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French earned fame in the 1980s as the lead guitarist for transvestite metal band Twisted Sister, which produced some of the most recognizable—and widely licensed—rock music in history: "We're Not Gonna Take It." "I Wanna Rock."

These days, French stays busy in other ways. He has a podcast in which he chats with other musicians, members of the music industry, and miscellaneous folks. He's a Beatles scholar with an impressive cache of Beatles records and memorabilia—he seems to have kept everything,…

"I walked in and watched this…

The Replacements have a great rock'n'roll Formation Story: Four rough-and-tumble Minneapolis kids, in and out of trouble, bitten by the music bug and headed for either stardom or dead ends. They chose to go all in and make this debut album, which is still heating the blood 4 decades on.

Front-man Paul Westerberg sums up the spirit of Sorry, Ma…

We are at a point in time when most new jazz releases were recorded during the pandemic. Many are direct artistic responses to the crisis. The response of drummer Joe Farnsworth is bound up with the city where he has lived for 30 years.

In New York, the center of the jazz universe, the music stopped in early 2020. Farnsworth says, "I've learned…

For fans of these two highly idiosyncratic artists, the only surprise this album may hold is the music. Others may reel as much at the spontaneous improvisatory nature of the playing as the wildness of the repertoire and the uniqueness of its sequencing.

If there's anything that Leclair's short Tambourin in C major and C.P.E. Bach's Presto, Helm 66 VI have in common with two movements from Jörg…

For those unfamiliar with them, in a moving-iron (MI) cartridge a tiny piece of iron—not a coil or a magnet—…

The other evening I played for a friend—a mastering engineer who shall remain nameless—Bob Ludwig's legendary "pulled from the shelves" (footnote 3) original mastering of Led Zeppelin's II (LP, Atlantic SD 8236). He was awed by the shimmer and sizzle of John Bonham's cymbals, and the tuneful slam of the rest of his drum kit.

The Hyperion's…

This very hefty (95lb) stereo power amp uses eight EL34 tubes to deliver a rated 95 watts per channel into 4 or 8 ohms. The unit comes with a plug-in milliammeter for setting bias, and detailed adjustment…

Comparing the Quicksilver MS190 with the Berning 2100 that I also review in this issue was rather difficult because they sound so different. If you like "tube sound," you are more likely to be happy with the Quicksilver, because it embodies more of what are generally conceded to be the positive (and, by tube detractors, negative) attributes of good tubed components. If you like solid-state bass and tube midrange, the Berning approaches this rare amalgam more closely than any other amplifier we have tested. For the best "tube highs," choose between the…

Description: Tubed stereo power amplifier. Rated output: 95Wpc into 8 or 4 ohms (MX190). Frequency response: +0/–3dB, 16Hz–70kHz, full output power. Outputs: 4 and 8 ohms. Power consumption: 300 watts.
Weight: 95 lb.
Price: $2495 (1984); no longer available (2022).
Manufacturer: Quicksilver Audio: Van Nuys, CA (1981–1985); Stockton, CA (1985–1992); Reno, NV (1992–2005) Denver, CO (2005–2008) 7475 Murray Drive, Suite 17, Stockton, CA 95210 (2008–present). Tel:(209) 957-6640. Fax:(209) 957-6641. Web: quicksilveraudio.com