Issue 173

These days, I struggle, aside from dealing with my illness, with taking in what else happens in the world around me. Like the death of Rick Turner at age 78. Rick is gone. This may not mean much to you. To me, it was earthbreaking. RT, GONE. He was supposed to live forever. Certainly he was supposed to outlive me.

I require of the world that it sit up and take notice. This man was among the heaviest there was, the heaviest there could possibly be. And by knowing him, he became responsible for so much of what I became. Now I feel the need to repay that. I have committed to writing a book about him and his life, and the struggle is to not make it primarily about our relationship.

And what a relationship it was. In the ways that show, to the extent that I’ve made innovations with getting tone on records, RT was right there. [For those who don’t know, Dan is a professional bassist – Ed.] I hardly made a move without checking its feasibility with him. Rick was the perfect guy to do that with, a man who had both been a part of improving things for musicians, and a real innovator in capturing them accurately.

Rick Turner Model 1 guitar. Courtesy of Rick Turner Guitars.

When I met trumpeter Jon Hassell, who was in his early 50s and died last year at 84, he was drawn to me immediately because I was one of the few people he knew who had experienced the death of a parent. He referred to it as their final gift. Now I get it.

I met Rick when I was 16 and he just shy of 30. I’d been at this for three years. It was in San Francisco. I’ve told the story many times. I was visiting my brother after the death of my father the previous November, when my mother decided that I should go to my brother’s in Palo Alto to relieve the pressure I was under. I thought I should take advantage of where I was and took a Gray Line tour to Monterey, where I found that month’s Guitar Player magazine with Wes Montgomery on the cover, and in the listing of articles, “The Dead’s Gear” by Jim Aikin. The article was a goldmine for me, who, having seen Hot Tuna and the Dead, and noticed all of the custom gear they both used: someone was behind it. Someone was. But who? The article showed me:

Alembic. Rick Turner.

The next day I took the train into the city, looked up Alembic in the phone book, called them and invited myself over. A short bus ride later, I was walking into 60 Brady Street. In their showroom the first instrument I saw hanging up on the wall was the Guild fretless bass that Phil Lesh later ended up giving to me (see Dan’s article in Copper Issue 94). Rick showed up and that began a dialogue which lasted until the week before he died last spring.

RT started out as a player and almost immediately found himself also working on instruments for friends, who included the Youngbloods in their early days. Rick and founding Youngbloods member Lowell “Banana” Levinger ran a summer shop together in Martha’s Vineyard before heading their separate ways, Lowell to the Bay Area and RT to New York, where he was in a psychedelic quartet called Autosalvage, which did one record before Banana succeeded in talking RT into joining him on the West Coast. From there, one coincidence led to another, and within two years Rick found himself a shareholder in electronics (and later musical instrument maker) Alembic Inc, under the aegis of Alembic founder Owsley Stanley, the LSD impresario, where Rick’s fearlessness and lack of preciousness was most welcomed by musicians looking for innovation.

Dan Schwartz with his Alembic bass, spring 1978. Courtesy of Scott Higby.

Above: Dan’s Alembic bass. Courtesy of Dan Schwartz.

The Grateful Dead’s famous 1973 “Wall of Sound,” an unprecedented assemblage of 604 speakers and 43 Macintosh 2300 127-lb. amplifiers, was the result of RT’s membership on a small “committee” of designers, which included no less than legendary high-end audio engineer John Curl. RT told me that he did the calculations for Phil Lesh’s speaker cabinets from Harry F. Olson’s 1957 book Acoustical Engineering, the Dead’s “bible” on building the Wall.

But Rick Turner’s biggest mark was made with musical instruments, and the shape of where he would take them. The original Alembic bass was a commission from the Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna’s Jack Casady. The result was, perhaps not by coincidence, the best bass ever made by man, in which every note swells from low E to high G. It’s been modified over the decades and is much simpler these days than when it was developed, but acoustically it’s what it always was.

The bass is built around two hollowed out halves of zebrawood, with birds-eye maple top plates, and the halves glued to a three-piece neck that runs through the body. This neck-through-body design wasn’t exactly unprecedented (Rickenbacker used this neck configuration), but it was the first to make such a splash in public. Rick frequently drew on or was inspired by previous designs that he thought worked. Like all Alembic instruments, the Jack Casady bass is absolutely stunning in appearance and unlike anything else seen at the time. Rick can be said to have launched the entire custom guitar phenomenon.

Rick stayed at Alembic till late 1978, when, according to what he told me and others, his investigation into their books resulted in his house being burned down. Wandering into the shop the next morning was a dreary event, I must say. I found Rick at his brother-in-law’s condo, full of good humor in spite of the circumstances. His “parting gift” for Alembic (Rick went on to found Rick Turner Guitars) was a design for a new guitar he’d done for them, much more traditional in design to suit the much more conventional guitarists. It was shown to Fleetwood Mac’s Lindsey Buckingham, who immediately ordered the first one. In the very early 1980s, Turner and I drove to San Diego in his MG, where I used the prototype of the Rick Turner bass in an advertising session.

Rick Turner Model 1 bass. Courtesy of Rick Turner Guitars.

Rick Turner’s signature on an Icon guitar.

In 1986, I played at the I-Beam in San Francisco, with Stanard Ridgeway (film score composer and Wall of Voodoo founding member), and when I walked out with my Steinberger bass (the first unlined fretless Ned Steinberger made – I had to wait for him to start a company to build it) RT said, “There’s our Danny!” (I barely remember anything from that time. This was told to me recently by a good friend. But it brings to mind a fairly important fact: despite all his innovations and accomplishments, the way I was personally impacted by meeting him was in my expectations for a bass: that as long as it worked, it could be ANYTHING. There were no rules.)

Rick had no time for preciousness – tools, including musical instruments, are just that. All parts are replaceable. It didn’t matter much to him that his tools were considered art by so many.

I want to bring up a facet few understood about the man. He was an audiophile from the get-go, the first I ever knew. He was my introduction to the phenomenon, and what he did with his instruments, aside from making them beautiful, was also intended to accomplish for instruments what audiophilia accomplished for home music. His goal (and Owsley’s in calling the collective “Alembic”) was the distillation and refinement, the purification, of the sound of – anything, whatever was fed into it. As he put it, he “helped ruin me for life” by showing me what was possible in 1973. In much later years I was able to return some of the energy he put into me by making possible the purchase of something of an audiophile system for him. It seemed a small way of giving back for a lifetime of influence.

Rick Turner Renaissance. Courtesy of Rick Turner Guitars.

Dan’s Alembic bass. Courtesy of Dan Schwartz.

Header image courtesy of Rick Turner Guitars.

After establishing her reputation as a mastering engineer over the past decade in Oakland, California for such artists as Third Eye Blind, The Go-Go’s, and LeAnn Rimes, Piper Payne merged her company with Infrasonic Mastering in Nashville, and has also expanded her audio industry involvement to become a co-owner of Physical Music Products, a Nashville vinyl record pressing plant. In Part One of this interview, (Copper Issue 172), she discussed her mastering work protocols, her love of analog tape and equipment, and how she started Physical Music Products. She continues here, talking about her first exposure to mastering and studio work, how she approaches mastering for different music genres, the challenges of working with mastering for different formats, and her opinions on the DIY recording movement.

John Seetoo: In the past, I’ve interviewed Steve Hoffman for Copper and he related the tale of having to remaster Jethro Tull’s Aqualung, and having to deal with restoring tapes that had stretched over the decades. Does Physical Music Products focus on newly-released music only, or does it also do restoration and reissues? And have you ever had to face similar challenges in your mastering, given your familiarity with analog tape and its physical limitations?

Piper Payne: Yeah, I have had to deal with some things here and there, nothing that’s worth noting. But funny enough, Infrasonic and Physical Music Products have a little, very friendly relationship because I’m kind of a conduit between the two companies. And Infrasonic has a division called Infrasonic Transfers and Archival, which services projects that Physical Music Products will press. So, we do have a division that handles restoration and archiving and remastering, and I’m happy to report that we’re working on some projects right now, even though we’re all really early in the relationship, but there are some projects that are in the works where the two companies can collaborate.

My wife is an archival engineer and one of the very best in the world. So, I would never call myself an archival engineer, although I did spend some time at an archival company, just transferring tapes. Catherine has already forgotten more than I will ever learn about restoration. I leave it to the professionals. (laughs)

But I love the process of it. And I love that every time someone comes to me with a new opportunity for either restoring or reissuing an old recording, there’s always something that’s never seen the light of day that gets included in that. And that’s my favorite part about all of it, to be able to hear and see new [material] tacked on to these old releases. And you never really know what you’re gonna get.

JS: Are you at liberty to talk about or promote any kind of remastered reissues in the pipeline?

PP: Not yet.

JS: Your bio states that you started in music as a drummer, but how did you migrate to the other side of the console? What led you to specialize in mastering, which you have called “my first love?”

PP: That’s a great question. I still kind of consider myself a recovering drummer. I still have a drum kit. And once in a while, I’ll pick up a pair of sticks and a practice pad. But for the most part, I just play the knobs and buttons. My first inquiries into what recordings were [was] when I was in high school jazz bands. We were lucky enough as a jazz band to be recorded; we had a budget to hire a recording engineer for our concerts. They would make CDs, and whenever we would get the CDs back, I would always be really confused as to why, when I’m sitting at the drum kit playing, I’m hearing myself with my snare drum and my hi-hat on my left-hand side, [and] my ride cymbal on the right-hand side. And then when I would get the recording back, I would hear the snare drum and the hi-hat on the right-hand side, and the ride cymbal on the left-hand side, I was just always really confused by that. I never got to the point where I would find the guy’s number and call him up and ask him or anything like that.

But then later on, when I learned what recording [was], I learned that recording engineering was a field [where it was] likely that a man was the recording engineer, and that what he was doing was making decisions about the sound that might be helpful for the overall recording of the music. [I thought] that could be a field that I could go into and learn more about. I started really diving into that and into classical recording and acoustic ensemble recording. I ended up pursuing that as a degree program at University of Michigan, and really, really focusing on classical recording.

When I went off to grad school in Norway, I found that there was an engineer based there who was a mastering engineer. He brought me in to do some quality control and basic studio assistant stuff. I didn’t know anything about mastering at the time, but I found out about what he did, which was [to] focus on [making] high-quality recordings, keep the fidelity, [and] do the quality and detail checking.

But he was also working on all different types of music. That was kind of a part of the one little pang I always had when I had chosen my degree program, which was, again, focused on classical recording specifically. I was like, “yeah, but I like all different kinds of music; I like rock and pop and hip-hop, and jazz and spoken word, orchestral music and all of it.”

So when he showed me that he worked on everything, all the time, that’s where I [thought], ”Oh, mastering is for me.” That’s why I have focused on mastering as a career ever since. It took me another three or four years working around the clock for different mastering engineers to ever take my first paid mastering gig. And ever since then, I’ve just been mastering full-time, and very lucky to have that as a career path.

Piper Payne at the mastering console. From the piperpayne.com website.

JS: You have worked on a wide range of music genres. Do you have a systematized approach that transcends genre, whether it’s hip-hop, rock, EDM, jazz or whatever? Do you have a protocol that transcends genres, or do you have a specific approach for each genre of music?

PP: I would say 90 percent of my projects use the same gear 90 percent of the time. [See Part One for details on the equipment Piper uses.] I’ve got my chain dialed in pretty well where everything’s there for a reason and I don’t have a lot of slack, not a lot of extra stuff in it for no reason. I had to tell you what I would start on, it would be [the] bass.

I’ll usually carve out bass frequencies that are just occluding. Other stuff like high frequencies – a lot of times, people will go to boost the high-frequency stuff because they don’t hear it quite enough or it doesn’t feel bright enough. But it’s usually because the bass is occluding it, or vice versa. So sometimes when something feels way too bright, it’s because there’s not enough bass, or [if] something feels way too dull, it’s because there’s too much bass, not because there’s not enough high-frequency information. So I’ll usually reach for some form of a control on the low end.

lt’s not a hard and fast rule, but in a lot of cases, [I’ll use a set of three bands activated on the FabFilter Pro-MB digital multiband compressor [plugin]. That’ll just be to kind of even out the bass a little bit. Then, I will go for a little bit of trying to pull forward some presence, to balance out whatever happened in the bass, whether adding a little bit or subtracting a little bit; we’ll try and clean up and clear out the vocal. Because in most cases, if the song has vocals, that’s kind of the most important thing. Then I’ll start trying to hit it hard to see how much level I can pull into the master. Then I’ll start using some subtractive EQ. When you hit a limiter really hard, it will make something feel really bright sometimes. Sometimes it will actually make the vocal feel too aggressive. Then I’ll just do a little bit of subtractive EQ there.

If I had to sum up, in order, what I hit first, it’s going to be the bass, and then balancing out the vocal, and then hitting the level and doing some subtractive EQ.

JS: This is a multi-part question: the mastering formats that you offer to clients for different platforms, whether it be compact disc, YouTube, Spotify, vinyl, or whatever: do you take the highest-resolution version and then monitor and reduce to what’s the best step-down match? Or, would you run a separate master in each format from scratch? And if the latter, what compromises do you have to make, say, when you’re trying to conform to the RIAA equalization curves for vinyl, yet you want to maintain the music with the same impact and emotional content in each format?

PP: I’ll answer the first thing that comes to mind, which is the RIAA curve. That’s baked into the [cutting] lathe chain when we hit the lathe. But the prep files that we make – I call them vinyl prep files – are a side A/side B master that’s all sequenced. Those are created independent of the digital master, the high-res digital master. I’m kind of backing into answering your question here, which is that when we make a master, I’m always going to go for the mastering at the highest resolution that’s practical, which in most cases is 96 kilohertz, 24-bit. But then if it’s a record that’s destined for vinyl, I’ll make a separate master for vinyl that’s again at a high-resolution, but different. It has a complication, which is that we have to roll off the very top end and the very bottom end just a little bit. And we have to make sure that we don’t have an excess of stereo information in the bass – in the bass, we want less stereo information as we can’t cut it if it has too much. Also, we have to make sure that it’s not going to hit the cutting [head] too hard on the high frequencies. So that’s going to be a separate master with its own limitations.

Then from there, we take the high-res digital master and [convert] that file down to the different formats: 48 kilohertz for video, 44 kilohertz/24-bit for digital streaming platforms that won’t take a high-res [file]. 16-bit/44.1 kilohertz for CDs, and then [master for] mp3, which I also informed my mom about this evening – about how mp3 works.

So from there, we give the artists that stereo master. Now if we’re talking spatial audio like [Dolby] Atmos or Sony 360 Reality Audio, I also master for spatial formats. Those are a completely different type of mix that gets submitted than a stereo mix. A different animal. I wasn’t sure if you were gonna ask me a question about that later. But we basically get the stereo approved first, then we get the vinyl approved, and then we deal with the Atmos later.

JS: Actually, I was going to ask you that, but you’ve nicely addressed it in advance.

Okay. The DIY movement of artists recording records in their bedroom has led to a learning curve issue with some clients. For example, many engineers of late have expressed concerns about unrealistic client expectations, when Grammy Award-nomination-level mixes are demanded from poorly-recorded and poorly-performed material. Do these problems ever reach the mastering stage?

PP: Let me make sure I understand the question. So, you’re asking:  does the DIY movement affect my work? Or does the DIY movement affect the music and music industry in general?

JS: Does it affect the client’s expectations? The work when it gets to you…

PP: Like somebody gave me a kindergarten drawing, and they expect Picasso?

JS: Well, sometimes they’re working with a mixing engineer who doesn’t really have a lot of experience. So that person did something that sounds great on their system, but it won’t sound great on any other system. So when it reaches you, they want miracles out of the mastering stage, and you’re not going to be able to polish this enough to get it to shine the way they want.

PP: In some of those cases, what we’ll do is suggest a remix, [and give them] notes. I have a project right now where the artist came to me and said, “Here are my mixes. This is the first time I’m working with this engineer. What do you think?” And I did not hold back. I told him, flat out, “If you want me to master this, and you want it to sound like…” I don’t remember what artist it was. And he goes, “Yeah, yeah, I want it to sound like that.” And I said, “There’s nothing I can do to make it sound that way.”

And it just comes with having a good relationship with your clients and being honest with them. And [sometimes] just saying, “No matter what I do to this, it will never sound as good as you want it to until you remix it or rerecord it.” Luckily, [this artist] had a mixing engineer that went back and remixed the entire album. I just got the mixes back the other day, it’s like night and day. I’m so glad that I said something. Because I would never want someone to – number one – I would never want someone to be unhappy with my work.

But really, in the long run. It’s more like, how can I help them be happy with their record years from now? If I’d kept my mouth shut, I could have easily just mastered that record, sent it back and said, “Sorry, that’s the best I can do. Good luck.” But now I have a client for life and a mixing engineer that trusts me to give them honest feedback and they have already come back to me and said, “Oh my God, I’m so glad that we did this. I learned so much through this process in reopening all this stuff.” So now, I’ve got two clients for life.

But yeah, the DIY movement has definitely affected the music industry, but I will go out on a limb and say that it’s made it better in the long run. Because the DIY at-home recordist is now the norm, especially since the pandemic. And so, those folks that were good at that to begin with have thrived. And those folks that were really dependent on always going into a big studio every day, they’re not really around so much anymore, or they were forced to really reevaluate and change up their workflow.

But seeing [remote recording] tools like Audiomovers, Zoom, Source Elements, things like that, have really helped us unlock that collaboration potential over the internet since the pandemic started. I’d say that’s all baked into the DIY side of things. And I think that it has, in one way, really improved the overall recording capabilities and the sound capabilities of DIY and at-home recording.

But it’s also really upped the game of those label artists and songwriters that had just been sort of relying on [the fact that] they’re label artists selling records, because now it’s shown that anybody can do this. Anybody with a story to tell, and a good tune, can write an amazing song. And that is really the most important thing at the end of the day. It’s about having a good song. And it doesn’t matter what the master sounds like. The song is undeniable.

Next issue’s final portion of the Copper interview with Piper Payne will include more on these topics and also cover her experiences in handling the “loudness wars,” her home hi-fi system preferences, and her involvement with education, and new artists and projects.

Header image courtesy of Piper Payne.

For a while now, I have been thinking about how classic rock will look in its last stages. Artists are quickly aging, and surviving members of the great old bands like the Beatles, the Who, and the Rolling Stones have an average age of 78, yet many are still touring. Ringo Starr, my favorite mop top, is 82 and recently had to cancel shows due to COVID. It would be presumptuous to think that most rock stars can live off past royalties and wealth, given that a few divorces, failed investments, and tax liens can drain the bank account of even the wealthiest headliners.

Pete Townshend is going back out on the road this year with his Who bandmate Roger Daltrey. According to a PBS News Hour interview about older workers, Townshend says he doesn’t enjoy being a rock star but that’s his job, and he needs to work to support a grandson with health issues and a lifestyle that includes a racing sailboat. Recording, touring, and associated merch have been traditional ways to bring in fresh money, but some are taking a more brand-driven approach.

To reach some of us older fans, alcohol provides an easy entrée to a whole new market. Just name the hooch, and there’s probably a band-brand partnership. But as much as I love Motörhead and AC/DC, I have no interest in drinking their wine, beer, or spirits. I’ve been a wine and spirits professional for the last 20 years, so I am very picky about my beverages: the beer I drink is micro-brewed within a day’s drive of my current location, and my esoteric wine is made by farmers who cultivate organic grapes on European estates. Most spirits come from a handful of multinational conglomerates so I don’t sweat that too much. One of my favorite spirits is tequila, a very hot category lately that has attracted collaborations and partnerships with everyone from Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson to Toby Keith, Adam Levine, Justin Timberlake, Nick Jonas, and Sammy Hagar. Nevertheless, I avoid celebrity booze and stick to small artisanal brands whenever possible.

I understand the temptation. A successful product can make people extremely wealthy. If a musician can hit it big the same way George Clooney did with Casamigos tequila and sell it for a billion dollars to a multinational, they’ll never to have to play another dingy club again – after that, any sales of music and merch is just gravy. Nevertheless, there’s a lot of alcohol on the shelves and each bottle is vying for your eyes and dollars, so having a good gimmick or backstory is extremely important. Metallica has its BLACKENED American Whiskey, which is aged with the help of – seriously – BLACK NOISE sonic-enhancement, whereby innocent barrels of whisky are blasted with Metallica playlists through subwoofers. Generally, whisky sits in warehouses for a few years to interact slowly with the wood through winter and summer temperature fluctuations. Based on my industry experience, I assume that heavy vibrations help circulate liquid within the barrel, thus making more contact with the oak for quicker aging. Metallica guitarist and lead singer James Hetfield is also launching a line of cigars. Not to be outdone by his former bandmate, Dave Mustaine and Megadeth are hawking beer and wine as well as delving into the mysterious world of crypto and blockchain. If imposed with a terrible life-or-death choice to spend my last $20 on Megadeth products, I guess I would buy Mustaine’s beer. At least I could drown my sorrows instead of wondering what my $Mega currency would be worth later that week. If I ever lost my life savings to some crypto pump and dump scheme, I could use one of James Hetfield’s new cigars to set myself on fire.

Metallica BLACKENED x Willett whiskey. Courtesy of PR Newswire/BLACKENED American Whiskey. Photo by Michael Perisco.

Had anyone had told me in the 1980s what Metallica would be doing 40 years hence, I would have said, “no way, dude, they will never be like KISS!” It turns out they are. Metallica sells necklaces, figurines, and even a Pro-Ject turntable for $1,599 (it looks like a ninja star). KISS, who are undertaking yet another final tour, have a beer pong table for $275 if anyone needs it for their frat house. Aerosmith is selling jewelry; the Sin City ring is $2,700. Iron Maiden sells soccer gear and a range of Trooper beer as well as glassware. Iced Earth and Jon Schaffer, their guitarist and militiaman turned government witness, specialize in hot sauce. And I don’t dare venture to Ted Nugent’s website to see what he’s peddling. I doubt it’s still beef jerky.

Pro-Ject Metallica turntable. Courtesy of Pro-Ject.

Even as a former member of the drinks industry, I don’t hold liquor companies to any moral standards, but as a music fan, I can’t figure out if this is commerce as usual or sheer exploitation of the fans. Over the last decades, we’ve already paid for everything: music in multiple formats, tickets to shows, and official merch at those concerts. Lately, the cash grab has gotten obscene. Obviously, no one is forced to enter these rock and roll bazaars, but when did it become cool to sell coffee mugs and toys? Artists should be able to control and profit from their merchandise, and I can understand signature instruments, amps, and other gear. What I worry about is when celebrities try to sell their brands unbeknownst to us. Not everyone knows that Sean “Puffy” Combs is co-owner of Ciroc vodka, and that he and any brand ambassador must disclose that fact whenever there is product placement. However, the young target audience scrolling on Instagram is likely unaware that their favorite personality is a paid influencer and not just a superfan of Ciroc.

Are these the last sad gasps of a once great, youthful, rebellious, artistic, and working-class tradition of rock and roll? If Jimi Hendrix were alive, would he be selling CBD oil and THC gummies at his shows? Would Duane Allman be heading up a national chain of barbecue joints? Perhaps if the money was good, they would. The Rolling Stones’ 50th Anniversary Suntory whisky fetched nearly $78,000 per bottle. Someone was willing to pay – all 150 bottles were sold. Ticket prices and VIP meet and greet experiences are often astronomical and out of reach for so many fans, but I can afford to join the Megadeth Cyber Army for $69.99, which buys me an annual membership with discounts on more merch, and exclusive access to pre-sale information. That might be another nail in rock and roll’s coffin, forcing fans to buy subscriptions and pay fees just for minor contact with the band. Or will my era of rock finally be canceled altogether by the younger generation?

Metallica has reached teenagers as a type of retro-novelty act through the TV show Stranger Things, but kids are a little different these days, slightly humorless about certain things, a little judgy, easily offended, and very ready to take swift social media action no matter the context. The craggy rock stars are cute like cuddly old grandpas, until child TikTokers reinterpret lyrics and musical zeitgeist, or learn how groupies earned their backstage passes. Stranger Things fans were ready to cancel Metallica just for being a raw young metal band at one point in history. For the sake of Daltrey and Townshend, I hope TikTokers never find out that the Who had an amazing yet crazy drummer named Keith Moon who ran around dressed like Marilyn Monroe, an Anglican nun, or field marshal Erwin Rommel.

By the way, if anyone wants to get on the ground floor of a great investment opportunity, Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick might still be selling shares of ROCK’N Vodka starting at $300. Invest $25,000 and you get a virtual meeting with Rick and his team, but $50,000 gets you two nights at the Hard Rock Hollywood, food and drinks, and an invite to an exclusive launch party (airfare not included). After whiskey, vodka is the next most popular spirit in the US, so maybe Metallica and Rick are onto something.

Breaking News: Jonathan Davis of Korn has announced a line of horror- and rock-themed pet products called Freak on a Leash, launching on October 28^th 2022.

Header image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Raph_PH.

On the top floors of 30 Rockefeller Center sits the Rainbow Room. It’s a lovely restaurant and sometimes event space that offers a breathtaking view of Manhattan. It even has its own bank of express elevators (duh, could you imagine taking a local elevator to the 65^th floor?). In the 2000s and previously, the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA, now CTA, the Consumer Technology Association) chose that location for their annual pre-CES party, depending on availability. The CTA holds these events every year in early November in New York, approximately two months prior to the January CES in Las Vegas.

By 2000 I had five or six Consumer Electronics Shows under my belt, and I had gotten to know a fair amount of the media attendees. At the pre-CES party that year I met Jim Louderback from TechTV, a cable and satellite channel out of San Francisco that covered technology, computers and other products. Previously it was a Ziff-Davis-owned broadcast called ZDTV. At that time Paul Allen (of Microsoft) owned the channel. I was aware of the channel, which had launched in 1998, but it was not shown on the cable network I subscribed to.

Jim and I got to talking and he had heard of my program The Cable Doctor Show, which immensely pleased me. Then, to my surprise, Jim (now CEO of VidCon) asked me to be one of his judges for the Best of CES Awards, sanctioned by the CEA. I was absolutely flattered, and I accepted his invitation without hesitation. The deal was, no pay, but they would cover all expenses for me to attend the show. That was fine by me.

In the Central Hall, off the main show floor at the Las Vegas Convention Center, there were meeting rooms for manufacturers. These were rooms where buyers could get away from the busy show floor and place their orders. TechTV’s war room was in one of those N200-numbered meeting rooms. It was our home base and lunchroom. We started and ended our days there. The first few years, Jim Louderback, Andrew Hawn, and the late James Kim ran the Best of CES program and helped the judges, who were a cross-section of technology editors and journalists. All were experienced product evaluators and tech writers. I had read many of them and was familiar with their work. It was a cozy atmosphere compared to the incredibly hectic press rooms that were provided for the other members of the attending media corps. From the get-go I was at ease and comfortable.

On the beginning of the first day TechTV held a round table where all of us were introduced, and then we went over the procedures and how the judging would be implemented. Most of the categories, like high-end and portable audio, video, and home security (just to mention a few), had only one judge, but if a category was too big ( if it had received too many pre-show submissions for consideration), then two judges were assigned.

My category was car tech and accessories. Yeah, I know. How did that decision get made?

Courtesy of Ken Sander.

Here is the thing. You write about what you do not know, and you learn. Take portable GPS devices. One would be correct in assuming that at that time I did not know a dang thing about them, but, within a brief period I was able to zero in on their particulars. Some advice I received from the author David Baldacci: “If you want to know something, write about it and you will quickly get up to speed.” I trust that and find it to be true. I was a quick study and quickly planned out my booth visits. We started on press day, the day before the show opened, which was a blessing as it allowed us to cover the show floor fast before the hordes of attendees came in.

My first stop was to Alpine Electronics, manufacturers of car audio and navigational systems. They had just announced a touchscreen GPS. That was an important thing at the time. A touchscreen requires a multilayered screen, with the outside screen used to direct the touch commands. This required making the touchscreens durable, while also thin enough to realistically fit into its housing, and sensitive enough to be accurate. Alpine was one of the first companies to successfully accomplish that. Their GPS screen had a texture that gave you a feeling of feedback from your touch. I was suitably impressed, and coined the statement, “You touch it, and it touches you back.” Alpine liked that so much they used it their media materials. Though I didn’t make any money from it, I enjoyed the fact that they quoted it.

Moving along to the other manufacturers’ submissions in my category, I checked into police vehicle technologies, and found a manufacturer that was proposing the use of steel to reinforce the drivers and the shotgun side of police cruisers. Officers were instructed to use those doors as cover if they were shot at. The problem was that car doors do not provide suitable protection from penetration from most incoming rounds, which would pierce the police car doors. Although one would think that the idea of using steel to reinforce the doors was good, and a metal barrier was in fact a great solution, the additional weight ultimately made the idea unworkable. (Later, there was much experimentation to find a suitable ballistic panel material – aramid fiber and ceramic tile.)

The SONICblue company had announced and submitted to us the first-ever DVR (digital video recorder), the ReplayTV 4000, and one of the first MP3 players, the Rio.  The company had come out of nowhere in the late 1990s with five technology firsts in total. I was surprised a few years later when the company went into bankruptcy. They were gone in a flash, but their technologies lived on with their product lines picked up by other companies.

That was part of the mystery of CES. There were times when a new company would announce a product with a big announcement and fanfare, and were never heard of again. Wishful thinking, or production issues, or the lack or loss of funding? Does anyone remember Moxi?

Fade to black: a 2008 Moxi DVR.

Occasionally there would be product wars. Companies would offer two competing formats for the same technologies. The classic example of course was the VCR wars between Betamax and VHS. Another famous format war was between Blu-ray DVD and HD-DVD, both were high definition. Toshiba officially threw in the towel on HD-DVD at CES 2008. That caught everyone by surprise, including their employees. I read some comments from the president of Toshiba. In an interview he was asked about the fallout from the decision to withdraw from the marketplace and was quoted as saying, “we were running 25 different companies and now we have 24.” No big deal. Yeah, right.

While working for TechTV we had our evenings free, and there were plenty of after-hours events to check out. One year there was a James Brown concert put on by Monster Cable. The event was an awards ceremony followed by a concert. Monster booked national acts like Brown, Diana Ross, Fleetwood Mac, Rod Stewart, the Steve Miller Band, and others of that caliber. The press was invited, as well as Monster’s most successful dealers and retail salespeople. The first time I went to a Monster concert I was given one via their public relations company I was pleasantly surprised to see that I had Gold seating. When I arrived at the concert (that year featured George Benson) the Gold section was way back, maybe a hundred feet behind the sound mixing board. Hmmm, if I had Gold, what did the other two thirds of the house that was in front of me have? The answer was Platinum and beyond. When I saw Seth Combs, a Monster executive, I asked him, “what gives?” He then handed me Platinum tickets. Impressed, I enthusiastically thanked him.  When I moved to my new seats, I discovered, much to my chagrin, I had only gotten 15 feet closer to the stage.

James Brown, circa 1996. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Robbie Drexhage.

The year of the James Brown concert, we just walked up to the doors, and were happily invited us into the concert. The Monster people commented that we were all San Franciscans, and were happy to oblige us.

James Brown was just coming on and the hardest working man in show business was taking no prisoners. If you have any doubts about James Brown, I would like to tell you a story that I recently read in Wolfman Jack’s biography, Have Mercy!

In 1963 Wolfman Jack was doing a time slot at XERF-AM, a 250,000-watt radio station on the Mexican side of the border. With the right conditions their AM signal would bounce off the ionosphere and could travel around the world. One time I got Wolfman Jack’s show while driving a rental car in Ohio. XERF was a “border blaster” AM station at 1570 on the dial, beamed out of Ciudad Acuña, Coahuila, Mexico, then considered to be the most powerful radio signal in the world. As Bob Smith aka Wolfman Jack told the story. James Brown was touring Texas and had a day off. James Brown went to Del Rio on the American side of the border. Asking around, he found a taxi driver who knew how to get to the XERF. Located in the desert a few miles south of the border, it was no easy trip. He took this run-down Mexican taxi across the border miles into the desert to the station. When he arrived, one of the station’s crew, Ernesto, was climbing down from the 300-foot-tall transmitter tower. It was his job to replace the burned-out red airplane warning lights on the transmitter tower. Wolfman said jokingly to James Brown, “D’you think you’d like to have a job like that?“

“Hell,” James Brown said, “that ain’t nothing.” Then, dressed in his tight, custom-tailored collarless charcoal gray suit and red shoes, he grabbed onto the tower’s ladder and climbed up to the top. Once he got to the top, he hooked one leg around the ladder, swung out, and waved down to everyone with both hands. Wolfman said he nearly had a heart attack, but the guys on the crew thought it was the coolest thing they ever saw. Besides his obvious talent, James Brown was an athlete and had balls.

Back to the Best of CES awards: TechTV finalized their decisions on the afternoon of the second day of CES. The judges would get up one by one and explain why they had made their decisions about products they had seen. Then all of us judges would vote on the products, and decide the winners. The awards show was aired live the next day while we, the judges, watched from the side of the stage. For me it was anticlimactic – all that work tied up into a 40-minute presentation, and poof! It was done.

The Samsung booth at CES 2009. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Ziggymaster.

Header image: the Pioneer booth at CES 1982. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Alan Light.

Part One of this series on desert island classical music albums appeared in Issue 172. To recap: this list reflects my taste. Yours may be entirely different. In fact, it’s very likely. So, if you hate my choices, I totally understand. But we can still be friends.

My tastes run largely to orchestral music and opera, primarily from the late classical period through to the middle of the 20^th century.

Wherever possible, I’ve tried to provide catalog numbers for the recommended recordings. However, since many recordings are available on vinyl, CD, SACD and as downloads, and each format has a different catalog number, it was not always possible. A quick online search should easily find the format you prefer.

I’m going to break this article into multiple parts. Truthfully, if I was stranded on a desert island, I would want to have the entirety of my music collection with me. But this is supposed to be a series about the essential music that I couldn’t live without:

DEBUSSY: Children’s Corner and Other Works. Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli; DG

I’m largely indifferent to Debussy’s orchestral music and when it comes to his only opera, Pelleas et Melisande, I’m fond of quoting the late Sir Rudolf Bing who quipped that it was “as long as Götterdämmerung and not as funny.” When it comes to his music for solo piano, however, it’s an entirely different story. It can be playful, introspective, soulful and always moving.

And, without a doubt, the finest exponent of Debussy’s piano music was the eccentric and reclusive but always brilliant Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli. Listen to the clarity of the bass ostinati in the opening movement, Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum. I’ve heard lovely performances by other artists, but somehow those notes are always a bit of a blur. Not so on this recording. Every note is crystal clear.

DVORAK: The Symphonies. István Kertész, London Symphony; Decca

In the realm of “what might have been,” we have the late conductor István Kertész who perished in a tragic drowning accident at the age of 43. He was widely sought after by major orchestras and, in his short career, nevertheless managed to create an extensive recording catalog. Many of those recordings are still considered benchmarks, particularly his recording of Bartok’s only opera, Bluebeard’s Castle. His traversal of the Brahms symphonies is also very fine.

But I don’t think anyone has ever quite equaled his cycle of the Dvorak symphonies and tone poems for a deep sympathy with this composer’s great music. Beautifully played by the London Symphony and available as a 96/24 high-resolution download, these are glorious performances. Listen, for example, to the way he makes the scherzo from the Fifth Symphony bounce and dance. And that’s just one example from a cycle full of wonderful moments.

GERSHWIN: An American in Paris (and other works), James Levine, Chicago Symphony; DG

It’s inarguable that George Gershwin was a genius, one who left an indelible mark on American music even if he died far too young. As a chorister, I had the opportunity to be part of a performance of Porgy and Bess. It was the most fun I’d had (musically) in a long time. And frankly, I could pick a number of Gershwin’s “classical” pieces, but I’ve always had a special love for An American in Paris; maybe it was the movie.

I listened to quite a number of recordings of this work from a wide array of American conductors including Leonard Bernstein, Michel Tilson Thomas, André Previn (ok, fine, he was born in Berlin, but still…), Leonard Slatkin and Lorin Maazel (ironically, an American who was born in Paris). None of them has quite the swagger of this recording, made in 1990. You can almost picture an arrogant young American, strolling the boulevards of Paris in the innocent days between the World Wars. The playing of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra is brilliant, at times brash (appropriate for this music) but highly effective, and the recording quality is excellent.

HANDEL: Messiah. Sir Neville Marriner, Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Elly Ameling, Anna Reynolds, Philip Langridge, Gwynne Howell; Decca

As a long-time chorister, I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve sung in this oratorio. I think I could sing many of the choruses in my sleep. I’ve even recorded it once (with Sir Andrew Davis and the Toronto Symphony on Chandos) and, of course, I have listened to countless recordings.

This is the one I keep coming back to. While Marriner uses modern instruments and tuning, nevertheless there is, throughout, a sense of “rightness” in tempo, in rhythm, in dynamics in every chorus and aria. Just as important, there is a real feeling of joy in this performance. It never once feels perfunctory or routine. And, of course, the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields plays with their usual flawless elan.

MAHLER: Des Knaben Wunderhorn. London Symphony, George Szell, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau; Warner Classics

Mahler was, in his day, a widely renowned opera conductor, holding music director posts at both the Vienna State Opera and the Metropolitan Opera in New York. In the course of a lengthy interview, Otto Klemperer – who was a protégé –  remarked that “People talk of the greatness of Toscanini, but Mahler was much greater.” Strangely, however, despite his significant output as a composer, Mahler wrote no operas. What he did write, however, were several wonderful song cycles for soloists and orchestra and, of those, this one is my personal favorite. At times cheeky and irreverent and at other times lugubrious and mournful, the music is brilliantly colorful.

This recording, from 1968, has both soloists at the top of their form with an always sympathetic accompaniment by George Szell, leading the London Symphony. I’ve heard numerous performances of this cycle including a wonderful live performance featuring Jessye Norman and John Shirley-Quirk. However, this trio seems to somehow capture the spirit of the cycle better than any more contemporary recording.

MAHLER: Symphony No. 6. Pierre Boulez, Vienna Philharmonic; DG

I’m a huge fan of Mahler and I own many complete recordings of his symphonies. If I were stranded on a desert island, I would not want to be without his music. While I love all of them, as it happens, my two favorites are the Symphony No. 6 and No. 7. Not a usual choice, I realize. Most people would probably opt for No. 2 – the Resurrection Symphony or perhaps No. 8, the so-called “Symphony of a Thousand.” Yet something about these two symphonies speaks to me in a very special way.

I recently listened to sections of 20 different recordings of the Sixth Symphony and while there are many lovely interpretations, this is the one that felt the most true to my vision of Mahler’s intentions. It is clear, unsentimental, and beautifully played, with Boulez’ usual attention to transparency and detail. Some may find the first movement a bit on the slow side, but the third  movement Andante Moderato is played with such gorgeous intensity that it sweeps away any second thoughts.

MAHLER: Symphony No. 7. Michael Tilson Thomas, San Francisco Symphony; SFS Media

One could be forgiven for thinking that Mahler conceived this work as a concerto for timpani and orchestra. The percussion plays a major role in this symphony, as in his Sixth, and the timpani is particularly prominent in the Second, Third and Fifth movements. But, of course, there’s a lot more to this, Mahler’s most iconoclastic symphony, than just percussion.

And there are many great recordings, including Otto Klemperer’s equally distinctive recording on EMI (far and away the slowest on record, but gorgeously played), Leonard Bernstein with the New York Philharmonic (recorded twice, once on Sony and the other on DG), Riccardo Chailly with the Concertgebouw, a beautifully detailed and recorded performance by Eliahu Inbal and the Frankfurt Radio Symphony, James Levine with the Chicago Symphony (wonderful recording of the percussion) and several recordings by Bernard Haitink.

Michael Tilson Thomas has a great affinity for Mahler and particularly for this symphony. Listen, for example, to the third movement Scherzo, marked Schattenhaft (shadowy). MTT manages to bring out the eeriness of this movement and thus render it truly shadowy. In addition, this performance benefits from a beautiful, clear recording, especially in the 96/24 high-resolution version.

MOZART: Late Symphonies. René Jacobs, Freiburger Barockorchester; Harmonia Mundi HMC901959 and HMC901958

René Jacobs began his musical career as a countertenor but in the late ’70s he turned his attention to conducting, working with a number of European period-instrument orchestras. He has recorded music ranging from Monteverdi to Bach to Schubert but is justly renowned for his recordings of Mozart operas, which are multiple award winners. These recordings of the last four Mozart symphonies are equally attractive. The playing is energetic, sparkling and always engaging, and the smaller forces ensure that all of Mozart’s contrapuntal lines are clearly audible. He takes all (or most) of the repeats and the recording quality is excellent.

MOZART: Die Zauberflöte. Otto Klemperer, Philharmonia, Nicolai Gedda, Walter Berry, Gundula Janowitz, Lucia Popp, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Christa Ludwig, Gerhard Unger, et al; Warner Classics

I love all of Mozart’s late operas (with the possible exception of La Clemenza di Tito which can get a bit tedious). But I have a special place in my heart for this, possibly the most charming of them all. A quick online search yields at least 30 different recordings, and well over a dozen videos of the opera. I have nine different recordings in my collection.

Recorded without dialogue, but with a luxury cast (including Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Christa Ludwig and Marga Hoffgen as the three ladies), it benefits from Klemperer’s sure hand and obvious love for the work. There are other wonderful recordings including those by René Jacobs on period instruments and with extensive dialogue. I’m also very fond of Solti’s first recording with the Vienna Philharmonic from 1969. But Klemperer’s performance, recorded in 1964 after a run of performances at Covent Garden (with Joan Sutherland as the Queen of the Night), remains the one that I return to, time and again.

ORFF: Carmina Burana. James Levine, Chicago Symphony; DG

As a chorister, this is another piece that I have performed many times under a variety of conductors. I know that some of it has become a cliche, frequently used in television commercials to hawk a variety of mundane products. But it is nevertheless a very carefully crafted piece of music and – as a personal aside – very entertaining, both as a participant and as an audience member.

As with Handel’s Messiah (above), I’ve listened to many, many recordings of this work and many of them are excellent, in particular the famous Eugen Jochum performance on DG with the forces of the Deutsche Oper Berlin and three of the greatest soloists imaginable. But the performance above, in my opinion, manages to eclipse even that one. Perhaps the soloists are not quite in the same league as Gundula Janowitz, Gerhard Stolze and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, but the playing of the Chicago Symphony is crisper and better-controlled, the singing of the choruses is clearer and the recording quality is far better.

PROKOFIEV: Romeo and Juliet. Lorin Maazel, Cleveland Orchestra; Decca

I used to regularly accompany my mother to performances of the National Ballet of Canada and this is where I first heard Prokofiev’s sparkling score for Romeo and Juliet. It was love at first listen. I’ve heard many performances of this lengthy ballet, but none of them has resonated with me as much as this one, recorded relatively early in Lorin Maazel’s tenure with the Cleveland Orchestra. Maazel has sometimes been criticized as cool and analytical, but in this performance, I don’t hear that at all. It’s certainly not a “heart on the sleeves” performance, but I don’t think that Prokofiev’s music particularly lends itself to that approach. What I hear is extremely fine playing by one of America’s great orchestras, sharp, rhythmic clarity, and sensitivity to the widely varying moods of the ballet.

PROKOFIEV: Symphonies No. 1 and No. 5. James Levine, Chicago Symphony; DG

Combined on a single disc, these are fine performances of Prokofiev’s two best-known symphonies. Truth to tell, there are better performances of the First (“Classical”) Symphony (for example, Sir Neville Marriner with the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields), but this is a particularly good recording of the Fifth Symphony played by the Chicago Symphony during the era when conducting duties were shared between Sir Georg Solti and James Levine and the CSO was considered the finest orchestra in America. Levine manages to capture the sharpness and angularity of Prokofiev’s motoric rhythms, and DG’s recording is clear and transparent.

PUCCINI: La Boheme. Herbert von Karajan, Berlin Philharmonic, Luciano Pavarotti, Mirella Freni, Nikolai Ghiaurov, et al; Decca

I have very mixed feelings about the late Herbert von Karajan. It’s inarguable that he took an already fine orchestra – the Berlin Philharmonic – and built it into one of the world’s greatest ensembles. But he was also a bald-faced political opportunist and later in his conducting career, self-indulgent in the extreme; at least to my ears.

That said, his recordings of Puccini are wonderful. Frankly, I prefer the “shabby little shocker” Tosca to La Boheme, which I find a bit maudlin. But this recording is so very wonderful that it simply cannot be ignored or missed. Luciano Pavarotti’s silver voice cuts through the orchestral textures like the proverbial hot knife through butter, and the rest of the cast is almost as fine. Karajan provides a sensitive, detailed accompaniment and I can think of no performance of this opera that quite equals this one.

PUCCINI: Tosca. Victor de Sabata, La Scala, Maria Callas, Giuseppe di Stefano, Tito Gobbi (1953); Pristine Classical PACO080

Based on a play by the French playwright Victorien Sardou, this “shabby little shocker” – as one contemporary critic described it – might, perhaps, have shocked the sensibilities of the late 19^th century audience at its premiere. But it has consistently been one of the most popular of Puccini’s operas and, indeed, one of the most popular operas in the standard repertoire.

There are many great recordings of this opera. To mention a couple: Herbert von Karajan with the Vienna Philharmonic, Leontyne Price, di Stefano and Taddei; Lorin Maazel with the Academia Santa Cecilia, Birgit Nilsson, Corelli and Fischer-Dieskau. Of course, there are many more.

But the recording above is undoubtedly the gold standard. Maria Callas is Floria Tosca and Tito Gobbi was the most renowned Scarpia of the 20^th century. Victor de Sabata conducts an entirely idiomatic performance with the forces of La Scala. If there’s any criticism, it is that the recording is rather closely miked, particularly the orchestra. But Pristine Classical has performed a remarkable restoration of this recording, rendering it almost modern and therefore even more relevant.

Having visited Japan and their disk recording lathes in previous issues (see Issue 171 and Issue 170), it is now time to travel back to Europe, this time to a country with a long history in the field of sound recording dating back to the late 1800s, with the pioneering work of Valdemar Poulsen and the early beginnings of what was to become the Technical University of Denmark. To name just a few, the country has been the home of the Electrical Fono-Film Company (established in the 1910s), Fonofilm Industri A/S (in the 1930s), TONO (a record label established in 1936, engaged in conducting sound recordings in Denmark), Ortofon (manufacturing disk recording cutter heads, playback cartridges and related products since 1918), Bruel & Kjaer (one of the world’s leading manufacturers of acoustics and vibration measurement instruments, founded in 1942), driver and speaker manufacturers Scan-Speak A/S (1970) and Dynaudio (1977), the well-known Bang & Olufsen (1925) and the topic of this episode, Lyrec Manufacturing A/S, founded in 1945 in Skovlunde, Denmark.

Lyrec developed a range of disk recording lathes, tape recorders, and preview head tape reproducers for use with pitch and groove depth automation systems for disk mastering lathes, turntables, industrial high-speed tape duplication systems. Along with analog and later digital loop bin systems. They also offered magnetic tape-based instrumentation recorders for industrial, medical and aerospace applications, as well as cassette tape loaders, automatic wrapping machines for shrink-wrapping of cassette tapes, VHS tapes, CD/DVD jewel cases and possibly other media. They also manufactured what was probably their biggest and most long-lasting contribution to the disk recording industry: a range of synchronous AC motors, designed to drive disk recording lathe platters in a direct-drive configuration. These motors were extensively used by Neumann on their lathes, up until the introduction of the VMS-80, when they moved to a different type of motor and the Lyrec synchronous motors were discontinued.

Not much information has survived regarding the people behind Lyrec. Neither the founders, nor the engineers, are known by name. The final product the company manufactured was introduced in 2004, a digital loop bin system for high-speed cassette tape duplication. The company folded shortly thereafter. The last three decades of Lyrec saw it focus on tape duplication systems, wrapping machines and on-body printing systems for cassette tape shells.

In 1945, when the company began operation, Lyrec introduced an early synchronous AC motor for disk recording lathes and turntables, along with a 15-watt cutting amplifier and a monophonic cutter head. Two years later, they introduced the Lyrec SV-2, a disk recording lathe intended for portable use (provided you could find some really strong people to haul it around), for direct-to-disk recording.

The SM-3, a further development of their synchronous AC motor, arrived in 1948, followed by an improved version of the SV-2 lathe a year later and the company’s first tape machine in 1950.

From the SV-2, the model designation jumped straight to the SV-7 in 1954, along with the SM-7, the third generation of their synchronous AC motors. The SV-7 was to be followed by the SV-8 just a year later, this being the very first stereophonic disk recording offering of the company.

The Lyrec SM-8, the legendary synchronous AC motor that found application as the main motor for the Neumann VMS-70 and VMS-66 disk mastering lathes, was introduced in 1955, representing the fourth generation of this theme, and the final development in this direction. It was responsible for cutting masters for probably more records in the stereophonic era than any other motor and perhaps even all other motors combined. It remained in production in large numbers unchanged up until 1976 (21 years), with many of them being purchased by Neumann.

Being a synchronous AC motor, the Lyrec SM-8 (and all their previous products) could only spin at what is known as synchronous speed, locked to the frequency of the AC power driving the motor. There were no control electronics; the motor could be powered directly from the electricity grid. However, since there could only be one synchronous speed for a given power supply frequency and the motor had to provide speeds of 33-1/3, 45 and 78 rpm, it was not actually one motor, but rather three separate synchronous AC motors stacked one on top of the other, all sharing the same shaft. Each disk speed had a dedicated motor section on the SM-8.

A Lyrec Disk Mastering lathe. Photo courtesy of Eward Nowill.

However, pulling the rotational inertia of a massively heavy platter into synchronicity was not possible, due to the design limitations of such a motor, so the synchronous motors were not self-starting. To get them to start, a separate induction motor was placed above the three synchronous motors, for a total of four motors sharing the same shaft. The induction motor would bring the platter up to speed, from where the synchronous motor of the appropriate (large) number of poles would take over and keep it spinning at the right speed.

The complications did not end there. About half the world used 50 Hz as their powerline frequency and the other half used 60 Hz, at different voltages. To operate correctly in different parts of the world, Lyrec made dedicated 50 Hz and 60 Hz versions. Most of these were single-phase supply motors, using capacitors to accomplish the phase shift required to keep the motor spinning. However, Lyrec also made three-phase versions that did not require capacitors. There were 50 Hz and 60 Hz versions of these as well!

As if this wasn’t confusing enough, Lyrec also made variants of the SM-8, offering 66-2/3 rpm instead of 78 rpm, in 50 Hz and 60 Hz versions, in both single-phase and three-phase…

And as if this was not complicated enough, synchronous speed is defined according to the formula Ns = 120 f/p (where Ns is synchronous speed in rpm, f is the powerline frequency and p is the number of poles of the motor), and there can only be an integer number of poles. A motor can only have entire poles; there cannot be fractions of poles, such as half poles. A motor can have 4 poles, or 5 poles, for example, but it cannot have 4-1/2 poles! As such, the SM-8 required 216 poles to spin at 33-1/3 rpm at 60 Hz, and 180 poles for the same speed at 50 Hz. But the other speeds were nowhere near as straightforward! At 60 Hz, 160 poles would give a speed of 45 rpm. However, at 50 Hz, there is no integer number of poles that would result in 45 rpm. The nearest integer is 154 poles, resulting in 45.112782 rpm! Similarly, at 60 Hz, the nearest integer number of poles for a nominal 78 rpm speed was 92 poles, resulting in 78.26 rpm. At 50 Hz, 77 poles would result in 77.922 rpm, which was deemed close enough. It becomes clear that neither the Lyrec lathes, nor the Neumann lathes using Lyrec motors, could agree on speed between the US and Europe, while none of them could produce an exact 78 rpm! In other words, a 45-rpm master cut in the US and the same master cut-in Europe would result in disks that did not play at the same speed!

In 1958 Lyrec introduced a preview head tape machine, to accompany the pitch automation systems they were building into their lathes. The model TR-18 was to be followed by the TR-33 in 1960. Lyrec used a 0.5-revolution delay system for their lathe automation systems and preview head tape machines, which was incompatible with Neumann’s 0.6 revolution delay and Scully’s 1.0 revolution delay (see Issue 153 for a detailed explanation of preview head tape machines, delay times and pitch/depth automation systems for disk mastering lathes). When introducing the VMS-80, Neumann also shifted to the 0.5 revolution delay, presenting, for the first time in history, a united European front in lathe automation system delay times. By that point, that were merely two manufacturers left, Lyrec and Neumann, with Lyrec having long-discontinued their disk recording lathes and preview head tape machines.

The SV-10, the final development in Lyrec disk recording lathes, was introduced in 1962, in collaboration with Ortofon. In total, between 30 and 50 Lyrec lathes are estimated to have been made between 1947 and 1965. This comes down to around two machines per year, each with unique features, indicating a largely “handcrafted” approach.

From the mid 1960a until the company folded in the mid 2000s, their focus shifted away from the disk medium, with an emphasis on tape recorders and industrial manufacturing equipment. Lyrec pursued the medical, aerospace and industrial instrumentation markets, while continuing to serve the media manufacturing sector for audio and video formats. The handcrafted spirit was gone for good by the end of the 1960s.

In the next episode, we will be looking at some of the features of Lyrec disk recording lathes.

Header image: a Lyrec SM-8 motor disassembled. Courtesy of Eward Nowill.

Ken Kessler assesses the increase in the reel-to-reel presence at the Tonbridge AudioJumble.

Only five months have passed since the previous AudioJumble, but cataclysmic events have taken place in that period, at least for the UK. We lost Queen Elizabeth II, the second-longest reigning monarch of all time and the longest serving British royal ever, fuel prices have skyrocketed globally – thus decimating disposable income – and Putin has continued to invade Ukraine. (That matters to the British not so much because of Russian gas, but because we are Ukraine’s strongest ally and within range of Russian nukes.) Add to that a change of Prime Minister, and a possibly catastrophic mini-budget (unless you’re already a bazillionaire) and you can understand why spirits were slightly dampened at the October event.

Attendees at the Tonbridge AudioJumble.

Despite all this, I noted a flood of intriguing gems, including a brace of Ampex tape decks, assorted vintage Luxman treasures, rare turntables, and more. This installment covers the tape-related goodies, while the next episode will look at other tasty items. As I am no longer predisposed toward acquiring more gear, as opposed to downsizing my hardware collection, I did pick up a rough Revox D36 in a swap for some vinyl. More than any previous AudioJumble, this one offered too many unusual reel-to-reel decks to contemplate.

Who can argue with a working Revox G36 for £250?

There were plenty of entry-level decks for newcomers which weren’t priced to deter, like this Tandberg 3441X with flight case for £130.

What took all of my willpower to resist were a clean Luxman preamplifier, some stunning turntables from Thorens, Fons and Pioneer, a tube tester, and ValvePower’s sublime reborn Leak tube amplifiers. But those will have to wait until Issue 174. As the images here show, cool oddities included an obscure Leak cassette deck (and, yes, the cassette revival is well underway), a Heathkit open-reel not common on these shores, and a plethora of superb Ferrograph products, including two fully-restored open-reel decks, one of which was a unique example as it had been modified to provided both 1/4-track and 1/2-track compatibility.

Most plentiful among the reel-to-reel decks were Akai D4000 models at great prices, not a few Revox G36s, a superb Revox A77, and a gorgeous Akai GX-747 dbx. But I am stopping at 10 decks…unless I get lucky, win the lottery and can find my dream Crown 800.

A pair of restored Ferrographs that caused a buzz at AudioJumble.

Another hugely desirable rarity: the Leak 2002 Cassette Unit.

Bargain of the show? An Akai 4000DS MKII for £110.

Another mystery to solve: a Heathkit STR-1 tape deck with a BSR badge on the head cover.

Certainly outside of the audiophile wheelhouse: a Fostex R8 8-track deck but at a knock-down price of £300.

A fully-serviced Revox A77 MK IV for £700 – a gift!

A near-mint Akai GX-747 dbx version.

One vendor had two of these – Ampex 800 series portables with rebuild kits purchased by a well-known restorer for £100 for the pair!

Otari MX5050 for £1500 – at the exchange rate of the day that was under $1600!

TASCAM’s 112 Mk II cassette deck for £400 – snapped up by a young enthusiast.

Here’s a vast selection of new-old-stock cassettes at sane prices.

All images courtesy of Ken Kessler.

Header image: one vendor arrived with 400 home-recorded tapes in top condition.

PS Audio’s Octave Records now offers its latest release, The Audiophile’s Guide: The Loudspeaker, a book and companion SACD/download that tells listeners exactly how to get the most out of their loudspeaker setup. Written by PS Audio’s Paul McGowan (see our interview below), the book and its accompanying disc (also available as a download) offer the practical knowledge he’s gained through more than 50 years of setting up speaker systems. The Audiophile’s Guide: The Loudspeaker is ideal for both novices and experienced audiophiles who may benefit from bringing their setup to a higher level or musical realism.

The book begins by covering a variety of topics including the nature of sound, different speaker designs, the importance of choosing the right speaker for your particular needs and listening tastes, and one of the most critical aspects of speaker setup: the effect of the listening room on loudspeaker performance.

Next the book discusses where to place the speakers in the room, and how do deal with various types and shapes of rooms. The Guide notes that different placements may be appropriate for different speaker types – for example, stand-mounted “box” speakers versus dipole planar designs – and listening room configurations (such as whether to place speakers across the short or long wall of a room). Real-world aspects like accommodating living spaces that aren’t dedicated to loudspeakers, and taking account of the locations of furniture, are also considered.

The Audiophile’s Guide: The Loudspeaker (SRP: $58 – $68 depending on format) then walks the listener through using the accompanying reference disc (or download) to fine-tune a system to perfection. The disc starts with some basic tests for channel orientation and moves on to exacting, step-by-step procedures (time to get out the tape measure!) for getting the best bass response and tonal balance, achieving a solid center image, finding the best seating position, maximizing dynamics, producing a believable soundstage, capturing subtle musical details, and ultimately, getting the speakers to “disappear” and create the feeling that the musicians are in the room with the listener.

The tracks on the disc are tailored to help the listener zero in on various sonic aspects, from the pluck of Chris Brunhaver’s acoustic bass and how it energizes the room, to the focused center image of Gabriel Mervine’s trumpet, and the resonance and spatiality of Bill Kopper’s acoustic guitars, plus a number of tracks featuring vocalists with a full band.

The Audiophile’s Guide: The Loudspeaker SACD is playable on any SACD, CD, DVD, or Blu-ray player (an SACD player is required to play the high-resolution DSD files on the disc). In addition, the master DSD and PCM files are available for purchase and download in formats up to 352.8 kHz/DSD256 from psaudio.com at this link.

I was more than a little curious about this book – once an audiophile, always an audiophile! – so I asked Paul about it.

Frank Doris: So much has been written about loudspeaker setup (a good thing, as there can never be too much good knowledge). What made you decide to write a book about it? In fact, what made you decide to write a series of books, beginning with the already-published The Audiophile’s Guide: The Stereo?

Paul McGowan: Most setup guides I am familiar with are somewhat limited and never really gave me the results I was looking for. And after watching and being part of hundreds of system setups at shows and people’s homes I started noticing a pattern. I and others had a set routine that used very familiar music. In fact, when on the road I would carry my trusted musical arsenal with me. I knew every one of those cuts and how they should sound. I found that within a very short period of time, I could set up a pair of speakers to where they “disappeared” and in their place was music.

That skill and those musical tracks became part of my life and I wanted to share this with people. Too many times I’ve had to come to the rescue of someone’s hard-fought system because it just wasn’t sounding right. They would tell me it must be the equipment, the room, the weather. Whatever. The truth was, it was almost always the result of setup problems – problem I could fix in a few minutes.

Having a recording studio [Octave Records] at my disposal was the final piece of the puzzle. Now, I could [completely know the sound of] the tracks I wanted to use, and then write a book about how to implement those tracks for great advantage.

Thousands around the world have upgraded their systems over the course of a Saturday afternoon using one (or both) of my Audiophile’s Guides. It’s made me really proud.

Paul McGowan.

FD: What do you personally look for in a loudspeaker, and what were you aiming for in the design of the FR30?

PM: The ability to disappear and present a seamless full-range soundstage, where nothing is missing and nothing jumps out at me.

Part of the problem I have personally had over all these many years of being an electronics manufacturer and designer has been speakers. What do we recommend with our electronics? Heck, for that matter, what speakers do we bring to the hi-fi shows to show off our electronics? Our choices had really narrowed down. Every speaker had its good and bad points. None were perfect.

Then the aspen [FR30 loudspeaker] came along. What a joy! Not only can I recommend these beauties to anyone who loves what I love, but when they receive their new speakers they are flabbergasted at how much better those speakers are than I could possibly have described in words. What a treat!

FD: Do you think the room is more important than the speaker, as some internet pundits have suggested?

PM: No, not at all. The room can certainly help and hinder, but with only a bit of work you can make a good pair of speakers sing in any room. You just need to know how. But, here’s the thing: the opposite isn’t true. No matter how good the room you cannot put enough lipstick on a speaker to make its sing if it isn’t designed properly.

FD: You make an interesting point in the book: when forced to place the speakers along the long wall or in a square room, you recommend not placing the speakers along the middle of the rear wall, but off to the side. (I confess, I had to make this compromise as my basement floor is pitched to a drain in case of a flood!) I’ve never heard mention of this trick. Why?

PM: There’s an old and inaccurate audiophile-wisdom chestnut about symmetry. Audiophiles at times go bananas obsessing over 1/16th of an inch symmetry when what will really fix the problem is exactly the opposite. (Symmetry has its place sometimes.) It’s one of the great secrets that shouldn’t be a secret.

FD: I don’t know that there’s a “best” speaker placement. Should a listener decide which sonic aspect is the most important to them, and place their speaker accordingly? For example, in one location you may get the best soundstage but at the expense of bass response, and vice versa. Or, is the “best” speaker placement the one with the least amount of compromises, in your opinion?

PM: You’re absolutely correct. “Best” is dependent on what your tastes, goals, and expectations are (all coupled with the design of your speaker type). If you’ve ever been to a hi-fi show and gone into, say, the Wilson Audio room you’ll notice a very different setup than you might in the PS Audio room. Both sound magical but both couldn’t be more different.

Wilsons, for example, are really happy when spread apart and pointed at the sweet spot through toe-in. In the space between the two speakers there’s a near-perfect soundstage. In our room you’ll note that the speakers are much closer together and without a lot of toe-in. The soundstage is wide and deep and extends beyond the sides of the speakers. (The aspen is very smooth in the off-axis response which allows this to happen.)

This is one of the reasons that in The Audiophile’s Guide: The Loudspeaker, we really roll up our proverbial sleeves and delve deeply into both setup methods.

FD: One more question: where do you get the energy to do all this?

PM: Hah! I get asked this a lot and, what’s funny, the people asking me don’t realize that on top of the books, recording studio, day-to-day at PS Central, my daily posts and videos, an actual home life, and still getting a good nine hours of sleep a night I am also working hard on finishing up a mystery/thriller trilogy called Eemians that I have been plugging away at for the last decade.

And I still at times get bored.

Here’s the thing. We all have the same number of hours in a day. And we all think that for the most part our lives are full. There’s not much room left to pile on more. Only, that’s simply not true. It’s the big lie our “lizard brain” (the amygdala) tell us because its job is to preserve our energy stores. It’s the part of our brain that makes us afraid, tells us we can’t, we shouldn’t, we don’t have the bandwidth. It’s that little voice in our head we do battle with daily and hourly.

It’s a story we tell ourselves and it is not true.

I have simply learned to tell a different story. To step out on a limb and just do it. Once that happens, my little lizard brain gives up and voila! Amazingly there’s enough time in the day for that.

I am sure few of you reading this will do anything about it. That’s normal. But, for those interested in changing their story, there’s a great book to read. It’s short and fun. Changed my life.

Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art.

If, like me, you are truly determined to get the best presentation from your stereo system, and specifically, desire the ultimate in clarity and center imaging from vocals, what are some of the things you can do to help accomplish this?

I thought it would be helpful to collate a checklist of things I’ve found useful to do to optimize the presentation of your “phantom” center channel. (Some of this may be familiar to veteran audiophiles, but knowledge and reminders are always beneficial.) Perhaps, as a die-hard stereo-only listener you feel that some of your playback is suffering from an underwhelming presentation of vocal presence. It may be that improvements can be made that are just waiting to happen.

Of course, the further to the left or right you sit from you main (centered) listening position, the more you will lose some of the focus of the main singer, who is typically mixed to the center. (There are exceptions, such as some early stereo Beatles recordings, for example.) And we’re presuming your stereo speakers are set up in a traditional symmetrical format. This is nothing new. But you may be able to gain a more engaging listening experience by improving your phantom center channel.

As most of us know, a phantom center channel happens when you set up your stereo speakers in such a way that the sonic image they present includes a third presence, a solidly tangible vocal (or instrument) between and in front of your speakers. When you really dial it in well, it can sound as if the singer (or main instrumentalist) is right in front of you, with the rest of the band members further to the back and sides.

If you are fortunate enough to have a dedicated listening room, it may be easier to apply these suggestions. If your listening room also happens to be your living room or other non-dedicated space, you may be able to adopt some of these techniques, albeit to a lesser degree.

A typical approach to speaker positioning may start out with having the speakers set twenty percent less wide apart from each other than from the listening distance from the speakers to your seating. In other words, if you sit 15 feet back from your speakers, then place your speakers with a footprint 12 feet apart from center to center. If you sit 10 feet back, place the speakers eight feet apart and so on. However, if you have them set up like this, you may be content with your music’s tonal balance, but still be missing out on a more refined vocal midrange presentation. This may occur due to a less-than-optimally-aligned soundstage and speaker positioning, and/or unwanted reflections coming off of coffee tables or other furniture, or in some extreme cases, physical obstructions to the direct line-of-sight of your speakers. And don’t forget to keep your speakers away from the front and side walls sufficiently to play into the room. This may be obvious (and you may have to compromise in how far away you can keep them from the side walls), but oftentimes, just bringing the speakers forward a few more inches forward can really help.

After getting the speakers in what seems to be the optimal position – and remember, there’s no “best” speaker location, only the one that provides the best mix of tonal balance, spaciousness and imaging including achieving a solid phantom center channel – consider how symmetrically the furniture, other items, and your system’s electronics are laid out in your room. Ideally, the speakers and everything in the room should be symmetrical, yet as we know it’s not always, or maybe not even ever possible if you don’t have a dedicated listening room.

These Vimberg speakers delivered a solid center image in the Wynn Audio room at AXPONA 2022. Courtesy of Frank Doris.

Using absorption and diffusion on the side walls to control the first reflection points can be extremely advantageous. There’s an old trick for finding these points. Sit in your listening chair and have a friend walk along the walls while holding a mirror at ear level. When you can see one of your speakers in the mirror, that’s a first reflection point. Mark this point, then have your friend keep walking until you can see the other speaker. Mark that point also, and repeat the process for the other wall. Then apply room treatment to those areas on the walls. There’s a good video from GIK Acoustics that illustrates the procedure.

But what about the front wall? In many cases this wall is completely overlooked, and no damping is utilized at all (except when people put bass traps in the corners, which can be very effective in smoothing out a room’s low-frequency response, but that’s a subject for another article). And yet by using some basic damping material, even thick foam cladding placed just behind the main speakers themselves, this can serve to take some harshness out of the room’s top-end response, as the foam will be acting as a good absorbent material of the higher frequencies produced by the rear of the speaker. Not only can this improve imaging overall including the phantom center channel, you may achieve improved bass response.

Achieving a good phantom center image starts in the recording studio, whether listening to speakers or headphones. Courtesy of Pexels.com/Anna Pou.

Returning for a moment to the room’s symmetry: not all symmetrically-placed objects are a good thing. Looking at my own system in the past, one of the biggest culprits for impeding the center phantom image was a large glass coffee table. It blocked and diffused the output from my speakers. The reflected and refracted waves off of its surface also were detrimental to the phantom center channel presentation, and the imaging and soundstaging overall. If you have to have a table in the listening area, a working compromise could be to have a smaller table, or simply set it to the side of the listening position when wanting to hear your system more critically. An added benefit of removing a table completely is having more room to stretch your legs and navigate the room more easily without the risk of knocking drinks over onto your carefully-selected sound-absorbing floor rug!

Generally speaking, though, a small table set to the side now works well without having an obviously negative impact on vocals and other phantom-center sounds. If you absolutely cannot move the table, you may choose to cover it with something absorptive, or even an inventively fabric-covered piece of foam. Note: for those who have a TV in the middle of an A/V setup, covering the TV with a blanket or other absorptive material can have the same beneficial effect when listening critically.

Another improvement could be rearranging the placement of your entertainment center cabinet or equipment rack. Very often the natural aesthetic choice is to place these in between the stereo speakers, but, if they’re of any significant size and your speakers are placed either to the side or even partially behind, you will suffer a loss in the center-image presentation. If possible, consider setting up your equipment to the side and/or behind the speakers. You may be surprised at how much of your sound is being gobbled up and refracted around your gear.

The overarching principle is that you want to keep any physical obstructions between and in front of your speakers to a minimum if you can’t eradicate them, or if you can, do just that: remove the obstructions with some thoughtful furniture and equipment placement adjustments. Optimizing the cleanest line-of-sight from your speakers is key. And of course, there are the obvious factors of using high-quality speakers, and setting your balance and volume correctly.

This latter point is critical and may be set according to your listening distance from the speakers. 75 dB is often considered a suitable benchmark for prolonged periods of listening. This is already quite a healthy level, to say the least, so be aware that if you are listening for extended periods, the higher you set the volume above this level, the more likely you will be contributing to hearing damage and or loss. That said, fine-tuning your speaker distances and listening volumes will significantly contribute to your phantom center imaging along with a less fatiguing or draining listening experience. You want to be comfortable and not taxed as you relax, or dance around!

Some speakers are designed with a wide, or alternatively, narrow dispersion pattern, and this can be a matter of personal preference. Good-quality narrow dispersion speakers have been designed with focusing the sonic presentation clearly in mind. Although this too may be true of high-quality wide-dispersion speakers, the latitude you may have for adjusting speaker toe-in may be less than with a wide-dispersion model. Of course, this is a generalization, but don’t jump to the conclusion that narrow-dispersion speakers will not produce an amazing result. They may well be your preference for both your seating position and that of other listeners in the room. Experimenting by making toe-in adjustments of 1 inch and then even one degree at a time can really help you hit that sweet spot.

It would be remiss not to mention the significance of using the best-possible source material. As always, be sure to test out your results with material you know particularly well as you track down and achieve these refinements.

Header image courtesy of Pexels.com/Akwice.

Sometimes a performer is so taken with another artist’s song that they just have to do their own recording of it. These cover versions can range from faithful portrayals of the original to something else entirely. This edition of Complete Recovery includes a few novelty acts. Here are some more of my favorites that are distinctly different from the originals:

801 – “You Really Got Me” (The Kinks)

801 was a project of Roxy Music guitarist Phil Manzanera. It featured a shifting lineup of musicians, including (Brian) Eno, Francis Monkman (from Curved Air), Lol Creme and Kevin Godley (from 10cc), Tim Finn and Eddie Rayner (from Split Enz), Mel Collins (from King Crimson), and Eddie Jobson (from Curved Air/Roxy Music/Frank Zappa, and U.K.). The first album, 801 Live, showcases some fine drumming from a very young Simon Phillips. The second album, Listen Now, was credited to Phil Manzanera/801. A third album, K-Scope, with most of the same players, was just billed as Manzanera. This cover, from the (ostensibly) live album, predates Van Halen’s version by a year or so. Eno’s quirky overdubbed vocals set it apart.

Patricia Barber – “Ode to Billie Joe” (Bobbie Gentry)

Many audiophiles have been exposed to Patricia Barber at high-end audio shows and audio salons, due to the exemplary sound quality of her recordings. I first heard this track at the California Audio Show in 2019 coming through a pair of very expensive Magico speakers, and I was mightily impressed. This is a haunting, slowed-down version, with her voice accompanied solely by acoustic bass and finger snaps.

Big Daddy – “With a Little Help From My Friends” (The Beatles)

Big Daddy was a fun concept band. Think “contemporary hits done in the style of ’50s and ‘60s artists.” Thrill to the sound of the Everly Brothers singing Rick James’s “Super Freak,” or “Ice Ice Baby” with elements of Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, and other oldie hitmakers. How about Paul Simon’s “Graceland” combining the Talking Heads with Harry Belafonte? They even did a complete version of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band with each track performed in a different style. Here’s “With a Little Help From My Friends,” as it might have been done by Johnny Mathis.

British Standard Unit – “d’ya think I’m sexy” (Rod Stewart)

This comes from a strange album called Hybrid Kids with the subtitle of “a collection of classic mutants.” Somewhat similar in concept to that of Big Daddy, it was a project of former Mott the Hoople keyboardist Morgan Fisher for the Cherry Red label in England. I think it’s safe to say it was probably inspired by Devo’s cover of “Satisfaction.”

From Morgan Fisher’s website:

“The first album Morgan recorded in London’s Pipe Studios (actually a TEAC 4-track recorder set up in his Notting Hill bedsit). This bizarre album was originally conceived (with the collusion of Iain McNay, Cherry Red’s boss) as a spoof compilation album featuring a variety of ‘bands’ from Peabody, an obscure little town in Kansas (at that time American towns like Cleveland and Akron were viewed upon as hotbeds of modern rock music). When this concept was stated on the radio and in the press, quite a number of people believed it! In truth, it was all made [up] by Morgan. The musical approach was to take songs and perform them in a way that was diametrically opposite to the original version.”

Alice Cooper – “Talk Talk” (The Music Machine)

In 1980, Alice Cooper took a shot at the New Wave sound with Flush the Fashion, an album credited to “Alice Cooper ’80.” I have the 45 of the original by The Music Machine, purchased in 1966 while it was on the charts. This is a pretty cool remake.

Concrete Blonde – “Beware of Darkness” (George Harrison)

Appearing on the first Concrete Blonde album, Johnette Napolitano’s powerful, smoky vocals set this one apart.

Mary Fahl – “Money” (Pink Floyd)

Mary Fahl was the lead singer for the band October Project. This track comes from her solo album From the Dark Side of the Moon, a complete re-imagining of the classic opus by Pink Floyd. For my money (pardon the pun), I vastly prefer her work with October Project, but this is an interesting take.

Neil Merryweather’s Space Rangers – “Eight Miles High” (The Byrds)

Bassist Neil Merryweather (real name: Robert Neilson Lillie) was a little-known Canadian rocker with some interesting connections. One of his bands was called Merryweather, and Linda Ronstadt called him Neil Merryweather in an encounter, so he stuck with that. His second album (under that name), 1969’s double LP Word of Mouth, featured guest performances by Dave Mason, Steve Miller, jazz guitarist Howard Roberts, and others. He also played on 1973’s Blues from Chicago with Harvey Mandel, Charlie Musselwhite, and Barry Goldberg. Shortly after that, he released Neil Merryweather’s Space Rangers, which was quite a departure from the blues he’d been playing. The band was a hard/progressive rock outfit with synthesizers and Chamberlin (a Mellotron sound-alike) supplementing the heavy guitar work.

My Sin – “Moonlight Mile” (Rolling Stones)

Synthesizers and drum machines – if this doesn’t scream “Eighties,” I don’t know what does. My Sin was a one-man project by Stan Fairbank out of San Francisco. This track was on a four-song red vinyl 12-inch EP called Beyond Good and Evil, released in 1984.

Run C&W – “Papa Was a Rolling Stone” (Temptations)

Whole lotta twangin’ goin‘ on! Run C&W was the brainchild of ex-Eagle Bernie Leadon, ex-Amazing Rhythm Ace Russell Smith, and Nashville songwriters Jim Photoglo and Vince Melamed. Clearly a novelty act, they perform soul classics in a bluegrass style with a healthy dose of humor.

(Special Bonus Cover)

Randy Hansen – “Papa Was a Rolling Stone/Foxy Lady” (Temptations/Jimi Hendrix)

I found this while accessing the previous cut on YouTube. Randy Hansen has been doing a first-class Hendrix tribute act for decades. Where Hendrix was left-handed but played a re-strung right-handed guitar, Randy is right-handed and plays a re-strung left-handed guitar. That’s a nice touch.

Some music sounds as fresh today as it did the moment it was first released. This has always been the case with Simple Minds. Their sound has always had muscle and a sense of atmosphere, and when it arrives on the airwaves it still packs a punch, both melodically and with the music’s message of hope in this troubled world.

Simple Minds began as a punk band in Scotland in 1977 and in the early 1980s transitioned into a group that would help to define an era, and in turn, a global generation. Their breakout 1985 hit “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” offered a lush yet hard-hitting sound that would become their trademark. Now, Simple Minds are about to release their first album of new material since 2018’s UK Top 5 album Walk Between Worlds. On October 21, the band will release Direction Of The Heart, their 18^th studio album.

The lead track, “Vision Thing” was written by front man and original member Jim Kerr and Charlie Burchill, his long-time musical partner. It’s an homage to Kerr’s late father that, through a thunderous display of sound, celebrates the life of a blue-collar dad who helped fuel the dreams of those aspiring teens from Glasgow.

Most of Direction Of The Heart’s tracks were created and demoed in Sicily, where both Kerr and Burchill live. Unable to come to the UK because of quarantine rules, the album was recorded at Hamburg, Germany’s Chameleon Studios. Here they produced most of the album, later enlisting Andy Wright (Massive Attack, Echo & The Bunnymen) and Gavin Goldberg (Simply Red, KT Tunstall) for additional production. Band members Ged Grimes (Simple Minds’ bassist, who co-wrote two of the new songs, “First You Jump” and “Solstice Kiss”), drummer Cherisse Osei, and vocalist Sarah Brown joined them on some of the tracks, recording their parts separately in London. Album guests include Sparks’ front man Russell Mael (on “Human Traffic”), and Gary Clark, who played with Grimes in the band Danny Wilson. Mael and Clark recorded their respective parts in their home studios.

Simple Minds, Direction of the Heart, album cover.

Direction Of The Heart is a triumphant return by a band that seems to be having as much fun today as they did when they first set out to make music as kids. We were able to catch up with Jim Kerr and talk about the band’s remarkable career that has maintained a singular purpose and sound. It was a laugh-filled exchange that tells a tale that seemingly has no foreseeable end. Whatever “direction” Simple Minds decides to take, there will always a world of fans ready to take that ride.

Ray Chelstowski: It’s been four years since your last studio record. Was COVID the reason for the long pause between outings?

Jim Kerr: Well it’s exactly like you said. It seems like anyone who is out promoting a new book, record or movie probably made it during those most hallucinogenic of times. We kind of summed things up in our press release by saying: “we tried to make a feel-good record in the worst of times.” It sounds a bit exaggerated, but that time was pretty extreme. We were about ten dates into our 2020 world tour and we had to stop because we could see the writing on the wall. Pretty soon we found ourselves on the plane back to goodness knows what. We had no idea when we’d be able to pick things up again. However, the one thing we did have is that we usually work in a bubble with only [Charlie and me] in a room. We try not to be distracted by life’s events, so after a few months, we picked up the baton and went back to writing and the new album is a result of that.

Jim Kerr. Courtesy of Dean Chalkley.

RC: What is the creative process like for you and Charlie? You write, then demo the songs and only pull the rest of the band in for a few tracks as needed?

JK: Yes, over the last 15 years we design the record and put together the picture and then if it’s cool we get the band in to do it for real. The band is fantastic, but what we find is that sometimes there’s just something about the demo, maybe its quirkiness or a character that when you do it for real it kind of loses something. So we kind of do it half and half. As the technology has started to get really good over the last decade, all of this has been made much easier.

RC: Russell Mael and Gary Clark make guest appearances on the record. How do you know when it’s time to bring someone from the outside into the process?

JK: Well, we are huge Sparks fans. You can even hear some of their influence on our first album [Life in a Day, 1979]. That’s how long we’ve loved the band. On our last trip through the States, Russell came to a couple of shows. Normally after a gig I don’t hang around, but I had heard that Russell was there, so we met and exchanged contact [information]. He was charming. Then when we came to work on the album, there was a song called “Human Traffic” that Charlie was really hot on. People around [us] were telling us that it was finished, but I thought that there was something missing. I thought that it had to be funny and it wasn’t. We don’t do funny, but I knew that Russell could be, and fortunately when we sent him the track he was able to send us back a few options in only a few days.

RC: The song “Vision Thing” is for your dad who has passed. Did you know always know that you would write a song for him?

JK: The funny thing is that we started writing pre-pandemic in Glasgow at my house, which was a 10-minute walk from dad’s. Charlie and I grew up on the same street, so he knew dad like I knew him. It had become apparent that he was unwell. We just didn’t know at the time how unwell he was. But like most dads, he was all about the work and encouraged us to get on with it. So indeed that’s what we did. Soon after that I ended up moving into [his house]. I like to work in the morning. That’s when I listen to the music and I tap my feet and hum along. He was in the bedroom next door as I’m listening to this piece of music that became “Vision Thing” and he didn’t realize that I’m writing it about him. I take the headphones off and he’s shouting “you’re driving me crazy with this stomping!” I said, “stop. I’m writing a song for you!” So he asked to hear it and he liked it. He’s a construction guy and he had given us the first 100 pounds [we needed] to record our demo. 40 years later I don’t think a week would pass where he didn’t remind us of how that money had blossomed. So it’s funny how when I tell people that I wrote a song for my dad, they are expecting this wistful tale, but instead we have this celebration of his life story and that’s more in sync with his character.

RC: You and Charlie are the remaining original members. What’s your relationship like and why has it lasted so long?

JK: Well it is remarkable and there’s a lot of luck involved. It’s remarkable to simply have a pal for this long. But to have a relationship within the context of a band for this long is not too common. He’s a musician; it’s how he sees the world. I am not. I’m about words and strategies, and a wing and a prayer. Charlie has much more structure. So we don’t tend to invade each other’s territory and are usually on the same page. When we aren’t we can have the most almighty of fights, and we like that as well. It shows that we’re still passionate. Most importantly, the next day all is forgotten. There’s no lingering bitterness.

We’re lucky we met. If our moms hadn’t moved to the same street I’d probably be driving a taxi.

RC: You began as a punk band. What prompted the shift to the expansive, synth-driven sound that would define you?

JK: Punk was the greatest thing. The ethic of punk seemed to come out of nowhere. Before punk you had as much chance of being an astronaut as you did getting a record deal. Everything was centralized. You had to go through London [and the record companies]. Punk had its own ethos and not only with music; people started doing their own magazines and some started fashion labels. This DIY ethic was a beautiful thing. But the limitations of the punk sound would have never been enough for us. About a year into it the first affordable synthesizer became available. Before that they looked like a bridge and that you’d need men in white coats to plug things into. Suddenly you could mess around with them and get your own sound and textures. Rock became more of an art form.

RC: You initially turned down the song “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” (written by Keith Forsey and Steve Schiff). How did the band come around and finally decide to record it?

JK: It was presented to us the wrong way. They had reached out and said that they thought we’d be great for the project [the song was included in the movie, The Breakfast Club – Ed.] and told us that they were going to send us a song. And we were like, “we write our own songs.” They told us that this would be different. The director, John Hughes, loved the song because it was centered around the script and the record guy then said, “and you’ll really like it because it sounds just like you!” So they sent us the song, and that demo version is actually online now. To be fair, it was pretty good. But it was a bit generic. So it just didn’t inspire us. Then Keith Forsey, who had co-written the song, was in Scotland and he got in touch. Keith told us that he knew we weren’t keen on the song, but that he liked Simple Minds and wanted to meet us. We were locked away in a room writing and Keith turns up. Within two days he was our best pal. It was like we’d known each other our entire lives. We didn’t really love Keith’s song but we loved Keith so we gave it a go.

RC: Do you think that was a make-or-break moment for the band? You already had a profile in the UK and had a number of songs that would appear on 1985’s hit record Once Upon A Time.

JK: It had kind of happened everywhere else in the world for us, but America is a bigger beast.  In America record companies have to spend the big bucks to make something happen. That hadn’t been happening for us until then. Whereas in London you could take [British DJ] John Peel out for a curry and that was considered payola. He had to like the record but you could charm him. America is a different thing and the stakes are much higher. You had to be able cut it live. If you could, that was a big deal, and we could. But our patience was rewarded in the sense that within weeks of The Breakfast Club there was this thing called Live Aid and MTV as well. That put [us] in homes all over the world.

RC: Your music has always had political intent.  With your support of Nelson Mandela, I was always surprised that you weren’t involved in Little Steven’s 1985 anti- Apartheid song and album project Sun City.

JK: Well I can’t say why we weren’t part of Sun City. We would have loved to have been. I remember hearing that song and just jumping up and down. If you want to be a writer, at a certain point you look around the world and want to grapple with some of the bigger issues. Certainly the themes of those days on our doorstep were Belfast, the Berlin Wall, [Ronald] Reagan [and Margaret] Thatcher; all of this. There was a sense of, “whose side are you on?” I think that our approach to it all comes from a place of empathy rather than political dogma. All of these years later it still is less about the issues and more about the questions.

RC: Will you take this record out on the road, and what do you hope fans take away from it?

JK: The promoters and agents are talking as we speak so you can expect to hear something about an upcoming tour. As for the new record, I hope that the fans feel the way we do about it, that it’s a committed record. And, that as long in the tooth as we are, that this is a record with a lot of vitality and imagination.

Header image of Simple Minds courtesy of Dean Chalkley.

Leave it to an unexpected COVID-driven quarantine to reassess one’s affinity for an entire decade of music. The impetus for this rabbit-hole deep dive was my Australian Facebook friend Katie posting a well-researched 2021 BBC-TV documentary that made me realize the 1980s were as important to me as my beloved 1960s and 1970s.

Hosted by the personable British music journalist Dylan Jones, this hour-long, highly watchable special includes recent interviews from notable musicians such as Nile Rodgers, Paul Weller, and Bananarama. In addition to looking at the bands and the music, the show notes major developments that affected music consumption, such as the launch of MTV in 1981 and the compact disc in 1982.

The decade started with me graduating college, while new wave was in full swing. My record-buying tastes reflected the times (e.g.,The Smiths, Yaz, Tears for Fears, et. al.). Arguably, synth-fueled new wave – a more homogenized outgrowth of punk – really started in 1978.

Analyzing the list I compiled, there’s a good representation of legacy icons (Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Lou Reed and others) and folk-leaning singer/songwriters (Al Stewart, Richard Thompson, Loudon Wainwright). I think far more interesting are the artists who emerged during the 1980s (like Sade, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, and The Go-Go’s to name a few), all whose popularity grew as a result of their videos getting played often on MTV, and who really sound like a product of the Reagan years.

One might look at the 1980s list below and wonder: where are alternative music stalwarts like Depeche Mode and Echo & The Bunnymen? At the time, their greatest hits records sufficed in my collection.

Also missing are any of the “hair” bands. My taste in metal then and now still ends with Black Sabbath, much to the chagrin of many close friends about 10 years younger. (I’m 64.) No apologies. I like what I like.

One of the odd things about the 1980s is that towards the end of the decade, the prerecorded cassette became the most popular music format for about a half-dozen years. I remember going to a record store in early 1985 to buy the Talking Heads’ recently released Little Creatures, only to find it wasn’t available. The clerk pushed the tape on me, which I bought, but I wasn’t happy.

The cassette’s ascendancy was caused by the major labels being bent on making sure the CD became the format of choice, so they changed their retail policies and would no longer accept returns on vinyl. However, they would be on CDs. This led to the record industry’s ridiculously corrupted system (“shipped gold, returned platinum,” keeping two sets of books,) which for LP fans resulted in the advantage of the proliferation of 99-cent and $1.99 LP cutouts, which helped my record collection grow by enabling me to take a chance on titles I wouldn’t otherwise have purchased. Anyone remember Jimmy’s Music World?

No doubt the cassette’s popularity was fueled by the advent of the Walkman and car decks as standard features, unlike in the 1970s when you needed to install them. An 8-track player and now-collectible tapes from the likes of Roxy Music were stolen from my AMC Hornet, and I’m far from the only one who ever had a car tape deck ripped off. (Choosing an auto audio system for one’s vehicle: another lost technological art form of sorts.)

The most popular 1980s albums did not make the cut. I certainly bought and listened to the likes of Dire Straits’ Brothers In Arms or Don Henley’s Building the Perfect Beast. This list focuses on the albums that meant the most to me, then and still.

Albums that had just two or three tracks I really liked are not on my Top 100. I have to want to hear the entire album with no inclination to move to the next song, and the presence of hits or album length is immaterial. You’ll notice I opted for The Clash’s Sandinista! rather than Combat Rock. I’m sure I could easily come up with 100 one-hit wonders from the decade if I included not only LPs but also seven-inch or 12-inch singles.

Looking back on the list, I definitely had my mellow side. I remember exactly where I heard Everything But The Girl for the first time (it was at a grad school classmate’s party).

I wish the list had more diversity, despite the presence of Sonny Rollins, Robert Cray, Peter Tosh, and Neneh Cherry. It wasn’t until the 1990s when I expanded my genre horizons significantly, into jazz, blues, reggae, and country (the latter, thanks to my now ex-wife, who grew up in the South; we met in 1987). Come to think of it, in 1989 at an MTV party I had a ridiculous argument with her when she took issue with me proclaiming “Buffalo Stance” as the single of the year. You decide.

Living a 15-minute walk from Manhattan’s downtown Tower Records store circa 1992 – 1994 was how I killed a Sunday night. Remember, these were pre-internet days.

I imposed a few rules in compiling the following register of recommended 1980s listening:

• Only one studio album per artist.
• No greatest hits or live albums (except for G-Man – I didn’t realize it was a recorded concert until Frank Doris pointed out this fact).
• The album had to be released as new music during the decade (i.e., no back-catalog releases).
• This is not a “ranking,” which I have always found to be a somewhat arbitrary exercise with no basis for choosing one over the other.
• Solo careers wouldn’t be penalized if the artist’s band that made them famous (Sting, Bryan Ferry, Morrissey, Alison Moyet, among them) is also on the list.
• It makes no difference what format (LP, cassette, or CD) a release was purchased; I’ve bought all three, although by 1986, I bought CDs almost exclusively, as my disposable income grew.
• A 1980s album that I learned about or bought in the 1990s or later (for example, Joy Division’s Closer) is not on the list (but New Order’s Ceremony is).

Without further ado…my 100 Favorite 1980s Albums list (in no particular order; they just came to me off the top of my head):

1. The Smiths – Meat Is Murder (1985)
2. The The – Soul Mining (1983)
3. Kate Bush – Hounds of Love (1985)
4. Sade – Diamond Life (1984)
5. Lou Reed – New York (1989)
6. Bob Dylan – Oh Mercy (1989)
7. Frankie Goes to Hollywood – Welcome to the Pleasure Dome (1984)
8. Bronski Beat – The Age of Consent (1984)
9. Prince – Sign ‘O’ the Times (1987)
10. Tears for Fears – Songs from the Big Chair (1985)
11. Paul Simon – Graceland (1986)
12. Rickie Lee Jones – Pirates (1981)
13. Richard & Linda Thompson – Shoot Out the Lights (1982)
14. Peter Gabriel – So (1986)
15. Talking Heads – Speaking in Tongues (1983)
16. Yaz – Upstairs at Eric’s (1982)
17. Ministry – In Sympathy (1983)
18. Stan Ridgway – The Big Heat (1986)
19. Soft Cell – The Art of Falling Apart (1983)
20. The Church – Starfish (1988)
21. The Clash – Sandinista! (1980)
22. Introducing the Hardline According to Terence Trent D’arby (1987)
23. The Police – Synchronicity (1983)
24. The Neville Brothers – Yellow Moon (1989)
25. Joe Jackson – Night and Day (1982)
26. Suzanne Vega – Solitude Standing (1987)
27. Tom Waits – Rain Dogs (1985)
28. Randy Newman – Trouble in Paradise (1983)
29. The Pretenders (1980)
30. Garland Jeffreys – Escape Artist (1981)
31. Bruce Springsteen – Tunnel of Love (1987)
32. Michelle Shocked – Short Sharp Shocked (1988)
33. Hüsker Dü – Warehouse: Songs and Stories (1987)
34. Bob Mould – Workbook (1989)
35. The Ramones – End of the Century (1980)
36. Bruce Cockburn – Stealing Fire (1984)
37. David Bowie – Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) (1980)
38. Traveling Wilburys – Vol.1 (1988)
39. Simple Minds – New Gold Dream 81-82-83-84 (1982)
40. The Kinks – Give The People What They Want (1981)
41. Squeeze – East Side Story (1981)
42. Rolling Stones – Tattoo You (1981)
43. Billy Bragg – Talking with the Taxman About Poetry (1986)
44. Roxy Music – Flesh and Blood (1980)
45. Bryan Ferry – Boys and Girls (1985)
46. General Public – All the Rage (1984)
47. The Feelies – The Good Earth (1986)
48. Neil Young – Freedom (1989)
49. Blondie – Autoamerican (1980)
50. Human Switchboard – Who’s Landing in My Hangar (1981)
51. Lenny Kravitz – Let Love Rule (1989)
52. Everything But the Girl (1984)
53. Marianne Faithful – Strange Weather (1987)
54. The Waterboys – Fisherman’s Blues (1988)
55. U2 – The Joshua Tree (1987)
56. Sting – …Nothing Like the Sun (1987)
57. Robert Cray – Strong Persuader (1986)
58. Fine Young Cannibals (1985)
59. The English Beat – Special Beat Service (1982)
60. Robbie Robertson (1987)
61. New Order – Movement (1981)
62. The Pogues – If I Should Fall from Grace with God (1988)
63. George Harrison – Cloud Nine (1987)
64. The Jesus and Mary Chain – Darklands (1987)
65. Jonathan Richman – Jonathan Sings (1983)
66. Loudon Wainwright – More Love Songs (1986)
67. Alison Moyet – Alf (1985)
68. Sinead O’Connor – The Lion and the Cobra (1987)
69. Stevie Nicks – Belladonna (1981)
70. Cowboy Junkies – The Trinity Sessions (1988)
71. The Cars – Shake It Up (1981)
72. The B-52s – Wild Planet (1980)
73. Elvis Costello – Imperial Bedroom (1982)
74. Peter Tosh – Wanted Dread & Alive (1981)
75. Pete Townshend – Empty Glass (1980)
76. The Bangles – All Over the Place (1984)
77. The Go-Go’s – Beauty and the Beat (1981)
78. Al Stewart – Russians & Americans (1984)
79. Morrissey – Viva Hate (1988)
80. Ian Hunter – Short Back n’ Sides (1981)
81. The Housemartins – London 0, Hull 4 (1986)
82. Willie Nile (1980)
83. The Cure – Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me (1987)
84. Heaven 17 (1982)
85. ABC –The Lexicon of Love (1982)
86. Graham Parker – The Mona Lisa’s Sister (1988)
87. Leonard Cohen – I’m Your Man (1988)
88. Dramarama – Cinéma Vérité(1985)
89. Sam Phillips – The Indescribable Wow (1988)
90. Neneh Cherry – Raw Like Sushi (1989)
91. Berlin – Pleasure Victim (1982)
92. The Lounge Lizards (1981)
93. New Model Army – The Mark of Cain (1986)
94. Pixies – Doolittle (1989)
95. Pet Shop Boys – Please (1986)
96. Tom Petty – Full Moon Fever (1989)
97. The Psychedelic Furs – Talk Talk Talk (1981)
98. XTC – Skylarking (1986)
99. Sonny Rollins – G-Man (1987)
100. The Smithereens – Especially for You (1986)

My annual salary quadrupled over the course of the decade, starting at about $12,000 with my first job after graduation in June 1980. Thus, I must have bought at least 1,500 LPs and CDs during the decade that didn’t make the list.

The Algerian-born French economist Jacques Attali once wrote: “People buy more records than they can listen to. They stockpile what they want to find the time to hear.” Professor Attali’s observation reminded me of the fall of 1986 when I was struggling internally with my proclivity towards purchasing at least one CD a week, and often, I couldn’t leave the store without several discs.

At this time, when I was a full-time reporter for the cable TV trade publication  Multichannel News (one of the few magazines that I worked for that is still in business, albeit under different ownership). At an industry event in the late 1980s, I remember telling then-MTV VJ Carolyne Heldman about this habit. She also was grappling with the same issue.

Buying music – no matter the format – has always had a therapeutic effect on me when feeling low. I was reminded of this during the past two years of quarantine, bolstered by the digital age’s ability to order anything via e-commerce without leaving your home. Discogs, eBay, Facebook merchants, Amazon, and TowerRecords.com, among others, all scratched that itch.

Analyzing the list by year, the picks are pretty dispersed, as you can see below, with 1981 slightly edging out 1987 as selecting the most records of the decade.

1980: 10
1981: 15
1982:  8
1983:  7
1984:  7
1985:  8
1986: 11
1987: 14
1988: 10
1989: 8

And just for the record, Talking Heads were my favorite band of the first part of the 1980s and U2 for the second half. Looking ahead, Nirvana captured it for the first half of the 1990s.

I have a sneaking suspicion that I might have a 1990s list coming sometime in the future.

So, what would your 1980s picks be?

Larry Jaffee is the author of the book Record Store Day: The Most Improbable Comeback of the 21st Century. More information is at https://larryjaffee.com, where it is also available for purchase.

Header image: The B-52’s, Wild Planet album.

There is something extraordinary about listening to a legendary artist hit their absolute creative peak, pumping out quality music seamlessly, in a manner that makes it seem almost too easy. It’s not easy, however.

Neil Young has had a long and eventful career. He’s achieved fantastic success and experienced significant lows, professionally and personally. Yet Neil Young is a man who may also be at his best in times of turmoil, particularly during times of personal crisis. With that in mind, I wanted to focus on one of the most fascinating periods of Neil Young’s career: a time of tremendous unrest in his life, which eventually manifested in what is known as the “Ditch Trilogy.”

Consisting of a trio of albums, Time Fades Away, On the Beach, and Tonight’s the Night, Young’s time in the ditch is now steeped in infamy, defined by three consecutive massive critical and commercial failures. At the time, they were seen as more challenging expressions of Young’s inner conflicts on achieving success, while also expressing his struggles of losing friends and himself and reflecting on the general decay of his generation in post-Vietnam War America.

The first of the Ditch Trilogy was Time Fades Away, released in 1973. It was an album of all-new material that Young had oddly chosen to take on the road with a completely new and unfamiliar band without recording any of it in the studio first. Following the success of Harvest, which reached Number 1 on the Billboard 200 chart and is his best-selling album, Young became highly disillusioned with the music industry and the world in general.

He set out on tour with his new band, The Stray Gators. The tour was an unmitigated disaster from the start, with confused audiences expecting to hear Young play his hits, but instead, they were subjected to loud and depressing songs played by a band who barely knew one another. In the midst of this, his good friend and long-time collaborator Danny Whitten died of a drug overdose. Shortly after that, on the same tour, friend and roadie Bruce Berry also died of an overdose.

At the same time, Young was battling his demons of depression, substance abuse, and physical issues with his singing voice. Time Fades Away was recorded during this tour, with the new music being premiered live in this extremely convoluted context. Fans, as they had been during the tour, came away confused by the record, and it flopped.

Young was so profoundly affected by the drug-induced deaths of his friends that he proceeded to record an album to specifically chronicle and deal with the incidents in his classic roundabout way. The result was Tonight’s the Night, which was eventually released in 1975 but recorded in late 1973 into early 1974. The extremely dark tone of the album led Young’s record label, Reprise Records, to shelve it in hopes that Young would find himself and record something more positive, or at least something that had selling potential.

Young’s response to this was two-fold. First, he recorded and proceeded to release what would become the second album in the Ditch Trilogy, On the Beach, in 1974. While On the Beach on the surface sounded like a more melodic and sweetly acoustic album, the record dealt with the same dark themes as his previous failed records, centering around the collapse of the 1960’s flower power ideology, his downward spiral in the wake of success, the dark underbelly of the seedy L.A. lifestyle, and more death and despair. It goes without saying that, like Time Fades Away, On the Beach was a commercial failure.

Young remained in the ditch.

After the release of On the Beach, Young’s record label was still stalling the release of the depressing Tonight’s the Night, so Young went back into the studio and recorded an album called Homegrown. If you know anything about Neil Young, you know he is a man of his own principles, an artist who will fight tooth and nail to do things his way and maintain absolute artistic integrity. And so Neil Young once again stuck his middle finger in the face of Reprise Records and the record-consuming public and recorded yet another depressing album.

Homegrown focused on Young’s failed relationship with actress Carrie Snodgress, but it was comparatively sunny compared to Tonight’s the Night. After the recording of Homegrown was complete, Young held a listening party at his home in California. During the party, Young played both Homegrown and the still unreleased Tonight’s the Night with the intent to hand Homegrown over to Reprise and release it as his next album.

After the playback of both albums had finished, Young had a sudden change of heart and instead insisted that Reprise finally release Tonight’s the Night. At the time, Young stated his reasons were that after listening to Tonight’s the Night again, he found “Its overall strength in performance and feeling trumped that of Homegrown.”

Retrospectively, Young admitted with regard to Homegrown, “It was a little too personal…it scared me.” Regardless of his reasons, Young did have his way, and in 1975 Tonight’s the Night finally got the wide release it deserved. And just as had been the case with his previous two records; it flopped. At the time, Young said that the album was “the closest I ever came to art.” As for Homegrown, the reel-to-reel was canned and stuck in a vault for 45 years.

There are a lot of Neil Young fans. Some love him for his longstanding “f*ck you” attitude and desire to follow his muse. Others love him for his music. Some, for both. Those who aren’t Neil Young fans, and probably some who are, may be extremely confused as to why I’ve called the trio of cascading mega-failures I’ve just chronicled one of the best and most fascinating times in his career.

Well, perspective is everything, and sometimes, time does heal all wounds. As the years wore on, Neil Young continued to do what Neil Young does: release music on his terms. Whenever he felt like it. In whichever way he felt like it. Some of it was successful. Some of it wasn’t. I can tell you this, undoubtedly – all of it is good. Damn good.

Music journalists and fans alike began to revisit the Ditch Trilogy, and began to change their tune. The albums started to garner five-star reviews and developed a devout cult-like following. By the turn of the century, the Ditch Trilogy went from being regarded as the proverbial sewer of Young’s work to being revered as among his best.

This begs the question: what is that all worth? These albums were just as good then as they are now. What changed? The answer is twofold. Once you do something a certain way, people expect you to keep doing it the same way over and over and over ad nauseam. Secondly, there is an over-reliance on critics to tell us what’s “good” and “bad.” People don’t always think for themselves, instead choosing to be sheep to be herded about. It was that way in 1975, and still that way in 2022.

Regardless, Neil Young doesn’t pay attention to any of that. He didn’t in 1975, and he doesn’t in 2022. I know what you may be thinking at this point: “what about Homegrown?” Well, Neil Young had yet another “f*ck you” up his sleeve. Just when critics and fans alike began to revere the Ditch Trilogy and see it as the masterwork it always was, Young decided to pull Homegrown out of the vault, dust it off, and drop it on the unsuspecting public in 2020, just as it was in 1975. Completely untouched.

So, what now? The Ditch Quadrilogy? The Ditch Tetralogy?

Neil Young doesn’t do gimmicks. I don’t think he cares if you like him, or mind whether you listen to his music or not. He would probably be the first to tell Rolling Stone, Spin, or Pitchfork to take their reviews and stuff them. Sure, it’s true that at any given point in the last 47 years, Young could have released Homegrown, but he chose not to. He even once opined that the songs on the album were “great songs that I can live without.”

Given that fact, in listening to the album you cannot help but revel in how great it truly is. It’s the work of a seminal artist at the height of his creativity while at the same time being mired in the worst possible headspace a human being could find themselves in. This entire period of Young’s uber-interesting career is a fascinating case study on success, excess, life, death, and, most importantly, artistic integrity.

The funny thing is, though, Homegrown may be the best of the bunch recorded during Young’s Ditch era. Listening to Homegrown, one feels like the missing puzzle piece has been found. A puzzle we didn’t even know was incomplete. It’s a true “a-ha!” moment. After hearing these songs 47 years on, we finally hear Young running the gamut of his emotional turmoil between these four albums. We see the vividly complete picture of his depressing yet grand artistic vision.

One cannot help but wonder how things might have been different for Young during that time had he chosen to release Homegrown instead of Tonight’s the Night, or even alongside it. However, that is not what happened, and that is by Neil Young’s design. Neil Young only plays by one set of rules, his own. What other artist can hold a truly great album in their hands, spit on it, and instead choose to release an album they knew would fail?

Perhaps in 2022, things all played out precisely as Young intended. Perhaps his intent can be summed up by his cryptic message included in the liner notes of the original vinyl release of Tonight’s the Night: “I’m sorry. You don’t know these people. This means nothing to you.” 

47 years on, we get it, Neil. We finally get it.

Header image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Mark Estabrook.

Part One of Copper’s NAMM 2022 Show report ran in Issue 172.

Sony is a company whose presence was all over NAMM 2022, similar to how Adobe impacts any photography trade show or conference, even those dedicated to analog processes. For NAMM, Sony was present with a large booth, lectures, demonstrations, and an event. The most fun we had at the show was at a venue in Los Angeles, at a unique facility called Gold-Diggers. My son (and Mac Edition Radio reporter) Thomas and I were driving around looking for it, and all we saw was what looked like a dive bar with a stripper vibe. Finally, I parked up the street, walked up to an unmarked gate, and voila, the Sony event. It turned out that Gold-Diggers is a complex that includes the aforementioned bar, with a killer stage on it for live performances, plus a full-blown recording studio, and a hotel. One-stop shopping for musicians working on an album. Amazing, if not quite in plain sight.

Sony chose the facility to demonstrate their new Sony 360 Reality Audio technology. So, this takes a bit of explaining. To demonstrate the system, attendees were invited into a small studio, and were fitted with special ear-mounted microphones by no less an audio luminary than Gus Skinas. (Among other things, Gus does engineering and mastering for Octave Records.) The mics were used to calibrate the room to our ears, and more precisely, our ears’ exact locations. In the studio were lots of speakers, in front, above, below, to the sides, in the back, all to deliver a 360-degree audio experience. The purpose of the demo was to show 360 Reality Audio’s ability to create that experience with a normal set of headphones. We listened to audio samples played in the room, then in our headphones, then back again, and again. While the headphone listening didn’t exactly match the room, it was both persuasive and impressive.

The computer display in Gold-Diggers showing the location of audio sources in the studio. The software is 360 WalkMix Creator developed by Audio Futures, that can be used with most digital audio workstations.

Keep in mind, when you have a set of speakers located just under your spine on each side of your body, just below your rear end, along with all those other speakers in the room it’s pretty tough to duplicate, but the immersive quality heard through headphones was lovely and believable. Of equal importance is that the 360 Reality Audio system doesn’t require any specialized equipment for headphone listening; you do need to download an app from a compatible streaming service, and listen to content created using 360 Reality Audio. This is unlike those surround headphones with multiple drivers, all connected separately to receive discrete signals and reproduce separate audio channels. The Sony 360 Reality Audio system was meant for your phone, on the go, anywhere you want to listen to music, though there are some compatible speakers available.

The goals of the system are ambitious. For example, by using the camera in your phone, the core technology can generate a personalized HRTF (head-related transfer function) “easily and quickly” from a photo of your ear. HRTF determines how an ear receives sound from a point in space (according to Wikipedia), and is unique to each person. For more information about 360 Reality Audio, click here.

Gold-Diggers’Simon Horrocks, and Ross Caravati of Sony, during the Sony 360 Reality Audio demonstrations.

Gus Skinas fitting Mac Edition Radio’s Thomas Fogel with positioning microphones. Thomas then faced the speakers, and the microphones calibrated the system to his precise location. Later the microphones are removed and replaced with headphones.

It was also a treat to be in a sparkling new recording studio, though not everything was new, as Gold-Diggers held stacks of vintage amps, guitars, and more; a heady environment. Food was prepared by a pop-up team that made fantastic sliders, chicken, fresh onion rings, and more. The stress of midtown Los Angeles traffic melted away. For my son Thomas it was the perfect introduction to NAMM, without all the show floor hustle and bustle, and an opportunity for all of us to see how and where music is created. How the public will respond to 360 Reality Audio is anybody’s guess, but with Sony’s backing I think we’ll hear more about it in the future.

All the main NAMM exhibition halls were filled with every conceivable variety of music, studio and pro audio gear, from stalwarts like Shure, Korg, Ludwig, Moog, and Fender to small one-person companies. As noted in Part One of this report, there were a number of exhibitors that audiophiles would recognize. Chord was there showing off their latest DACs and amplifiers, including their Ultima 3 mono power amplifier, and acclaimed Mojo 2 portable DAC/headphone amp. The packed Audeze booth was a few aisles away. With the help of public relations expert Ari Morguelan guiding me around the booth, and company founders Sankar Thiagasmudram and Mark Cohen, Audeze introduced their $1,699 MM-500 planar magnetic headphones. The MM-500 was voiced by Grammy-winning producer Manny Marroquin. I didn’t have a chance to seriously listen to the headphones, but hope to in the near future.

Tom Vaughn of Chord Electronics with the pro market version of their Ultima 3 amplifier.

Ever wonder who created Audeze headphones? It’s these two gents, Sankar Thiagasmudram and Mark Cohen.

IEMs (in-ear monitors) are a huge business with musicians (and some audiophiles), as they’ve become the standard for on-stage live concert use. Accordingly, the Etymotic/Westone booth was jumping, with folks getting ear molds made on the spot, and enjoying the ability to try and compare different models. One of the goals of exhibiting at NAMM isn’t just to meet with consumers, but also to organize business and sales meetings, and work with the press to spread the word about new products. Even I had some ear impressions made; now to follow-up on them!

Etymotic and Westone are two peas in a pod, actually, with Dr. Mead Killion, founder of Etymotic Research, now having enormous influence over both product lines. One difference between the two companies is that Killion was a firm believer in single-balanced-armature driver designs, as opposed to in-ears that use multiple balanced-armature drivers. His vision was that as one adds drivers, it adds issues with time-alignment and crossover design, along with additional expense and manufacturing complexity. That said, Westone has a plethora of models that incorporate multiple drivers (as do other vendors like Shure). Etymotic’s top-of-class ER4SR and ER4XR models are flagship earphones for many audiophiles, and rightly so. (The ER4SR is tuned for a flat “studio monitor” response; the ER4XR has increased bass.) I’ve known folks at both companies for a while, and it’s nice to see them under one tent.

Hearing protection was how Etymotic Research got its start. And hearing protection is very much in the news as we read about large class action suits against allegedly defective earplugs used by those who served in Afghanistan and elsewhere, with multitudes of veterans returning with hearing damage. Hearing protection comes in many types, including headsets, simple earplugs, and custom-molded units, and can be passive or have active noise reduction. Etymotic and others offer hearing protection at different levels of attenuation through the use of removable filters.

Etymotic Research and Westone Audio had one of the most popular booths, with ear molds being made for attendees every 20 minutes. Baile Johnson, Catherine Davis, Jeff LaRico, Steve Kearney, Tommy Roalson, Amanda Spencer, Tal Kocen, Rachelle Winnson, Drew Walters, Jacob Gonzales, and others were just part of the team on hand.

What does this have to do with audiophiles, you might ask? Many current IEMs are refinements of Killion’s designs, which arose out of products made for hearing protection – he had training as an audiologist and as a classical musician. (As an aside, I remember the first time I tried Sennheiser headphones that had the large yellow foam cushions. I was working at my college radio station, KHSU, and was getting headaches from wearing Koss Pro-4AA closed-back headphones, which were clamping on my head. Someone brought the lightweight, comfortable Sennheisers in, and I think it’s safe to say they changed our relationship to headphones forever.)

NAMM is a place where thousands upon thousands of people are trying out amplifiers, headphones, headphone amps and DACs, speakers, digital recorders, consoles, cables, and more (along with musical instruments, of course), but in a dual capacity: evaluating them not only for listening to reproduced music, but also in creating the recordings. Many attendees are professionally involved in the music creation process, and are keenly aware of neutral versus colored products and systems. It’s quite amazing to hear folks audition microphones and hear the sometimes subtle but often distinct differences they make. It’s pretty cool to experience a set of small studio monitors, and a few booths away, stare up at some twenty-foot-high stacks used in a concert setting.

NAMM is an industry-only event, but isn’t always so difficult to get a pass, since many manufacturers offer them to attract potential customers. If you are a musician, you will have a blast, as will anyone involved in component design, engineering, or post-production. In addition to the exhibits, there are many on-site and streaming seminars and more: at the 2022 show there were more than 260 educational sessions. While most of these are aimed at established and emerging professionals from all aspects of music production and performance, serious audiophile would also find much to learn about.

One of my favorite events was the annual loudspeaker competition, where the audience got to vote for their favorite speakers. Oh, I should mention, this wasn’t like sitting in an audio salon and auditioning a pair of bookshelves – the competition was between large pro-audio systems used for concerts. I couldn’t stick around for the outcome, but it was fun to see how seriously everyone took the listening and judging, using listening criteria that would not be unfamiliar to audiophiles.

It’s important for us audiophiles to remember that this is where our hobby begins, with musicians, instruments, and the recording chain, and with mixing and mastering technology, all in the hands of engineers, producers, and other experts. NAMM makes it all visible in one place, and it’s marvelous and inspiring.

Here are more show highlights:

Dave Trumfio of Gold-Diggers, and other folks enjoying a drink during the Sony 360 Reality Audio demonstrations.

Gus Skinas and Hiroyuki (Hiro) Komuro of Sony at Gold-Diggers Studio. If you have listened to and believe in DSD, you owe a lot of it to Gus.

Joey Krieger of AEA Ribbon Mics & Preamps discussing the features of some new products.

The Disney-authorized Haunted Mansion Guitar, and Marc Minarik from Minarik Guitars at the NAMM Media Preview Day.

The Artiphon Orba 2 portable synthesizer is held by Mike Butera, founder and CEO.

Focusrite had some wonderful new tools for podcasting. Here, John DiNicola and Hannah Bliss show off their new line of Vocaster products.

The fine gents of Winkler Woods, showing off their stock of hand-picked specialty woods for sale to instrument makers.

Mark Corbin, Rob Bingham, and Cody Criswell of cable and accessories manufacturer Monster.

Freddie Gateley, Finley Smith and Cash Gateley of VocalBooth showing off their portable sound isolation booth. My wife Nancy suggested that I get one and use it when testing open-backed headphones. She also doesn’t appreciate my singing or humming either.

Sophia Samons and Daniel Shinall of Thunderbolt Audio. Their Little Wedgie is a rubber wedge to keep onstage monitors at the right angle.

Many audiophiles utilize media storage products from Other World Computing (OWC), and here is the team behind the company: Greg Threlkeld, Jon Hoeg, Chris Kooistra, Teddy Mazrin, and Tyler King.

Officer Edgar, Officer Alvarez, and Sergeant McAlpine, three fine members of the Anaheim Police Department officers who kept the peace, while grooving to the tunes. I can certainly think of worse assignments!

The Donner company shows off several new affordable instruments. utilizing composite materials. Here Jake Qijie Wu of Donner, holds a violin while Mac Thomas Fogel holds their latest carbon fiber guitar and PR person Ari Morguelan keeps the party in check.

Audeze was featuring the new MM-500 Series planar magnetic headphones, designed and voiced by Manny Marroquin, and it seemed that everyone wanted to meet him. Here some visiting students and faculty pay him a visit.

The Antares booth, either the savior or the enemy of music, depending on your view about Auto-Tune.

Hiroyuki Komuro is one of key engineers at Sony, involved with Sony 360 Reality Audio among other achievements.

Getting yourself noticed is a common goal for many musicians who were attendees. Jared Baisley, Elishia Florence-Baisley, Reginald Bailey, Filia Luna, and John Polimeni did just that!

Shingo Dobkin, Dylan Scarzafava, and Phillip Walker at the Dekoni Audio booth. Dekoni, vendors of high-quality headphones, IEM tips, cases and other products, were a popular booth at NAMM I’ve tested many of their products and can attest to their quality.

Byllee Kairy and Justin Howard of Pole Hugger Music. Their Pole Hugger is designed to fix a nagging issue for musicians: where to put your headphones while in a studio or onstage. Might be handy for audiophiles also.

Fred Armisen delivers the opening monologue at the 2022 NAMM TEC Awards. The awards honor achievements in music, technology, engineering, and other categories.

Clark Holmes, Kim Bjerga and Andy Nufer, of KLŌS Guitars, Provo, Utah, Their band, The Birdwatchers, was featured at NAMM, where they played the firm’s carbon fiber instruments.

Header image: it’s not uncommon that folks like Joe Lamond, President and CEO of NAMM and drummer, are also  serious players. Here he is sitting in on the drums with the band Printz during a gig at the Hilton Hotel. Most hotel bars feature a house band, but during NAMM, the abundance of talent is amazing.

Jazz fusion and contemporary jazz guitarist/composer Pat Metheny is the only person to have won Grammy awards in 10 different categories. And while his cache of 20 Grammys is not a record number, it puts him in an echelon with few peers.

The Missouri native was born in 1954 to two musicians. Trumpet was the family favorite – his grandmother, father, and brother played it – so it made sense for him to start there. But after he saw the Beatles perform in 1964, all he could think about was the guitar. Add to that his exposure to Miles Davis in his teen years, and Metheny had a recipe for combining new ideas in jazz with innovative guitar technique.

He got practical tutelage by gigging in Kansas City with jazz pianist Paul Smith, and cornetist and trumpeter Gary Sivils. The organist Russ Long liked to make Metheny perform tunes he didn’t know, just to challenge him. His education continued with an intensive summer mentorship with Hungarian guitarist Atilla Zoller and some lectures on jazz harmony by Gary Burton. Metheny himself started teaching right after high school, first at the University of Miami and then at Boston’s Berklee College of Music. While there, he played with Gary Burton’s band.

It was teaching that turned Metheny into a composer. The exercises he created for his students became the basis for the tunes he recorded on his first album, Bright Size Life, in 1976. He started the Pat Metheny Group in 1977, a small ensemble that’s had dozens of musicians rotate in and out over the decades. Over half of Metheny’s Grammy awards were won by that band.

In 2021, the Library of Congress named Bright Size Life a “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” work worthy of preservation in the National Recording Registry. That same year, Metheny put out Side-Eye NYC, new recordings of his early compositions, including the tune “Bright Size Life.”

Enjoy these eight great tracks by Pat Metheny.

1. Track: “Phase Dance”
   Album: Pat Metheny Group
   Label: ECM
   Year: 1978

When the Pat Metheny Group (PMG) started out, it was a quartet with Metheny, keyboardist Lyle Mays, bassist Mark Egan (on a fretless instrument), and drummer Danny Gottlieb. Those four were an ideal blend of creative forces to invent a new subgenre of jazz. Their music was constantly in motion, shimmering with multiple layers of electric guitar, virtuosic keyboards, and Mays’ distinctive approach to strumming the autoharp. Some credit also goes to producer Manfred Eicher, founder of ECM Records, who helped nail down the band’s signature diffuse sound.

There’s something simultaneously low-key and intense in Metheny’s playing on “Phase Dance.” Like all the tracks on the group’s debut album, he and Mays share writing credit.

2. Track: “Daybreak”
   Album: New Chautauqua
   Label: ECM
   Year: 1979

While PMG was an important outlet for Metheny, he also continued to do solo work. New Chautauqua is a quiet, mesmerizing record, with no one but Metheny in the studio. Listening to it is like peeking at an artist’s most intimate creative moments.

“Daybreak” was inspired by a practice session. Metheny fingerpicks his electric guitar, exploring, seeing where it takes him.

3. Track: “Travels”
   Album: Travels
   Label: ECM
   Year: 1983

Like many jazz ensembles, PMG quickly became legendary for its live performances. Although there are some (sonically dreadful) bootlegs and amateur recordings of their gigs – stay away from Lo-Light Records’ Stumptown ʼ77 – the EMC album Travels was PMG’s first official live release. It was a huge seller and won the 1984 Grammy for Best Fusion Jazz Performance.

The PMG lineup had changed a bit: Steve Rodby had taken over bass (upright, electric, and bass synthesizer), and Brazilian master Naná Vasconcelos added thrilling percussion. The song “Travels,” credited to Metheny and Mays, has a harmonic sequence reminiscent of gospel. Gottlieb’s brushwork in this understated arrangement is like a cloud for the melody line to roll around in.

4. Track: “Have You Heard”
   Album: Letter from Home
   Label: Geffen
   Year: 1989

Letter from Home is another Grammy-winning album. Argentinian bassist Pedro Aznar joined the lineup, or rather re-joined it, having also played on the PMG album First Circle five years before. His specialty was usually fretless bass, but on this album he plays a range of percussion instruments, melodica, and pan pipes.

The album closer is “Have You Heard,” by Metheny. Its appealing, Latin-flavored vibe goes virtuosic at around 2:09, when he lets a full chorus of almost constant 16^th notes flow from his guitar.

5. Track: “Everybody’s Party”
   Album: I Can See Your House from Here
   Label: Blue Note
   Year: 1994

I Can See Your House from Here is a duo album with fellow guitarist John Scofield, whose range of styles overlaps with Metheny’s while also venturing into funk. This makes for a fun and highly rhythmic collaboration. Producer Lee Townsend, who has worked more with singer-songwriters than with jazz artists, made the choice to keep each guitarist strictly in his own stereo channel. The backup players are Steve Swallow on bass and Bill Stewart on drums.

Half of the tracks are by Metheny and half by Scofield. Among the latter group is “Everybody’s Party,” with its bassy, funky, almost raunchy bite.

6. Track: “Resolution”
   Album: A Map of the World
   Label: Warner Brothers
   Year: 1999

The 1999 movie A Map of the World starred Sigourney Weaver, Julianne Moore, and David Strathairn. Scott Elliott directed this rough-edged, contemporary story of a tragedy in small-town America. Metheny’s soundtrack underscores the desolation of the setting and the hollowness of a community that turns on one of their own.

The dissonance in the movement called “Resolution” has an unsettling effect. The listener almost wishes for the tension to be brought closer to the surface and dealt with openly, but instead it is woven into a deceptively calm orchestration.

7. Track: “Don’t Wait”
   Album: Metheny/Mehldau Quartet
   Label: Nonesuch
   Year: 2007

Pianist Brad Mehldau, bassist Larry Grenadier, and drummer Jeff Ballard join Metheny for this quartet album. This followed the duo project Metheny/Mehldau, released the previous year.

“Don’t Wait” draws from a range of influences, from New Age jazz to the impressionism of Debussy. The minimal harmonic motion highlights the textural differentiation among the instruments. Listening through headphones is particularly rewarding, thanks to exceptional sound production by Metheny and engineering by Pete Karam.

8. Track: “Better Days Ahead”
   Album: Side-Eye NYC
   Label: Modern Recordings
   Year:  2021

As mentioned above, Side-Eye NYC reconsiders some of Metheny’s early compositions. It does so through his new trio, Side-Eye, whose name was inspired by current affairs. As Metheny told DownBeat, “It’s been hard to be an American in the past few years and not have a kind of side-eye look at ourselves during this incredibly bizarre period of time.”

Musically, it is distinctive among Metheny’s many collaborations: there’s no bass player. The other trio members are pianist James Francies and drummer Eric Harland. “Better Days Ahead” has a delicate Latin sound, with the bass provided by Francies at an electronic keyboard. The trio gels so naturally that it’s hard to believe it’s their first album together.

Header image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/R. Steven Rainwater.

During the 14^th, 15^th, and 16^th centuries a few villains and events emerged that wouldn’t be out of place if you found them in episodes of TV’s American Horror Story. These evil-doers and strange occurrences were real and their existence has been substantiated in a variety of documents. In other words, it’s all true…well, most of it. Aspects of the legends that developed around these people and events have been misinterpreted over the years, facts have become mixed with myths, and some of the descriptions have become exaggerated. But most of the horrors actually occurred, and music was integral to each of these lurid tales.

The Legend of Dracula

The most familiar villain of the 15^th century was probably Vlad III Dracula, Prince of Wallachia (a part of Romania), who lived from 1431 – 1476. By employing terror tactics, psychological warfare, and a small army, he contributed to stopping the Ottoman (Turkish) army when it invaded his native Wallachia. As a result, some Romanians today consider him a national hero for helping save Europe from the Turks, but others believe he’s a villain for using exceedingly cruel punishments during his reign. [1]

Dracula’s moniker “Vlad the Impaler” was derived from his preferred method for executing his victims: impaling them and displaying their heads on stakes. His reputation grew as the moniker became more popular, and the exceedingly fiendish punishments he imposed became better-known through the distribution of medieval Transylvanian pamphlets. Stories about Dracula were recorded in chronicles written after his death, and re-imagined more recently in Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula [2] as well as in 20^th century movies. [3]

The prince’s legend grew, in large part, because of a widely-known 15^th century song-poem written and set to music by a German poet named Michel Beheim (1416 – 1472) – a writer referred to as Germany’s most productive 15^th century poet. Beheim’s song-poem, composed in 1463 and called “Story of a Bloodthirsty Madman Called Dracula of Wallachia,” detailed the ruler’s atrocities. It portrayed Dracula as someone who implemented acts of torture and mass murder and, according to some tales, was a madman who also drank blood. [4] The poem was first performed at the court of the Holy Roman Emperor Friedrich III during the winter of 1463 where Beheim sang his poetry to the accompaniment of various musical instruments.

Beheim’s “Dracula” poem was written in a manner similar but not identical to the German Meistergesang, a form of lyric poetry set to music and sung by a soloist. [5] Meisters (Masters) were highly skilled poets and tradesmen who could both write new verses to existing melodies as well as invent new melodies, and Meistersingers (Master singers) were members of the German guilds for lyric poetry, composition, and unaccompanied art songs. Each Meistersinger school had a system of learning intended to train trade apprentices and journeymen in the Meistergesang style, then promote them to the title of Meistersinger after an exam and the creation of a “masterwork.” [6] Some historians believe Beheim was a Meistersinger himself even though he didn’t belong to any of the Meistersinger guilds.

Establishing the context of Beheim’s poem is essential, given the political implications of the damage it would do to Vlad Dracula’s reputation. First of all, the Dracula poem shares many of the characteristics of Beheim’s other works, specifically a tendency to exaggerate numbers for political purposes, to invent conversations of which there is no record, even to manufacture incidents. For Beheim, historical accuracy was less important than adherence to the central principle that history is a vehicle shaped at will and intended to promote a particular political point of view.

Also, that these poems were performed raises the possibility of deliberate dramatization by an entertainer ever-conscious of the effect on his audience. Beheim had no direct contact with Dracula. For his narrative, he relied on three sources: earlier widely-circulating narratives, most of which are part of what is now called the St. Gall manuscript; current events such as Vlad’s arrest and imprisonment by King Matthias of Hungary, filtered through a political lens; and a first-hand account gleaned from a Catholic monk who had recently encountered Dracula in Transylvania and lived to tell his probably well-embellished tale. [7] The St. Gall manuscript (named after the Swiss monastery where it is located) comprises thirty-two short anecdotes, all of which present Dracula as a bloodthirsty tyrant.

Beheim uses the same parallel in his own poem, underscoring Dracula as a persecutor of the Church and hence the enemy of all mankind. Indeed, he uses the term “wutrich” (bloodthirsty monster) which he also employs elsewhere in his poetry.

By 1462, Vlad Dracula’s reputation as an exceptionally cruel and sadistic tyrant had been well established. That year, Pope Pius II sent a representative to investigate the recent arrest of Dracula by Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary. The representative met Dracula in person, and has provided us with the only known description of the prince in a printed source. His report back to the Pope claimed that Dracula had [already] killed 40,000 of his political opponents by the most ferocious of methods, including impalement and skinning alive. Such tales were readily embraced, in fact even encouraged not only by Corvinus but by other opponents of Dracula in order to justify his arrest and imprisonment.

Beheim elaborates on the final statement in one of the St. Gall manuscript’s episodes, reporting it as follows: “It was his pleasure and gave him courage to see human blood flow and it was his custom to wash his hands in it as it was brought to the table.” [8]

Vlad the Impaler. Courtesy of Wikipedia/public domain.

The Strange Case of the Dancing Plagues

In addition to Dracula’s peculiar ways of entertaining himself, several bizarre events occurred when a mysterious affliction overwhelmed groups of men and women throughout Medieval and Renaissance Europe. Sometimes it affected only a few people, sometimes large masses, but the symptoms were always the same: uncontrollable, frenzied dancing which ended in physical collapse, exhaustion, and sometimes death. These outbreaks, usually referred to as choreomania, often incorporated music as a kind of therapy when “asymptomatic” people would use it to stop the affliction that troubled the dancers.

At an outbreak in the city of Strasbourg during the summer of 1518, between 50 and 400 people danced for weeks:

Citizens by the hundred[s] became compelled to dance, seemingly for no reason – jigging trance-like for days, until unconsciousness or, in some cases, death.

In full view of the public, this is the apogee of the choreomania that tormented Strasbourg. Also known as the “dancing plague,” it was the most fatal and best documented of the more than ten such contagions which had broken out along the Rhine and Moselle rivers since 1374. Numerous accounts of the bizarre events that unfolded that summer can be found scattered across various contemporary documents and chronicles compiled in the subsequent decades and centuries.

The more citizens this unusual plague afflicted, the more desperate the privy council became to control it. The clergy held it to be the work of a vengeful Saint Vitus, patron saint of dancers, entertainers, and neurological disorders, but the councilors listened instead to the guild of physicians, declaring the dance to be “a natural disease, which comes from overheated blood.” According to humoral [body fluids] theory, the afflicted must therefore be bled. But the physicians instead recommended the treatment given to past victims of this bizarre disease. They must dance themselves free of it. A 16^th century chronicle composed by the architect Daniel Specklin records what the council did next. Carpenters and tanners were ordered to transform their guild halls into temporary dance floors, and “set up platforms in the horse market and in the grain market” in full view of the public. To keep the accursed in motion and so expedite their recovery, dozens of musicians were paid to play drums, fiddles, pipes, and horns, with healthy dancers brought in for further encouragement. The authorities hoped to create the optimal conditions for the dance to exhaust itself.

It backfired horribly. Being more inclined to a supernatural than a medical explanation of the dance, most of the onlookers saw in the frenzied movements a demonstration of the magnitude of Saint Vitus’ fury. None being free of sin, many were lured into the mania. [9]

The privy council ordered the stages to be pulled down. If the choreomaniacs must continue their disturbing movements then they now must do so out of sight. The council went further, prohibiting almost all dance and music in the city until September. This was no small thing for a culture in which communal dancing was central – from upright burghers performing their restrained, delicate steps…to ale-laden peasants leaping with hearty abandon to let off steam. Sebastian Brant, a Strasbourg chancellor and author of The Ship of Fools (1494), detailed the exception to the ban: “if honourable persons wish to dance at weddings or celebrations of first Mass in their houses, they may do so using stringed instruments, but they are on their conscience not to use tambourines and drums.” Presumably strings were deemed less likely than percussion to bring on the mania. [10]

Music and dancing had become dangerous, something to be kept at home, toned down, and performed only by “honorable persons.” Music lured people to the dance stages: Some people left without becoming affected, probably fascinated then appalled by the spectacle. For other people, music served as a “gateway drug” by hooking them into something beyond their control…something that was secondary to the awful and compelling sight of the dancers. And for those who did become entranced, music made the problem worse by helping to continue the spell. It was also suggested that dancing mania was similar to a “possession cult” – a trance initiated, sustained, and finally terminated by music.

Music was only one explanation for causing choreomania. 20th century investigators thought that the dancers might have eaten bread made from rye flour that had been contaminated with the fungal disease ergot which is known to produce convulsions. American sociologist Robert Bartholomew suggested that the dancers belonged to heretical sects, dancing to attract divine favor. The most widely accepted theory was medical historian John Waller’s who believed the dancing plague was a form of mass psychogenic disorder. He claimed such outbreaks take place under circumstances of extreme stress and generally reflect local fears.

According to Waller, the Strasbourg poor were primed for an epidemic of hysterical dancing. First of all, there was precedent. Every European dancing plague between 1374 and 1518 had occurred near Strasbourg, along the western edge of the Holy Roman Empire. Then there were the prevailing conditions. In 1518, a string of bad harvests, political instability, and the arrival of syphilis had induced anguish extreme even by early modern standards. This suffering manifested as hysterical dancing because the citizens believed it could. People can be extraordinarily suggestible and a firm conviction in the vengefulness of Saint Vitus was enough for it to be visited upon them. “The minds of the choreomaniacs were drawn inwards,” writes Waller, “tossed about on the violent seas of their deepest fears.” [11]

The Strasbourg plague is the most famous example of choreomania. Similar events included an outbreak during the 11^th century in Kölbigk, Saxony where it was believed to be the cause of demonic possession or divine judgment. In 15^th century Apulia, Italy a woman was bitten by a tarantula, the venom making her dance convulsively (and cause later composers to write “Tarantella” dance music, no doubt). The only way to cure the bite was to “shimmy” and have the right sort of music available, which was an accepted remedy by some scholars.

As for Strasbourg, whatever the cause, the mania lasted for about two months before ending as mysteriously as it began. And like Dracula’s legend, tales of the choreomaniacs have been frightening people for centuries beyond their occurrences.

Some Words of Caution

Halloween is just about here, so I suggest staying home where it’s safe. If you do go out, avoid listening to any rock band called Dracula and the Choreomaniacs. Avoid any gathering hosted by someone named Vlad III, and decline all offers of food made from rye flour. Finally, if you’re invited to a party where the guests seem to be moving in an uncontrollable manner, focus your attention, keep your head, cover your ears, and dance The Mashed Potato in order to gyrate your way as quickly as possible out the door.

Suggested Listening

The Black Dragon: Music from the Time of Vlad Dracula

[1] The research is interesting because of the different ways it has been used, and reasons why people have chosen to view Vlad as a hero or villain. These descriptions may be two sides of the same coin, i.e., heroes are capable of deeds of compassion or cruelty, of humanity or inhumanity, or of good or of evil.

[2] Although it seems likely Stoker knew about Vlad the Impaler, there’s some controversy concerning whether or not Stoker actually used Vlad as a model for his vampire.

[3] Some of the best Dracula films were produced by the British Hammer studios during the late1950s – 1970s. Kevin Lyons of the British Film Institute noted: “A post-millennial revival [of Hammer movies] has yielded a handful of interesting films, but none can hold a candle to those 18 years when the Hammer name promised an hour and a half of gory, sexy and inventive thrills.” (May 2, 2017)

[4] Dracula supposedly washed his hands in blood, likely misinterpreted as drinking blood. Over time, this and other elements of the legend might have been influenced by the story of Elizabeth Bathory (1560 – 1614), the serial killer “Blood Countess” accused of bathing in the blood of her servants to keep herself eternally young.

[5] The form developed at the end of the 14^th century and reached its height in the 16^th century.

[6] These singers held regular competitions to display their skills and name new Master singers. Richard Wagner’s opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1868) presents exactly such a contest: In the opera, the winner will not only be crowned Master but will also receive prizes including the goldsmith’s beautiful daughter.

[7] Many people who made contact with Dracula, even if they weren’t his enemies, were tortured or disposed of by Vlad and didn’t live to tell their tales.

[8] Excerpts from David B. Dickens and Elizabeth Miller, “Michel Beheim, German Meistergesang, and Dracula,” Journal of Dracula Studies: Vol. 5, Article 5, 2003.

[9] “The authorities turned a crisis into a nightmare scenario worthy of a canvas by Hieronymus Bosch.” John Waller, The Lancet, February 21, 2009.

[10] “Stringed instruments weren’t considered as dangerous because percussion triggered the spasmodic, rhythmic convulsions of the dancing.” Excerpts from Ned Pennant-Rea, “The Dancing Plague of 1518,” The Public Domain Review, July 10, 2018.

[11] Ibid.

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Hendrik Hondius/public domain.

Header image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Pieter Bruegel/public domain.

Like almost every well-known record label, A&M Records also made some forays into the jazz world. Some would be more of a relaxed style of pop-jazz, while others would come out of left field and skirt the avant-garde. Here is a random assortment of what A&M had to offer jazz listeners.

One of the label’s earliest jazz signings was pianist Pete Jolly. Born Peter Ceragioli Jr. and raised in Phoenix, Arizona, Jolly began his music career playing the accordion at age three. In his early teens, he was friends with up-and-coming young guitarist Howard Roberts, and Jolly followed Roberts in relocating to Los Angeles in 1952.

He soon became part of the West Coast jazz scene, worked with many now-famous players, and also joined Shorty Rogers on several recording dates. Jolly’s most popular album was 1963’s Little Bird, the title track becoming a hit single. He is also known for the Pete Jolly Trio, which performed together for nearly 50 years in the greater Los Angeles area, with Chuck Berghofer on bass and Nick Martinis on drums. His piano performances appeared on many television and movie soundtracks.

Jolly had worked as a session musician at A&M for many of the label’s earliest recordings, and his electric piano intro graced Herb Alpert’s hit single “This Guy’s In Love With You” (which was the first chart-topping single for both A&M Records and composers Burt Bacharach and Hal David). It was no surprise that Jolly would record a handful of albums for the label.

His first album for A&M (Herb Alpert Presents Pete Jolly) was a pop/jazz record, and his second, a live album (Give a Damn). His third album, Seasons, would arguably prove to be a masterpiece in his catalog – recorded in a four-hour session and largely improvised, with Jolly playing an array of different keyboards, it was roughly presented as a suite of music. The title track was one of only two outside compositions on the record. “Seasons” was penned by Roger Nichols, who also co-wrote hits with Paul Williams, including “We’ve Only Just Begun” for Carpenters.

Saxophonist Paul Winter had started his recording and performing career playing jazz, and dabbled in a couple of early bossa nova records following a goodwill tour of Latin America with his sextet (as cultural ambassadors for the US State Department). In 1967, he formed The Paul Winter Consort and released The Winter Consort on A&M the next year. After the 1969 album Something in the Wind, A&M released Road in 1970, a live album that combined all the new influences he had gathered along the way, making the Consort one of the first “world music” groups.

The album Road was notable for two other reasons. It is likely the only A&M album ever taken to the moon, as the Apollo 15 astronauts took a copy of the record with them, naming two craters after two songs on the album: “Icarus” (perhaps the Consort’s most recognizable song) and “Ghost Beads.” Also, if some of the performances seem familiar to fans of the long-running group Oregon, all four founding members of that band (Ralph Towner, Paul McCandless, Collin Walcott and Glen Moore) played together on this album (along with Winter and cellist David Darling), and soon departed the Consort to play under the Oregon name.

Chuck Mangione first caught the ear of his mentor Dizzy Gillespie at a young age, and that resulted in his recording a handful of albums with his brother Gap (Gaspare) on Milestone Records in the early ’60s. After recording a series of albums with Mercury, he signed with A&M for several more recordings. Perhaps his best-known album and hit single are “Feels So Good,” yet on a song like “Hide and Seek,” he still leaves space for solos by himself, reedman Chris Vadala, and guitarist Grant Geissman.

Seawind was a fusion jazz band from Hawaii that signed with A&M in the late ’70s, after a pair of albums for CTI Records. While they didn’t exactly burn up the popular music charts, they surprisingly had success on the R&B chart and in dance clubs with their self-titled Seawind album, as well as getting played on contemporary jazz stations. It would be their final album, until 2009’s Reunion was released. The lead singer is Pauline Wilson, who would go on to record a few solo recordings with members of the group. More notable were the Seawind Horns: Jerry Hey (trumpet), Kim Hutchcroft (sax and flute), and Larry Williams (sax and flute); they would later appear on many other recordings, including albums by Quincy Jones, George Benson, Earth, Wind & Fire, and Michael Jackson’s three blockbuster recordings (Off The Wall, Thriller, and Bad). “The Two of Us” is one of two singles from the self-titled album.

The co-founder of A&M also had his hand in the jazz world. After his somewhat overlooked solo album Just You and Me, Herb Alpert (Jerry Moss was the other co-founder of A&M) had teamed up with Hugh Masekela for a studio album of primarily funk/jazz with Latin and African overtones. That combination was kicked up another notch on the live recording that soon followed: Main Event. Recorded at both the Roxy Theatre and the A&M soundstage, African trombonist Jonas Gwangwa joins the group, and all three get plenty of room to stretch out on these tunes. Here is the album’s leadoff track, “Foreign Natives,” one of four on the album composed by Gwangwa.

One of Stan Getz’s final albums was Apasionado, released in 1989 on A&M. While a lot of the album is overproduced and slick, there are still a couple of redeeming songs, like the Latin-tinged “Coba.”

A&M still had a few tricks up its jazz sleeve in the late 1980s, such as two late-period Arkestra albums by Sun Ra: Blue Delight and Purple Night. The former features guests Tommy Turrentine and Don Cherry, along with a handful of Arkestra alumni who returned for this recording. Here is the title track from Blue Delight.

Don Cherry would also record a pair of albums for A&M – Multikulti and Art Deco. The latter was a reunion of sorts – he is reunited with former bandmates, drummer Billy Higgins and bassist Charlie Haden, along with tenor saxophonist James Clay, who had last played with Cherry in the 1950s before moving back to Texas and near-obscurity. Here is the title track from Art Deco.

A&M Records was no stranger to putting a pop music spin on jazz. Proof of this is the Thelonious Monk tribute album That’s The Way I Feel Now, which features numerous popular musicians putting their own spin on Monk’s music. Included in the credits are such names as Dr. John, Donald Fagen, Steve Khan, Was (Not Was), NRBQ & The Whole Wheat Horns, Todd Rundgren, Joe Jackson, John Zorn, Peter Frampton, Carla Bley, and dozens of others. This is “Mysterioso” with the Carla Bley Band featuring Johnny Griffin.

We’ll close out this chapter of A&M’s jazz releases with the great Gerry Mulligan, featuring the title track from his 1990 A&M album Lonesome Boulevard.

Our next installments in A&M’s jazz history will sample some music from A&M’s subsidiary labels.

Header image: Hugh Masekela and Herb Alpert, A&M Records promo photo.

There was folk. There was rock and roll. There was blues, coming back home via the 1960s British scene. But thanks to innovative groups like Buffalo Springfield, all those genres merged, glued together against a backdrop of psychedelia. Although the band made only three albums, its influence was undeniable.

At the heart of Buffalo Springfield was the pairing of singer/songwriters Neil Young and Stephen Stills, who had met in 1965 at a folk club called the Fourth Dimension in Thunder Bay, Ontario. They were with different bands at the time and had no plans to collaborate. Fate intervened.

Stills’ band, The Company, broke up, and he moved to California; soon he convinced former bandmate and fellow singer/songwriter Richie Furay to join him there. Meanwhile, still in Canada, Young met bass player Bruce Palmer, and the two of them drove down to Los Angeles in a Pontiac hearse. Things didn’t go great for Young and Palmer, and they decided to give up and head to San Francisco. But before they could leave, they were driving along Sunset Blvd. (in their hearse) and caught sight of Stills and Furay going in the other direction. They all stopped to say hello, and the rest is music history.

Having named themselves after the “Buffalo-Springfield” brand of steamroller parked outside Stills’ house, the band made its debut at the famous Troubadour in West Hollywood in 1966. They had added a drummer: Dewey Martin was a session musician, mainly for country musicians; the manager for the Byrds hooked him up with Stills and company. Those two bands were good friends, and soon Buffalo Springfield hit the road as an opening act on a Byrds tour.

It was still 1966 when a bidding war resulted in a nice deal for Buffalo Springfield with Atlantic Records, specifically for their subsidiary Atco. Their recording career got off to a rocky start with a single that died on the vine (“Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing”) and a debut album, Buffalo Springfield, that had to be released in two different versions before it found its legs. The key factor on the second version was the addition of the song “For What It’s Worth,” which went gold as a single. That song seems at first glance to be an anti-war lyric, although it’s actually about anti-curfew riots in Los Angeles.

Perhaps one of the stumbling blocks for that first album was the use of rookie producers, two men who also served as the band’s managers, Charles Green and Brian Stone. The band complained that the record’s sound didn’t represent the excitement of their live shows, but Atco wasn’t willing to delay release long enough to re-record the album.

Stills and Furay were the main singers on the debut. They share the lead on “Hot Dusty Roads,” written by Stills. It has a funky beat, basic rock and roll harmony, and a country-blues twang in the guitars.

Although Young was not yet participating much as a lead singer, he did compose several songs on that record. Among them is “Do I Have to Come Right Out and Say It?” The smooth-voiced Furay sings lead. Young is already experimenting with psychedelic compositional elements, such as moments of surprising chord changes, a melody that seems to turn randomly, and a floating, ethereal quality in the accompaniment. The chorus of this song, with all the voices in harmony, is an unfortunate example of the underlying weakness of the sound production, just as the band complained about at the time.

The following year, the second album came out, Buffalo Springfield Again. This time, Stills and Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun produced. Given the laundry list of complications, it’s a miracle it got finished. Over the nine months from conception to release, Young quit and rejoined the band multiple times, at one point being replaced by David Crosby. He recorded one of the songs, “Expecting to Fly,” entirely with non-band musicians at a different studio. Meanwhile, Palmer, after several drug-related arrests, was deported to Canada. He sneaked back in illegally to finish the album, but soon gave up on the band altogether.

On a more positive note, Furay tried his hand at composition, creating the country rock tune “A Child’s Claim to Fame,” complete with mountain harmonies like the ones the Everly Brothers had popularized. James Burton, a legend of rockabilly and country (who played guitar for Ricky Nelson, Elvis, and Emmylou Harris among others), plays dobro.

Stills gets the lead vocal and writing credit for “Rock & Roll Woman,” although rumor has it that it grew out of jam sessions with Crosby, who may well have co-written it. Some believe he can be heard in the background vocals, uncredited. Another guest on this song is Doug Hastings, a pioneer of psychedelic guitar. Although it’s not their most famous song, this is one of the distinctive tracks that make Buffalo Springfield Again such an important album.

Another song with a big impact on this record was Stills’ “Bluebird.” It didn’t do particularly well as a single, but through live performances the band turned it into their calling card. The piece has several mini-movements and is unusual for its side-by-side contrasting styles, particularly in the guitars: Stills fingerpicks on an acoustic as Young shreds on an electric. Since Buffalo Springfield was one of the original jam bands of the psychedelic era, and since the song grew and developed over time, it’s appropriate that Atco Records released an extended version of this cut in 1973, long after the band had split.

The band’s members were not being prescient when they called their 1968 album Last Time Around; they had already broken up, and they made the track list from songs they’d previously recorded. Young was already in the band that would become Crazy Horse, and Stills was already working with Crosby and Graham Nash, so they had no interest in continuing the old group. The band’s short existence had been so unsteady that you could say a slow-motion breakup had practically begun just after the band formed. For example, Palmer had been out of the picture for so long that their unreleased tracks barely included him. He plays bass only on the opener, Young’s “On the Way Home.” Jim Messina replaces him on the other songs; he also produced.

That troubled development aside, Last Time Around was well worth the effort to compile and release. There are some excellent songs here, some of which – Furay’s “Kind Woman,” Young’s “On the Way Home” – stuck around in repertoires of the band members’ future groups. Less well known is the Furay and Young R&B-inspired collaboration “It’s So Hard to Wait,” which features a particularly supple vocal by Furay.

Dewey Martin wouldn’t let go of Buffalo Springfield. He attempted to tour with multiple versions of it (New Buffalo Springfield, New Buffalo, Buffalo Springfield Revisited, White Buffalo, Buffalo Springfield Again), a few of which were collaborations with Palmer. Most of them ended after cease-and-desist orders from Young, Stills, or Furay. Palmer died in 2004 and Martin in 2009.

As for Young, Stills, and Furay, they reunited in 2011 for six Buffalo Springfield concerts in California. They started the band, so it’s only right that they should end it together.

Header image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Atlantic Records/public domain.