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The Battle of the Somme From the Other Side

George Kerevan reviews Christopher Duffy's Through German Eyes: the British and the Somme 1916, which sounds like a corker. In the first 24 hours of that battle, Britain lost more men than in the Crimean, Boer, and Korean wars combined.

Duffy apparently takes us beyond the conventional saga of incompetent and bloody-minded command and tells a revolutionary story about a battle I thought had nothing new to offer.

Since, over the last few entries, I've developed a thread of recommending other books, I'll also tout Stephen O'Shea's Back to the Front: An Accidental Historian Walks the…

Mozart's Widow: Photo A Hoax?

Several folks make the case—Agnes Selby, author of Constanze, Mozart's Beloved does so most emphatically. Sound And Fury has it all covered.

That's what I get for trusting Auntie Beeb.

Majors and Manners

Last night, in Manila&#150like heat, I trekked southward on Manhattan Island to meet with Jim Davis, owner of Music Direct and one of his right hand men, Colie Brice. One of the best online sources for audiophile wares, both soft and hard, (now, now, let's keep those high fidelity minds up out of the gutter!), Music Direct, as many of you know, also owns the revived Mobile Fidelity label. MoFi was and maybe again THE proudest audiophile label of them all. The extra dynamics they squeezed out of Nirvana's Nevermind will forever amaze me.

But alas, it's now 2006 and according to Davis…

And All the Pizza, Too

Ward asked, "Did you return the Arcam Solo already? Have you tried any gear yet that you would actually consider going out and buying in the next month or two, were it not for the parade of review gear?"

Yes, the Solo went back some time ago. But not before I came very close to purchasing it. The Solo's a wonderful introduction to hi-fi: it does everything you want it to do, it does it well, and it looks good doing it. It's simple and fun. Something like that is always nice to have around. In fact, I wish I had one here, right now, in my office. I'd play M. Ward's bouncy Post War,…

Language and Numbers

Speakers of English and Chinese apparently process numbers differently. I'm fascinated for three, no, four, . . . uh, many reasons.

Record Making With Duke Ellington

What a score! Here's a promotional short for Irving Mills' Master and Variety labels that shows us Ellington in the studio. Amazingly, the process of record manufacture hasn't changed substantially since 1937.

BTW, in Music Is My Mistress, Ellington devoted a chapter to Mills. IIRC, it consisted of the following sentence: "My mother told me that if you can't say something nice about somebody, say nothing."

It Must Be Art

It's a paper turntable. I'm sure that Mikey Fremer will be contacting the artist for one to go next to his Nixie clock.

The Geometry of Music

A new way of looking at chords and music. Well, new-ish. Or maybe, not so much.

Depends on who's talking, I guess.

The High Cost of Free Parking

Guess there's free and then there's free.

Yes, it's quite obvious that this site has its own agenda, but there are some valid points in this argument.

Mucho Agua

I should have just slept here. It certainly would have been easier. And, of course, it would have saved me the commute. However, the thought of enormous roaches warming up against my thighs throughout the air conditioned evening kept me from crashing on JA's couch.

And to sleep here would be a kind of surrender, a submission of all else. I already forget to eat. I've already begun using 261 Madison Avenue as my mailing address. If only I could find a shower somewhere in the building, I could stop paying rent and get so much more done.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm doing…