search
Dear readers,
You can find our December 2008 issue on newsstands now.
You can find our December 2008 issue on newsstands now.
I am proud of this issue for many reasons, just as I am proud of every issue for many reasons, but I want to focus on the December issue's cover. Next to President-elect Obama on the October 30th issue of Rolling Stone and Megan Fox on the October 2008 issue of GQ, it is my favorite cover of the year. We saved the best for last, I feel. I love the color combination; it never would have occurred to me to match orange with this particular shade of purple, but I think it works very well—it is…
Last Friday at the Jazz Standard, I saw clarinetist Don Byron play compositions from his 1996 Bug Music, maybe his greatest album, certainly one of the most exciting jazz albums of that decade. It features music from the ‘30s by John Kirby, Raymond Scott, and Duke Ellington—an era largely neglected by jazz musicians and historians.
Byron says the title “Bug Music” comes from an old episode of The Flintstones, in which Fred, Wilma, and all the other cavemen and women of Bedford are nauseated by the new “Bug Music with them four insects”—a parody at the time of the Beatles. Just as most…
Maria Schneider and her 18-piece orchestra play their annual Thanksgiving week gig at the Jazz Standard starting Nov. 25 and continuing till the 30th (except for Thursday, when the club is closed), and if you’re in the tri-State area, you should reserve seats now, as her shows usually sell out. Regular readers of this blog may recall my previous ravings about Schneider. A former student of Gil Evans and Bob Bookmeyer, she is the most sumptuous jazz arranger on the jazz scene today, having absorbed her teachers’ penchant for lush stacked harmonies and added a flair for Latin rhythms, a…
Saturday
The very lazy day started off with me not taking a shower. Following that, I played another interesting record: Gegenwind by Pirchner-Pepl-Jazzwio from the Mood Records label. What initially attracted me to the album was Harry Pepl's Ovation guitar on the cover, and I always have to support my fiberglass-guitar-bodied homies.
Gegenwind really showcased the ability of my system, most notably in terms of soundstage and realism. Werner Pichner's vibraphone moved from right to left across the right-center of the soundstage, and I sensed the true softness of the mallets,…
It's not all-audio all-the-time in the Stereophile forums. Every once in awhile, a fellow likes to turn down the stereo and reach for The Wall Street Journal, Mother Jones, The Economist, Sports Illustrated, King, whatever.
We are large. We contain multitudes.
Therefore, we've created a new forum where we can gather to discuss any topic that might be on our minds. The Open Bar is where we'll toss around ideas on politics, entertainment, science and nature, sports and leisure, arts and literature, board games, the weather, or whatever.
Conversations may become…
Remember what I wrote last week about my dream listening room? Some nice furniture, DeVore Fidelity loudspeakers, Shindo amplifiers, walls lined in vinyl LPs, all that?
Well, shit, Matthew Rotunda of Pitch Perfect Audio went and beat me to it. The team at Pitch Perfect Audio will be celebrating their third anniversary on January 1, 2009, and they'll be doing it in style. The new showroom looks pretty damn glorious. If I lived in San Francisco, I might just stop by on my way home from the office and roll all around the rug and tangle myself up in my favorite LPs, like the place…
My favorite audio product of 2008 isn't precisely an audio product—it's a home theater in a box. I'm referring to Polk's lovely SurroundBar 360, which sells for $1200 and gives you a low-profile 48" "sound bar" and a base station, which includes an optical disc player, DSP processing, and an AM/FM tuner. The base station, of course, contains all the amplification the sound bar requires. Also included is a special umbilical to connect the two pieces—and, in a savvy little detail that tells you a great deal about how much thought has gone into the SurroundBar 360, the connectors on that cable…
Perhaps the most interesting thing on satellite radio has been Bob Dylan’s Theme Time radio show on XM, where he uses big themes like “baseball” or “eyes,” and builds shows around music that somehow connects to the theme. The idea for this show, which is worth listening to if only for Dylan’s raspy–voiced patter, may have come from a previous Forties–era radio program hosted by one of Dylan’s heroes, Woody Guthrie.
Besides the music which is extraordinary, the show is filled with great details. Ellen Barkin as the opening announcer is um...well, forgive me, but the woman has…
My heart is not broken. It is collapsed like the sun into the frozen Meadowlands. Sometimes, alone in bed at night, I get this awful, screaming pain in the side of my bony chest, in that empty space where I imagine you to be. It's not often that I do this, sit here. Listen to the same sad songs over and over again, sing along, cry, think of how these words were written for us. It's probably not a good habit to be getting into, but it seems I just can't stop. It's been more than two weeks now, and it isn't wearing off. Twelve songs, 40 minutes, over and over again. I can't stop…