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Going Rogue: An American Amp

We can’t let Sarah Palin have all the fun.

In an upcoming review, new contributor Erick Lichte talks about the inherent coolness of tubes and the “transitive property of coolness,” by which owning tubes makes you cool, and it got me thinking:

What the hell am I waiting for? I’m always waiting around for something that never comes. Why don’t I just go out and grab it?

All of my cool friends have tubes in their systems. And don’t I want to be cool like them? Why, yes! Yes, I do want to be cool like them.

I have had some experience with tubes. I…

Nellie McKay’s Normal As Blueberry Pie: A Tribute to Doris Day (Verve, CD and LP) is the unlikeliest delight of the year. Who’d have thought that the snarkmistress of Get Away from Me (her 2004 debut double-album, with its “Explicit Lyrics” label, downtown cool, and sharp-wit irony, to say nothing of the title’s savage slash at the then-raging darling, Norah Jones) could produce such gentle covers of hits once sung by the queen of wholesomeness?

And yet that’s what this is. Yes, there’s a whimsy to the arrangements (nobody these days could sing the lyrics to “Send Me No Flowers” straight…

Kind of Blue Barcelona

There was fast food like Catalonian baguette pizza with chorizo. Tapas like flash fried baby squid or crispy potatoes with olive oil mayo and tomato sauce. And then of course there was that robber baron Rupert Murdoch and his damnable tabloid The Sun which every morning has a half–naked twentysomething smiling at you from page two! Danni, 23, from Coventry was my personal favorite. Yes, Europe does have its advantages! And then there was the music, right, right, the music. A mini-theme of the 41st installment of the Barcelona Jazz Festival was the 50th anniversary of Kind of Blue. The…

Tweet, Tweet

Hey, have you ever wondered what it’s like to be a Stereophile staffer? (I have.)

Well, now’s your chance to find out! Are any of you guys on Twitter? Stereophile is on Twitter. Come follow me, I mean, us, as we bring you updates on the most important topics circulating around the Stereophile office. I’ll, I mean, we’ll, answer all of your pressing questions.

Such as: What’s Coral Watkins wearing today? What are the girls from Soap Opera Digest giggling about? Where in the world is Robert Baird? What’s Jon Banner eating for breakfast? Who flooded the toilet?…

Betty Davis Tees

You don’t have to wear a thin mustache and skinny jeans to rock the new Betty Davis t-shirt from American Apparel. (Really, I promise.) The t-shirt comes from a partnership between the hip fashion outlet and Anthology Recordings, an all-digital reissue label devoted to rare and out-of-print music from around the world. For $27, you also get a digital compilation, curated by Anthology, featuring tracks from Betty Davis, Karen Dalton, Father Yod, Telegraph Avenue, Shoes, and other obscure, forgotten artists.

Remember: American Apparel shirts are super-soft and yummy-feeling, but…

Powering the Ionizer

Chris Vogel of the Space Coast Audio Society is excited. He believes he has developed a “dramatic improvement” for treating deleterious, devilish static&#151not only on compact discs, but in compact disc players and even integrated amplifiers.

(Suddenly, I feel like J-10. What the?) Chris writes:

“There are a number of CD de-static gizmos out there that treat the CD with negative ions. Some are like a Zerostat, some are variations of a hand-held hair blow dryer with Tourmaline or an electronic based negative ion generator. I have been using an easily acquired ion…

Sonic Youth at Terminal 5

This past Saturday night was Sonic Youth at Terminal 5.

With so many great bands, it’s often the mistakes, or accidents, that make the magic of a live performance. But in the case of Sonic Youth, it’s their simple presence, their plain being, that is magical. I had never before seen a band perform so flawlessly, yet with such pure power and vibrant energy, such love. Theirs was a ferocious accuracy, a blistering precision. Sonic Youth was everything on Saturday night, profound and inconceivable beauty shooting from their voices and instruments. I left Terminal 5 thinking that…

Steve Davis Quintet, <I>Live at Smalls</I>

Smalls is, well, a small jazz club in New York City’s West Village and, while far from the most comfortable establishment in town, it’s certainly among the most authentic and dedicated. The cover is cheap, the audience is youthful (two facts that are probably related), the musicians are usually the best up-and-coming players, and established masters sit in now and then too. (Last week, Albert “Tootie” Heath played drums with the Bad Plus pianist Ethan Iverson.)

Smalls’ owner, Spike Wilner, has started a new CD label, called Smalls Live, featuring (as might be guessed) sessions recorded…

Maria Schneider at the Jazz Standard, '09

Maria Schneider’s early set last night at the Jazz Standard—part of her 17-piece Jazz Orchestra’s traditional Thanksgiving-week run—reaffirmed and advanced her position as the preeminent big-band composer of our era.

The time has long passed when she could adequately be pegged as an acolyte of Gil Evans. Though she did come up the ranks as his assistant, and still draws on his stacked, lush harmonies, her sound is distinctly her own. The melodic lines are now more propulsive, the rhythms more varied, the dynamics both brasher and suppler than anything her mentor devised.

Much of…

Dreams

I dreamed that I was back in Puerto Rico with the Vivian Girls. They asked me to work on a new song with them. We decided to set up a rehearsal space at my aunt’s beach house. It was taking us awhile to get the instruments properly set up, and Katy was becoming anxious, but I soothed her nerves with a stunning spread of snacks and candies: finger sandwiches, kiwis, grapes, pomegranates, baskets of popcorn, bowls of pretzels and chips, towers of Twizzlers, tall pyramids of Almond Joy…

I didn’t even know that she liked Almond Joy.

Katy took a handful of popcorn and tossed it…