Issue 100

As some readers may have noticed, the tales I write are stories of my life. Some of them, including the one below, are about my family history. My father, born of German/Polish roots, fled the Holocaust. On my mother’s side I had a Ukrainian grandfather and Belarusian grandmother who was a Bolshevik who had to flee her home before the Russian Revolution.

Normal conversation among us descendants of European anti-Semitism is often peppered with stories of guile, luck or serendipity.

For the 100^th edition of Copper, I bring you an account of my mother-in-law Erna who, as I write, is 100 years old and still living independently in New York.

Erna

“They’ll never let you sit your final exam,” her friends told her.

This was in 1938 Vienna shortly after the Germans annexed Austria in what’s become known as the Anschluss. A campaign against the Jews began immediately and thousands were driven from their homes. Property was seized and many were arrested and deported to concentration camps.

It was at this time when Erna, just 19, after finishing an intense course to qualify as a French teacher, demanded to go before the educational board for her spoken language final. To everyone’s surprise, the panel agreed to hear her and she passed with flying colors. The coat of arms of Austria (a double eagle) on her certificate of matriculation already had the Hakenkreuz (swastika) overprinted on it. (Many years later, this certificate qualified her for a pension from the Austrian government.

On her parents urging she agreed to leave Austria for Palestine. Her cousin lived there and had enrolled her in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. This helped her to obtain an exit visa. She left with the intention of bringing her parents to Palestine but by the time she managed to organize visas from the British mandate in Jerusalem, World War II had broken out and there no longer was a British embassy in Austria to process the application. Her father subsequently died of Parkinson’s disease and her mother, after spending time in the Treblinka concentration camp in Czechoslovakia, was transported to Auschwitz and to her death.

Her father had booked her on a boat and had ordered the finest cabin. This wasn’t to coddle her; currency restrictions dictated that the amount allowed per passenger was dependent on the size of your cabin. While on board, she was approached by a Spanish princess who offered her money to give up her cabin. Thinking, presciently, that this would probably be the last time she would ever travel in luxury, she declined.

On arrival in Tel Aviv, she contacted her cousin in Jerusalem and arranged to meet him there. He presumed that she, a sophisticate from Austria, would take a taxi. So, he with flowers in hand, waited at the taxi station. She, not wanting to waste money, took a bus and of course they missed each other. Jerusalem in those days was hot, dusty and run down. Opposite the bus station was a psychiatric hospital and the wails of inmates did nothing to welcome her. Dressed in her finest Viennese clothing and high heeled shoes, she had to walk through the unfinished streets carrying her bags. Her shoes ruined, she eventually found his apartment and when she entered, he presented her with a bouquet of wilted flowers.

In 1917 the Balfour Declaration was issued by the British announcing support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. After the defeat of the Ottoman Empire which had ruled there for over 400 years, the League of Nations (a precursor to the United Nations) gave Britain a mandate in the early 1920s to rule over Palestine until such time as the local populations (Jews, Christians and Muslims) could stand alone as independent and self -governing. The British established Jerusalem as its capital and created a professional civil service, built roads and eventually created a lively western society.

Erna took a series of jobs, the first to a man who sexually assaulted her, then as an aide to a woman suffering from post-natal depression. Her next job was governess to the son of the head of the British High Command. She taught the son French and in return, he taught her English. This, along with the Hebrew she was learning, added to the other languages she knew: German, French and Latin.

While working there she learned from her boss of the illegal arrival in Palestine of her fiancé from Vienna. Leopold Vole was a violinist but he joined the newly formed Palestinian Orchestra (a precursor to the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra) as a needed double bass player; too many violin players from Europe had already arrived and joined the orchestra. She did not marry Leopold but years later became friendly with his son, Gaby, who also became a bass player in the Israeli Philharmonic. (A subsequent story is in the works about Gaby’s wedding in Tel Aviv which my wife and I attended along with Zubin Mehta and the whole orchestra.)

After dating a few men in Jerusalem Erna ended up falling in love and marrying her cousin, Benno. He had been a butcher in Germany and they subsequently opened a shop in Jerusalem. She worked there and it was a far cry from the academic future she had planned as a teenager.

Such are the vicissitudes of war. Life in Jerusalem was exciting. They were members of the YMCA on King David Street opposite the luxury King David Hotel. In those days it acted as a social club and sports facilities for expats. They had a camaraderie of refugees, Europeans who were fortunate enough to flee Hitler before it was too late. She survived the siege of Jerusalem in 1948 when the Arab armies blocked the entrance to Bab Al-wad (the entrance of the main road to Jerusalem).

This caused severe food rationing for the population. Water was also in limited supply. The siege lasted about seven weeks until the Israelis built a temporary road that bypassed Bab Al-wad.

My sister-in-law and my wife-to-be were both born in Jerusalem. Erna celebrated the declaration of Israeli independence and gradually fell in love with the town.

Benno had always wanted to emigrate to the US. In 1953 his visa arrived and Erna very reluctantly left what had become her cherished home for New York and the start of yet another new life.  It took a while but she eventually fell in love with New York and lives there to this day.

Header image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Golasso.

La Jolla Cove, California. B. Jan Montana drove his 1931 Cadillac V-16 here during the 2019 Concours d'Elegance.

All Along the Mayflower
Bob Dylan at the Beacon Theater, November 27, 2019

I am still on a writing sabbatical because I have to finish my first book [about the rock band Twisted Sister – Ed.] by the end of the year. I had no intention of returning to my various writing assignments until mid-January.

This changed (for a brief moment) after going to see Bob Dylan at the Beacon Theater in New York City last night, where the critic in me forced me to write a review.

I went to the show with my wife and old friends, one of them being Dylan’s first producer Richard Alderson, who produced Live at the Gaslight 1962, an album of early Dylan performances, and was the sound man for Dylan’s 1966 European tour in which Richard recorded nearly every show. In fact, the 35-CD package of these recordings was released last year on Columbia Records. Richard also recorded Dylan’s very first show at the Gaslight in NYC’s Greenwich Village in 1962. Richard is 82, Dylan is now 78 and I am, for context, 67 years old.

I have been a Dylan fan since I first heard the crack of the snare drum on “Like A Rolling Stone.” The very first song I ever sang in a band was that song, in a junior high school battle of the bands in 1966. I was in a band with a drummer named Paul Herman and another singer, a Chinese kid from the projects across the street from my house, named Bing Gong.

We called ourselves John, Paul and Bingo.

We were 13.

I recognize Dylan as a towering force in the history of American music. His lyrics were always beautifully mystifying when they weren’t socially devastating.

The Beatles, Stones, Dylan. All were incredible to me.

The masterful way other artists interpreted his songs – The Byrds (“Mr. Tambourine Man”), Peter, Paul and Mary (“Blowin’ In the Wind”) and the Turtles (“It Ain’t Me Babe”) to name but a few 1960s examples – exposed Dylan to millions of people who maybe wouldn’t have paid much attention otherwise.

I count “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” as one of my personal favorites and one that I listen to with unending regularity.

Now, I have seen just about every artist of any consequence since my first-ever concert, which was the Weavers reunion at Carnegie Hall in 1963. (The very same concert on the famous Vanguard Records audiophile LP, The Weavers Reunion at Carnegie Hall 1963!)

Well…not the Beatles (my mother wouldn’t let me go), but I have seen Sinatra, Elvis, The Stones, Lennon, McCartney, Ringo (the last three as solo artists) Zeppelin, the Who, Pink Floyd, the Dead, the Airplane, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Janis, Jimi, all during their respective golden years of around 1966 through 1972. I could go on with a longer list (I actually have one) but that would take way too long.

However, I never had a chance to see Dylan. Not deliberately, it just never happened. Until last night.

Frankly, as the years went by and from what I have been told by many friends over the years, I’d heard that Dylan live is a big disappointment. If you actually understand what he’s singing, I was warned, you may even be able to figure out what song he is playing.

This warning probably kept me away…until last night.

Could it have been any more convenient? Dylan was playing just a 10-minute walk from my apartment and Richard’s wife Jane Raab (a high school friend and TV producer – Sex and the City, Blue Bloods) asked me if I was interested in going to see the show. My wife asked, “Isn’t this a bucket list show for you?”

Well, yes it was and so we went. I decided at the last minute that I was going to review the show, not just go as a fan.

My wife had seen Dylan twice before and she walked out both times, as she thought the show(s) were an unintelligible nightmare. And still she wanted to see me watch him, and, I think, hope that he could somehow redeem himself…one last time.

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly…

The Good:

Dylan’s five-piece backup band was sensational. Total pros who could play anything. The stage set was very low key but dramatically lit. The sound mix was immaculate. Dylan’s voice, while not pronounced in the mix, was actually beautiful. Age has seasoned it like a fine whiskey. Smoky and richly nuanced.

The Bad:

The arrangements were not connected in any way (except for ”Ballad of A Thin Man”) to the original.

I have a huge problem with that.

I am a 47-year veteran of the music business and have performed live over 9,000 times.

Here is a universal truth: 95 percent of any audience wants to hear a song exactly as it is played on the records they own. Period. Oh, save your artistic interpretations and “respect for an artist’s choices.” I don’t buy it. Ever. It’s all BS. If you’re an artist and believe that the minions are just so happy that you came down from the mountain to exalt us with your new interpretation of a song you are fu*king delusional.

Yes, can you get away with a couple of these kinds of things during a show, probably, but why? Are you so bored as an artist that you have to do this crap just to get through another night? More BS. The responsibility of an artist is to give the audience what they want, not what you want.

Remember in a previous post when I tore into the Springsteen myth? However, one thing I did give Bruce credit for was that he gave his fans exactly what they wanted and that, in the end, is all that matters.

Dylan played 18 songs. I knew about half of them (and there were no major hits, either), but I couldn’t figure out what any of them were until about halfway through the song, when I could pick up a vocal nuance that led me to a lyric that I knew.

WTF?

The band was so good, they could play it any way Bob wanted to. It wasn’t the band, it was Bob’s idea to do it this way.

I promise you Bob, if you ever decided: a) to perform more of your biggest hits, b) actually address the audience more than just once and c) play the songs as recorded, you would make your fans really happy, not just grateful for the crumbs you threw.

I get no joy being this critical as I love Dylan’s music, but in the end, I did not get off at this concert. At all.

I am also strictly talking about my reaction and not anyone I went to the show with.

Just to be clear, if Dylan needs to play this kind of show, then do it at a small club and charge $20, with a warning that you will probably not understand anything being sung, but you will, at least for 90 minutes, share the same air as Dylan.

At $180 per ticket, I’d rather have donated the money to a charity than watch a show that was blowin’ in the wind.

Header image painting by Bob D’Amico.

This TMT will appear in Copper #100 on December 16, 2019. Happy Anniversary to Copper and to all the fine people who make it happen! What you’re reading is not my 100th column for Copper; I started writing something called (I think) “Classical Corner” well before Copper got underway. Plus, I took a sabbatical or two, so maybe you’re reading TMT #127. In any case: Paul, thanks! Trying to come up with something worth reading every two weeks has kept me more alive.

December 16 is also Beethoven’s birthday. (For half a century, Schroeder regularly reminded us of that.) This year it marks Beethoven’s 249th birthday, so next year marks his 250th. Anniversaries like this are a big deal in classical music, so here goes: I will feature at least one Beethoven work, plus a recommendable recent recording, in every 2020 Copper. I’ll balance my choices between well-known and lesser-known. Today (just to jump the gun), it’s Beethoven chamber music for winds. The two-plus pieces discussed below are relative rarities, if such a thing is possible in Beethovenland.

Also today, a remembrance and another anniversary: Sir Stephen Cleobury passed away on November 22; for many years he directed the Choir of King’s College Chapel, Cambridge University. The Choir has released The Centenary Service: A Festival of Nine Lessons & Carols, a live recording of its 100th-anniversary Christmas Eve observance from December 24, 2018. It was not intended as a memorial to Sir Stephen, but many longtime followers of the Choir will undoubtedly be drawn to it for that reason. (King’s College has since released a download-only tribute.)

Finally, we feature one more rarity: a new recording of a lesser-known and infrequently recorded Haydn orchestral Mass, the Missa Cellensis in hon. B.V.M. Although it’s young Haydn, it makes a joyful and elaborate noise, perfect for the holiday season. Conductor Justin Doyle, the RIAS Kammerchor, Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, and a host of talented young solo singers make this a first-rate musical experience.

Beethoven: Music for Winds. Shifrin, Purvis, Morelli, et al. (Naxos) Most of what’s on this album was written for pairs of clarinets, bassoons, and horns. The Octet op. 103 adds oboes. It’s all young Beethoven, composed between 1792 and 1798. Awkward moment: he may have told his new teacher in Vienna, Joseph Haydn, that he had revised his 1792-3 Octet as a result of Haydn’s instruction, but when Haydn sent a score—along with a plea for more funding—to Beethoven’s Bonn patron, the Archbishop-Elector, the Elector dismissed his request out of hand, telling him that Beethoven had, after all, written the work before leaving Bonn!

No matter—it’s delightful music, skillfully and sensitively played by a group of distinguished faculty at the Yale School of Music along with their talented former students. Historically, small wind groups like this were kept on hand in patrician households; the musicians could summon up pleasant sounds at dinner parties and afterwards on the lawn, as guests strolled about and occasionally cocked an ear. Let’s hear a bit of the Octet’s opening Allegro:

The Adagio from the Sextet op. 71 features especially lovely bassoon playing from Frank Morelli:

The Centenary Service: A Festival of Nine Lessons & Carols. Choir of King’s College, Cambridge; Sir Stephen Cleobury, cond. (King’s College; SACD & download) Special care was taken in selecting carols and anthems for this event. Obviously not everyone’s favorite could be included, but among those that made the cut were “Adam lay ybounden” (Boris Ord), “I Saw Three Ships” (arr. Simon Preston), “Unto us is born a Son” (arr. David Willcocks), “A Spotless Rose” (Herbert Howells), “The Lamb” (John Tavener), “What Sweeter Music” (John Rutter), “In the bleak mid-winter” (Harold Darke) and 2018’s commissioned work, “O mercy divine” (Judith Weir).

Weir’s new carol is a revelation: the cello obbligato adds a pensive, searching quality to this setting, while the choristers give out with simpler music that fully expresses the childlike joy of miracles recounted in Charles Wesley’s text.

Judith Weir is now one of a handful of composers who’ve gotten King’s College Christmas Commisions more than once. Others include John Rutter and Richard Rodney Bennett but not John Tavener, who composed “The Lamb” in 1982, a year before Sir Stephen initiated the commissions. Nevertheless the Choir featured it on Christmas Eve that year, and it has since become a favorite.

The music Weir provided in 1985 for her first commision, “Illuminare, Jerusalem,” was quite modernistic, although not at all “atonal,” as online yobs would have had it. Although performed quite well by the Choir, it may have struck some people as insufficiently consonant for Christmas Eve. With “O mercy divine,” Weir demonstrated that she was more than capable of writing lively, tonal music of an emotional complexity suitable for grownups of all ages at any time of year.

Let’s finish by hearing Sir Stephen’s own arrangement of “Joys Seven,” also part of the Centenary Service. This video is from 2009’s separately recorded BBC telecast (not an excerpt from the Christmas Eve service, which is never telecast.)

Joseph Haydn: Missa Cellensis in honorem Beatissimae Virginis Mariæ. RIAS Kammerchor et al., Justin Doyle, cond. (Harmonia Mundi; CD & download) Years ago, I wrote a book about Haydn’s choral music; it was fun going back to see what I had said about the Missa Cellensis. Well, not totally fun: I found myself skipping the source analysis and speculations about why and when Haydn wrote this Mass. Briefly: after he was made chief Kapellmeister for Prince Nicolaus Eszterházy, Haydn celebrated by writing an ambitious thank-offering, a full-blown “number” Mass—or at least a Kyrie-Gloria-Credo cycle in that style. (They’re called “number” Masses because the wordier Gloria and Credo texts are broken down into separate, contrasting movements featuring various styles and soloists; a well-known example is Bach’s Mass in B Minor, the Gloria of which comprises nine movements, numbered 4 through 12 in modern editions.)

Haydn apparently titled his work Missa Cellensis to honor the venerable pilgrimage church at Mariazell, a site long associated with the Eszterházy family. There’s no record of it ever having been performed there, but it could have found performances at several Viennese churches. Haydn may have waited until 1770 or so to complete and/or revise the Mass; the work’s latter movements—Sanctus, Benedictus, Agnus Dei, Dona—are written in a markedly different style than the earlier ones.

The Gloria begins in typical fashion, all hands on deck, lively tempo, trumpets, drums, confetti. Even within this conventionally festive context, Haydn shows plenty of skill, varying choral textures, downshifting nicely into “Et in terra pax,” and so forth. It’s a proper setting for the Song of the Angels.

There’s much more to come. (After all, this is a “numbers” Mass.) Note the graceful, measured, altogether aristocratic tone of the “Laudamus”:

The orchestral accompaniment maintains an attractively starchy, upright character that complements the soprano’s slightly freer delivery. Three movements later, the choral “Qui tollis” strikes a more somber note:

It may be somber, but it’s no less energetic, which is true everywhere in this beautifully paced performance. The “Et incarnatus est,” a dramatic recitativo accompagnato and arietta, manages a similar balance:

We’ll skip the obligatory fugues that end both “Gloria” and “Credo,” so I can offer at least one taste of the post-1770 music. Here’s the opening of the “Benedictus”:

And here’s what I said about it back in the day:

What the listener will hear immediately . . . is the uneasiness in this music. It careens between minor and major, encountering diminished chord outbursts and martial rhythms en route to its ultimately tragic ending. Blessed, but cruel also, is he that cometh in the name of the Lord: here is a feeling akin to those in the great minor-key Benedictus movements of the late Masses, especially the Nelsonmesse.

It makes a great Christmas gift, folks, and not just for the Scrooges on your list. (By the way, how does one wrap a download?)

In the days when Jan Van Eyck and his ilk were painting lush portraits and still lifes in the Netherlands, the same patrons who supported visual arts also poured their gold into the field of music. Anchoring this early edge of the Renaissance was the composer Guillaume Dufay (c. 1397-1474), leader of the style musicologists refer to as the Burgundian School. A number of recent recordings celebrate his compositions.

You’ll sometimes find his name spelled Du Fay, but the one-word version is favored by early-music ensembles and the recording industry. He spent most of his career in the French town of Cambrai, although he accepted many commissions in Italy and the Netherlands, working for a variety of dukes.

Dufay’s music is important for a host of reasons. For one thing, he was equally prolific in sacred and secular music. Also, both types of his music are equally well preserved, indicating how much his works were valued in his own day and giving us a wide window into the world of 15^th-century music.

Although their album Flos florum originally came out in 2004, the Lyon-based Ensemble Musica Nova has just rereleased this collection of Dufay’s sacred music on the Alpha label. The group has been around since 2000, and director Lucien Kandel has a firm understanding of how to bring old music to life.

The ensemble’s sound is calm and clear, as demonstrated in their recording of “Urbs beata Jerusalem” (Blessed City Jerusalem). This work is a motet, meaning a polyphonic piece that sets a liturgical text broken up into partes (plural of pars, basically an early version of the concept of movements in longer works). Each pars opens with Gregorian chant followed by a four-voice a cappella setting inspired by those chant phrases.

You can hear the entire album of motets and shorter sacred works here:

The ensemble Jerycho has a much different take on Dufay’s sacred music with their new recording of the Magnificat sexti toni. The Magnificat is one of the oldest surviving liturgical Latin texts; “sexti toni” (“of the sixth mode”) describes the scale Dufay has used as the basis for his composition.

Jerycho is a Polish ensemble directed by B. Izbicki. It is not your typical European or American early-music group. Their style of vocalization is clearly influenced by Eastern Orthodox church singing, using a slight swoop of the voice from below the pitch and other microtonal decorations. It’s not surprising that they’ve worked with Marcel Pérès, innovative and controversial leader of Ensemble Organum and longtime proponent of the influence of Byzantium style on Gregorian chant.

Until you’re used to it, Jerycho’s tuning makes for a jarring change from the mathematically perfect temperance of better-known touring groups. Frankly, it sounds out of tune. But if you let the slow, a cappella sound wash over you for a while, you have the distinct sense of being amid a crowd of medieval monks who have far loftier things to worry about than scholarly agreement on pitch frequency in historical performance practice.

You can hear the Magnificat on Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/album/5LrZoAc11hMSjyKhuW9OgH

In his own day, Dufay was probably more famous for his secular songs, or chansons. When it comes to 15^th-century secular vocal music, the Orlando Consort has long been the go-to source for high-quality recordings. They maintain that tradition in their newest Dufay offering for Hyperion, Dufay: Lament for Constantinople and Other Songs.

In surviving copies of Dufay’s works (all hand-written, since movable type for music did not yet exist and other printing methods were awkward and inaccurate), the text for his French-language secular songs is only assigned to the highest of the three voices. This has led some musicologists to believe that the lower parts were played on instruments. The Orlando Consort doesn’t seem to buy that theory; they add text to the lower parts as well, and the results are always convincing.

By listening to Hyperion’s mini-sampler from the album (sorry – there are no complete tracks available free), you can get a good sense both of Dufay’s various methods of writing secular polyphony and of the Orlando Consort’s approach to distributing lyrics. In “Je me complains piteusement” (I Moan Piteously), for example, the three voices seem equal and in a similar range. But in “Malheureulx cueur” (Unhappy heart), the top voice is separated in range from the others and has a more melodious style, which was one of Dufay’s innovations.

Quite the opposite of the Orlando Consort, the equally venerable ensemble Gothic Voices includes instruments all over the place in their new Dufay Spectacle on Linn Records.

British early music guru Christopher Page founded this group over 30 years ago, focusing on tuning and vocal production to create a purity of sound unmatched in the industry. You can hear this in samples of all the tracks on the Linn website; I recommend you start with the motet “Vassilisa, ergo gaude / Concupivit rex decorum” (it has two titles because two different texts are sung simultaneously, a common practice in the late 14^th and early 15^th centuries).

https://www.linnrecords.com/recording-dufay-spectacle

Dufay set a chanson called “Se la fatze ay pale” (“If the face is pale,” more commonly spelled “Se la face ay pale”) for three voices, and here it’s played only on instruments, with appealing delicacy.

That track is the perfect segue to our last recording, by the French group Diabolus in Musica singing Dufay’s Missa Se la face ay pale on Alpha Music.

Perhaps Dufay’s most influential practice was his use of his own secular French-language songs as the basis of his sacred music. He would first set the song for three voices. Next, he would take one, two, or all three of the vocal parts as musical material, set aside the French lyrics, and reuse his own music with the words of the Catholic Mass.

Every Mass movement used the secular source material, inspiring scholars to refer to such Masses as “cyclic” because of the interconnection of their movements. The Masses are always called by the Latin “Missa” plus the title of the source. One such example is the Mass that Dufay composed using his own song, “Se la face ay pale.” (This is the usual spelling, as opposed to the “fatze” spelling by Gothic Voices, above.)

In the Kyrie section, you’ll notice a sweetness and richness of sonority, which Dufay borrowed from English composers in a style known as fauxbourdon. Diabolus in Musica’s meditative sound might not be as pure as that of Gothic Voices, but director Antoine Guerber digs satisfyingly into the contrasting phrases and cadential moments.

If you compare the beginning of that Kyrie with that of the Gloria section, you’ll see what I mean about every movement using the same musical material. Must have been a nice shortcut for a composer (and Dufay inspired many others after him to use this technique). But when the music turns out this gloriously, what does it matter?

With this issue we celebrate Copper Magazine’s 100th issue, which is quite a milestone of success for any publication. Here’s to the magazine’s continued prosperity in the future, under the guidance of new editor, Frank Doris.

My function here at Copper is to search out interesting and noteworthy new releases and reissues, as well as notable titles that have finally made their way onto the popular streaming services, such as Tidal and Qobuz. In my spare time, I’ve been building a Roon-based music server from digital downloads and Red Book CDs that I’ve collected over the last couple of years, often from thrift stores and used CD bins from indie record stores and the like. Along with the occasional hard-to-find LP. I plan on expanding the reach of my column in the coming year to include particularly rewarding crate-digs that have unearthed notably enjoyable and rare titles that are out of the mainstream, but well worth seeking out.

To celebrate Copper’s achievement, I’d like to take a look back at some outstanding and perhaps controversial titles I’ve reviewed during my tenure here, and share some additional insights I’ve gained regarding them since their initial publication.

Thom Yorke – Anima

[Anima is still available to be viewed on Netflix; I’d strongly suggest taking the time to check it out if at all possible. It’s a very compelling watch, and gives the Anima EP another dimension that really makes a viable case for music combined with artistic or performance video content. I’ve seen a few performances by Thom Yorke recently online and on late night television; he has a commanding stage presence, and as I originally observed, is made infinitely more human by this video and his live performances. Do check it out, it’s well worth your time.]

Hard to believe that it’s been thirteen years since 2006’s The Eraser, the first solo release for Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, but the icy electronica of Anima finds him treading some very familiar ground. Radiohead fans will find this music not at all dissimilar to their post-OK Computer output, where we’ve gotten fewer “fully formed” songs, per se, but still very cerebral listening. If stark electronica is your particular poison, well, this is a very darkly brewed cup! Be careful to mind the volume level during playback—the subterranean bass on this album will plumb the very depths of your system’s capabilities.

If you have Netflix, I’d strongly suggest watching Paul Thomas Anderson’s Anima short that’s currently available there. It’s only about fifteen minutes, and sequences three of the albums songs, “Not the News,” “Traffic” and “Dawn Chorus” into a single musical suite. It’s a very entertaining and visually striking watch, and for me presented Thom Yorke in a much more humanistic light than I might have previously given him credit for. And perhaps allowed me to view this album from a very different vantage point. Highly recommended.

XL Recordings, CD/LP/Limited edition colored vinyl (download/streaming from Bandcamp, Amazon, Tidal, Qobuz, Spotify, iTunes)

Clairo – Immunity

[I regularly visit the Pitchfork website; it’s often filled with insightful and timely assessments of releases from artists that are, say, slightly less visible to the mainstream than many—like Clairo. Not long after my review was published, an excellent piece appeared on Pitchfork that offered a much more in-depth exploration of Clairo and all the circumstances surrounding her near-meteoric rise into the music spotlight. And particularly addressed (more like, called-out!) all the haters who attempted to describe her as a major-label plant into the indie music world. The article is totally legit and informative, and I’d like to personally retract any kind of negative slant my review might have adopted in perhaps proffering that same intent. I’ve revisited this record several times since my review, and I must admit, I find it much more enjoyable and entertaining than upon first listen.]

Music is almost my religion, and I approach it with a great deal of seriousness. Which would make it very easy for me to simply out-of-hand dismiss a seemingly frivolous internet and YouTube sensation like Clairo and her debut album, Immunity. Without a judge and jury. Her YouTube videos have had tens of millions of views, and the music is generally described as “bedroom pop” (a label that Clairo dismisses). Bedroom pop, according to the Urban Dictionary, is “characterized by its lo-fi quality and contemplative themes, sharing elements of other indie-pop genres such as shoegaze, dream pop, jangle pop, and emo.” Her songs do seem to have a very dreamy and contemplative quality to them, for sure. I pride myself on generally being reasonably up to date with current musical trends, but I have to be brutally honest here: I had to look those genres up, although “dream pop” and “jangle pop” almost seem self-explanatory.

Clairo’s (her given name is Claire Cottrill) dad had a number of music industry connections through his business dealings. And even though Clairo was actively being courted by a number of major labels after her internet success, she eventually signed with the Fader label her dad had serious connections with. She’s been openly accused by other indie artists of benefiting from nepotism, and of being an “industry plant.” In other words, they’re accusing her of being a mainstream industry-backed artist marketed and presented as an indie artist—solely for the feel-good vibe and to sell more records. Getting a break in the music industry is extremely tough sledding; my daughter has been trying to break through for years with only a modicum of success. Naturally, I fully understand the deep level of dedication it takes and the difficulty of ever truly making it. Check out Clairo’s website; she’s in the midst of a national tour that’s taking her to some impressive venues in most major cities—so let the nepotism theories roll on!

All of that said, I find the music here a totally mixed bag, though some of it is actually surprisingly cerebral and enjoyable. The record was produced by Rostam Batmanglij (Vampire Weekend), and has a much higher level of production than seen in any of her previous work—though not so overproduced as to take it into the realm of adult contemporary music. Immunity is basically a synth-pop affair with guitars, keys and a drum machine on most songs, and Clairo plays some of the instruments herself—it’s definitely lo-fi, but not nearly so much as the YouTube stuff. It’s a love-hate situation, though, for me—while I do find some of the songs emotionally engaging, there are aspects that are less gripping. Like when she uses a vocoder to alter the sound of her actually pleasant voice to something not at all dissimilar to say, Britney Spears. Blechh! Clairo would probably have an aneurysm if she found herself compared to Queen Britney in a review, and her very passable voice doesn’t need augmented in a way that makes it downright unpleasant to listen to. YMMV—if for no other reason, at least you’ll know whether to encourage your kid who’s making music videos in her bedroom.

Fader Records, CD/LP (download/streaming from Amazon, Tidal, Qobuz, Spotify)

Susanna Mӓlkki/Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra – Bartók: The Wooden Prince/ The Miraculous Mandarin Suite

[A reader responded to my review, informing me that the source of the original tapes for this SACD release was a PCM recording. While I’ve never been one to stickle over PCM vs. DSD, I will say that—with regard to SACD playback—I find an improved level of musicality in pure DSD recordings, and in analog recordings directly remastered to DSD for SACD. I have no predjudice against PCM; most of my digital library consists of CDs converted to PCM lossless FLACs, and on any given day, most of my listening is to files that are sourced from or converted to PCM. All of that said, I have a number of BIS label SACDs—all of them predating the Susanna Mӓlkki Bartók disc reviewed here—and they’re all pure DSD recordings. I was unaware that BIS has converted all SACD production to DSD transferred from 24/96 PCM recordings, and apparently a while back. Regardless, the sound quality of this SACD is exemplary; should you decide to forego getting the hi-res disc, the 24/96 sound quality of the Tidal and Qobuz streams is also superb.]

This new disc of Béla Bartók’s early symphonic works is notable for two reasons: Firstly, both The Wooden Prince and The Miraculous Mandarin (along with the early opera Bluebeard’s Castle) are stylistically unlike anything else in Bartók’s canon of works. These works are presented in a compositional style more closely related to the late Romantic period than any of the more angular and abstract works of Bartók’s later period, where his works took on many of the Hungarian folk influences he was so strongly attracted to. Secondly, Finnish conductor Susanna Mälkki makes her debut with the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra on the BIS label; she’s undeniably one of the brightest stars currently in the classical world. She presently serves as the chief conductor of the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, who perform at the acclaimed (and brand new!) Helsinki Music Centre, where this outstanding set of performances was recorded. In her spare time, Susanna Mälkki slums as the principal guest conductor for the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Those urban Angelinos sure seem to love their Finnish conductors!

And if I may be so bold as to proffer Thirdly, it’s because this is such an incredibly dynamic and well-recorded performance of these infrequently programmed works. If you can get your hands on the excellent BIS SACD disc, that’s definitely the route to go for the very highest level of aural satisfaction. Through my Yamaha BDA-1060 universal player, the opening crescendo in the first movement of The Wooden Prince is staggeringly dynamic, and offers an incredibly realistic acoustic representation of the Helsinki Music Centre in my listening room. That said, if you’ve abandoned spinning discs and are more into high-res streaming, both Qobuz and Tidal offer this performance at 24/96 PCM sound, which isn’t too shabby either. The CD layer of the SACD disc (or 44.1 FLAC or WAV) is actually quite good, as well, but you’ll want high-res sound to get the most satisfying sound quality, which this title delivers in spades!

Susanna Mälkki’s readings of these works is very lyrical here; if you’re looking for a more muscular interpretation, try Boulez on DG. If this disc is indicative of what we can expect from this outstanding orchestra and conductor, their future efforts on BIS should not disappoint. Very highly recommended!

BIS Records, CD/SACD (download/streaming from Amazon, Tidal, Qobuz, Spotify)

 

Sleater-Kinney – The Center Won’t Hold

[I noted in my review that long-time drummer Janet Weiss had announced her departure from Sleater-Kinney just about the time of release of The Center Won’t Hold. Shortly afterwards, she was involved in a serious automobile accident, suffering a number of injuries that included a broken leg and a broken collarbone. That has delayed a tour with her new band, Quasi, which had been scheduled to commence on October 7. Janet was released from the hospital after about a week, but will be wheelchair bound and going through intensive physical therapy for a period of at least three months. Janet’s sister has started a Go Fund Me web page to help assist with her medical costs; like many musicians, she had no health coverage at the time of the accident.]

All-girl group Sleater-Kinney, consisting of Corin Tucker (vocals, guitar), Carrie Brownstein (vocals, guitar), and longtime drummer Janet Weiss, was one of the indie rock mainstays from the Pacific Northwest during the mid 1990’s to mid 2000’s. Critical darlings, they regularly won indie best-of polls and only increased their legend with each successive studio release. 2005’s The Woods was another critical success, featuring a denser, more heavily distorted sound that reflected changes in the band’s direction during their long stint opening for Pearl Jam’s 2003-2004 tour. A tour where Sleater-Kinney frequently—on record and in concert—stretched out into more extended set pieces. And suddenly, without explanation, Sleater-Kinney went on a decade-long hiatus. Carrie Brownstein was deeply involved in writing and acting in her collaboration with Fred Armisen in the Portlandia series on IFC. And the various group members remained active in other side projects throughout their absence from the forefront of the music scene.

Sleater-Kinney’s long hiatus ended in 2015, with the release of the album No Cities to Love, their eighth studio album, which was met with much acclaim and very positive critical reception. The New York Times review described it as the “First great album of 2015” and noted that they’d honed their sound down closer to the three-minute post-punk songs of their beginnings. All working toward making the release of the new album, The Center Won’t Hold, one of the most highly anticipated releases of 2019. The album’s title already seems highly prophetic of their future prospects; drummer Janet Weiss announced her departure a couple of months before the new record’s release. Produced by St. Vincent (rumors abound that her involvement precipitated the departure of Janet Weiss), the album continues with their exploration of a more abbreviated song form, with some of the resulting tunes quite “poppy,” to say the least.

It’s really quite sad for me, the departure of Janet Weiss; her excellent drumming is pretty much the rhythmic core of this album. The title track and opening cut, “The Center Won’t Hold” unleashes a powerful drumbeat intro, soon accompanied by searing guitars. With both Brownstein and Tucker repeating the title line in a slow, rhythmic fashion that’s suddenly interrupted by a single piercing guitar note. This suddenly erupts into a chaotic minute and a half of the two singers screaming the same phrase over surprisingly melodic power chords into an abrupt ending, with Weiss just pounding those skins relentlessly throughout. Which happens with just about every song on the album. That is, ending abruptly. St. Vincent’s slick production is very appropriate with the eclectic song selection, which, while retaining much of their post-punk aesthetic, remains very melodic and “power pop-ish.” Many of their songs are presented as statements of where the band stands in the current political environment in the US; Carrie Brownstein, in a recent NPR interview with the band, basically stated that while none of the songs are specifically anti-Trump, Sleater-Kinney is most definitely an anti-Trump band. In the song “Ruins,” they ask, “Do you feast on nostalgia? Take pleasure from pain? Look out, ‘cause the children will learn your real name.” Doesn’t take much imagination to guess who that’s directed at, huh? At 5:18, it’s the longest song on the album.

The Center Won’t Hold is an outstanding album from Sleater-Kinney; despite the departure of Janet Weiss, Brownstein and Tucker insist they’ll soldier on. Let’s hope so, they’re making some of the most intelligent, tuneful, and listenable post-punk/pop currently out there. Very highly recommended.

Mom + Pop Music, CD/LP (download/streaming from Amazon, Google Play Music, Tidal, Qobuz, Spotify)

 

Lana Del Rey – Norman F*cking Rockwell

[I came down pretty hard on Norman F*cking Rockwell (NFR as it appears on most record store shelves); and it’s really not that I totally hated it. But I did have a hard time with some of the alliterations that compared this album with classic American pop music—the jury’s a long way out from making those kind of pronouncements. I’ve revisited this album repeatedly since my review was published, and it’s not an unenjoyable listen—it’s actually a very well recorded album, and Lana Del Rey’s vocals are seductively enticing. I just have a hard time placing it on quite the high pedestal level that the other media outlets seem to have no problem with.]

Norman F*cking Rockwell. When I first started reading about the impending release of this album months ago, I had to assume that the title was a freaking joke. It’s not. On the opening title track that’s lushly orchestrated with layers of Lana Del Rey’s multi-tracked vocals singing the chorus, the first words from her seriously angelic voice are “Goddam, you man child…you f*cked me so good that I almost said I love you!” I’m no saint, but trust me, I almost can’t even believe that I just typed those words! There’s nothing else out there in pop music that even remotely compares with this; she drops the “F” bomb repeatedly throughout the songs on this album. I’d been listening to Tidal all day on my home system while working on reviews, but as the day progressed into evening, I switched to headphones right as I put this album on. Thank God for that—my wife Beth’s no prude, but she probably would have freaked had she heard that opening refrain live across the airwaves! Her verbal response to this would probably have made her typical expletive-laced response to the music of Rickie Lee Jones sound like she was reading from a Sunday school primer.

When I first signed up for Instagram about a year or so ago, a video for Lana Del Rey appeared in my feed; I took a look, and suddenly my feed was flooded with videos of Lana Del Rey. Dancing this kind of lilting stylistic dance, her skirt or dress swaying rhythmically to her movements. That’s pretty much the mental image I get from listening to this album; I just didn’t picture it with the language embellishments. Don’t get me wrong, but generally I equate someone’s repeated use of f*ck in a song to hate speech, hardcore metal, or even gangsta rap. Not repeated as though it’s almost a mantra or a prayer. Back in the day, when I’d hear Mick Jagger sing “you can come all over me” from the Stones’ Let It Bleed, yes, it was hypersexualized, but it was the Stones, and you expected it from rock’s bad boys. Maybe I was a tad more hypersexualized myself back then, because it didn’t shock me on any kind of level compared to this. An alternate take on this: in today’s Me Too world, where carelessly expressing your sexuality can get you into some seriously deep doo, it’s almost refreshing to see that Lana Del Rey is so seemingly sexually uninhibited.

In the Pitchfork review of this album, they call Norman F*cking Rockwell Lana Del Rey’s “masterpiece we’ve been waiting for,” and also call her the “best American songwriter, period.” A bit further down, some Joni Mitchell/Leonard Cohen alliterations are made. Okay, it’s my turn now—are you f*cking kidding me? I can totally see the appeal of this record to a particular demographic; the music accompaniment to Lana Del Rey’s ever-lyrical voice is almost like ear candy. And I’m sure this record will sell metric tons of music software. But is this really the state of the art of current American popular music? Even mentioning her in the same breath as Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen is damn near blasphemous. YMMV.

Interscope/Polydor Records, CD/LP/Cassette (download/streaming from Amazon, Google Play Music, Tidal, Qobuz, Apple Music, YouTube, Spotify)

 

Header image: Lana Del Rey, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Justin Higuchi.

When I first started writing for Copper, my mandate was to write about digital audio. Frankly, I wasn’t sure how long Copper was going to last, but it seemed pretty reasonable to think I could fill every issue with something useful about digital audio. But nothing lasts forever, because forever is such a long time. And eventually I decided I’d pretty much said everything I had to say about digital audio without starting to repeat myself. So I started to write about other stuff that came into my head. Those of you who have been unfortunate enough to read all of my rambling contributions to Copper will have come to understand that my head can be a pretty weird place. But I’m not a professional writer. I’m not up to the rigors of churning out the sort of content that meets the standards I think Copper should be demanding – every two weeks on an ongoing basis. I certainly can’t do it forever: you should really try it sometime! So, with issue 100 of Copper, I’m going to sign off for the foreseeable future. I may be back on an occasional basis – that is if new Editor Frank wants me back – but for the time being this is Sayonara. [You are welcome to return any time. You’ll be missed. And I put you squarely into the professional writer category – Ed.]

So, what do I write about when I contemplate Copper’s future heading off into eternity without me? And I think the answer is obvious. It’s staring me in the face, really. It’s the very concept of eternity.

We humans are mortal beings, and we live out a life span which seems relatively short in the grand scheme of things. Just when you think you’ve got it all under control, there’s always something to remind you of the inexorable march of time. And while I can’t yet make out the light at the end of the tunnel, if I squint hard enough there’s always a pinprick that might just be it. So it is perhaps a natural reaction for us poor humans to wish that, instead of making do with our measly allocation of four score years and ten, wouldn’t it be nice if we could actually get to live forever? And if not in this world, then maybe in the next. Sounds appealing, no? But we really should be careful what we wish for.

What would you do if you could live forever? Let’s assume that I could bestow immortality onto you. Also, for the sake of the argument, I would bestow on you all of the resources necessary so that there would be nothing whatsoever that would be inaccessible to you, and you could enjoy your immortality to the fullest. You could explore the entire earth – on foot if you wanted. You could enjoy an evening out with every interesting person who ever lived – plus a few of the uninteresting ones too. You could catch every movie ever made, binge-watch every drama series on Netflix, cheer on every sporting contest ever played. You could read every book ever written, in every language that ever existed (and including some, like Klingon, that never did)…because you’d have all the time you needed to learn them all! You could study philosophy and debate it with Plato, science with Einstein, politics with Churchill, and exchange world travel tips with Genghis Khan.

Eventually, though, most of the pleasure would dry up. After exploring a large part of the Sahara desert, you might conclude that the rest is pretty much going to be exactly the same. There are only so many interesting people that you could stomach before you’d never want to hear from another one. There are some bad movies out there, not to mention Stranger Things on Netflix. And with the best will in the world, just how many times can you really watch the Browns vs the Bills? And so on. It will take a long time – a really long time – but eventually you’ll manage to exhaust your all-eternity bucket list.

How long do you think that would take? 100 years? 1,000 years? 1,000,000 years? As Marvin the Paranoid Android put it, “The first ten million years were the worst. And the second ten million years – they were the worst too.” But however long it is, let’s label that time span ES – the Everything Span. What the hell do you do next when you have finally done everything – every single thing – that you ever wanted to do? There is absolutely nothing left that you still want to do … and you still have all of eternity stretched out ahead of you. Don’t be tempted to pooh-pooh the idea on the basis that ES is such an unimaginably long time and you’ll surely keep coming up with new stuff. You’re always going to reach an ES, simply because of the inexorable nature of eternity itself.

So let’s start really facing up to Eternity. Our time period ES has elapsed, and you have now done and experienced every single thing you ever wanted. Now what? Well I suggest you might start by doing them all over again. After all, the very first thing you did happened “ES” years ago, so for all practical purposes it would be as good as experiencing it again for the first time. It’s a bit of a no-brainer, especially given that the alternative is to start on the stuff that you’d previously eliminated because you didn’t want to do them in the first place.

Excellent, so now we have the first two ES periods sorted. And in fact, we could actually keep on doing this, recycling through the same set of experiences once every ES years. But in the end, it’s only a band-aid because, at some point, whether you’ve been through the loop ten times, or a hundred, or a million…at some point you’re just going to get fed up. And this time there will be nothing you can do about it. How much of your eternity will this have taken? Let’s call this the FP – the “Fed Up Period.” You have endured one FP’s worth of Eternity and now you are bored to tears, with every possible resource at your disposal and absolutely nothing that you want to do. How is Eternity looking now? Kind of a nightmarish remake of “Groundhog Day.”

How many FPs are there in one Eternity? Well, there are a lot. Let’s start thinking about that. Clearly two FPs won’t amount to one Eternity…we’ll need a lot more than that. Eternity exceeds even an impossibly large number of FPs. At this point, I thought I would describe Graham’s Number to you, as an example of a mathematically large number, but instead I’ll just limit myself to paying homage to its massiveness. Ronald Graham was a mathematician who, back in the 1970s, was studying a very arcane problem in topology (which I won’t bore you with). He realized that although he couldn’t solve the problem exactly, he could at least put an upper bound on the solution. And the upper bound he came up with was a precise number, but it was a number so big, so unmanageably gargantuan, that there was no sensible way to represent it. So he came up with his own formalization, g₆₄ which is now called Graham’s Number. If you want, you can Google it and you’ll find it’s not all that hard to understand. But getting your head around the utter massiveness of it is another thing entirely. At the time it was the highest precise number that had a meaningful mathematical purpose, but now (unsurprisingly) there are even higher ones around.

So let’s get back to our poor hapless individual who has attained the great joy of living for all eternity. He’s spent the first FP years of that Eternity repeating over and over the sum total of every conceivable thing he’s ever wanted to do, and now he’s bored. He’s contemplating the rest of Eternity and trying to come up with a go-forward strategy. I can’t offer him much help, but I’d tentatively suggest that he plans his Eternity to start off with g₆₄ separate periods of FP years each. He can then break down the task into manageable chunks by planning how he might like to fill each of those individual periods. After all, by this time he’ll be comfortable with the reality of an FP period, since he’s just experienced one first hand, in all of its richness. Also, since he’ll have spent a lot of time boning up on Science and Mathematics for those multiple discussions with Einstein, he’ll have no problems getting his head around the concept of g₆₄.

While he’s busy working on that, let’s think a little about the implications. What might a time span of g₆₄ multiples of FP look like? Interestingly enough, g₆₄ is so freakin’ YUGE that it doesn’t actually matter in the slightest how long you think FP might turn out to be. We’re looking at a long, long, loooooooong time. This is longer than the expected lifetime of our Sun. It’s longer than the expected lifetime of the Milky Way. In fact, it’s longer than the expected lifetime of the entire universe itself, which we believe will eventually collapse into nothing but black holes, which in time will all evaporate away to nothing due to Hawking radiation. Hmmm….

I wrote about this a while back. Mathematically speaking, this post-Hawking universe looks indistinguishable from the pre-Big Bang universe, and so, in principle, it could spontaneously generate its own brand new Big Bang. If so, a period of g₆₄ multiples of FP will allow our Eternity Seeker to observe several of these Bang-Expand-Collapse-Evaporate cycles. In fact, he will be able to observe gazillions upon gazillions upon gazillions of them.

He will be a bit like those physicists today who contemplate our universe at the smallest possible scales, which we call the Planck length and the Planck time. At those impossibly tiny scales, space and time, as we know them, no longer actually exist. The “quantum foam” interpretation suggests that tiny fragments of “reality” continuously spring into and out of existence, like bubbles in a boiling foam. It’s quite hard to fathom, really. But, without doubt, our Eternity Seeker will have plenty of time on his hands to contemplate the extraordinary symmetry between the Bang-Expand-Collapse-Evaporate cycles that he gets to watch over the longest of long timeframes, and the roiling quantum foam of the shortest of short timeframes predicted by modern string theory.

All provided, of course, that he doesn’t go stark staring mad first, and develop a God complex.

Live long, and prosper.

To recap from Part One (Issue 99): John Meyer is a pioneer in the field of sound reinforcement. Meyer Sound equipment is used by a who’s who of artists, in touring productions like Cirque de Soleil and in concert halls and theaters around the world. Meyer began his professional career in 1967, worked with the Grateful Dead on their famous Wall of Sound and continues to innovate today. John Meyer graciously took the time to share some of his insights with John Seetoo for Copper.

John Seetoo: Your innovations in audio systems include incorporating technologies from other industries. For example, the Meyer X-10 High Resolution Linear Control Room Monitor used your Pressure Sensing Active Control or PSAC technology, which was developed from a circuit used in United States Air Force stealth aircraft. (PSAC uses a pressure sensing device in front of the woofer to track the driver’s output pressure, then sends the measurement into a circuit that compares it to the input signal and corrects the behavior of the woofer accordingly. The PSAC circuit could do this on a microsecond time scale, yielding superior linearity and resolution.) The amplifier was an analog, solid-state Class H which is a modified version of a traditional Class A/B amp.

How did you find out about the circuit and then what hurdles did you have to overcome to access it and modify it for Meyer Sound?

John Meyer: We were collaborating with the University of California mechanical engineering department, where they were working on controlling high-speed jet fighters, which you can’t control strictly manually. You have to use fly-by wire steering control with computers. The jets are going too fast and too many things have to change all at once [to be operated by manual control]. So, with these adaptive systems, we wanted to see if we could apply them to a loudspeaker.

As a loudspeaker driver moves, it may not move perfectly the way you want it to. However, you can use adaptive systems to correct for that and make it behave more like an ideal loudspeaker. So the X-10 became a project of making the low-frequency driver of the speaker behave correctly, to produce what it’s supposed to, using this kind of adaptive circuitry. And it’s difficult, because you’re predicting the behavior of the speaker. You have to implement a model of the speaker’s behavior so that you can predict what’s going to happen and correct for it.

For that, we had a little computer that simulated what the problems were that we were trying to crack. These are very complex problems and solving them turned out to be very, very expensive to implement.

In the end we decided to go back toward more of a straightforward linear approach, meaning that the speakers would have low distortion on their own, rather than using the kind of adaptive technology used in the X-10 and the PSAC to try to correct the non-linearities in the speaker’s performance. It’s just difficult. But we learned a lot from that experience and that product.

The Meyer Sound factory in 2007.

Someone out there might remember the early days when Meyer Sound used tube amplifiers, which people loved because they sounded good. Then solid-state amplifiers came out and they didn’t sound as good as the tube ones, but they measured better.

It turns out that it’s hard to measure all the things that we can hear. It’s like trying to measure wine with chemistry. Sound is subtle. You can measure a lot of information, but it’s very difficult to get all the information just from testing. It took a long time for solid-state amplifiers to start sounding good.

With technology, you can encounter a lot of complicated things which make it difficult to figure out what a product is actually doing, and what you want it to do. At Meyer Sound we tend to try to keep things as simple as we can. Our products are easy to use. They’re easy to repair, they’re easy to service, and they are understandable. If something breaks, you can send the customer a new part; it doesn’t require a whole new realignment of the speaker or system.

Meyer Sound’s HD-1 High Definition Audio Monitor.

JS: Do you find that Meyer’s Sound’s breakthrough designs in powered loudspeakers, time-aligned speaker arrays and other advancements have taken a lot of the analytical guesswork work out of the equation for live sound engineers?

As a parallel development: as houses of worship, recreational parks and other types of spaces are demanding ever-better quality sound reinforcement, the experience and skill set of the engineers may vary widely. Is Meyer Sound looking to expand into serving these markets in addition to your live sound clientele?

JM: If you remember cars from the 1950s, they had a lot of controls on the dashboard. There were some cars where you could even change the engine timing. You could change all kinds of things, with chokes for example, but which made it harder to know how to start the car. What the car makers finally figured out is that things like water vapor, temperature and even changes in altitude could be taken care of with a computer. So now the driver didn’t have to constantly know so much. The goal was to simplify the basic car so all the driver has to do is step on the gas and shift – and eventually even shifting went away.

In a similar manner a lot of what we’ve done is to take a lot of the complexity out of sound reinforcement systems, and having self-powered loudspeakers helps with that. You don’t have to try to set up an amplifier and make it work with the speakers and the protection circuitry. Basically our systems work right out of the box. You put the system up in the venue and it sounds pretty good to start with in what we call our Native Mode. Then the sound engineer can tweak it a little bit with their controls they have in their mixing console.

Meyer Sound rocks the crowd at Denmark’s Roskilde Festival, 2018. Photo courtesy of Ralph Larmann.

So, I think that one of the things that has become valuable as sound reinforcement systems have evolved over the decades is the application of technology to make the systems easier for people to use. People have to remember that in the early days of the Grateful Dead, it took a week to set up the Wall of Sound system! That’s just not acceptable anymore. With today’s touring schedules and economics, systems now have to be loaded in and set up in the same day. Load in the morning and do a show that night. No one is going to pay for a week of stadium time to get the system set up. The Wall of Sound and things like that were really, really time consuming. I think it took 10 days in New York to have the whole thing up and running, at this huge cost.

JS: There’s a second part to my question: houses of worship, recreational parks and other spaces other than the usual, traditional live sound venues are demanding better quality sound reinforcement. However, the experience and skill set of the engineers or even the laymen or volunteers who are tasked with operating the systems can vary widely. Is Meyer Sound looking to serve these markets in addition to your more traditional professional clientele? And if so, how? The analogy would be similar to how Apple and Microsoft opened the computer market to individuals by making their products easier to use, after decades of corporate and government exclusivity.

JM: Yeah, substantial improvements could be made in general in the overall quality and usage of sound reinforcement in general and we’re definitely looking at that. It’s a different business model for us in a sense that we’re currently in a small, highly professional market. People know exactly what they want to buy. We’re fitting in a narrow market that is very sophisticated. This new, broader market has to be simpler.

Again, one of the great things that Apple did when they introduced the Mac is that they made their computers very intuitive to use and got rid of the command-line interface and all kinds of complexity. It made computers accessible to everyone, not just engineers and programmers. That was their big breakthrough. It will require that kind of thinking, on how to make our future audio systems intuitively easy to use, and computers will help with that. So those exciting new markets are a big challenge.

 

The final part of this interview will appear in Issue 101.

In 1973 Phoenix was hard for me to figure. Didn’t seem to be much there there. Soon after I arrived in town to start work at KRIZ (now KOY) I got a ride in our traffic report airplane and saw that there really wasn’t much to see. But I liked the heat. I was newly single and excited to be in a new town with new opportunities.

When I first arrived the station had no program director, then hired one soon after I had begun. His exact words to the air staff: “This is my big chance and I’m not going to let any of you f*ck it up for me.” He must have meant that for me, as I was fired pretty quickly.

I had been noticed though, as I had started giving away dirt bikes to non-listeners who had been calling the wrong station – us. Our competitor, KUPD – the one that was crushing us – they were the ones giving away dirt bikes in a contest they were running, and a big part of the reason we were being crushed. I’d get a lot of calls from confused listeners who didn’t realize they were calling the wrong station, so I would pretend I was giving the bikes away and tell them to come to the station at 3:00 in the afternoon the next day and ask for the program director. Only thing was, I told them to go to the Crushing Competitor station.

The thing was, we would get so many wrong numbers and so few calls for me or for the rest of the staff that it got really irritating after a while. One day I reached some kind of personal breaking point and slammed the phone down. It was one of those phones with many lines coming into it. And it shattered. I always thought those phones were pretty much indestructible. I tried to piece it back together, but it was no use. None of the incoming phone lines worked anymore. I finished my shift and went home. And was awakened the next morning by the general manager, who asked, calmly but with a hint of menace, “What did you do to the phones last night?”

I’m thinking, I’ll buy time with the guy. “What phones?,” I asked, feigning innocence. “ALL OF THEM!”

Once I got drunk while doing a remote broadcast. It was really hot outside – Phoenix with the flame turned up! And my remote location was at a water park. I was on a few times each hour doing promos. “Come to the water park!” and such.

The promos would go on for about a minute. Well, after that, I’d go to find someplace cool, and cool turned out to be inside a bar onsite, where I ordered a beer. Then I’d go outside to do another on-air piece and sweat some more, then go to the bar and have another beer, then…you get the idea. Soon, I wasn’t doing so well on the air – especially since I had no copy to read from.  The thing is, I rarely drank alcohol, then or now, so I wasn’t prepared for the combination of extreme heat and beer intake.

My bad.

After that little adventure the midday guy told me I was going to be fired and thought I should know, especially since I had come all the way across the country for this job. So I went to the GM who hired me. I told him, “this guy says I’m going to be fired…?” The GM replied, “No, no, but we just had a meeting and I just said that to everyone for effect and to let everybody know that everybody has to pull their weight or else anybody could be let go, even the new guy.”

Later that week the program director calls me on phone. Him: “Wanna see you at 9:00 am.” Here I am getting off air at midnight… Me: “Oh man, that’s so early for me, can we make it later?” Him: “In that case I’ll come down to see you now.” He smiled as he fired me and said, “You know that big party the station had that I didn’t invite you to? That was a clue.” I didn’t even know about the party.

It would take many weeks before I found other work, weeks I spent at the pool, and I think becoming fearless in the water. I had plenty of time to become a good swimmer.

Some other stories of life at KRIZ:

One time after a Johnson & Johnson baby shampoo commercial I couldn’t help myself from adding a line: “Excuse me, there’s a lizard in your hair!”

The station was located near a rough neighborhood. I’d look out the door and see a bunch of kids sitting on my car – the only car in the lot. I’d freak. The car was a treasure to me, a Camaro, a prized possession. But I was on the air so I couldn’t do anything about it.

There was a transmitter behind a heavy door. There was a story going around that one DJ opened the door to read the meters, and a neighborhood bad guy cold-cocked him. Why, we’ll never know. The other station legend was that some employee had thrown a body block into a fancy-then electronic vending machine which then gave up all of its contents. No, it wasn’t me.

The overnight guy smoked weed, as I discovered at my first midnight stint. But he wasn’t worried because he had this magic aerosol, Ozium, which he said would immediately mask the smell. I said, “Well, you had better use it because I just heard the front door open.” He sprays the stuff, looking completely unconcerned. The engineer walks in and immediately says, “Who’s smoking dope in here?” So much for magic aerosol.

The general manager called in drunk one night after hearing me play “Layla” by Derek and the Dominos. “Play it again!” he barked. It’s a long song. He didn’t care. I played it again.

Phoenix is so hot that you can actually burn your hand on your steering wheel.

My next door neighbor had short hair at a time when men were growing it out…this was the early Seventies, man! But then I found out that the reason his hair was short was because he just got out of jail. It didn’t do anything to reduce my stress level.

Several Phoenix Suns basketball players lived in my complex. Very tall guys! I didn’t know any of them. DIdn’t care about the team.

Phoenix definitely wasn’t one of the highlights of my career. So I couldn’t believe my luck when I got hired BACK by WAMS in Wilmington, Delaware, to do an afternoon show.

To be continued…

Header image courtesy of Pexels.com/cottonbro.

My dear wife Diana is one of those who begin buying Christmas presents in April. Yes I know it’s annoying. But how lucky is that girl? She has Christmas in her heart all year. However there is a dynamic in relationships that requires one partner to show the other what she bought that day for Sandy while I’m watching the NBA playoffs. And trying, really, to remember who the heck Sandy is while keeping one eye on the game. You girls think we’re not listening. We are. Just winking at the game and waiting for peace.

“Look, I found this adorable ‘Howard is at the free throw line down by a point’ candle for Sandy. ‘Ya know John why wouldn’t you foul this guy..His free throw style looks like a hammer falling out of a tree’ I found a wonderful blouse but I don’t know her size ‘boink..yep, don’t you think they’d make this clown practice free throws?’ Do you know her size?” Wait..what??!! That answer is always no.

So we get to this week. The week before the celebration of the birth.  I’m weak. I can’t help it. I get sloshy and on my bedside table I put the plastic Santa with a squeaker that my parents put in my crib my first Christmas and that we’ve kept all these years.

Wait! There he is!

Now imagine. I am 65 years old. That little guy has been waving to me from my crib, fireplace mantles, hutches and coffee tables for every one of 65 Christmases. Each year he is packed carefully away and the next Christmas he is hunted for again, sometimes with mounting anxiety because he didn’t pop out until the last box of decorations was opened. My kids are all in their 30’s and he has been a part of all of their holiday memories as well. Bonus, the squeaker still works.

You can see from the picture at the top that we decorate our home with whatever comes to our attention during post-holiday sales. Obviously there is no grand design. We just throw it all together and the result is something the family cherishes. The Snoopy on his doghouse was purchased as a surprise for Christmas 2011 when I came off the road. The lit up Santa on the deck stood in front of Diana’s home when she was growing up. You can’t see it but there is a rooster weathervane on the top of the house. I risk my life each year climbing up there and putting a Santa hat on his head.  Getting old for that crap, as my wife keeps reminding me.

My son is 30 and is hurt if I don’t have him help me put all this junk up. He also sets up the Christmas village inside the house and no one  is allowed to move anything after he’s done. So of course I always move one thing to see if he notices and he always does. The short story is I feel the kids are lucky to have been brought up believing in the holiday, succumbing to the wonder, and knowing that somehow Santa Claus is still alive.

I’ve written Christmas columns for every year since Copper was founded. By the way you’re reading our 100th issue. It’s fitting this issue comes out a week before Christmas and so our gift to you is the continued fun of reading this great rag. Your gift to us is your readership. Honestly we can’t do this without readers. Personally I am blessed with a vehicle which I use to drive my editor crazy and to present music to you from the wacky to the sublime. I appreciate each one of you and love the comments. Thank you all for this gift.

I have wonderful memories from all past holidays but I spend every Christmas veering between elation and melancholy. I am acutely aware that millions of people all over the planet dread the coming of the season. To these sad souls the weeks of Christmas carols, TV commercials and lighted town squares are constant reminders of the coming loneliness they will experience on December 25th knowing luckier families will be spending time with loved ones in warm happy homes. This creates a situation where some of these unfortunates ignore and even campaign against the holiday as an illegal representation of religious icons and sycophantic gift giving. That separates us and in a time when we need no further separation we should be tasked with closing that distance.

Part of the space between those who love the holiday and those who seem to hate it can be caused by Christian attitude. OK, this is tough sledding here. But I am a man of strong Christian faith and I continue to be amazed at the aloofness we tend to project towards those who are not of the same faith. This attitude is hardly the province of Christians alone; those of all faiths can be guilty of this. However, this is a Christian holiday and we have a responsibility to show focus on the spirit and its meaning. The man-child whose birth we celebrate loved everyone and we all need to bring ourselves closer to that ideal and realize we are not loved because we go to a church, read a certain book or donate money. We are loved in direct proportion to the love we create and spread around regardless of who that person is or their faith. Agnostics, atheists, Jews, Muslims, backsliders, bike riders and Christians are all the same in God’s heart.

We should not be focused on gift giving. Our family has been guilty of overdoing the gifts, filling the living room with brightly wrapped boxes and bags. This Christmas we decided to choose one present for each person, something special we know that person needs but would never buy for themselves. It has forced us to think hard about each other and spend time with everyone else coming up with that one special gift. I’ll miss the 14 books I always get, and will someday read, but I think we’re onto something.

Give yourself a gift this Christmas and talk to a homeless person you pass on the street. Let that guy who’s obviously in a hurry go before you at the stop sign. Pray for the spirit of those tailgating you on the highway. Volunteer at a shelter. Bless someone you’ve just met by telling them you love them and mean it.

The season is a time of joy but also a time of despair. In many ways and within too many of our brothers and sisters there are hearts suffering with loss and hopelessness. This holiday gives you the light, the right, the singing railroad tie and the sunrise. The chance and the hope. The word “season” is the root of the word “seasoning.” Use that spice liberally and remember you are never alone. My friends I am telling you, you are never ever alone.

Naturally, I’d like to leave you with a song. This Christmas standard was written during World War II by Kim Gannon and Walter Kent. It was penned from the perspective of a soldier in a foreign war with no chance at actually being home for Christmas. Recorded by Bing Crosby the song was a huge hit with the the families missing their sons and daughters and as well as with those sons and daughters themselves. Here from 1943, Der Bingle singing “I’ll Be Home For Christmas.”

 

Happy Holidays to you all.  And by the way I love you.

Header image courtesy of Pexels.com/Irina Iriser.