Clearly, many of you still cherish your cassette decks, but what about <A href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reel-to-reel_audio_tape_recording" target="new">open- reel</A>? Do you own, or have you ever owned and used a reel-to-reel or open-reel tape deck?
<B>Pat Metheny <I>Orchestrion</I></B><BR>
Pat Metheny, guitars, orchestrion programming.<BR>
Nonesuch 516668-2/-1 (CD/LP). 2010. Pat Metheny, prod.; eng. AAD? TT: 52:06<BR>
Performance ****<BR>
Sonics ****
A group of people sit along an old, grimy bar, doing things. Watching, waiting, aspiring. Every single one of them, in one way or another. Watches, waits, aspires. One of them—the strangest looking one of all—is a black dude with hair like the wind through a California Cypress. Eyes like two half moons. With more care and concern than any of the others, he watches. He watches the man on stage, a fellow named Henry Vestine. Henry is playing guitar, bass, and drums all at once, all by himself.
I love my job, I love my office, I love a whole lot of other things. But, when the sun is shining through my living room windows the way it was this morning, it is very hard to leave home.
A crime of passion? Depraved indifference to the importance of tuneage? Death by music? The simple fact is that most audiophiles got that way by having too many records. That's right—very few got into this rewarding, non-contact sport because they were aroused by shiny brushed-steel boxes or supersexy speaker grilles. It's because they wanted to hear their piles of music—their Mahler, Monk, or Rick James—sound the best it could. (And, okay, yes: It <I>is</I> cool to show drooling friends your designer gear.)
"A reasonable man adapts himself to the world around him. An unreasonable man expects the world to adapt to him. All progress, therefore, is made by unreasonable men."
<B>DVORÁK: Symphony 9, "From the New World"<BR>
WAGNER: <I>Flying Dutchman Overture</I>, <I>Siegfried-Idyll</I></B><BR>
Jascha Horenstein, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra<BR>
Chesky Records CD 31 (CD only). Bob Katz, remastering eng.; David & Norman Chesky, executive prods. (Original 1962 recordings: K. E. Wilkinson, eng.; Charles Gerhardt, prod.) ADD. TT: 67:30
In his <A HREF="http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/">blog</A>, Stephen Mejias reports on the resurgence in cassette-only releases and is now looking for a good deck. Do you still use a cassette deck?
Although it was Thomas Edison who set the tone for technological development in the 20th century, with his intellectual sweatshop in New Jersey, it is the lone inventor who has always had a special place in the heart of the American public. Since the days of Samuel Colt, Eli Whitney, and Nikola Tesla, fortune and fame have awaited the genius tinkerer who emerges from his back yard with a better mousetrap, cotton gin, etc., etc.