On weekends, I play guitar in a string band whose membership varies between two and five members, depending on the location of the job and the amount of pay offered. We're reasonably good at picking and singing, but we lack the originality that would make someone want to buy our albums, which is why we haven't made them. Our little group is McDonald's, not Le Circe or even Applebee's, and I'm at peace with that.
You forget to turn the power amp off while unplugging an input cable, or your neighbor walks over and taps your tonearm while a record is playing. Has bad luck ever struck your audio system?
Sony has triumphed once again. The company that has until now held control of the dominant audio format, "Red Book" CD, and the dominant high-resolution audio format, SACD, will now dominate high-resolution video as well with its Blu-ray technology.
Adam Kolker’s <I>Flag Day</I> (on the Sunnyside label) is a knotty pleasure. It may leave your head in a coil (take two tracks of hard bop to unwind), but ride with the twists while they’re winding; it’s a soft-toned heady trip. Adam Kolker, who plays tenor sax, soprano sax, and clarinet, is known mainly as a sideman, and he doesn’t try to get out in front of his bandmates on this session—John Abercrombie on guitar, John Hebert on drums, and the irrepressible Paul Motian on drums. I promised when I started writing this blog that I wouldn’t dwell excessively on any individual musician, but Motian is such a giant, I could write about him every day and not be rightly charged with excess.
The "Want to make an easy $1,000,000?" e-mail wasn't a scam from Nigeria but an alert from Paul DiComo, late of Polk Audio and now of Definitive Technology, about a double-blind cable-identification challenge made by The Annoying Randi, a magician and debunker of paranormal events who goes by the name of "The Amazing Randi."
After reviewing a long series of minimonitors, I am now working on what may well be an equally varied selection of large floorstanding loudspeakers. This trend began with <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/1207sonus">my review</A> of the Sonus Faber Cremona Elipsa in the December 2007 issue, and continues this month with the Series 2 version of the KEF Reference 207, until recently the flagship model from this English manufacturer (footnote 1). I <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/775">reviewed</A> the original Reference 207 in February 2003, and was very impressed by what I heard.
<B>PJ HARVEY: <I>White Chalk</I></B>
Island B0009972-02 (CD). 2007. PJ Harvey, John Parish, prods., mix; Flood, prod., eng., mix. ADD? TT: 33:34
Performance *****
Sonics ***1/2
At some point during my time with George ($499), I lost a neighbor. The IT guy who sat in the cubicle immediately outside my office suddenly wasn't around anymore. Weeks later, I learned that the music had been bothering him. It had been too loud, I suppose. Or there had been too much of it. I'm not sure. I started apologizing to people: "Sorry about the music. It's just that I've got this new radio in my office. It's a lot of fun. His name is George."
Beneath George's top panel, you'll find a list of his creators.