Absolutely not.

JF: Okay. Does Korn fit the description?

JR: No.

JF: Do any of the bands that are considered nu metal that are older than 20 years old fit the description?

JR: Not at all.

JF: Tool? Marilyn Manson?

JR: Nope.

JF: All right, then, what is classic rock about…would you say then that the Ozzfest bands don’t fit the description?

JR: It’s funny, because the majority of the bands who played Ozzfest do not, but Ozzy [Osbourne] absolutely does.

JF: And Black Sabbath?

JR: Black Sabbath, yes.

JF: Deep Purple?

JR: Deep Purple, yes.

JF: Okay, so here’s where it gets really interesting, because the format leaps over some of the grandfathers, in a way. Would it be safe to say that the songs you play from those bands, however, are much later on in their careers?

JR: Well, with Deep Purple, it’s the enduring [1972] hit, “Smoke On The Water.”

JF: Which is one of the great guitar tracks of all time.

Well, let me now ask the most loaded question in the world. If the Beatles were the beginning, the middle and the end of everything, without the Beatles, none of this would happened. None of this, right? Without the Beatles, probably you and I wouldn’t be talking about this kind of music. Would that be a fair statement to make?

JR: I’ll go with that. Yeah, absolutely.

JF: Okay; then how come the Beatles aren’t played on classic rock radio?

JR:  It’s not that they’re not played. But it probably begins and ends at Come “Together.”

JF: What about “Helter Skelter?”

JR: “Helter Skelter,” no.

JF: But that’s a heavy, isn’t it? That’s one of their heavier rock songs.

JR: It gets so weird to try and explain, because so many people try to understand [classic rock programming] in terms of the music, and it’s not strictly that. This [might help it] make sense [to you]: our demographic does not change, but our listeners get younger.

JF: Does that mean that even though they’re younger, they want to hear the same 20 songs as…

JR: Well, first of all, [we don’t play just] 20 [songs].

JF:  If I ask people, “What do you think is classic rock?” they’ll go, “‘Stairway to Heaven,’ Lynyrd Skynyrd, Who’s Next, ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again.'” They’ll name four songs, and they’ll go, “that’s all you hear.” Now, we know it’s not all you hear. However, you will admit that there is a core group of songs that do represent what is considered the classic rock bullseye. Would that be fair to say?

JR: Absolutely.

JF: Okay. What would those songs be?

JR: Well, “Stairway to Heaven” is obvious. We had a feature on the radio station for a while called “The Perfect Lunch Hour.” Listeners would write in [with] a list of 20-something songs, and we’d play their requests for the hour. Every single lunchtime request we got had two songs on every single list.

JF: Let me guess. “Stairway to Heaven” is one, and “Free Bird’s” the other.

JR: Yes.

It’s tough, because it’s like, I’ve played those songs a million times. [But] because people want to hear them I’ve found a way to [always] listen for something different That’s how I’m able to continue. Look, as a DJ, you’re under the same [constraints] as [being in a] band. Can you imagine, as a member of Twisted Sister, going out and doing a show where you don’t play “We’re Not Gonna Take It?”

JF: No. To be fair, to be absolutely fair, of course, you have to give the people what they want. You have no choice.

JR: We do play the Kinks [who have an album called Give the People What They Want].

JF: By the way, the most-played song in the Twisted Sister canon is “Under the Blade,” okay? Because it goes back way longer than “We’re Not Gonna Take It.” We’ve played it every single show since Dee wrote that song, except one night somewhere in Europe, and the only reason why we didn’t play it that night was I looked at Dee and I said, “man, what I wouldn’t give for you to not put that on the set list.” He goes, “I do it for you,” and I said, “What do you mean?” “Because that’s your signature song. I thought if I didn’t put it in, you’d kill me.” I said, “You’re doing it for me? I f*cking hate that song. I can’t take it anymore.” He said, “All right, I won’t put it in tonight,” which was kind of funny.

So, if you play a Beatles song you’ll play “Come Together.” Ironically enough, that is their number two Spotify song around the world. It makes sense for you to play the song, because you’re ratings-oriented.

No one doesn’t love “Come Together.” Do listeners like the Aerosmith version more than the Beatles version?

JR: I feel like there’s more attraction to the Beatles version than the Aerosmith version. [But people] remember the [song from the] movie [Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band] that the Aerosmith version was from.

JF: I consider the Mount Rushmore of rock to be the Beatles, Stones, the Who, Zep, Floyd, Queen, Black Sabbath, AC/DC. Call me crazy. We could kind of agree for the time being on that?

JR: Yeah.

JR: Okay, the Beatles have one song. How many songs do the Stones have represented on classic rock?

JR: I give the Stones somewhere between five and eight. It goes as far back as 1968, “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” [and] would be as new as “Start Me Up,” which was 1981. “Sympathy for the Devil” shows up from time to time.

We want to play what people hear, so we ask people to let us know what they think. One of the things you can do on our radio station is listen to us on our app, and you can vote up or down on the songs that we play. And we pay attention, so if you tell us you’re tired of the song, we’re going to stop playing it. So songs come and go from the playlist. It doesn’t stay the same all the time.

JF: But “Start Me Up” is the most recent song by the Stones?

JR: Yeah.

JF: Which is ’81, which is 40 years ago. Okay.

JR: Yeah, well, I made you feel older before, you just made me feel old.

JF: But I’ll be the first one to say it that they haven’t made a good record since that album.

JR: Maybe not a full album, but I wouldn’t say that necessarily.

JF: Well, you can get a good song here and there, but when you talk golden age of the Rolling Stones to me, you’re talking about Beggar’s Banquet, you’re talking about Let It Bleed, you’re talking about Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out! You’re talking about Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main St. That’s what you’re talking about with the Stones. Their golden age.

JF: I compared them to the Beatles’ golden age in a Copper article (Issue 117).

If you look at the Beatles and you go, “Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt. Pepper, the White Album, Abbey Road,” and you put those against the five Stones’ albums, as great as the five Stones albums are, the Beatles crush all competition.

How many Who songs do you play?

JR: Three or four. The oldest is probably “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” That’s ’71.

JF: Wow. That’s bizarre to me. You don’t play, and you won’t play anything from Tommy, and you don’t play “I Can’t Explain” or “My Generation?”

JR: “My Generation” pops in and out from time to time, but nowhere near as often as some of the others.

JF: All right, so Floyd. How many Pink Floyd songs do you play?

JR: Oh, my god.

We play a lot because…well, we’re playing stuff from The Wall. We do play stuff from The Dark Side of the Moon. That’s really the majority of where all the Floyd stuff comes from. [We also play] “Wish You Were Here.”

JF: You’ll play “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” probably somewhere in there.

JR: No. In the 20 years I’ve been in radio, we probably haven’t played it in the last 18.

JF: Wow, interesting. Yet, you get a lot of requests for Floyd, though, right?

JR: Oh, absolutely. But, okay, so this is what you have to understand. I was talking about it before. Our demographic remains the same, but our listeners got younger. We’re aiming for people who are 25 to 54. That’s the majority of the people who listen to radio stations. It’s not that there are no people outside of the demographic who listen to it, but that’s essentially who [the listeners are].

It’s pretty evenly split between men and women. Now, you look at people between 25 and 54, the albums that they know the most are Dark Side and The Wall. They don’t know the other albums.

JF: All right, what is the earliest-year recording of any band you play?

JR:  1968. “Born to Be Wild,” Steppenwolf.

JF: Okay, so you play songs from 1968 to 20 years ago. Then, that pretty much ends your classic rock time frame.

JR: Yep.

To be continued.

Header image: Robert Plant and Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, 1977. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Jim Summaria.

The Middle Ages lasted from the fall of Rome (c. 500) to the start of the Renaissance (c. 1400 – 1500). It’s a span also referred to as the medieval period or Dark Ages – an age that brings to mind images of knights in shiny armor, castles, and damsels in distress. [1] The Dark Ages were known for widespread poverty, famine, plague, superstition, and social oppression, but are now looked back on as an active time that also included economic expansion, urban growth, the emergence of national identities, the Crusades, Gothic art and architecture, and the birth of the university.

There were positive developments in music, too, from monophonic chants to the beginnings of  polyphony. The first music we have any documentation for comes from this period and some modern composers have looked back to the Middle Ages and Renaissance as sources for their own compositions. Here’s a sampling of medieval music from several countries as well as two modern approaches to these early compositions.

Hymns of Kassiani/“Hymn of Kassiani”/Cappella Romana (Cappella Records/Naxos SACD) Kassiani (aka Kassia c. 810 – c. 867) was a 9^th century nun, poet, and hymnist generally thought of as the first woman composer. She was certainly not a helpless damsel in distress. Born into a wealthy family associated with the imperial court in the Byzantine Empire of Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey) she became famous partly because of her popular composition known as “The Hymn of Kassiana” and partly because of her supposed encounter with the emperor Theophilus:

“The emperor is said to have met Kassia as a potential bride. He said to the young Kassia: ‘Through a woman came forth the baser things’ (referring to the Biblical story of Eve eating the forbidden fruit). To which she replied, almost certainly with a steely glint in her eye: ‘And through a woman came forth the better things,’ referring to Christ’s mother, the Virgin Mary…

She did not marry him. Instead she became a nun and wrote some of the most haunting music of all time.” [2]

The Cappella Romana, a leading ensemble in the field of medieval Byzantine chant, performs Kassia’s hymn in a traditional manner. The music is usually sung by an accompanied soloist but also performed by choirs singing in unison supported by a Byzantine vocal bass drone. Kassia’s melodies closely follow the rhythms of the text, and motifs are often used to mirror the words. The hymn is attractive and melodic but also has occasional resolutions and chromatic changes that wouldn’t be out of place in some modern choral music.

There are several examples of the composer’s music on the disc that haven’t been recorded before, all impeccably sung. The sound is excellent in the standard CD format and even better for those who can take advantage of the SACD layer. The production quality is outstanding, including texts that are provided in Greek and English. A very appealing and welcome new release…the first in a planned series to record all of Kassia’s surviving works.

Hildegard von Bingen: Symphoniae/“O quam mirabilis”/Sequentia (BMG CD)

Hildegard von Bingen (1098 – 1179) was another woman who would never be considered a damsel in distress. A well-known German saint, she is now recognized as a New Age guru, an early feminist, composer, writer, and visionary celebrated not only for her music but for her experimental contributions to holistic medicine and nutrition. (Her name has also inspired the creation of contemporary products like Hildegard bread and Hildegard’s naturopathic moisturizers and face creams.)

In the 1150s Hildegard gathered her songs into a lyrical cycle called the Symphony of the harmony of heavenly revelations. “O quam mirabilis,” from that cycle, is her depiction of life’s central miracle: When God looked at the beauty of man (referring to both males and females), he knew he could not create anything greater. Hildegard’s music is important because her melodies were freer, more wide-ranging and elaborate than those used by her contemporaries and she gave plainsong greater expression through the use of long, spiraling melismas [3] and soaring melodies. [4]

Maybe not be the best choice for Karaoke night, but ideal music for relaxing while eating Hildegard bread.

Love’s Illusion: Music from the Montpellier Codex 13th-Century/“Amours, dont je sui”/The Anonymous 4 (Harmonia Mundi CD) For 30 years the critically acclaimed female quartet Anonymous 4 (established in 1986) specialized in singing early music. Every album these four women recorded treated listeners to little-known medieval repertoire, with superb performances and musicianship presented in superior sound by Harmonia Mundi.

Love’s Illusion focuses on courtly love texts from the Montpellier Codex, the richest single source of 13^th century French polyphony. The Codex spans the entire century and contains polyphonic works in all the major forms of its era, especially motets. [5] From the extensive literature of fin amours [6] “there emerge two inviolable precepts: first, true love may exist only outside of marriage and, second, a man must subject himself totally to the will of his beloved, whether her requests seem rational or not. A woman’s physical perfection…was an outward symbol of her inner goodness, for which a man yearned and suffered, to the point of death…[However] the romantic love expressed in the literature of fin amours was probably little more than a clever illusion; the [misogynistic] reality of day-to-day life remained unchanged.” [7]

“Amours, dont je sui” is a double motet where each of the two upper voices has its own text. The following translation is from from the start of “Amours…” and reflects the ideal of courtly love:

“Love, who holds me captive,
makes me sing.
I must be gay
and conduct myself joyfully,
for the one whom I most love and desire
deigns to call me sweetheart.
I want to serve and honor her
with a true heart, without deception,
all my life long.

On Yoolis Night: Medieval Carols & Motets/“Ther is no rose of swych vertu”/The Anonymous 4 (Harmonia Mundi CD) The Anonymous 4 return in a program of carols, plainchant, songs, and motets for Christmas using English sources from the 13^th through the 15^th centuries. These works refer to all aspects of the Christmas story and its many related legends, and “express a range of responses to these marvels: mirth and joy, wonder and praise, and even theological exegesis. But the thread that ties this music together is a striving toward something out of the ordinary, a special sound or gesture, reserved for this most wonderful time.” [8]

Most of the carols on this disc date from the early 15^th century and were written for two or three voices. They follow a basic pattern of refrain alternating with a number of verses but are still varied and expressive. The two-voice sections sometimes incorporate fauxbourdon – an improvisatory technique where a third voice is added between the two written outer voices to create a richer harmony.

Officium/“Parce mihi Domine”/The Hilliard Ensemble, vocals with Jan Garbarek, saxopohone (ECM CD) The combination of medieval/Renaissance vocal music and saxophone seems like an odd concept but is surprisingly successful. Garbarek’s instrument provides musical commentary as it weaves through the voices and breaks through any predispositions caused by time and style. Words like spacious, ancient, primeval, and spiritual come to mind and this distinctive style can be haunting.

John Potter of the all-male Hilliard Ensemble makes a connection between modern jazz improvisation and the earliest music. He explains that ancient songs had lives of their own and each monastery had its own living tradition: “There was no central authority to call upon, just the experience and skills of the singers; every performance was the first one.” As for adding a saxophone to early music, “What is this music? We don’t have a name for it…When jazz began, at the beginning of this century, it had no name; nor did polyphony when it began around a thousand years earlier. These two nameless historical moments were points of departure for two of the most fundamental ideas in Western music: improvisation and composition. The origins of the performances on this record, which are neither wholly composed nor completely improvised, are to be found in those same forces that awoke a thousand years apart from each other.”

Although the YouTube selection is from a concert, performances by the same artists can be found on ECM’s Officium. The CD has three different versions of Spanish composer Christóbal de Morales’ early 16^th century “Parce mihi Domine”: the original version for acapella vocal ensemble and two performances for ensemble with saxophone.

Carmina Burana Vol. 1/“Tempus est iocundum”/New London Consort (L’Oiseau-Lyre/Decca CD) This isn’t the famous Carl Orff piece but the early text and music Orff based his composition on. The original manuscript, compiled in Bavaria during the first half of the 13^th century, contains the most important and comprehensive collection of medieval Latin lyric poetry we know of. There are over 200 pieces organized by subjects like moralizing and satirical songs, love songs, and eating, drinking, and gambling songs. The codex draws upon several preexisting sources, resulting in a collection with moral and didactic annotations similar in form to various moralizing encyclopedias of the Middle Ages. Scholarly and artistic poems written by successful clerics are found side by side with lusty verses generally attributed to poorer clerks and itinerant scholars who wandered from one patron and university to another.

The Carmina Burana is an uninhibited celebration of life’s pleasures including sensuality and the physical excitement of love. You might want to listen to the original version of “Tempus est iocundum” first, then compare it to Orff’s interpretation.

“Tempus est iocundum” from Carmina Burana (original)

“Tempus est iocundum” followed by “Dulcissima” (Orff) – stay tuned for a slightly blurred but outstanding and clear-sounding 1989 videotaped performance of Orff’s complete work (Seiji Ozawa conducting the Berlin Philharmonic with soloists Kathleen Battle and Thomas Allen).

[1] There were many tales of knights saving damsels in distress, but there is little if any evidence of anything like that having actually occurred.

[2] Lizzie Davis, “Listen to the music of the first female composer: Kassia a ninth-century Byzantine abbess,” Classic FM (March 8, 2018).

[3] A group of notes sung to one syllable of text.

[4] For more about Hildegard see Anne E. Johnson’s “Hildegard of Bingen” (Issue 98) and my own article about “Women Composers of Early Music” (Issue 114).

[5] Polyphonic choral compositions on a sacred text usually without instrumental accompaniment.

[6] The 13^th century gentle spirit of fin amours in northern France is found in thousands of trouvere love lyrics. The idiomatic expressions of fin amours poets and the musical style of the trouveres (northern French lyric poets/musicians influenced by the original southern troubadours) had a major influence on the most important polyphonic genre of the 13^th century: the motet.

[7] Susan Hellauer, Anonymous 4 performer

[8] Susan Hellauer

Header image: Officium album cover by Jan Garbarek and the Hilliard Ensemble.

In issue 141 and Issue 142 Ken wrote about his late 1960s relocation from New York to California. The story continues here.

Monday just before noon I park my bike at 8709 Santa Monica Blvd. directly in front of the Music Revolution, the record store where I’d just been hired. Standing there in the bright light of midday, I close my eyes and tilt my face up toward the sun. Just taking a moment.

A few seconds later owner Les Carter and his wife Susan drive up. Parking next to my motorcycle, they greet me and unlock the front door of the store. We enter and Les turns and hands me the key. I will be opening most days. He shows me around the store while telling me what I must know about selling the records, restocking the bins, keeping track of inventory, answering the phone, and where to put the cash. After an hour or so Les gives me his home phone number and they leave. He tells me he will check in with me in a few hours and that I should call if I have any questions.

The job is pretty simple and just requires common sense. My hours are: I open at noon, and I stay till 8:00 pm at which point I am relieved, and the store stays open till 11:00 pm, midnight on Fridays and Saturdays.

Les calls around 3:00 pm to check on me. The pace is leisurely, and mostly I am there for answering questions and ringing up the sales. The Music Revolution’s clientele are Hollywood people. We get the occasional rock star or television actor. The hip community is inclined to support the store. It is an enjoyable gig, listening to the latest music and answering questions. If one thinks about it, a record store is a peaceful place.

The average cost of an album is $3.99. That is not a discount price, but it is fair. Big chains have promotions and discounts, but we are too small and ”boutique-y” for that. This is a couple of years before Tower Records opened. Tower was at 8801 Sunset Blvd. on the corner of Sunset and Horn Avenue in West Hollywood. They were about a half a mile away from us and opened in 1971.

Next door there is a women’s sportswear shop, and my soon to be good friend Gayle Galli works there. The owners were a nice married couple and they designed women’s sportswear in the back of their store.

Gayle owned a copper-colored Porsche 356 convertible, one of the coolest-looking cars ever made. She would drive me all over Hollywood. It felt so elegant riding in that car. There was a sexual tension between Gayle and me, but nothing ever happened and maybe that is why we are still friends today.

November 22^nd, 1968, The Beatles (aka the White Album) is released. The phone is ringing off the hook. Rock star Lee Michaels stops by, and we still don’t have it in stock, but are expecting it any moment. Lee asks if he can wait in the store for it. Sure, I say, and he sits down on an empty record carton next to one of the record bins. He is smiling and happy as all get out. People are streaming in, but we cannot let them wait inside, there just is no room. Lee Michaels is an exception of course.

Finally, Les pulls up and his car is stuffed with cartons of the White Album. Ted, another employee, and I, unload the cartons, taking them inside and putting them in the back room of the store. I unpack the boxes and Ted is doing the sales. There is a line down the block running eastward, almost to the Tropicana Motel (the infamous 1960s rock star hangout). In an hour or so we sell out. We have so much cash we hide it in the back room. Les tells us that every record store is experiencing the same crush; it is bedlam out there. Les heads back to the distributor but they are so busy and their wholesale buyers’ line is so long that Les cannot get his order filled till later that night. Next morning, we open early at 11:00 am and the store is swamped just like the day before. Finally in the evening things start slowing down.

That was some rush, and the Music Revolution was never that busy again. It was an incredible couple of days for record stores everywhere.

Les had an idea that maybe we could offer free delivery if an order was for more than four LPs. His thinking was, I could make good time on the motorcycle and it could increase sales. That is how I met my late friend Barry Byrens, one of the first people to show me around in Hollywood. He and Gayle were the only two people that I met that were actually born in Beverly Hills/Hollywood. Barry bought five albums to be delivered to his sister for her birthday.

A day later I ran into him in the parking lot of Ben Franks, that is a hangout for hundreds of Hollywood freaks at night. Barry and I became friends and he called me the Music Revolution’s two-headed motorcycle delivery boy. This did not last too long, as he came to prefer calling me Linc, because my hair resembled the character on the TV show The Mod Squad. There were a few more deliveries but that service did not really catch on. The straw that broke the camel’s back was a delivery to Doug Weston.

Weston was the founder of the Troubadour, the renowned folk and rock nightclub at 9081 Santa Monica Boulevard, a tad east of Doheny Drive on the boarder of West Hollywood and Beverly Hills. He ordered six LPs one weekday afternoon. When I arrived at his house, he ushered me into his living room. He told me to sit. I said, “I am on delivery, and I really cannot stay.” He angrily told me he wanted to check out the LPs and I had to wait. He opened one, held it up to eye level and said it was warped. Now understand this, all albums are warped to some degree. At the time, approximately ten percent of them are warped so badly they were unplayable. They could be readily exchanged at the place of purchase; this was common knowledge and a universal custom. Even artists’ recording contracts paid a royalty on 90 percent of sales, assuming there would be a 10 percent return rate.

Doug took about 20 or 30 minutes to inspect and play each album. He played each and every one of them while ranting and raving at me. I sat there quietly. I was not afraid or defensive, though I did not understand his actions. I knew he was just giving me a bad time, but why, I do not know. I did not waste time trying to explain anything. My thinking was that any attempt or effort to calm him or explain would worsen his tirade.

He insisted I return with the replacements within the hour. I left, and driving back to the Music Revolution, I went over what had happened and it just didn’t add up. Besides, I was sure Les and Doug knew or at least knew of each other. Maybe he had a problem with Les? According to Doug, five of the records were warped  and he was being ripped off. I don’t know probably, perhaps you could call my next realization street smarts, but I was pretty certain based on Mr. Weston’s actions that I was not gonna get a tip.

I went back to the Music Revolution, replaced the albums and drove my motorcycle back to Doug Weston’s house. He angrily ushered me in and proceeded to go through the whole process again, yelling at me and accusingly suggesting that he was being ripped off. I said I had to get back, and he angrily demanded for me to sit there and wait though his lengthy inspections. Finally, he says it is not right; he will keep the albums, but I should understand he felt he was getting crappy merchandise. When I finally got back to the store over two hours had passed, and this was a losing transaction for the Music Revolution.

A few hours later Les stopped in and I told him what happened. He listened and asked just a few questions. When I finished, he didn’t say anything, though I did get the impression that he understood and did not blame me. I never found out what caused Doug Weston’s abusive freak out. My guess was that he had an issue with Les, but even that theory has holes in it. This incident is going to remain one of those mysteries. Les never offered any thoughts on it .

The Music Revolution’s delivery service did not make financial sense. Even the shortest delivery took a while to complete, and it didn’t add up. I did not mind it though. It got me out and around while making me more familiar with Hollywood. I met a new lady friend, Stephanie, during a delivery.

One day the phone rang, and a gal was asking if we stocked some LPs that she wanted. We did, and she said she would stop by in an hour. It turned out that it was Peggy Lipton of The Mod Squad, and she was charming and appreciative. I told Barry that she came by the store, and he said, “oh! You met your co-star!”

Barry had moved temporally into an apartment on San Vincente, and they had another vacancy. It was a one bedroom furnished apartment just two blocks from my apartment on Larrabee. I checked it out and it was nicer and certainly quieter than the apartment I was living in, and it was $85 a month. I gave notice to my landlord, and this nice and pleasant lady turned into a mean old witch right in front of my eyes. I was surprised at her sudden change of behavior but possibly it was because that apartment was difficult for her to keep occupied.

I meet this gal, Jeannie Franklyn, who was a designer who dressed many of the rock stars of the day. Kinda like the Hollywood version of London’s Granny Takes a Trip. Her shop is called Genie the Tailor. It was a retail space at 9091 Santa Monica Blvd, just east of the Troubadour. Her designs were amazing. They were one of a kind, very hip and expensive, styles for the Hollywood elite – movie stars and rock stars, the young and the monied.

It was fun to hang out with her at the tailor shop. Jeannie was easy to be around and it was interesting to see her clientele come in for fittings and to watch her create this amazing clothing. The shop wasn’t open to the public even though it was in a retail space. We were becoming friendly, when she mentioned to me that she was going on a two-week vacation. A couple of weeks later I stopped by her shop. It was half-empty and in the process of being emptied out.

“What happened?” I asked one of the workers. He said Jeannie had been killed in a car crash. Stunned, I turned away. Later I found out that she was riding with the band Fairport Convention (and was guitarist/songwriter Richard Thompson’s girlfriend). They were returning from a gig, and they were in a horrible car crash that also took the life of their drummer, Martin Lamble. The accident happened on a British motorway on May 12, 1969 when a roadie for the band fell asleep at the wheel. The suddenness and violence of Jeannie’s death just shocked the hell out of me.

One more installment of this tale to come…

Header image: the Miracle Mile, Hollywood, California, 1960s.

Singer-songwriter Joshua Radin has recently released “Goodbye,” a single from his new record The Ghost And The Wall, which came out on July 23. This gold-selling singer-songwriter’s ninth studio album explores the walls we build to protect ourselves against sadness and pain, especially this past year. That’s not, however, where the real story of this album resides. While the inability to tour and perform together as a full band impacted how musicians remained in steady contact with their fans, no one to my knowledge embarked on as ambitious an effort as Radin did with the creation of this record. It was produced by Jonathan Wilson (Father John Misty, Conor Oberst, Dawes) who also played many of the instruments on the record.

Together they assembled a cohesive collection of music by sharing recorded files and communicating via e-mail and text, never meeting in person or even virtually through a video platform. Special needs like strings and female vocal parts were farmed out and recorded remotely in people’s homes. They were then sent back to Wilson who found a way with Radin to snap the parts into place. The final product is a piece of music you would swear was recorded live and it just might change the way Radin and others make music moving forward.

This is just one more groundbreaking effort from an artist who has generated more than one billion streams, sold over one million records, and has landed north of 150 film, television, and commercial syncs. This success has placed him on world tours that have covered four continents, opening for artists like Ed Sheeran and Sheryl Crow. Along the way he has acquired some super fans like Ellen DeGeneres, who invited him to perform at her wedding. His sound is unique and has often been compared to artists like Elliot Smith and Paul Simon. Those comparisons hold true with The Ghost And The Wall.

Perhaps more important than the success he has earned through his music is the work he has done as a committed philanthropist.  He was personally handpicked by First Ladies Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden for a campaign in support of the troops and continues to support charities like Little Kids Rock and North Shore Animal League America (NSALA), among others.

We were able to connect with Radin and talk about the how The Ghost And The Wall was made, who is most drawn to his brand of music, and what lies ahead on the charity front for an artist who has committed himself to making music that inspires people to be the best versions of themselves that they can be.

Ray Chelstowski: You have a very unique vocal style that is breathy but that can really amp up. This is pretty consistent across all of your recorded material. Does it dictate the kind of music you create or how you create it?

Joshua Radin: I think it’s the latter. I always write sitting around with the guitar, and no one can be around because I have to get vocally confident and be able to get loud. That’s how I come up with melodies. It’s just a very organic process.

RC: You worked with producer Jonathan Wilson (Father John Misty, Dawes, Conor Oberst) on this project. What led you to him and what did he bring to the songs?

JR: Well, I got home from my last tour in support of my last record, Here, Right Now, which was all about trying to be more in the moment, to be more present. Literally a day after I arrive in Los Angeles the whole world shuts down. But I was like, “OK, I can deal with this.” So I started writing. I had a theme that I wanted this album to be about. After a few months of writing, the world was still under lockdown. I turned the songs I had written in to the record company because I thought that I had created a body of work, an album. Obviously, I thought that we would have to wait for the world to open up again to record them, because I don’t have a home studio or anything.

To my surprise they said no, let’s see what we can do. Let’s find a producer [who will work with you] where you can just share files back and forth. I was like, “no way!” [I thought,] that’s not going to result in a great record. You have to be in a studio playing live, eating lunches and dinners together and talking [with others] about the process. They told me to keep an open mind and they brought up Jonathan Wilson’s name, saying that he had a great studio, could play every instrument and that I could just record my vocals in my home.

So, I talked to Jonathan on the phone for thirty minutes. He seemed awesome, so I decided to try recording it this way. [I thought], if it’s terrible we can just bail. After the first song I said, “Man this sounds really good! Let’s do another,” and we just kept recording more songs.

RC: Where did you record the album and who did you recruit to back you musically?

JR: Jonathan recorded from his studio in Topanga, California, and I recorded from my house in Los Angeles. We still have never met. We just traded files back and forth. I only played guitar and sang. This was still real early in the lockdown. I set up a little home studio in my closet with a laptop and a couple of [acoustic sound-absorbing] panels and a mic. That’s where I did all of my vocals – in a closet – and I sent them to Jonathan.

We [then] sent just a few songs to three different women to add female harmonies, [which] they recorded in their homes. Finally, there were some string parts for one song [that needed to be recorded] that we sent out to some of Jonathan’s collaborators. Other than that, Jonathan played almost everything. It was a very unique way to make a record and we were forced into it because of the lockdown.

RC: In a way the process you describe seems very liberating.

JR: I was always a night owl, but the pandemic turned me into a morning person. And Jonathan was a night owl as well. That was one of the biggest differences between this record and all of the others I have made. The major factors [influencing] every other record were time and money. This record had neither [constraint].

In the past I have made records with session musicians that I revere musically, and would be a bit intimidated to say something like, “hey I think that should be a bit slower.” Instead, with this record, I would get up at 6:30 in the morning to go for a hike and listen to all of the files that Jonathan had done the previous night. After listening to them for a day or two I’d send him a note saying something like, “let’s have the drums come in here, etc.” and we’d just go back and forth. It really was just a collaboration all of the way through, that was all [through] text and e-mail. No Zoom or even a FaceTime.

RC: Across your career you have delivered a billion musical streams to date, have sold over a million records, and you have a super fan in Ellen DeGeneres, who actively promotes your work on her show. Who are your fans, and how would you describe them?

JR: I would have to say that when I am looking out at the audience from the stage it’s a lot of couples, people on dates holding each other who have been together for a long time and may have even met listening to one of my songs. They may have fallen in love to one of my songs and maybe even walked down the aisle to it. They are couples, who make it to my show whenever I come to town.

RC: You are as well-known for your charity work as you are for your music. What’s next for you on the charitable front?

JR: I like to be part of an organization for a while, then move on to another. I’m actually looking for inspiration in finding a new organization to work with right now. Typically I’m drawn to those that fight for the underdog. There’s just so much to do.

Header image courtesy of Catie Laffoon.

Back in the 1980s or maybe earlier, “transparency” became the buzzword in high-end audio. Harry Pearson of The Absolute Sound was a big proponent of the term, and soon many reviewers and sycophants jumped on the idea, to the point where talking about “transparency” quickly became a tiresome cliché.

But what does “transparency” really mean?

I think most audiophiles consider transparency as having a clear window into the sound; the visual analogy being pretty much perfect here. The music is heard unobscured, rather than through a grimy sonic “window.” (Of course, our systems can only sound as good as the quality of the recording.) Certainly, we know when a component or system is not transparent – it lacks detail, spaciousness, depth and “life,” and can sound uninvolving.

Conversely, systems that let us hear deeply into the music (sometimes literally, if the recording has a deep soundstage) are considered to be transparent. Fine musical detail is revealed, often to an astonishing degree, whether it’s the way a guitarist will fingerpick each note a little differently, or the ability to hear the sound of a symphony orchestra bounce off the concert hall walls. The line between hearing a “hi-fi system” and the illusion of experiencing “real life” is thin.

However, I don’t think transparency is necessarily the same as better resolution. But surely, if a system lets more detail through, we hear more, and it’s more transparent, right? Maybe there’s more to it.

I can’t be the only one who has mistaken brightness as better resolution, especially when first swapping a component, cartridge or cable that has more of an upper-midrange and treble emphasis than the one previously in the system, and being enamored of all the new sonic “detail” that’s “revealed.” But it’s often just an illusion of better resolution. (On the other hand, rolling off the treble will reduce sonic information.) How to tell the difference? Listen to known reference recordings to hear if you really are getting more detail, or simply more brightness.

No-brainer time: noise is the enemy of transparency, whether hum, buzz, powerline interference, tube noise, record noise or some other type of unwanted overlay. Sometimes low-level noise is insidious, and we don’t hear its effects until it’s reduced or removed. It’s the phenomenon of hearing the music against that “blacker background” that reviewers love to gush about.

Maybe some measurements-are-everything guy or gal would just tap me on the shoulder and say, “hey pal, why are you wasting everyone’s time going on about this? Just measure the input and the output waveforms and whatever distortion is present in the output is your lack of ‘transparency,’ right there.” But I think there’s more to it than that.

I think we have to consider the idea of dynamic transparency. Sure, it’s probably the same as dynamic range, and I’m probably just being too clever by half here, but recordings and systems that offer greater dynamic contrasts absolutely sound more real, involving and yes, more “transparent” to me.

Transparency can vary across the frequency range. It shouldn’t be considered some overarching thing that’s applicable to a recording or system as a whole. For example, I think we’ve all heard systems with articulate bass, and with muddy bass, and no one would argue the former is more transparent. How much of this is a result of the system’s resolution and how much is the effect of the room on the quality of the low frequencies? Good question. Oh boy, now we’ve got to deal with the concept of transparent rooms! Maybe I can get Bob Katz or Carl Tatz or somebody like that to weigh in on this in a future issue.

Can we even agree on what audio components offer greater or lesser transparency? I’ve always prized the sound of a good electrostatic or ribbon or plasma tweeter. I doubt I’d find any audiophile who’d disagree that the words “Quad ESL” and “transparent” go hand in hand. But then there’s the age-old, perhaps-never-to-be-resolved debate about vacuum tubes. Every 300B-based tube amplifier I’ve ever heard has had, for me, an almost spooky kind of you-are-there realism, a sense of hearing deeply into the sound. Is it because of the transparency and linearity of a 300B, or am I being fooled by harmonic distortion?

I’ll leave with this thought. One of the definitions of “transparent” is “easy to perceive or detect.” So, according to this less-common usage of the term, perhaps any audible improvement in an audio system essentially an improvement in transparency.

Russ Welton offers his thoughts on the subject in Issue 132.

Header image courtesy of Pexels.com/cottonbro.

“7 Audio Wonders of the World” was a series of virtual recording studio tours created by the Audio Engineering Society (AES) as the star attraction for its AES Fall Show 2020, conducted online this year due to COVID-19 restrictions. Copper issues 123 – 133 covered Skywalker Sound, Galaxy Studios, The Village, Blackbird Studio, Abbey Road Studios and United Recording Studios. This issue includes Capitol Studios.

Capitol Studios on Hollywood and Vine Street is probably the most recognizable building among these iconic studios, thanks to its cylindrical architecture and signature spire overlooking Los Angeles.

When a film or TV show wishes to signify New York as a location, the associations with the Empire State Building, Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty immediately come to mind. For Los Angeles, the immediate locale signifiers are: The “Hollywood” Hills sign, beaches and palm trees, and The Capitol Records Tower.

Brian Kehew, co-author of Recording the Beatles, hosted the AES virtual tour, supplemented with some samples from over 46,000 archived photos that document Capitol’s history.

Originally located on Melrose Ave., Capitol Records hired architect Welton Becket for expansion of its offices and recording facilities in 1954. Becket was already renowned for designing the Cinerama Dome movie theater, Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, and his hand in helping to design the LAX Airport Theme Building, with its “space age” motif.

Capitol Studios’ grand opening was on April 6, 1956, at a final cost of two million dollars. The Capitol Tower roof loomed 150 feet high over Vine Street, and its unmistakable spire, originally intended as a radio broadcast antenna, stretched a further 90 feet into the skies. The building’s unique cylindrical design was intended to maximize floor space and minimize interoffice foot travel distances. Originally, Capitol thought it looked too much like a 45 RPM record stack gimmick and wanted a rectangular building, but its insurance company preferred the cylinder design and prevailed.

Frank Sinatra was Capitol’s biggest star in the 1950s, and the studio’s first artist to record there, along with Nat “King” Cole (Capitol Studios was often referred to as “The House that Nat Built” due to his huge popularity and record sales). Perhaps because of his stellar vocals, Nat “King” Cole’s keyboard playing has been often overlooked, but his favorite Hammond B3 organ and Steinway grand piano are still in use at Capitol Studios.

Capitol has mics dating from the 1940s to the present. They have a huge Neumann U47 and RCA 44 collection in particular and they still have Frank Sinatra’s preferred U47 in a special box marked, “Frank.”

Other recording artists during Capitol’s early years include Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps, The Beach Boys (“Surfin’ USA” was cut in Studio B), the Kingston Trio, Wanda Jackson and Buck Owens.

The virtual tour included a visit with Paula Salvatore, Vice President of Client Relations and Studio Marketing, UMG, who was lauded by Tom Petty in the documentary Sound City. Her special guest was fabled producer and engineer Al Schmitt, recipient of over 160 gold and platinum albums and 23 Grammy awards. Sadly, Schmitt passed away in April 2021. He spoke about a number of noteworthy projects produced at Capitol, such as George Benson’s triple-platinum Breezin’. Paula was Al’s “studio wife” because he spent so much time at Capitol. Schmitt gushed about how he loved the sound of the rooms, the microphone collection and the working environment, and talked about why Capitol has what he considered to be the best assistants and maintenance staff in the world.

Studio A

Studio A is a large, 1,500-square-foot recording space. It is separated from Studio B by retractable soundproof walls, which effectively allow for both rooms to be combined upon demand. The monitor speakers are PMC QB1-As.

Considered by many in the audio industry as one of the finest-sounding orchestral recording rooms on the planet, Studio A can easily seat 50 musicians. Adjustable wooden panels on the walls are designed to adjust the reverberation delay time in the room. Two isolation booths, one smaller and one larger, also have adjustable acoustic panels.

Tommy Vicari, who started his career at Capitol in the mailroom, has been an engineer since the 1970s when George Benson cut “This Masquerade” with Al Schmitt. As someone who has engineered solo artists, rock groups, big bands, film/TV scores, the Academy Awards simulcasts, and pre-recordings for the Super Bowl, VIcari believes Capitol’s Studio A is the most complete room for production in the industry.

Studio A’s analog console is a Neve 88RS with 72 inputs, running Pro Tools HDX. The studio features 7.1 surround-sound mixing and monitoring via PMC QB1-A speakers.

The studio’s outboard equipment includes Fairchild 670 and UREI 1176 vintage compressors, Summit Audio equalizers, vintage and modern DBX and Lexicon processors and additional gear, all housed in a humongous patch bay. Artists who have recorded in Studio A lately include Sam Smith, Muse, Imagine Dragons, Billie Eilish, Ariana Grande and Katy Perry.

Studio B

Studio B’s maiden project was Frank Sinatra’s 1956 Tone Poems of Color, containing orchestrations which Ol’ Blue Eyes himself conducted. With over 1,000 square feet, Studio B is a favorite of rock musicians, especially for its 150 square foot drum booth, and it can also accommodate large ensembles. Landmark rock records recorded in Studio B include The Band (“I Shall Be Released”) and The Joker by the Steve Miller Band. Other Studio B guests have included Bob Dylan, John Mayer, Green Day, and Oasis.

Studio B still has its 1956 adjustable swing-out acoustical panels with a varnished wood hard surface on one side and absorptive fiberglass on the flip side. There are also separate movable soundproof partitions along the back wall, which can be used for sound separation when recording live ensembles. All the walls are non-parallel. The monitor speakers are PMC QB1-A’s.

The original recording console was custom-made with rotary faders. It was later replaced with an Electrodyne Quad-Eight 8-channel console that was in use from the 1960s to 1970s, which was subsequently expanded to 16 channels. The console was changed out for a Neve 8068 which was 24 channels (which was doubled in size in the 1990s. The left side of the console has a panel autographed by famous engineers and producers including Rupert Neve, George Martin, Eddie Kramer, Geoff Emerick, Phil Ramone, Al Schmitt, and Andy Johns.

There are presently two Neve consoles in use: an 8058 MkII, and an 8068 with “flying faders” automated faders. Audio engineer and modification specialist Fred Hill was contracted to combine the consoles (both made in 1976-1978) for extra flexibility. The maintenance required for an older Neve console can be analogous to that of maintaining an antique car. (Capitol techs have been busy servicing the consoles’ auxiliary switches and pots during the pandemic.) Studio B’s main loudspeakers are PMC QB1-A large-scale studio monitors.

Although they usually run Pro Tools HDX recording software, Capitol Studios prides itself as one of the few facilities left that can also sync-up vintage analog multitrack tape recorders and handle Dolby A, SR, and other noise-reduction platforms. Capitol can lock most analog tape formats to sync with almost any other analog or digital audio format, from the Golden Era of recording to the contemporary “tip of the spear.” Capitol’s staff believes its world-class reputation is important to maintain. The studio is also one of the only ones left that can still cut vinyl record lacquers.

A second floor lounge for guests overlooks the live tracking room. It also has a break room, and overdub capabilities for vocals, with tie lines for mics, headphones, video, and other connections.

Studio C

Lacking a live room, Studio C was designed as a fully equipped mixing room with overdub capability, and has its own isolation booth. It originally had an Electrodyne 4-channel board, but this was upgraded to a Neve 88R 72-input console customized for, Dolby Atmos, Auro 3-D, 7.1 and 5.1 surround mixing. The monitor speakers are PMC IB2-XBD-As.

This was Al Schmitt’s favorite mixing room. Studio C contains racks of vintage and modern outboard gear from Pultec, UREI, Teletronix, Neve, Summit, SSL, Lexicon, and DBX.

Studio C has leaned mostly towards film and TV projects over the last five years, thanks to upgrades that give it immersive audio multichannel mixing capabilities.

Capitol’s Echo Chambers

The heart of Capitol Studios’ signature sound and its greatest attraction for many artists, producers and engineers is unquestionably its selection of eight echo chambers.

Expanding upon the work of his good friend, acoustic engineering titan Bill Putnam, Les Paul was commissioned by Capitol to design the original four echo chambers for its then-new studios. Located thirty feet under the tower beneath the parking lot, each trapezoidal-shaped room, complete with uneven ceilings to avoid any parallel surfaces, was designed to have a different sound. Originally equipped with RCA 44 ribbon mics and Altec Voice of the Theatre speakers, subsequent experimentation led to alternate speaker and mic combinations. The different dimensions, speaker choices, placements, and microphone selections and locations resulted in an individualized sound for each chamber.

Built out of concrete and finished with a highly-reflective hard lacquer of a type used on pipe organs, the echo chambers proved so popular that an additional four more chambers were added in the 1960s.

Totaling approximately 2,000 cubic feet, the eight chambers have an average delay of 3 seconds and maximum reverb time of 5 seconds, all with a smooth sound decay curve to create a natural room tone in each chamber.

The chambers are accessed by a trap door and a ladder, down to a vestibule that leads to the original four chambers and a tunnel that connects to the four newer ones.

Such is the popularity of the famed Capitol Studios echo chambers that Universal Audio (UAD) has digitally modeled the four most popular Capitol chambers into a plug-in.

Engineers like Schmitt and Vicari have noted that each chamber has different characteristics for depth, brightness, amount of compression, decay and delay. Also, since each chamber is a physical space, seasonal weather changes will affect speakers and mics and change the sound, something that won’t happen with a plug-in! Additionally, one can send the sound of one chamber into another, to create even more and unusual combinations.

During the virtual tour it was once again noted that Capitol’s tech crews are indispensable, especially when dealing with the pressures of live recording. For example, during one session a vintage Neumann U48 mic developed a crackling sound because of excessive humidity. It was immediately replaced with another U48. Few studios have that kind of depth. Tommy Vicari commented: “The trick is to be ready whenever the magic happens.”

The engineers also feel that the legacy of Capitol Studios gives artists creative inspiration. The Capitol experience is certainly a unique and special one, from a facility that is prepared to deliver the production of any kind of music humanly possible.

Header image courtesy of Capitol Studios.