Issue 38

A couple of years ago, along with a DirectStream DAC, I bought an older Mac Mini. Why older? The price was “attractive”, and I got the last model you could get with a “Super Drive”, the Mac DVD/CD drive.

For the first half-year or so, I connected the Mini to the DAC via USB (and tried various AudioQuest USB enhancements), but ever wanting to fiddle, I eventually connected it up to my network via a Bridge II card. This necessitated using JRiver, MC 20 and 21, and giving up on most other choices. But that particular software is really meant for someone who loves working in Windoze, and that person isn’t me (I’m insufficiently pointy-headed). Nonetheless, I did study computer programming back in the days of Fortran IV, and am completely comfortable dissecting my dissectable Macs. And the Laufer-Teknik Memory Player, which I had until I sent it back for updating a few years ago, ran on Windows. So I can at least say that my head has a bit of a point — I’m conversant in Windows, but much, much prefer Mac, as I prefer spending my time with art rather than technology.

So Roon was a great gift to people like me, who will do just about anything to avoid having to get down and dirty with tech. For those living on the Dark Side of the Moon, it’s software, and now an OS, that does for your system what the Sooloos did on it’s own — which, if you never saw it, was pretty slick[1]. Besides displaying the art, Roon lists (or attempts to, at least) the credits on albums (yes, it’s my best friend). And if the metadata is right, it does a pretty good job of it[2].

All was über-groovy until late this past winter. There was an issue, and Roon’s tech support mentioned to me that I might think about switching out the hard drive for an SSD. That’s fine, if you can spare the dosh. I tried to set it aside, but you know, it’s one thing after another. And then in the spring, a Roon update came and it all went to hell.

There’s still no answer, but although Roon continued to work, it was losing art. And lost more and more art. Over the course of about 6 weeks, I tried different things, including responding to inquiries as to the health of my drive (it checks out fine), but mostly waited on tech support. There was obviously some kind of dynamic corruption. Tech support and I managed to get pissed off at each other, with most of my questions still unanswered. And there the story almost ended.

I even communicated with their CEO, Enno Vandermeer, via a Facebook message, asking what he recommended. Finally, I got fed up, wiped the Mini’s drive and started over. By the time I got to this point, I was pretty sick of Roon. I tried to find an alternative, but there was only MC22. So I turned back to Roon, and I rebuilt all the playlists, about a dozen of them, which took the better part of a day. It worked, and a few weeks later it’s still working.

As I was contemplating putting pen to paper, so to speak, Editor Leebens suggested I talk to Roon’s Rob Darling. That conversation started out a bit testy, but once we found common ground, it was good. I’m not sure what did the trick, but eventually my career background came out, as did his (we both come from making records). I discussed the joys of taking apart my various Macs and replacing components (actually, it’s kind of fun). And he, finally understanding me, and me him, talked a bit about Roon’s plans.

Which brings us to this.

This is the computer that Roon recommends. Not quite a week after my talk with Rob, I found this article. If you want to go this way, fully tricked out, it’s about $400, give or take. That’s what I wanted the readers to know. These guys seem to have done their homework. I sent that link to Rob, and here’s his response:

“Hosting Roon on general-use computers can get hard with older computers.

“Many people have not needed to buy a new computer in many years as their phones and tablets have picked up most of their computing minutes in a day… unless they are a specialist in something like graphics, they are fine with an 8 or 10 year old computer.

“But Roon is a fully modern app developed to take advantage of all the tools in a modern OS, with clients on all major mobile and desktop operating systems. This can make for user experience problems and tough support situations with older machines.

“Asking people to pay for a new Mac Mini, which is overpriced and still presents compromises and challenges to the audiophile, just to use Roon, is something we are not very comfortable with. This is why we created Roon OS and ROCK for the DIY enthusiasts and Nucleus for those who want an off-the-shelf solution. Roon OS and ROCK offer the DIY’er an inexpensive (<$500) music server running a ground-up-built, rock-solid, stripped-down, audio-optimized LINUX OS, running on best-in-class hardware from Intel.

“Nucleus offers a turnkey version of this LINUX OS and best-in-class hardware, in a silent chassis that looks great in your listening room. Just as important as these basic values is the fact that Roon OS, ROCK, and Nucleus are things we can own, which means we can support them better and can optimize performance for them.”

This wasn’t intended to become an advertisement, for Roon, although given the fact of its display of credits, I should want to do that. But I thought it would do to hear from a spokesman for the company what I came to know, and what their thought process was.

For those who can afford the PS server when it appears, I’d choose that, too –– no question. But for those who can’t (and based entirely on hearsay — I haven’t used one yet), the NUC and ROCK, the Roon OS, sounds like the way to go. I expect to get one pretty soon.

[1] A couple of the guys started Roon after Sooloos was sold.

[2] Can you believe I’m writing about metadata? [NO.—Ed.]

[This is another occasion upon which press-releases cannot be relied, because there aren’t any. I’ll piece together the timeline to the best of my ability, and link to other reports online, such as there are.—Ed.]

Observers of the audio biz may recall that industry-leading loudspeaker manufacturers Bowers & Wilkins were sold last year to a mysterious Silicon Valley entity called EVA Automation, of which little was known. The best coverage of the sale was by Engadget, which explained that EVA was owned by Gideon Yu, former CFO of Facebook and a partial owner of the San Francisco 49ers . EVA Automation appeared to be a 40-person startup minnow which had never released a product, swallowing the 1,100-employee whale, B&W.

The one statement made by Yu regarding the purchase does almost nothing to explain the reasoning for the purchase, or the company’s possible future direction. According to Yu, longtime Chairman and majority owner of B&W Joe Atkins would remain with the new entity to help guide it. Despite Yu’s statement  that “Joe Atkins has graciously agreed to remain the CEO of our combined company, while I will be our Executive Chairman. There are very few leaders in home A/V as experienced, respected and successful as Joe, and I look forward to partnering with and learning from him…and all of you”—-according to company and industry insiders, Atkins departed within a few months of the deal’s close, and indications are that the departure was less than amicable.

Once again, the company did not issue a statement regarding the departure. I’ve had to rely on statements from folks close to the events who are unwilling to be be attributed.

Along with the B&W line of speakers, the B&W Group distributes Rotel in much of the world. Despite not owning Rotel outright, the relationship is a close one. The new company is headquartered in Silicon Valley as Bowers & Wilkins.

Longtime B&W Group North America President Doug Henderson was recently dismissed, as reported in industry news-site Strata-Gee.  The company issued a remarkably uninformative statement informing dealers of Henderson’s departure.

B&W Group also owns electronics manufacturer Classe’. Strata-Gee  has stated that employees were recently notified that Classe’ is shutting down—but again, none are willing to provide attribution in print, and there is no formal statement from B&W, other than a pat statement, “Thank you for your inquiry. It is Bowers & Wilkins policy not to comment on rumors or speculation.”

So: what’s the direction and intent of B&W in the future? This listing of job openings makes it sound like a very different company from the stalwart loudspeaker company. As one former B&W exec recently put it, “What that means for the future only time will tell.”

The latest bit of non-news came in the form of a letter to Classe’ dealers which creates more questions than it answers. This was reported, once again, by Ted Green at Strata-Gee.

Please note: vagueness and lack of attribution are anathema to me—but at this point I can provide nothing better than what’s been presented here. There will be more to follow in the future, I’m sure.

Musings from a long-time listener upon entering the hi-fi industry

I remember the exact moment the switch flipped. I was in my early twenties when I hit “play” and was blown away by what a couple of bicycle inner tubes and heavy books could do to the sound of my Sony CD-player and Indian-made Cox integrated amplifier. Since then, my love for music has been matched—and, if I’m not careful, exceeded by—a love for the products and optimizations that replay that music.

When I found a job in the high-end industry at 43, I had entered late but had the tools to be an ideal observer. I knew the language, but didn’t know the water-cooler gossip. I had the framework, but carried little baggage. In my first months, I asked every industry rep I met the same question. “Who’s the new audiophile?”

To my surprise, the answer was always some form of “I don’t know”, with the follow-up: “This industry has done a terrible job of promoting and branding itself.”

“This is over,” said more than one rep (usually the younger ones) pointing at racks filled with audio equipment, bristling with cables, and flanked by looming speakers. “Nobody wants this any more. It’s all about convenience.” [Smartphone waggled for emphasis.]

The death of high-end audio… again?

But is that true? It’s true this year certainly. Much has been made of how the millennial would rather hike to Choquequirao than buy a power amplifier. That audiophiles are (literally, given their average age) a dying breed.

Many audio companies have decided that democratization is the way forward. All-in-one products with slick smart phone and tablet apps, streaming technologies, and lifestyle design. These boxes have few cables, offer easy set-up, and equally democratic usage by fitting near-invisibly into homes with children and non-enthusiast domestic partners. (“What do you mean, power-up procedures? I just want to play my damn music!”)

So what hope then for the rack of audio equipment and giant loudspeakers? I believe that the death of retail as we know it offers an answer. In the news of the end of malls, and the closing of national retail brands, is the hope that the future of retail isn’t only online, but in a specialized marketplace of spaces that offer “experiences”, especially if those are hand-made, curated, and highly personalized.

Here’s the thing: the high-end audio store has always been this kind of experience. It has always been about dedicated listening rooms, beautiful products, and a need to understand who the customer is, before selling to them. It has always been about knowledgeable curation, expert-led “auditions”, and a generous take-it-home-and-try-it policy. With its polished metal, glowing vacuum tubes, and incremental upgrades it has always been Instagram gold, the consistent “braggable” experience. And finally, it has always been about education and open-mindedness: technical seminars, listening events, and a high level of customer access to the people who actually design and build the products.

And yet, this is an industry that is seen in general as snobbish, elitist, and only for people with more money than sense. And that’s if it’s seen at all. I recently showed my mother (a well-read, tech-savvy theater professional) a photograph of a brand new Audio Research VT80 power amp. “Is that an antique?” she asked. “I remember vacuum tubes from when I was young!”

And this, according to nearly everyone I speak to, is the industry’s own damn fault. Shouldn’t it then be actively moving the discussion to a more formal venue than the editorial pages of consumer audio magazines, and hotel bars at audio shows? Is offering interchangeable speaker grilles to match decor, and color options from the RAL swatch book part of the solution… or the problem?

But real things matter!

David Sax, in his book The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter (PublicAffairs, 2016), writes about how we’ve fallen in love again with supposedly outdated technologies, many of them messy and difficult, but all of them somehow real. The first chapter is “The Revenge of Vinyl”, and whatever your views on the purported revival, I’m sure you’ll agree that there’s at least the hint that the long-term future of high-end audio might lie, not in its convenience, but its obduracy. If you’re a photographer, the parallel would be the astonishingly healthy market for film photography.

But obduracy must be marketed with care. At its least empathetic, aspirational branding focuses on the product, telling the customer that it is better than they are; that they need to prove their credentials. This may have worked for luxury audio in the past, but absolutely will not work in this millennial era, in which anybody of any age who uses a smartphone has a little millennial in them.

After all, when millennials are described to and by marketers, they sound startlingly like audiophiles. Even with the “experiences, not ownership” concept mentioned earlier. Sure, audiophilia involves a lot of product ownership, but audiophiles revel in how it offers experiences—moving experiences—at the push of a button.

Millennials are said to value authenticity. Okay, let’s never forget that the term “high-fidelity” promises truth, not quality. (“If the original is bad, we’ll make sure the playback sounds just as bad!”) Short signal paths, naked power tubes, exposed heatsinks, no unnecessary features… these are all signs of brute honesty.

Millennials are apparently not swayed by regular advertising, and don’t find brands through conventional channels, instead seeking like-minded users or experts of their choosing. Surely that is every audiophile who has breathed and logged on to an audio forum or attended a show.

Millennials use technology to the fullest. In response, I present the audiophile who loves to pretend to be a Luddite even as he knows precisely where and how his MQA files are unfurled for his delectation over streamer, server, DAC, and dale.

And finally, millennials want to be acknowledged, and never talked down to. This is the industry’s cue to shift the traditional product focus of aspirational branding to the customer, and tell him or her that there exist products of such sophistication and subtlety, that they are humanistic. The customer doesn’t need to prove credentials, being human is complex enough. It’s the product that has to match up to the level of high discernment that’s now the norm.

All this suggests to me that when, and if, the industry does emerge from invisibility (and by all accounts, that needs to be soon), it should do so with full acceptance of what it is: narcissistic, eccentric, precious, and obsessive, yes. But also capable of leading us into beauty in a deeply human way like few other luxury products can consistently do. Even if the source is digital, the multi-box, multi-cable, multi-shelf system is hopelessly, romantically analog in the way it can be nurtured and optimized, ever towards, but never attaining, perfection.

Democratizing the high-end audio experience requires changing the very fabric of its universe. Consider instead that its traditional perception problems of elitism and unnecessary complexity are across a thin line from deep customization and analog uniqueness. All that’s needed is the flip of a switch.

If you’re human, you make mistakes. Sometimes they are driven by emotion, sometimes by ignorance. But you’re never going to escape them, and you’ll always be sorry you didn’t, or couldn’t, correct them. Making mistakes and being sorry is  part of the human condition. If you focus on them, it’s easy to see your entire life as one long series of mistakes. That’s a mistake.

Some mistakes you can correct, most you can’t. This makes you as liable as the rest of humanity, unless you feel you can act with impunity — which is another mistake.

It’s easy to see a mistake someone else makes as incredibly stupid, but we are often blind to our own deficiencies, and make mistakes that are equally stupid — only different. So the kindest thing you can do for the people around you is to accept your own mistakes and fallibility. Once you’ve done that, you can accept the mistakes of others, even if they are directed towards you. That’s the real meaning of understanding and forgiveness. We’re all flawed, just in different ways.

So it is with audio systems. They’re all flawed too, just in different ways. Nevertheless, we still believe, like Don Quixote, that perfection is possible, and go to great lengths and expense to achieve it. A new system, like a new sweetheart, seems perfect …………. for a time.  But when the honeymoon is over, the truth comes out, and you discover that your new acquisition is as flawed as the last. Good thing ex-audio equipment doesn’t demand alimony.

Back in the last century, I ran into my ex at the home of the guy I sold it to. It sounded much better than I remembered.  Now I’m thinking I might want the system back, but there’s no way Larry’s letting go. Mistakes suck.

Larry tells me he’s taken the trouble to cultivate a relationship with his system. I knew to do that, I just  didn’t bother when it was mine. He moved the speakers around the room till they sounded right and rearranged the furniture accordingly, glued some foam around the tweeter to minimize diffraction, replaced the tired midrange drivers with those recommended by a parts house, braced the interior of the cabinets and experimented with different damping materials, added some acoustic panels at reflective points on the walls and behind the listener, and he created a 4′ X 8′ piece of artwork from wood scraps to provide diffraction between the speakers.

How’d his wife feel about all this? Fortunately, he cultivated a relationship with her as well. He asked her what she thought of the sound as he moved his speakers around the family room. When they found the ideal spot and it was necessary to rearrange the furniture, he asked for her input. When they couldn’t come to an agreement, he bargained and agreed to let her rearrange the furniture in the living room. As it turned out, she demanded new furniture for the living room, but that was less expensive than most audiophile toys.

Larry also made her part of the creative process. She got to chose the color and design of the material on the acoustic panels.  She was flattered when he bought several pints of enamel and asked her to paint the wooden artwork in any way she wanted. He even offered to change the finish on the loudspeakers to a veneer of her preference. As a result, she’s happy and he’s happy — all for much less than the price of the system I bought to replace the one he now owns.

Rather than replace my system again, I took a lesson from Larry and developed a relationship with my system. I moved things around, learned about box alignments, diffraction and room acoustics, and applied some digital signal processing. Turns out my system had much more potential than I thought. I also got my wife involved in the project, and discovered she had much more potential for understanding than I thought.

The beauty of audio, unlike much of life, is that you can always correct your mistakes — even years later.

Elvis Presley

DVD: Elvis Lives: The 25th Anniversary Concert “Live” From Memphis

Single DVD

Available from Amazon

Occasionally  there are performances that cause you to completely change your opinion about the artist. This, for me, is one.

I never had much use for Elvis. I had no use for “You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog”, but I happened upon a trailer for a DVD on TV, and thought that the technology involved seemed interesting:  it is a live concert recording made in Elvis’s home town of Memphis on the 25th anniversary of his death. The concert took place on August 16, 2002,  25 years to the day after Elvis’s 1977 death.

Every musician is live on stage for the concert,  including all of the original members of Elvis’s band and supporting vocalists. There are also additional musical and vocal reinforcements…all that is missing is Elvis.

But he’s there, too. The backbone of  the concert is video of his Elvis: Aloha from Hawaii performance from January, 1973 (although other performances are used as well).  It was the first time satellites were used to beam a live concert around the world, and more than a billion people watched.

At the time of that concert, Elvis was 38 years old. He was mature, strong, and vigorous: at the peak of his powers.

The editing and merging of the images of Elvis  with the live performers is excellent. I would say Elvis was at his best, and the musicians had gotten even better and stronger after 25 years. The only soundtrack extracted from the original concert is Elvis. You can view the trailer here.

The first song that really grabbed me was” You Gave Me a Mountain”, which just  takes off and soars. It was this song’s chorus that made me think that something special was going on here.

“If I Can Dream”, from the 1968 TV special, Elvis,  is terrific and he puts everything into it. The 2002 version is much bigger and stronger than the original, largely due to the additional singers and musicians.

“American Trilogy” is a magnificently powerful work, a beautifully crafted medley of several pieces with a full range of musical and emotional dynamics. It is over far too soon; just listen to how a solo flute gets us ready for a really great musical climax. This was not the last number for the concert, but it well could have been.

The intercutting  of the varied concert images and the edited-in discussions was ocasionally confusing.  Overall, though, it’s difficult to realize that Elvis is not physically present. The sound is great: just like being there, but better.—Fred Schwartz

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King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard

Album: Murder Of The Universe

33 RPM – 1 LP Vomit Coffin Ltd. Edition

Release: Flightless Records, June 2017

Within the first 30 seconds, I got the feeling of where the latest KG&TLW – Murder Of The Universe was going to take me. To the end of humanity, and the cusp of the what would lay beyond the end. This is the 2nd of 5 planned releases of 2017 by the Australian garage psych-surf-band lead by the never resting Stu Mackenzie. The first release of the planned 5 for this year was Flying Microtonal Banana (February 2017) had the band transform their instruments (all of them) into hand modified micro-tonal instruments.

Previous to that release, Nonagon Infinity (2016) was a concept album which seamlessly looped all songs into one another and linked the last song to the first by matching tempo and spacing fuzzed guitar riffs perfectly. 2015 KG&TLW released Quarters!  Which has 4 songs, each measuring 10:10 and splitting the album into equal doses of jazz and acid rock and heavy metal. KG&TLW’s discography is equally ambitious and strange the further you dig into the vault.

This brings us to the most draining and heavy of all their previous 8 full length epic conceptual albums. The first time I finished Metallica’s – Master of Puppets in its entirety, I was drained. Driving in my Volvo and grasping for breath between tracks. Metallica never gave me time to catch my breath, until I had to flip the tape or get out of the car. Murder Of The Universe reminded me of that sweaty anxious, pit of my stomach feeling. The album is split into 3 chapters with two characters providing voice overs for the entire story.

The first part Tracks 1-9: (Female voice over by the eloquent Leah Senior – a gifted Australian folk singer) “The Tale Of The Altered Beast” is a story of a human who comes across a hybrid human/beast creature who is then dubbed “The Altered Beast”. The Altered Beast is created by a human who wishes to cross the taboo and become “altered”. After the human and beast combine themselves, the narrative continues from the perspective of the Altered Beast – consumed by the need to destroy all. Ha! Of course! What would you do in that situation? As the first set of songs continue, you learn that the beast cannot mentally support the absorption of the human being and understanding the human conscience. Song 9 “Life / Death” is the death of the Altered Beast through insanity and depression, falls to the ground and absorbed by the Earth. This is only the first set of songs, and writing this I have to remind the reader – this isn’t a movie review. Its Australian psych- rock and conceptual albums at its finest. Exhausting and entertaining as hell! The songs blend together and with a total album play time is just over 46 minutes, with content is bursting through Frankenstein stiches.

The Second Chapter (voiced again by Leah Senior) “The Lord Of Lighting Vs Balrog” is an somewhat interrelated story, post Altered Beast existence, of a battle between two powerful entities. One named The Lord Of Lighting and the newly formed zombie corpse named Balrog. See, Balrog was a stiff who got zapped by the Lord Of Lighting and reanimated. Obviously! Only to turn into The Lord Of Lighting’s arch enemy. The Lord of Lighting turns Balrog into a pile of ash and leaves Earth forever.

New comes the piece de resistance! Chapter 3: “Han-Tyumi And The Murder Of The Universe”. The final chapter spans tracks 16-21 and is narrated by the real-life robot:

NaturalReader’s “UK, Charles” text-to-speech program. The narration tells the tale of a cyborg like being who gains consciousness, almost the same consciousness that was part of the now decomposed Altered Beast. It is through this newly formed consciousness that the cyborg, Han-Tyumi (ammonium for Humanity) strives for the one thing a cyborg can’t achieve. Vomiting and death. Yup. This is not a drill. This is a new album by a very far-out there band. Han-Tyumi creates a machine named, get ready… “Soy-Protein Munt Machine”, whose only “skill” (used lightly) is to vomit. The newly formed robot Soy-Protein Munt Machine rejects Han-Tyumi’s affection. Through this denial, Han-Tyumi wants nothing but to merge himself into his creation. The newly formed “thing” goes crazy (has to rough), like all the others before it and destroys itself. And in the process of self-destruction coats the universe in infinite supply of vomit.

Yikes! Gnarly.

All this cosmic comic content, which would make Troma movie enthusiasts blush, fits onto two sides of a single LP. The story is bizarre, fun and unique. The musical texture is lo-fi to the extent that is sounds like it was recorded live via VHS Tape. The band is gaining notoriety and selling out all of the 2017 tour and featured on spots on all the late-night talk shows. Murder Of The Universe isn’t trying to solve the world’s problems, fix social injustices and isn’t calling out the faults of man or the current state of international politics. It’s fun (at times hilarious, catchy, fast, and stained in sweat and motor oil. The songs of Murder Of The Universe never get overly repetitive and there are some set changes which shape the story line and alter the tempo. After a couple solid listening adventures, this album has some serious staying power and secrets of the Alter Beast continue to exposes themselves listen after listen.

If you see this band coming to a venue in your town, don’t pass. This is a group reaching the top of the mountain and gaining some well-deserved attention.—Dan McCauley

Ok.  This is how shit happens.

In 1967 Chris Curtis, former drummer for the Searchers, had an idea to start what would essentially be a supergroup where the members would rotate.  Curtis sold the idea to some London businessmen and they began recruiting.  The first gentleman they looked at was a classically trained Hammond B3 player named Jon Lord.  He’d been mucking about London playing with bands with names like The Flower Pot Men.  He needed a real job.  Through bandmates Lord heard of a guitar player who was in Hamburg doing session work and backing people like Screaming Lord Sutch.  If you haven’t heard that shit you go and check it out.  We’ll wait.

The guitar player’s name was Ritchie Blackmore.  The first Deep Purple started practicing with Rod Evans on vocals who’d brought in Ian Paice from Evans’ former band, and Nick Simper on bass from those wacky Flower Pot Men.   Evans grew restless and decided to move to Hollywood and become an actor.  Goodbye Mr. Evans.  The core group now of Blackmore, Lord and Paice really wanted the band to move in a more hard-edged direction.  A mutual friend who played in a band Episode Six with Ian Gillan on vocals and Roger Glover on bass introduced the purple dudes to them.  Goodbye Episode Six.  Gillan’s vocals were perfect but Lord and Blackmore weren’t certain about Glover.  Glover stayed on at Paice’s insistence.  Always ask the drummer about the bass player.  Always.  And if you love the drummer you take his advice.

The personnel of one of the greatest rock bands ever to be formed was set, and through a series of happenstances and chance meetings.  And by the way, that pesky Roger Glover became one of the influential bass players of his generation, and went on to produce many of their albums and stay through many band changes through the years.

But we will focus on the four greatest albums of the band’s career that were done exclusively with this line-up.  DP had released three albums with the other band and with this lineup turned to a classical approach with a Lord composition “Concerto for Group and Orchestra”.  Blackmore wasn’t happy with the release since it wasn’t really in the vein of what they were after, but at that time Lord was a de facto leader and the release had some success and got some publicity.  What followed would be the first of those four albums that would get a lot of attention and setup influences in metal and speed rock.  Starting with this album Deep Purple WAS Speed Rock.

In 1970 DP released “In Rock”.  A friend in college made me sit and listen.  I was a Led Zeppelin man.  But Jack was the guy who turned me on to Life in general so I listened.  We all knew people like that growing up, and remember their names and faces.

Here’s an example from “In Rock”.  I distinctly remember the words “Holy Shit” coming to mind. Check the interplay between Lord and Blackmore with the always rock solid rhythm section of Paice and Glover holding up that bottom like marble and granite.  Watch out, the beginning could fry something.

Controlled chaos.  The whole album is like that.  But my personal favorite album came next.

“Fireball” was released in the summer of 1971.  Somehow that doesn’t have the ring of the Summer of Love (1967) or the Summer of 42.  But I had turned 17, I had a stereo of my own, and my first motorcycle.  Yeah Buddy.  A purplish pink Yamaha 250.  Not a Harley, but it was two wheels man, and I burned them up.  In 1971 you didn’t have headphones or radios on the bikes, so you played the music in your head.  I remember very well riding behind Skins on his Kaw 900 and I could tell by the rhythm of his shoulder he was listening to “Statesboro Blues” or “Thick as a Brick” down deep in his soul where the moondogs fly.

“Fireball” was and is a true gas.  We had a small circle of friends that would discover a band, or an album, and turn the others on.  Mine was “Fireball”.  A classic and progressive offering from DP but still rocked harder than anything else out at that time, and says a lot.  The album took what “In Rock’ had done, refined it and turned up the heat.  I’ve gone through two vinyl records I flat wore out and three CD’s.  My son got two and the third my brother Jim borrowed and still has.

Besides the magic of their individual skill and the syncopation of their arrangements there was something that started on “In Rock” and continued on “Fireball”.  My son coined it.  We were talking last night about this column and he said “Those guys invented galloping rock.”  That was so perfect.  As soon as he said it I knew he expressed something I loved about these guys but hadn’t said aloud.  You listen, and you’re hanging on to the back of a runaway horse turned towards the barn.

In December 1971 DP headed to Montreux Switzerland to record the next album at the Montreux Casino’s theater.  The night before they were to record, Frank Zappa and the Mothers played the last concert of the season.  The casino would shut down the next day for annual renovations and that would have allowed DP to use the empty casino to record.  But during the Zappa concert a fan fired a flare gun into the ceiling and the whole place went up like roman candle.  It’s a miracle no one was killed, a fact due to an alert Montreux fire department and the Montreux Festival manager, Claude Nobs, getting kids out of the building.  Roger Glover related it was the biggest fire he’d ever seen, and staring at the fire from across the lake they came up with a song title.

Those of you who know the song “Smoke on the Water” well had those lyrics in your head during that entire paragraph.

Deep Purple had already arrived and had leased a very expensive mobile Rolling Stones recording truck, so they had to come up with something.  As the song relates, they had to use the old Montreux Grand Hotel, stuff hallways with mattresses and make it work.

The result was their most commercially successful album, “Machine Head”.  The album certainly was helped by the huge success of “Smoke on the Water” that became an anthem for guitar players everywhere.  But the reality is “Smoke” is far from the best song on the album.  With “Lazy”, “Space Truckin” and “Highway Star” some real magic happened and continued to be staples on tour for the remainder of their career.

One of my favorite stories in rock history is how “Highway Star” was written.  This has been corroborated in a few places so the story probably has no chance of being true.  Anyway, the band was being interviewed on their tour bus heading to a gig, and the interviewer asked a classic dumb question “So how do you write a song?”  They responded by writing the “Highway Star”on the spot and played it at the gig that night.  Ok, the “Smoke on the Water” story was better but dig that.  Those two stories, same band.

The fourth album of which we spoke was recorded live in August 1972 on their first tour of Japan.  Released in 1973, I am going to free the hounds and place “Made In Japan” among the greatest live rock albums recorded, right up there with “Allman Bros Live at Fillmore East” and Little Feat’s “Waiting for Columbus”.  This album caught one of most influential bands ever at their absolute zenith.

I didn’t add any audio from “Machine Head” because some of the songs from that album were on “Made In Japan”, and despite the fact the studio recordings were wonderful in their sparsity and control, these live renditions are so flippin good, showing off each band members’ talent and power as well as the way the band was playing together in 1972.

Here is “Lazy”, originally recorded on “Machine Head” in the Montreux Grand Hotel.  Please youtube that recording, it is remarkable.  But this live version shows off a band that knows they are good, plays around with it, roars around the block, stops to grin in a window, then roars off again.

My son Dean will not forgive me, nor would I forgive myself, if I didn’t devote some words to the tone of Ritchie Blackmore’s guitar.  Honestly I could easily do a column on just that.  Certainly this article is already overly long so I probably should.  Screw it.  Let’s go.

Ritchie’s tone is unmistakable.  Guitar players study video of him to try and figure out what he’s doing.  It is unique and as far as I know hasn’t really been captured completely by anyone.  Guys have come close, , but Blackmore couldn’t be copied.  It was a mystery, and spawned urban myths.  My favorite was he used banjo strings (not true).  Ritchie was interviewed many times and he would explain everything in detail, down to how he setup the amps (Marshalls which he helped develop with his friend Jim Marshall), his use of a tape recorder as his only effect which he used to get control of feedback and a miniscule amount of delay.

Basically Blackmore played a Fender Stratocaster (after he dumped his 335) through two 200W Marshall amps both with an extra output stage with a tube set to boost the heads to 300W.  In an interview for Woody Tone he said the tone controls on the Strat are turned all the way up, never adjusted.  Both amps are flat out on all controls, and his only volume control is on the guitar which he keeps full up, except turning down for quieter solos.

Blackmore also used a souped up reel-to-reel recorder to control distortion and modified to provide echo.  He runs his guitar into the recorder, set on record, then out directly to the amp.  The recorder also acts as a preamp, so he can get fuzz effects by turning up the output to the Marshalls.   He has no bass on the amps at all.

Lastly he scallops the fretboard between the frets.  He’d bought an old acoustic that had bad wear on the fretboard and he loved the sound.  When he gets a new guitar the first thing he does is scrape the fretboard out until he can almost get his fingers underneath.  I suspect you have to do all these things to get that tone, and oh yeah actually be Ritchie Blackmore.

Here’s a chance to check out that tone, and the true power of Jon Lord, Ritchie Blackmore, Ian Gillan, Ian Paice, and Roger Glover.  Originally released on “In Rock”, this is “Child InTime” from “Made In Japan”.

Shiver me timbers.

I liked Deborah Conway the moment I learned she had an album called Bitch Epic. Fortunately, that album lives up to its name, and the rest of this Australian singer-songwriter’s output is worth getting to know too.

Conway’s first solo album was String of Pearls in 1991. The most popular song from it was “It’s Only the Beginning.” It shows the promise of a confident songwriter, even if this pop-love number doesn’t reveal how much she has to say.

(By the way, if that opening hook seems familiar, you’re not imagining it. It bears more than a passing resemblance to The Cure’s hit single “Just Like Heaven,” from 1987.)

It’s no surprise that Conway’s first solo effort has a pop sound. She spent the 1980s in a three-person band called Do Re Mi which had some success in the Australian pop charts. But even in this early album she pushes at the expected framework of pop. For example, the song “Someday,” also from String of Pearls, has a more interesting melody. And even if that melody does bring to mind the style of Natalie Merchant (of 10,000 Maniacs), Conway proves she has a voice worthy of the comparison. A tinge of American country and western sneaks into this song, too, which was to become very important in Conway’s career.

Bitch Epic came out next, in 1993, and with it a new side of Conway: snarky, snarly, and cynical. That bouncy, strong-voiced woman on the first solo album was apparently still trying to be a pop star, but a different part of her longed to break free. This new album opens with an unapologetic statement of intent, “Alive and Brilliant,” with a repeating line to start the chorus that says it all: “It’s been a long time since anyone meant what they said”:

“Holes in the Road” is another kind of departure from Conway’s pop beginnings because of its interesting rhythmic and textural use of the guitar. An electronic drone that sounds like locusts helps set the mood:

There’s a harder rock sound in the 1997 album My Third Husband. The title refers to this being Conway’s third album, which speaks volumes about her obsessive dedication to her art. No sweetness or pop fluff here. The song “Only the Bones (Will Show),” originally written for her experimental band Ultrasound, features voice distortion, driving drums, electric guitar riffs, and dissonant pitches in the melody:

Notice, though, that her voice is already showing some signs of wear. Bitch Epic was the height of Conway’s vocal power. Nevertheless, in the late ʼ90s she had the perfect voice for country music, and was cast as Patsy Cline in the Australian production of the stage show Always…Patsy Cline, which then inspired a 2001 album of Cline covers.

Since 2004, Conway has worked as part of a duo act with singer and steel-guitarist Willy Zygier, an original member of Ultrasound and Conway’s longtime domestic partner. Their songs together tend to be quieter, more philosophical, and influenced by their Jewish faith (as they have explained in interviews).

“Something’s Right,” from their 2004 album Summertown, would be a straightforward folk-style song about loneliness were it not for two factors: First, there are Conway’s exceedingly long lines of poetry that roll out the phrases of melody like country lanes stretching to the horizon. Then there’s the way the moseying pace of the verses gets interrupted twice by a strident waterfall of strings:

Sentimentality is narrowly avoided in “Cul de Sac,” a song about domestic life from the album Half Man Half Woman, also from 2004. What saves it from being sugary is the humor in the musical arrangement that includes ukulele, mandolin tremolo, accordion, and someone whistling with a warble that would make Bing Crosby proud:

On the 2013 album Stories of Ghosts, the song “Outside of Zion” has lyrics that are thoughtful and wise, with a wistfulness typical of Conway/Zygier songs. It’s an affecting country waltz. Conway’s voice is unsteady and cracking, but at the song’s climax there’s a glimmer of that roaring lioness of Bitch Epic:

It’s still the same Deborah Conway, even if the days of charting tunes are long past. In 2016 the duo put out a single from the new album they’re working on (to help raise money for its production), and you can hear that old snarky wit, if a bit more subtly, in “Life’s a Curse”:

I’m skeptical about that title, though. Conway has enjoyed decades of music-making, much of it alongside the love of her life. So, how much of a curse can it really be?

I don’t drink wine, but I’m fascinated by it. The rituals, the industry, the marketing.

I do drink chocolate, because I decided I need some sort of vice, and after all, chocolate is about as perfect a vice one can have. And I showed up just as the chocolate industry started down the road to being as much like wine as they can be.

Hang in for just a few paragraphs, I’ll bring it back to audio. Thanks for your patience.

Twenty years ago, John Scharffenberger launched the first bean to bar chocolate in the United States. He was the only maker (not Nestle, not Hershey, not anyone) who was buying beans directly from small farms and then, using vintage equipment, turning them into chocolate. John was a winemaker, and he fully understood terroir and floral notes, as well as storytelling, branding and culture.

It took a few months, but his team discovered that chefs didn’t see a real need to switch from big blocks of the French chocolate they’d always used, but that consumers were eager to embrace this new hobby.

Because they were buying a story, a lifestyle and a set of expectations.

Fast forward to today, when there are more than a hundred bean to bar companies in the US. And every bar tastes different, every bar has a story. We’ve gone from the banal dollar Nestle milk chocolate bar to the $14 Rogue Porcelana 84% dark bar, made in batches of a few hundred at a time.

Right about now, the ‘shoulds’ start to appear.

You should like this one more than that one.

I was sitting with Carlos, the head of Cacao Hunters, a new bean to bar venture in Colombia, and we were tasting his stuff. I couldn’t help it–part of me started worrying that I wasn’t tasting what I was supposed to taste. After all, Carlos is a pro, this is what he does. How dare I speak up and say what I tasted?

What if I was wrong?

The wine folks figured this out a very long time ago. A large number of well-heeled people don’t want to be wrong. Being wrong isn’t what got them to be well-heeled, after all.

And so they await instructions. They look for clues (like price!) to help them figure out if they like something for not.

So that’s my first point: if you go into a hobby seeking reassurance, you’re likely to find it. There are plenty of people happy to tell you what you should like.

And it turns out that more often than not, being told you should like something makes it more likely that you will like it! This alone might be enough reason to read stereo magazines.

The second thing: After six or seven bars, Carlos and I took a break. We spent about an hour talking about his marketing strategy and drinking tea. Then I grabbed an unopened bar from a small experimental batch, tasted it and said, “wow, this is the single best thing we’ve had all day.”

With chagrin, I realized that it was the very same varietal we’d tasted two hours earlier.

But here’s the kicker: we went back to that first bar and compared it to the second one, the one I had just opened. They didn’t taste at all alike. Same beans, different taste.

That’s because, like music, like room tone, we’re dealing with something that’s really hard to quantify. That’s because beans grow on trees, and one tree is in fact going to taste really different from another one.

The should on the table: They both should have tasted the same, and my taste buds should have realized that they were the same. The truth, though, was quite different.

In this case, my taste buds were confirmed by others. They did actually taste different (to us, anyway). But it’s not that simple.

In research in the Journal of Wine Economics, researchers found that among judges at wine competitions (judges!), blind tasting of wine led judges to say a glass of wine was different 90% of the time when it was actually the same wine. Nine out of ten times, they didn’t taste what they should have.

I was thinking about this when I was sitting in the listening room of one of the most famous audio reviewers of this moment. And I thought his stereo sounded lousy. Of course, I didn’t say anything, because I shouldn’t hear that, and because who am I to question the emperor and because, hey, bad things happen in basements.

You are welcome to sign up for ‘should’. Or, if you want, you can just enjoy what you listen to.

If you like it, that’s good enough for me.

Originally published in Copper #2.

I want to consider a topic seriously, minus my usual snark. It’s not a feel-good topic; if anything, it’s the opposite of that.

Why do successful, widely-admired artists keep killing themselves?

This is admittedly well outside my usual beat, but I think it’s an important question that we as music-lovers (and just as decent human beings) need to ponder. I may be discussing artists unfamiliar to some Copper readers; we can consider this an opportunity to practice Larry Schenbeck’s Values #1 and #2.

Chester Bennington, the animated lead singer of Linkin Park, recently killed himself by hanging. A few months ago Chris Cornell, survivor of the grunge era and lead singer of the bands Soundgarden, Temple of the Dog and Audioslave, killed himself after a Soundgarden performance—also by hanging. Cornell was 52, and a mentor to the 41 year old Bennington; Bennington took his own life on what would’ve been Cornell’s 53rd birthday.

Both had long struggles with depression and drug abuse, as anyone familiar with their music knows. Drugs did not directly contribute to their deaths.

As this Rolling Stone article indicates, Bennington’s forthright presentation of his anger and pain helped many listeners, relieved to find that they were not alone in their struggles. That was a blessing, but also a burden.

Bennington was said by many to be a kind, caring person, thoughtful of the feelings of others. Linkin Park was a meld of rock and rap, the first band whose videos were viewed a billion times on You Tube. They fostered a generation of hybrid bands, such as My Chemical Romance and Evanesence.

The media loves underdog stories: folks who have overcome affliction, adversity, illness, addiction.—Well, hell, if we’re honest, we all love those stories. So when someone like Bennington or Cornell seems to have overcome their horrible upbringings—Bennington survived sexual abuse and drug use starting in high school— and shared the stories of their issues with drugs and depression in a way that helps others, those guys are heroes. And rightfully so.

But what kind of pressure does that put on them? Are they continually anxious about disappointing those who have supported them, and those who have found support in their stories? The facts seem to indicate that yes, it creates tremendous pressure upon them, on top of that created by the continual struggle of staying sober and sane.

There is a reason why addicts and alcoholics who have attained sobriety say they are “recovering” addicts and alcoholics, and not “recovered” addicts and alcoholics: the process of maintaining sobriety is continual. It’s a battle every single day, and there is no guarantee of continued success. Coupled with the equally-precarious battle to maintain an edge over depression, it must be tremendously stressful. There is a reason why the first tenet of 12-step programs is to admit to being powerless to control the addiction.

We’ve seen all this before, of course—whether it’s the suicides of Kurt Cobain and Bobby Fuller (23 and 51 years ago, respectively), or the self-destructive behaviors that lead to the tragic deaths of Sam Cooke, Marvin Gaye, Michael Jackson and who knows how many others. It seems that the sensitivity that allows many to be expressive, communicative artists, also makes them vulnerable to depression and self-destruction.

That’s not exactly a news-flash—yet rather than maintain a caring watch over such souls, we are disappointed in them when they fail, and express shock when they die. That seems to convey a naively hopeful attitude that once a troubled artist attains some level of control over their demons, that it’s a done deal. It just ain’t so.

I come from a family in which many of us have depressive tendencies and issues with anger. Some have had issues with alcohol. Imagine the stereotypical long-winter flattened -affect Upper Midwest behavior of A Prairie Home Companion, or closer to truth, Fargo. Combine that with a highly-competitive Type A nature—and that’s pretty much the picture.

I personally have battled severe depression many times in my life—things have been okay for several years, thanks, but it’s still a battle to be positive, every single day. A very smart counselor told me a long time ago that “emotions will lie to  you”—and I can say without irony that such is the truth. When I become emotionally-overcharged, I have to ask myself, “Does that make sense? Is that a reasonable reaction?” Many times the honest answer to myself is, “No, it’s not. Dial it back, Leebs.”

It would be presumptuous and untrue to say that I understand how Chester Bennington, Chris Cornell, and Kurt Cobain felt. I can’t and won’t say that. What I can say is that I understand emotional struggles, I understand depression, and I understand the pressure I have felt at certain times in my life to live up to the expectations of just a few dozen people. The idea of having thousands or millions watching me, often critically, feeling their judgment as well as their support—is absolutely overwhelming. No matter what level of wealth or adulation accompanied it, there is no freaking way I would want that.

My daughter Emily is a sensitive and at times troubled soul, a writer and insightful observer of mankind with all its glories and deficiencies. She’s 23: and yes, she was born shortly after Cobain’s death. Just as her generation has always known the Internet, they’ve also grown up with the specter of a depressive popular artist who killed himself. That may sound a little melodramatic, but I don’t think it is: for millions of us, our worldview changed after the death of JFK, became less hopeful and more cynical. In a similar way, for millions to whom his music and messages were meaningful, their worldview changed after the death of Kurt.

The deaths of Cornell and Bennington may have a similar effect, likely lessened by the precedent of Cobain. Emily said of Bennington, “he was my generation’s Kurt.”

I can’t argue with that. I listened to Linkin Park’s music, and was affected by both its messages of hope and by its portrayals of pain. I related to Chester Bennington’s anger and angst. A Linkin Park concert that Emily and I attended was one of the most  moving experiences that I’ve had in my life, of any kind. And no, I am not an easily-swayed emo tween.

I asked Emily what she thought propelled Bennington and the others to kill themselves. She put it in her typically- succinct, shorthand, no-nonsense way:

I’ve been reviewing classical records for, like, ever. In the process I think I’ve begun to figure out what matters and what shouldn’t.

Naturally, I’ve made a list. Two lists, in fact: you could call them values and maxims.

Value No. 1: New music matters. Do I still listen to Beethoven? Of course. Mozart, Puccini, Stravinsky, Mahler, Bach? Ditto. But as a mindful member of the food chain, I usually check out the new stuff first. That means listening repeatedly (giving it a quick “test of time”), reading liner notes, analyzing the music’s relationship to other musics, and putting it in context with contemporary ideas, arts, politics, literature, and cultural trends. If we can’t find good new music, share it, and praise it, eventually there won’t be any more.

I cite this value not because music written a hundred or four hundred years ago no longer speaks to us. Obviously it does: that’s what “classic” means. But as a rule, the further back you go, the more those sounds need extra help to reach listeners. Often their original significance gets completely lost.

Think of Gregorian chant. Originally it was functional music for Christian worship, bound to various liturgies, patched together from melodic formulas known to the Middle Easterners who created it and first spread it. When sung, it made such a powerfully sensual, ecstatic impact that many churchmen considered it a danger to those who heard it.

Today it’s widely marketed as relaxing, vaguely spiritual ambient music associated with devotion, withdrawal from worldly concerns, and Ye Olde Medieval Tymes. It’s performed cleanly and carefully, without rhythm, according to rules set down by certain French monks in the late 19th century. A few of us know one or two chant melodies like the Dies Irae, mainly so we can recognize them when they pop up in Berlioz or Liszt. Does this music lack all meaning today? No, but that meaning has atrophied or otherwise changed forever.

In time, so will the meaning of music by Tchaikovsky, Mahler, Stravinsky, and Reich. The moral is obvious: find new music that matters to you.

Value No. 2: Young artists matter. Why should I promote a sixty-year-old performance of Brahms Symphony No. 1 by some long-dead conductor so that his record label can continue to make a buck?

Oh, because it’s a great performance? Maybe so, but no single performance of a Brahms symphony can ever suggest all its beauty, meaning, or sheer musical perfection. You need to hear it in as many guises as possible. Don’t begin and end with Karajan and Klemperer—check out Andrew Manze, Riccardo Chailly, Ívan Fischer, and many more.

This value—that you should help young artists survive while they mature, before they’re totally “great”—seems so obvious. There are many deserving kids coming up these days. Don’t worship the dead. Please.

Value No. 3: Good sound matters. Preaching to the choir, right? The trouble is, we who especially love classical music often become inured to beloved performances heard through a haze of LP scratches-‘n’-dirt or ineptly remastered CDs. (One of my favorite Mahler Ones comes from Dmitri Mitropoulos and the Minneapolis SO c.1940—not remastered ineptly, but no picnic sonically, that’s for sure.)

I wasn’t all that shocked to discover last year that people who buy physical recordings from Channel Classics—one of the pioneers of multichannel, DSD-based hi-res discs—usually listen only to the Redbook CD layer. Consumer resistance (or indifference) to hi-res offerings remains a stumbling block for the industry. CC have drastically cut back on physical hi-res (i.e., SACDs) and now offer most of their hi-res issues solely as downloads. Elsewhere Blu-rays are further diluting the classical hi-res market.

C’est la guerre. I’ll keep pushing for hi-res, because it seems like a no-brainer. If great music sounds better, won’t people enjoy it more?

Now for the Maxims. Maxim Number 1: Kiss a few frogs, it won’t kill you. This applies almost equally to Values 1, 2, and 3. If you’d like to hear one album a month of stunningly terrific new music (not talking about what geriatrics like Glass, Reich, Adams, Pärt, et al. turn out—sorry, no longer “new”) you’ll have to investigate at least half a dozen releases. (So, one terrific album every six months might be more realistic. When it comes to frog kissing, your patience/stamina/stomach may vary.)

Same when it comes to supporting the best young artists. Every young artist puts out albums. They get money from patrons, foundations, mom and dad, their own piggy banks or trust funds. They have no illusions about making money from these recordings. What they want is bookings. They hope a good album will give them visibility with concert promoters and the media, not to mention their potential audience. If what you want is to be thrilled anew by, say, the Liszt B Minor Sonata, that’s still possible; I heard two such records from younger artists within a month last year. Generally, though, you’ll need to do some frog-sorting. (We critics can help with that.)

Maxim Number 2: Share the good news. Yes, I’m talking to you, that person sitting there in his man-cave who really, really likes Edward Gardner’s Elgar recordings but hesitates to bring that up when he gets together with his Pink-Floyd-worshipping buddies. You’ll never make any converts—thereby aiding and abetting Values 1, 2, and 3—if you hide your passion under a bushel. Come out as a classical fan. Carefully choose some incredible classical music and listen to it with a friend. (Start with your spouse or partner if that seems easier.)

Maxim Number 3: To everything there is a season. Follow your heart. When it leads you back to Beethoven, go there. When it leads you to the Allman Brothers at Fillmore East, go there. Be sure to give some things an extra try. (I’m still working on my inability to enjoy John Luther Adams: you never know.) On the other hand, recognize when you’re burned out. Know when to give it a rest.

Which leads me to today’s final thought: at the end of this month, I’m embarking on a sabbatical. I need to rest, recharge, re-think. I’m just too tired of too many things, although I expect that’ll be temporary. You won’t see my words in Copper for a while, but I’ll be at work on something, somewhere. Or maybe not! (Faint smile.)

Not long ago, I watched a documentary on Netflix from Sony Classics called Tim’s Vermeer.  It was a profoundly interesting program, one I felt was worth writing about.  I urge you to seek it out.  You won’t regret it.

Johannes (Jan) Vermeer was one of the Dutch Masters who painted in the latter part of the 17th Century.  His paintings, typical in general of the Dutch Golden Age, possess a quality we refer to as ‘photo-realism’.  They exhibit an accuracy of perspective, and of illumination, that we today take for granted in photographs, but which was quite unknown in Vermeer’s time.

Tim Jenison is an American entrepreneur who built a successful career in software for the TV and video industries.  Although he is a graphic artist, he is not trained in any way as a painter.  Jenison, like many people before him, was deeply intrigued by how the Dutch Masters – and Vermeer in particular – were able to make the leap in perception which they did.

As an expert in the field of video, he came to appreciate that Vermeer’s paintings differed from many other photo-realistic works in a key aspect.  The way he saw it, they looked more to him like video stills than photographs.  To his way of thinking, this would only come about if they were ‘copied’ from life.  Typical paintings, by contrast, are ‘created’ in the sense that you can modify the result if it isn’t exactly what you have in mind, even to the extent that it is no longer a strictly accurate replication of the original scene.  Many experts in the field have postulated that the Dutch School arose due to the concurrent development of the camera obscura.  This would throw an image of a real-life scene onto a screen or wall in a darkened room, and the artist could paint from that.  Vermeer’s “video-still” brand of photo-realism could arise if, for example, he painted by ‘copying’ what he saw on a camera obscura image.

Books have been published on this topic (the so-called Hockney-Falco thesis, named for the British artist David Hockney and the American physicist Charles Falco), which made an impression on Jenison.  The interesting thing is that none of Vermeer’s works show any evidence of the sort of procedures an artist would presumably have had to follow if that were the case.  A camera obscura (latin for “Dark Room”) is a low-light environment, and not one at all conducive to painting a masterpiece.  Therefore, if an artist were to use one as the tool to throw an image directly onto a canvas that he would then paint over, it is likely that he would record the basic framework of the image in the camera obscura, and finish it off at his leisure in his studio.  However, X-ray analysis of Vermeer’s works show no evidence of any such structures beneath the final layers of paint.  His works appear to have been deposited in their final form directly upon the canvas, and with extraordinary precision in some critical aspects.

Intrigued by these findings, Jenison set about his own experiments, to see what would happen in practice if you tried to paint Vermeer-style art from camera obscura images, and from there to imagine how Vermeer might have responded to these challenges.  One of the obvious problems is that the image in a camera obscura is upside-down and back-to-front.  Although the latter is not too much of a hindrance, the human brain – and therefore the artist’s eye – has a lot more trouble interpreting an inverted image.  Jenison realized that using a mirror would be the simplest way to correct for that problem and set about experimenting with one.

He immediately found an intriguing solution.  He placed a small canvas flat on a table which he positioned directly below a photograph.  He then placed a small mirror directly above the canvas, equidistant between the canvas and the photograph.  Peering at the canvas from above, a viewer would see the canvas, except for the area where the mirror impinged, where instead he would see a reflection of a small portion of the photograph.  Both photograph and canvas would be in focus.  You could then use the setup as a tool to draw a replica of the photograph, a bit like dividing a picture into a grid of squares like they taught you in high school.

As a graphics designer, Jenison saw this configuration as a 17th century version of an editing window in which you could place the original and the copy side-by-side for comparison purposes.  In particular, it would enable very precise colour matching, which is otherwise rather more challenging than you might imagine, since the human eye/brain combination has very poor absolute colour memory.  Jenison then used this theory to attempt for himself to copy a simple B&W portrait photo using oils.  As a non-painter, this would be his first ever attempt at an oil painting.  You really need to see the film itself to appreciate what an incredible job he was able to do.

Essentially, what his technique does is to nibble away at the whole image, by adjusting his viewpoint so that, bit by bit, the entire image passes by the interface between the mirror and the canvas, allowing him to compare and replicate the exact tint of the applied paint at each point.

Armed with a primitive (but authentic) camera obscura device, his mirror, and his B&W portrait in oil, Jenison visited David Hockney in London, plus a couple of other authorities, to see if there was any interest in the notion that this might have been the technique that Vermeer himself had used.  The reception he received was quite encouraging.  Also, while in London, he was granted special dispensation to visit Buckingham Palace and spend a half hour looking at his personal favourite Vermeer painting, “The Music Lesson”.

He came away convinced of what the next step should be.  He would attempt to use the self same techniques to try and replicate Vermeer’s “The Music Lesson”.  Actually, he would not so much try to replicate the painting, rather he would attempt to replicate what he proposed to have been the entire creative process employed by Vermeer, to the greatest possible degree of authenticity.  Given that Jenison was not in any way a painter – not even a talented amateur – and Vermeer is a revered master, this would be a major challenge.

Jenison was quite thorough in his approach.  Like Vermeer, he chose to make his own paints by grinding his own pigments and mixing them with oils.  He made his own furniture when he could not buy authentic originals.  He cast and ground his own lenses to use in the camera obscura.  He recreated as exactly as possible the room in which the original painting was set, the clothes worn by the subjects, the decoration and the furnishings – which included a Viola da Gamba, on which he gave a rustic and rather baroque rendition of the iconic riff from “Smoke On The Water”.

I won’t elaborate on the outcome, save to say that it all comes to a fitting and entirely satisfactory conclusion.  Along the way, a couple of quite extraordinary things emerge.  One of the first things Jenison observes when he begins his marathon paint job is the appearance of chromatic aberration, caused by the fact that he has obliged himself to use authentic glass and lens designs in his camera obscura.  If he is going to be true to his aim of objective authenticity, he must include the faint blue blurs which are visible at certain high contrast edges.  In fact, given his method, it would have been quite challenging to attempt to correct for them.  But, looking at high-magnification images of the original Vermeer, he is astonished to find that it, too, has rendered the same blue blur, in the same places.  There is no reason to believe that Vermeer understood chromatic aberration.

More dramatically, though, part way through the painting, Jenison discovers that his lens also shows some mild pincushioning, a fact that only becomes evident due to the unerring optical accuracy of his method.  Again, and quite astonishingly, the original Vermeer is shown to exhibit the very same pincushion distortion, in such a way as to suggest that not only did he follow Jenison’s method, but also the precise (and highly practical) techniques through which Jenison implemented it.  Unfortunately, the narration did not address the question of whether or not this pincushioning had ever been detected by experts prior to Jenison’s work.  That would have been interesting to know, but on reflection I conclude that it really can’t have been.

I found the whole thing to be wonderfully entertaining and informative.  Since the program was produced by Penn and Teller – with Penn Jillette doubling as presenter and narrator, and Teller directing – one can comfortably eliminate the notion that the wool is being pulled over our eyes in the service of a good yarn.  Some limited follow-up diligence on my part shows that while Jenison’s theory does indeed receive a great deal of credence – seriously unusual in itself for the work of a rank amateur and outsider in the rarefied world of fine art – there is little to support it in terms of the historical record.  Vermeer is not known to have had any particular interest in optics, and his personal effects after his death were not noted to have included a camera obscura, lenses, or anything similar.

It is interesting, by way of a coda, to contemplate some of the negative criticism that came the way of Jenison’s efforts, most notably by Jonathan Jones, Art Critic of the UK newspaper The Guardian.  More than anything else, Jones’ panties are apparently all in a bunch over the notion that Jenison is somehow seeking to prick Vermeer’s reputation as an Old Master.  But read between Jones’ lines and what you realize is that Jones is not so much bothered by what Jenison has to say about Vermeer as much as what it perhaps has to say about his own credentials as an art critic.  Because, very clearly, Jenison’s motives and objectives are not as Jones seeks to characterize them.