Awkward Buggers
Sean O'Hagan asks, "where are the heirs to awkward buggers like Robert Wyatt?"
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Flying First Class
By blimp, of course.
Joni & Herbie & Wayne (& Dave)
I’ve listened to Herbie Hancock’s new CD, <I>River: The Joni Letters</I> (on Verve), three times now, and it gets better with each spin. This is a Joni Mitchell tribute album, with Hancock on acoustic piano heading a straight-ahead jazz quintet (including Wayne Shorter on soprano sax and Dave Holland on bass), fronted on six of the 10 tracks by various singers.
MartinLogan's Custom Shop
You can do it with <a href="http://www.converse.com/index.asp?bhcp=1#home_red_2007">Chuck Taylors</a>, you can do it with <a href="http://www.miniusa.com/#/build/configurator/mini-m">Mini Coopers</a>, you can do it with <a href="http://www.cobworks.com/workshops.htm">Cob Houses</a>, and now you can even do it with <a href="http://www.stereophile.com/news/101507martinlogan/">loudspeakers</a>. MartinLogan, ever fashion conscious, has launched a Custom Shop, allowing music lovers to style their own loudspeakers.
Adult Fairytales
On the eve of the film's UK release, Neil Gaiman muses on how he came to write <I>Stardust</I>.
Twelve-Tone Music Isn't Dead
It's just outside, looking in.
Frank Sinatra Has a Cold
This Gay Talese <I>Esquire</I> profile of the chairman of the board is frequently cited as the best celebrity portrait ever published. I don't know about that—I'd rate both Wolcott Gibbs' <I>New Yorker</I> deconstruction of Henry Robinson Luce and Lillian Ross' Hemingway profile just as highly.
Kimber Presents the Fry Street Quartet
Ray Kimber of Kimber Kable strongly believes that audiophiles need to be exposed to live music. He arranged for one of the ensembles he records with his Isomike system, the Fry Street Quartet, to perform a series of concerts at RMAF. After the players finished a Haydn Quartet in the Marriott's lobby, the audience went into the Kimber listening room across the corridor to hear the same piece on Ray's $500k reference surround system, described <A HREF="http://blog.stereophile.com/rmaf2007/101307isomike/">earlier in the blog</A>.
Reason to Dally
It was 5:30 p.m. on Saturday. As Day Two was coming to a close, this sleep-deprived audiophile determined to end the day on a high note. Ah, the Cary/Dali room. That's sure to be a winner. Thank God, it was.
Will Wonders Never Cease?
Walter Liederman and Danny Richie next showed me the mammoth LS9 (named for its nine planar magnetic drivers). Priced at an unbelievable $6000/pair considering their size and complexity, the LS9s were coupled with Al Stiefel's fine Red Rock Audio 50Wpc Renaissance Monoblock amplifiers ($39,750/pair), Red Rock prototype preamplifier, Abbingdon Music Research CD-77 player ($8500), Grand Prix Audio Monaco turntable ($19,500), and Red Rock Audio cables. Components were supported by the Monaco Modular Isolation Rack ($4750) and Monaco Amplifier Isolation System ($1499). Grand Prix designer Alvin Lloyd says of these plexiglass shelf stands, "I will argue that our stands are the most efficient and highest-performing isolation products in the industry."