There it was again. Goosebumps. Even a grainy old out&ndash;of&ndash;synch <I>YouTube</I> video of a 1986 sound check at Maxwell's in Hoboken still evoked a shiver. At the risk of living in the rock 'n' roll past, The Replacements were one of the best bands, bar or otherwise, that I've ever had the pleasure of witnessing. Over the years I saw Westerberg, Mars and the Stinson Bros many, many times. I saw them when they were riotously drunk, careening from one tune to the next, never finishing any of them. I saw them once at an unbilled gig do not a note of their own music, preferring instead to rip through TV themes: <I>Batman</I> followed by <I>Bewitched</I> followed by <I> The Flintstones</I>... I saw them jacked up on God knows what, painting their shoes and whipping bologna from a deli tray all over their dressing room. Through it all, with the possible exception of when Bob Stinson was kicked out for getting a little too addictive, they had a ball. When it got serious near the end, around the time of <I>Don’t Tell a Soul</I>, it was for all intensive purposes, over. They were the best thing to come out of the once vaunted Minnesota scene&mdash;okay, after Prince&mdash;and whether they liked it or not, one of the originators of the whole "alt" rock thang.

The audio industry may have lost a legend and a prolific innovator in <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/11260">Henry Kloss</A> a few years back, but it still has another affable, creative eccentric in <A HREF="http://blog.stereophile.com/ces2008/011008smith/">Peter Ledermann</A>. In the mid-1970s, Ledermann was director of engineering at <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/historical/1005bozak">Bozak</A&gt;, where, with Rudy Bozak, he helped develop a miniature bookshelf speaker and a miniature powered subwoofer. Before that, Ledermann was a design engineer at RAM Audio Systems, working with Richard Majestic on the designs of everything from high-power, minimal-feedback power amplifiers and preamplifiers to phono cartridge systems. He was also an award-winning senior research engineer at IBM, and the primary inventor of 11 IBM patents.

The audio industry may have lost a legend and a prolific innovator in <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/11260">Henry Kloss</A> a few years back, but it still has another affable, creative eccentric in <A HREF="http://blog.stereophile.com/ces2008/011008smith/">Peter Ledermann</A>. In the mid-1970s, Ledermann was director of engineering at <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/historical/1005bozak">Bozak</A&gt;, where, with Rudy Bozak, he helped develop a miniature bookshelf speaker and a miniature powered subwoofer. Before that, Ledermann was a design engineer at RAM Audio Systems, working with Richard Majestic on the designs of everything from high-power, minimal-feedback power amplifiers and preamplifiers to phono cartridge systems. He was also an award-winning senior research engineer at IBM, and the primary inventor of 11 IBM patents.

The audio industry may have lost a legend and a prolific innovator in <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/11260">Henry Kloss</A> a few years back, but it still has another affable, creative eccentric in <A HREF="http://blog.stereophile.com/ces2008/011008smith/">Peter Ledermann</A>. In the mid-1970s, Ledermann was director of engineering at <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/historical/1005bozak">Bozak</A&gt;, where, with Rudy Bozak, he helped develop a miniature bookshelf speaker and a miniature powered subwoofer. Before that, Ledermann was a design engineer at RAM Audio Systems, working with Richard Majestic on the designs of everything from high-power, minimal-feedback power amplifiers and preamplifiers to phono cartridge systems. He was also an award-winning senior research engineer at IBM, and the primary inventor of 11 IBM patents.

The audio industry may have lost a legend and a prolific innovator in <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/11260">Henry Kloss</A> a few years back, but it still has another affable, creative eccentric in <A HREF="http://blog.stereophile.com/ces2008/011008smith/">Peter Ledermann</A>. In the mid-1970s, Ledermann was director of engineering at <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/historical/1005bozak">Bozak</A&gt;, where, with Rudy Bozak, he helped develop a miniature bookshelf speaker and a miniature powered subwoofer. Before that, Ledermann was a design engineer at RAM Audio Systems, working with Richard Majestic on the designs of everything from high-power, minimal-feedback power amplifiers and preamplifiers to phono cartridge systems. He was also an award-winning senior research engineer at IBM, and the primary inventor of 11 IBM patents.

The audio industry may have lost a legend and a prolific innovator in <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/11260">Henry Kloss</A> a few years back, but it still has another affable, creative eccentric in <A HREF="http://blog.stereophile.com/ces2008/011008smith/">Peter Ledermann</A>. In the mid-1970s, Ledermann was director of engineering at <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/historical/1005bozak">Bozak</A&gt;, where, with Rudy Bozak, he helped develop a miniature bookshelf speaker and a miniature powered subwoofer. Before that, Ledermann was a design engineer at RAM Audio Systems, working with Richard Majestic on the designs of everything from high-power, minimal-feedback power amplifiers and preamplifiers to phono cartridge systems. He was also an award-winning senior research engineer at IBM, and the primary inventor of 11 IBM patents.

Buddha said:

If you visit <a href="http://forum.stereophile.com/photopost/showphoto.php/photo/1646">our Gallery</a>, you'll see that Christian bought an LP. Vinyl, that is. Funny thing about that: Christian doesn't own a record player.