LATEST ADDITIONS

And earlier in <a href="http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/safe_sex_of_the_highest_order… night</a>, I listened to an old Yazoo title: <i>St. Louis Blues (1929-1935): The Depression</i>, which has some amazing, moving cuts from Henry Townsend, Charley Jordan, Georgia Boyd, Peetie Wheatstraw, and Hi Henry Brown. Such pure, raw sounds are timeless, and are perhaps especially meaningful today.

Are audiophiles born or are they created? Are "Golden Ears" an innate talent (nature) or can you train yourself (nurture) to be a critical listener?

It’s one of those lineups that almost promises too much: McCoy Tyner, the pianist from Coltrane’s “classic” early-‘60s quartet, leading his own quartet with Ravi Coltrane, John’s son, sitting in on tenor sax. And yet, at tonight’s first set, they pulled it off, which is to say, they seemed natural, the music was simply very good--better than that--and not some cockeyed freak show like, say, Paul McCartney teaming up with Sean Lennon. The band was playing in Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Allen Room—a wonder of concert-hall architecture, at once spacious and intimate, with a grand view overlooking Central Park—and Tyner, now 70 and recently ailing, was in ultra-fine form. He banged out the set’s first notes, and there they were—those clanging block chords, forceful, percussive, the sustain-pedal meshing their overtones into a shimmering sonic bouquet. It sent shivers. Then entered Coltrane the younger, now 43 (he wasn’t quite two when John died of liver complications at the age of 40), sounding increasingly like his father—that plangent tone, the sinuous, fluent lines of sixteenth-notes, broken up by abrupt hesitations and jagged rhythms—but not as insistent, adopting more the tone of a balladeer. (Check out his new album, <I>Blending Times</I>, on Savoy Jazz, for a tasty sampling of what might be called intense lyricism.) Midway through the set, he and Tyner took a big risk—it literally took my breath—when they dashed into “Moment’s Notice,” John Coltrane’s uptempo anthem from his 1957 LP <I>Blue Train</I>, but Ravi navigated the brisk rapids with aplomb. (It may have helped that Tyner never played that song with Coltrane <I>pere</I>—the album was recorded a few years before he joined the group—so they were both, in a sense, interlopers. If they’d started wailing the first movement of <I>A Love Supreme</I>, well, that might have been too eerie.)

Much has happened in the analog world since I <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/analogsourcereviews/796">reviewed</A&gt; SME's flagship Model 30/2 turntable for the March 2003 <I>Stereophile</I> (footnote 1). Back then, spending $25,000 on a turntable (without tonearm) was an odd extravagance intended only for those seriously committed to the format, and who already owned large LP collections. Although new LPs were being pressed in growing numbers, the resurgence of vinyl was still spotty, and the long-term prognosis for the old medium remained in question.

For roughly the same amount of money, you can buy a new Toyota Camry or a used mid-sized Mercedes-Benz sedan. The new car has several things going in its favor: no one else has ever driven it, smoked in it, or ferried dogs and kids and fast-food leavings in it, and it comes with a fresh warranty and the latest safety equipment. But the used Mercedes has other things in its favor: having started with a much larger "build budget," it is, simply, more car for the money all around&#151;you just have to pick a good one.

Tribute records are only as good as the person being feted. Their success or failure is also directly linked to how much energy the performers put into the project. Most tributes operate via telephone and UPS, meaning everyone uses the telephone to figure out what song they want to cover, and then UPS (or if you’re really sexy and rich, Fedex) delivers the finished tape. Actually, in some really impersonal cases, the music might be sent via email. Gee, ain’t this `ol digital world great?

<i>Pain: I guess it's a matter of sensation</i>