News

Stereophile's senior contributing editor, Michael Fremer, and the magazine's editor at large, Art Dudley, are both giving presentations this spring at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. Michael appears on Tuesday, March 28, followed two weeks later, on April 11, by Art Dudley.

The goal of Cornell's "Audio Fanatics" series of occasional seminars/lectures/presentations/demonstrations is to cultivate interest among Cornell students in high-end audio/video, from vintage vinyl to the digital state of the art. These events will also be open to the larger community. More information can be found here.

We will post info on Art's April presentation when we have more info; in the meantime, Michael Fremer, a 1969 Cornell alumnus, will be talking about "Living Analog: the return of vinyl records in the iPod age."

Michael was a DJ on WVBR-AM until he was shown the door in 1965 for "being Howard Stern before Howard Stern." He returned to the radio in Boston in 1973 on the legendary "free-form" rock station WBCN-FM, until he was fired there too, for the same reason. He went on to stand-up comedy (he played Ithaca College in 1975) and later co-wrote and voiced an animated film Animalympics, with Gilda Radner, Billy Crystal, and Harry Shearer. Later he supervised the Academy Award –nominated soundtrack to the sci-fi feature film Tron.

The introduction of the compact disc so upset Mikey that he dropped everything to campaign against it. Thus began a 20-year writing career. In addition to writing for Stereophile, Fremer has written for The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, and many other magazines and newspapers. He can be found online at ultimateavmag.com, where he has a blog and writes A/V reviews, and on his own music review website www.musicangle.com.

Michael will speak about his obsession with vinyl long-playing records and explain why they are currently making a comeback, especially among young musicians, who insist on releasing their music on vinyl, and among an "enlightened" segment of college students. He promises to be funny and outrageous, but not to the point of being shown the door at Cornell!