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It was almost exactly a year ago that I first heard Cecile McLorin Salvant at the Village Vanguard. I came home and wrote a blog for this space, wondering how I could have missed her ascent (she'd already won a Grammy and other prizes) and deeming her the best jazz singer around, standing among the greats of all time. I went back to see her, dragging along my wife and two friends, the following Sunday—the late set, the final set of his week-long stint—and she was better still. (That set inspired me to pitch a profile of her to The New Yorker, which was published this past May.)
Hef is gone and whether you think he was a villain, a visionary or a skeezy old fool, the news, alleged by his widow and some recent former girlfriends was shocking: Hefner, who let’s not forget was 91 when he died, had taken so much Viagra that may have experienced a rare side effect and lost his hearing. In other words, he’d chosen sex over music.
You can debate the merits of that trade, but what was weird was that Hefner had always been such a music fan, supporting jazz in particular.
I interviewed for an editorship with Playboy many years ago, and all during the interview…
Starting with Musicians As Audiophiles subject #1, jazz drummer extraordinaire Billy Drummond, one thing soon became clear: New York City and its environs are a veritable smorgasbord of musicians who value high-end audio authenticity as much as any longtime reader of Stereophile. Billy Drummond led us to such like-minded audiophile/musicians as bassists Chris Lightcap and John Hébert, drummer Dan Weiss, guitarist Adam Rogers, and preeminent music scholar and jazz superstar Ron Carter.
"A fellow drummer and friend, Aaron Kimmel, got me into audio via Billy Drummond," notes MAA #7, drummer…
A revitalized Rocky Mountain Audio Fest begins this Friday, October 6, in the completely renovated Denver Marriott Tech Center Hotel. The three-day show, which opens to the public at noon on Friday, promises 143 active exhibit rooms that will host 358 exhibitors from 27 countries and 36 states. In addition, the show's widely lauded Canjam will host an additional 64 exhibitors within its walls, and seven more large exhibits in the lobby. Exhibit numbers would have been even greater, had not a few exhibitors lost everything in the recent hurricane onslaught.
These impressive figures place…
Can we all remember where we were when we first heard "American Girl?" "She was an American Girl raised on promises . . ."
And in 1979 was there a bigger record than side one of Damn the Torpedoes?
Finally, can Tom Petty actually be gone at the age of 66?
The idiotic dance that the LAPD and TMZ did throughout the night aside—He's dead. Oh wait, he's not dead. Yet.—Tom Petty did indeed pass sometime during the night after suffering a heart attack yesterday morning.
Always reminiscent of Bob Dylan and The Byrds, Petty and the Heartbreakers was first and foremost a…
This is more to my liking than the other records I review this month! Side 1 is devoted entirely to a real humdinger of a thunderstorm, replete with rain, thimble-sized hailstones, and five minutes of someone diddling with a set of wind chimes. Side 2 is four sequences in the saga of Steam Locomotive 4449, which was refurbished from rusty decrepitude to haul the bicentennial Freedom Train 28,000 miles around the continent. My first reaction, before listening to this, was that half-speed cutting seemed the most inappropriate manner possible in which to disc a thunder storm and a steam…
It's get-ting bet-ter all the time (it can't get no worse)—John Lennon & Paul McCartney
Remasterings of recordings make me angry—they mess with my memories of the songs I love, especially songs from the 1960s that I played in my bedroom on a cheap Garrard turntable through Lafayette speakers. Like my first girlfriend, these songs permanently entered my psyche and modified my DNA.
When songs I've heard a thousand times are remastered or remixed, they sound wrong and weird to me. They make my inner hard drive skip as I try to figure out what was changed, and why. This is…
To me, 9" tonearms have always seemed more lively and responsive than their longer, lazier-sounding counterparts. I imagine that short tonearms handle like short-wheelbase sports cars. I could tell just by looking at it that the 9W2 would handle like a very fast and expensive Bayerische Rennvagen. According to my eyes and ears and Shure's An Audio Obstacle Course: Era IV test record (LP, Shure Brothers TTR115), the 9W2 tonearm in combination with the higher-compliance (18 x 10cm/dyne) AMG Teatro moving-coil cartridge tracked difficult grooves at the highest levels.
The AMG…
Sidebar: Another June night
Because the AMG turntable sits rigidly on three adjustable spiked feet, it seemed wise to repeat my auditioning with the Giro G9 sitting on my PS Audio PerfectWave PowerBase isolation platform and power conditioner ($995, discontinued). Normally, I use the PowerBase passively—not as a conditioner, but only as a platform for my Linn LP12, to prevent footfalls on my bunker's ancient wooden floor from becoming part of my music.
The PowerBase worked some unanticipated magic with the AMG Giro G9. Besides making the turntable noticeably quieter, it sharpened…
Seeing your album in a record store's cutout bin meant one thing. Despite the label execs' wide smiles, warm handshakes, and earnest promises to the contrary, once the record jacket had a hole punched in it, or its corner clipped, it meant your record label had lost faith and moved on.
Record collectors felt differently. The prices of cutouts were right—usually, from 99õ to a penny under two bucks. And cutouts were better than digging through crates because the records were still sealed . . . even if the jackets were a bit mangled. The beauty of cutouts was that they were so cheap, you…