Listening #84
<I>She responds as expected to the only sound: hysterical voices!—Brian Eno</I>
LATEST ADDITIONS
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The Fifth Element #57
Ah me, another year gone by. The rest of my holiday-gift suggestions are at the end of this column, but I wanted to kick off with a hearty recommendation of <I>Aja</I>, a book by Don Breithaupt. You may recall Breithaupt as a co-author (with his brother, Jeff) of the survey <I>Precious and Few: Pop Music in the Early '70s</I>, which cracked me up in my <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/thefifthelement/the_fifth_element_56">October column</A>.
Now on Newsstands: Stereophile, Vol.33 No.1
The January 2010 issue of <i>Stereophile</i> is now on newsstands. Hooray! A new volume! A new year! Twelve more issues of <i>Stereophile</i>! Whee! We are pretty excited about starting the year off with a review of a PC soundcard. And at just $200, the ASUS Xonar Essence is the least expensive product to ever grace the cover of our magazine. Plus, it’s got that pretty golden tiger thing on it. What aroused John Atkinson’s interest, however, was the ASUS’s claimed signal/noise ratio of 124dB: “True high-end territory.”
Fried Model G/3 loudspeaker
Irving M. "Bud" Fried, an early contributor to Stereophile, hails from the city of brotherly love, and I must confess to finding it difficult avoiding a few brotherly jabs at Mr. Fried's name: something like "this Bud's for you" would surely not escape deletion by our conscientious Editor. And what if I should happen to complain of a dried-up or "Fried" quality in the upper midsJA is bound to object to this breach of good taste. Well, having gotten that off my chest, you'd be interested to know that I consider it quite appropriate that someone from Phil-a-del-phia should be in love with transmission-line enclosures; the name is almost as convoluted as a trip down a folded line.
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Where the Tapes Is
I’ve received two packages in the mail today. Both were from Portland, Oregon, a hotbed for outstanding independent music, and both contained <i><a href="http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/why_cassettes/">tapes</a></i&…;.
What was your biggest audio disaster?
It could have been a stupendously bad purchase or, perhaps, a cat running across the turntable while your first-pressing Parlophone Beatles LP was playing. What stands out as your biggest audio disaster?
The Jazz Book of the Year
The jazz book of the year is called, simply,<I>Jazz</I>. Written by Gary Giddins, the best living jazz critic, and Scott DeVeaux, one of the most astute jazz historians, it’s a vital reference for those well versed in the subject and an essential guide for those who get lost in its thickets and want to know how to listen to the music so that it at least makes sense.
White Man's Blues
John Hammond has always been a strange case. Son of the legendary record producer and scout John Hammond Sr. who worked with Billie Holiday, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, young John who sang and played guitar staked out a difficult piece of musical turf when he decided to make playing acoustic Delta–styled blues on the National Steel guitar his signature move.
Why Cassettes?
I was introduced to <a href="http://www.freewebs.com/scotchtapes/">Scotch Tapes</a>, “the worst hi-tech music label ever,” on December 9, by a <a href="http://twitter.com/stereophilemag">Twitter</a> post from <a href="http://www.jagjaguwar.com/">Jagjaguwar</a>. Oneida would be releasing a limited-edition <i>cassette</i> through Scotch Tapes. This was interesting news to me, first because <a href="http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/the_way_we_listened_then/">I’ve been fascinated</a> with the idea of a “cassette tape revival,” and second because Oneida is a well-established name in the world of underground rock bands. Why would Oneida release work on a format that had been all but forgotten by the music industry? Why cassettes?
Best Jazz of the Year (and the Decade)
My annual piece on the Best Jazz Albums of the Year appears in today’s edition of <I>Slate</I> (for which I write a regular column, though usually on foreign and military policy). This time, I also drew up two lists of the Best Jazz Albums of the Decade—one for new recordings, the other for previously unreleased historical recordings (treasure troves of which were excavated this past 10 years). Readers of this blog may recall reading about most of these albums in this space.