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Scheduled for next Friday through Sunday, June 3–5, in the Newport Hilton, adjacent to Orange County's John Wayne International Airport, T.H.E. Show: Newport is the brainchild of Bob Levi, President of the successful Los Angeles & Orange County Audio Society, and Richard Beers, President of T.H.E. Show. Levi came up with the idea, selling Beers on the notion of a new show that would open the audiophile fiefdom to the area's 24 million inhabitants. Beers in turn summoned forth over a decade of knowledge on show organization, and provided the infrastructure to make the event possible. . .

I remember, fairly clearly, the events which led to this particular column. It was a chilly winter evening, late January or early February, and the girls and I had enjoyed a quiet, lazy day. We were now on our way home from a quick trip to Trader Joe’s. I was riding in the backseat of Natalie’s Honda (she’s got a motor back there, too), Nicole was in the passenger seat. The conversation turned from music to food.

Unlike Round Midnight, which encased Dexter Gordon's Bud Powell character in a soft-focus, romanticized, soundstagily mythic NY/Paris jazz juncture that never quite was (Herbie Hancock's music direction was deliberately inauthentic for that or any time or place other than the film studio), producer/director Clint Eastwood's labor-of-love Bird attempts to place Charles Christopher Parker Jr. squarely in the bebop world he created. The modern musicians he "plays" with here blow strictly in that tradition, accompanying Parker's solos, as peeled off the original Savoy, Verve, and home recordings with audio wizardry (massive EQing, dynamic noise filters, etc.).

Now add to this list of treasures Sam Rivers' Fuchsia Swing Song. All four of those albums were . . .

And just as suddenly as we arrived in Munich&#151just as we were beginning to feel comfortable and alive&#151it was, unfortunately, time to leave Munich. Rosemarie and I loved the city, the people, the food, and the hi-fi.

The M.O.C. proved to be an outstanding venue for presenting hi-fi in the best possible light, creating an atmosphere that invited attendees to linger, relax, enjoy. Though the weekend’s weather was absolutely glorious, people from all over the world decided to spend it indoors, with music and sound and gear.

Some stats and trivia:

Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” sounded appropriately thrilling, and it was cool to hear how well the system managed to depict Christina Aguilera as a petite woman with an enormous voice.

Drama, scale, impact, resolution, speed, speed, speed, three-dimensional images on a massive soundstage. This system produced music with a sort of muscular physicality and confidence. Another one of my favorite sounds at the show, though completely different from all others.

Rosemarie agreed, for once. She liked it, too. (Thank goodness! It obviously only takes half a million dollars to impress this woman.)

“Oh, cool. Let’s take a picture,” I said. “Go over there and look pretty.”

“What?”

“I said, ‘You look so pretty.’ Geez. Come on, stand next to the speakers. Please?”

“Alright.”

“I said, ‘Stand next to them.’ I didn’t say, ‘Lean all over them like they’re yours.’”