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For musicians' sake, the terms "sure thing" or "a hit" should be permanently stricken from the music business lexicon. Like Beetlejuice, if you say it enough, bad things are sure to occur. But in the long annals of the music business crushing the dreams of artists who were a "sure thing" and singles or albums that were guaranteed to be "a hit," few have risen higher and fallen faster than Lone Justice. Rising stars on the Los Angeles music scene in the early 1980s, they melded punk-rock attitude and ethos with a love for classic country music. The New York Times called them "Impressive,…
A quick survey of 1977's rock albums shows a vibrant genre, pushing in many directions at once. British punk went major label, with debut albums from The Clash, The Damned, Wire, and The Sex Pistols (their only studio album). The Ramones released Rocket to Russia. David Bowie explored a new direction with both Low and Heroes. Mainstream blockbusters included Rumours by Fleetwood Mac, News of the World by Queen, Slowhand by Eric Clapton, and Pink Floyd's Animals. Not to mention Meat Loaf 's Bat Out of Hell and the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever (footnote 1).
Amid all of this, there was…
To watch as Rega very slowly expands its turntable offerings upmarket requires the patience of a Thomas Pynchon addict waiting for each new tome from the notoriously slow-working and reclusive author. Starting out 51 years ago with just one turntable model, Rega now offers turntables at seven different price levels, plus a few minor variations in between (footnote 1). During the "lost years" of waning turntable and vinyl sales in the 1990s and early 2000s, Rega boss Roy Gandy (footnote 2) candidly admits that the company put little effort into advancing its turntable designs, as sales at the…
Fig.1 Rega Naia speed stability.
All Rega turntables from the Planar 6 up come with an external power supply, and the Naia's is called the Reference Power Supply. Rega hand-adjusts each power supply to match the actual motor and turntable it will be paired with, so while there is a way to fine-tune the speed, I found that the Naia was set perfectly right out of the box (fig.1) with no additional tweaking required. The power supply lets you change the speed between 33 1/3rpm and 45rpm—there's no 78 speed—and turn the motor off. This is certainly a far cry from my own original Planar 3…
From May 4 through August 18, 2024, the San Francisco Museum Of Modern Art (SFMOMA) staged the largest multisensory installation cum performance art exhibition in its history. Entitled Art Of Noise, the multi-room show, which occupied 14,000ft2 on the museum's seventh floor, drew an estimated 140,000 visitors, boosting museum attendance by over 33% from the same period in 2023. Even accounting for postpandemic attendance declines, that's an impressive figure.
The exhibit, designed to celebrate "pioneering designs shaping our music experiences," was the creation of two visionaries: Museum…
The genesis of Art Of Noise
"Music has always been a passion of mine," Becker told me weeks before I journeyed to San Francisco. "I'm motivated by music that can be transformative. That led me to want to provide a transformative listening space. I am also a curator of architecture and design. Pulling out the connection between design and music was a natural evolution of my interests."
Close to 18 years ago, when Becker began working at the museum, he learned of its "incredible" collection of nearly 500 psychedelic rock posters that was gifted to SFMOMA by Jim Chanin in the…
Jimi Hendrix: Electric Lady Studios: A Jimi Hendrix Vision
Experience Hendrix/Legacy Recordings (LP). 2024.
Janie Hendrix, Eddie Kramer, John McDermott, prods.; Eddie Kramer, Chandler Harrod, engs.
Performance *****
Sonics *****
Experience Hendrix/Legacy Recordings (LP). 2024.
Janie Hendrix, Eddie Kramer, John McDermott, prods.; Eddie Kramer, Chandler Harrod, engs.
Performance *****
Sonics *****
The new-look Jimi Hendrix Experience (Billy Cox on bass; Mitch Mitchell on drums) recorded a remarkable amount of material between June and August of 1970 at Electric Lady Studios in New York City. The sessions were intended to become First Rays of the New Rising Sun, a double album follow-up to 1968's Electric Ladyland. Hendrix would never…
Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos.19 & 23
Kristian Bezuidenhout, fortepiano; Freiburger Barockorchester
Harmonia Mundi HMM 902334 (CD, 24/96). 2024. Martin Sauer, prod.; Julian Schwenkner, eng.
Performance ****½
Sonics ****½
Kristian Bezuidenhout, fortepiano; Freiburger Barockorchester
Harmonia Mundi HMM 902334 (CD, 24/96). 2024. Martin Sauer, prod.; Julian Schwenkner, eng.
Performance ****½
Sonics ****½
As an inveterate lover of period instruments with the timbral tang of authority, it's hard to imagine that any Mozart aficionado, even those who might initially turn to Khatia Buniatishvili's contemporaneous, modern-instrument recording of Mozart's Piano Concertos Nos.20 & 23 with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, will not develop a special…
Donald Vega: All Is Merry and Bright
Vega, piano; Clovis Nicolas, bass; Pete Van Nostrand, drums
Imagery Records and Anderson Audio (DXD 24/352.8 WAV file). 2024. Vega, Jim Anderson, Laura Vega, prods.; Jim Anderson, Ulrike Schwarz, engs.
Performance ****
Sonics *****
Vega, piano; Clovis Nicolas, bass; Pete Van Nostrand, drums
Imagery Records and Anderson Audio (DXD 24/352.8 WAV file). 2024. Vega, Jim Anderson, Laura Vega, prods.; Jim Anderson, Ulrike Schwarz, engs.
Performance ****
Sonics *****
It's easy to hear why performers of all stripes are drawn to Christmas music: The tunes are irresistible. The challenge lies in how every known Christmas tune has been played live and recorded umpteen times. Yet hope springs eternal and every artist who dives in thinks they can bring something new to these…
In last month's As We See It, I offered some reminiscences of my almost half-century of being involved in audio magazine publishing, as well as some thoughts on the Law of Diminishing Returns as it applied to the prices of hi-fi products. As I was compiling this issue's Records 2 Live 4, it struck me that my interest not just in audio but in recording live music started 10 years earlier, when my parents bought me a mono Grundig tape recorder for my birthday. I first used the Grundig to record the high school rock group in which I played bass guitar, then replaced it with a stereo Sony tape…