I mentioned in my CanJam NYC intro that CanJams offer more than just networking and headphone auditions. (You can read part 2 here.) They are also good places, I noted, to access the house sound of virtually every good DAC and amplifier that will fit on a tabletop.
George designs Zesto's preamplifiers, power amplifiers, phono stages, and step-up transformers, while Carolyn, a talented fine-art painter, gives Zesto's products their unique organic curves...
I was traveling upstate to visit Rob Kalin, a founder and former CEO of the online craft marketplace Etsy and proprietor of a newish speaker company called A for Ara.
Weeks later, I heard that Specials front-man Terry Hall had died, of pancreatic cancer. Memories came flooding back.
Jazz as a form of popular song has largely faded from America's music culture, but Fitzgerald and Holiday's brilliance lives on, a beacon to their artistic excellence. Much evidence for that excellence can be heard in two new vinyl sets, both produced by Ken Druker.
CanJams are about much more than skull-testing the newest headphones. They are the best places for all audiophiles to audition innovations in amplification, file servers, and digital converters and to jabber and bond with students, hipsters, gamers, and brainiacs from every part of the demographic spectrum. When the Jam is in New York, at the Marriott Marquis, it's like a being in a secret stadium lit neon-purple with white, vinyl-covered lounge chairs sheltered from the 100dB cauldron of Times Square tourism.
The increasingly rare exceptions are to be celebrated. Here's one. Just before the year turned to 2023, on what would have been Donald Byrd's 90th birthday, a smoldering, untapped artifact surfaced after 50 years in the can.
