If the cover of the latest issue of <I>Uncut</I> is any indication, “lost” albums never lose their appeal for the musically–inclined or obsessed. Music fans always want what they don’t have or haven’t heard or hear is <I>hard to get</I>. It’s the allure of the forbidden record. And it’s a chief symptom of the record collecting psychoses.
In <a href="http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/now_on_newsstands_stereophile… April issue</a>, Robert Baird talks to Okkervil River’s Will Sheff about his recent collaboration with Roky Erickson, the wild-eyed frontman for the famed 13th Floor Elevators.
The May 2010 issue of <i>Stereophile</i> is now on newsstands. Jon Iverson opens this issue by exploring “The Holy Trinity of Audiophiledom.” The idea was born on the morning of February 9. I had sent an e-mail to Jon, directing his attention to <a href="http://forum.stereophile.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=82398&an=0… post</a> in our forum regarding one reader’s experience with cassettes and cassette decks. Jon responded by directing <i>my</i> attention to that morning's <a href="http://cgi.stereophile.com/cgi-bin/showvote.cgi?663">Vote question</a>, which also dealt with cassettes.
Never did I think the day would come when I’d be standing in a line at 10:30 am on a chilly April Saturday to get into a record store. A record store mind you that is directly across the street from the now spacious, high-ceilinged NYU offices that were once the Tower Records on Broadway in downtown Manhattan.
The May <I>Stereophile</I> features reviews of horn speakers from JBL and Klipsch. What do you think of horn loudspeakers? Do you own them, have you tried them?
You know what tomorrow is? <a href="http://www.recordstoreday.com/Home">Record Store Day</a>! It’s not that guys like you and me <i>need</i> a special reason to go to the record store and buy a bunch of vinyl, but it’s nice to have it anyway. You’ll find me at my local shop, Tunes, in Hoboken, by no later than 10am, waiting for the doors to open. Last year, I showed up just 30 minutes after they had opened, only to find that most of the coolest stuff had already sold out. Not this year. This year, <i>I’ll</i> be the one that gets all the cool stuff.
So far, other than Steve Zahn who is really annoying as a devil–may–care DJ with goofy eyeglasses, the new HBO series, <I>Treme</I> is pretty great. Lots of flavor. Some hokiness of course, but still fairly believable most of the time. The best scene so far hands down was when Elvis Costello, playing Elvis Costello, comes out of a bar to crawl into his limo and Kermit Ruffins, playing himself, is standing on the sidewalk really huffing on fatty. When Zahn encourages him, through the cloud of smoke, to talk to Costello and maybe land himself an opening slot on an upcoming Costello tour, Kermit demurs and Zahn comes back with a line, and I’m paraphrasing, “So what do you want to do all your life, play music, get high and BBQ in New Orleans?” Kermit laughes and shakes his head in the affirmative. In some ways that’s the story of a lot of NOLA musicians. They can be provincial. And disdainful of success. It can be a town where a sort of collective inertia keeps people from doing anything but hanging out. I know, I’m painting with broad strokes here, but it’s always been a town, heavy with musical talent, much of it unwilling or unable for whatever reason, to leave. And then those who do leave get tarred as traitors or getting too big for their britches. There truly is nowhere like New Orleans, I adore it, but damn, the place is like a parallel dimension sometimes.
A few years ago, I had a phone call from a marketing organization. I was asked, as a member of the audiophile press, to participate in a survey dealing with the "images" of various brands of loudspeakers.
Although LPs remain, for me, the high-end medium of choice, I'm not terribly interested in today's high-end record <I>players</I>. Most of them, from the 1980s through the present, have been soulless, uninspired, me-too products that utterly fail to communicate the presence, momentum, and punch of recorded music. And in certain ways—expense, complexity, size, cosmetics—some have been, quite simply, ridiculous.
I’ve been digging Dexter Gordon’s 1963 album, <i>Our Man In Paris</i>, featuring Bud Powell on piano, Pierre Michelot (a JA fave) on bass, and Kenny Clarke on drums. Look at how deep and cool Dexter Gordon looks on the cover, balancing a smoke between his fingers, lost in thought.