David Johansen is a traditional blues singer. His latest project, David Johansen and the Harry Smiths, focuses on acoustic American roots music, and it's perfectly complemented by Chesky Records' natural-sounding, audiophile-quality recording. I joined Johansen at…
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Who the heck is this guy? Is he David Johansen, the lipstick-wearing front man of the seminal glam-rock, proto-punk New York Dolls? Is he Buster Poindexter, the pompadoured and tuxedoed "Hot, Hot, Hot" soca stylist? Is he a lounge singer? A Latin artist? Johansen is all of the above, having achieved success in each incarnation.
"I still listen to a lot of Latin music. And then I listen to a lot of classical, jazz, movie soundtracks—especially Italian movie soundtracks. My favorite, of course, is Nino Rota, but I like a lot of the other guys too. And I paint, so a lot of times I put music on my boombox, and it just is there. It's like a friend of mine. Lately I've been listening to this series of early American rural music that Shanachie puts out. There's some great music there you'd never get to hear."
"I'll have to check that out."
And So my Wish was Granted. Johansen happened to be packing a deluxe-…
"Hey Rick, did you ever play an Erik Satie record and hold the fast-forward like this? It sounds just like ragtime. I was doing this the other day, and it sounded just like Scott Joplin."
"You seem to have a deep knowledge of all kinds of music. Do you have your own archives? Do you collect LPs, 78s?"
"No. I got a bunch of records, but I very rarely listen to them. This friend of mine is in the estate liquidation business, and I asked him to just keep his eye out for one of those hi-fis with the changer, so you could put like 10 records on it. I got one of those now, and I listen…
"That reminds me of recently, when I heard one of the Dolls records on CD, and I said, 'What is this?' It sounded just completely different from the way it always sounded on LP."
"Yeah, especially Johnny's guitar, that rrowrr, rrowrr, rrowrr. It loses the depth of the thing."
"It always had this real mushed-together, murky vibe to it. The CD sounds so clean, it sounds completely different. It sounds like..."
"It sounds almost acceptable! [laughs] It's funny, because last week or something in Rolling Stone they reviewed the Dolls record in the Hall of Fame, and it got four…
Sidebar 1: David Johansen: Selected Discography
David Johansen as... David Johansen and the Harry Smiths, David Johansen and the Harry Smiths, Chesky JD196 (2000)
Buster Poindexter, Buster's Happy Hour, Rhino R2 71680 (1994)
David Johansen, Live It Up, Razor & Tie RE1994 (1992)
Buster Poindexter, Buster Poindexter, RCA 6633-2 (1987)
David Johansen, David Johansen, Razor & Tie RE1989 (1978)
New York Dolls, Too Much, Too Soon, Mercury 834 230-2 (1974) New York Dolls, New York Dolls, Mercury 832 752-2 (1973)
Sidebar 2: David Johansen's Playlist
¡Ahora Si! Here Comes Changüì, Corason CORA 121 Dock Boggs, Country Blues: Complete Early Recordings (1927-1929), Revenant RVN 205
Dama and D'Gary, The Long Way Home, Shanachie 64052 D'Gary, Malagasy Guitar, Shanachie 65009
Jimmie Dale Gilmore, One Endless Night, Windcharger/Rounder 3173
Rubén Gonzàlez, Introducing...Rubén Gonzàlez, World Circuit/Nonesuch 7947?-2
Greatest Cumbia Classics of Colombia, Vol.2, Fuentes 11015
Kneelin' Down Inside the Gate: The Great Rhyming Singers of the Bahamas, Rounder 5035
Ali Hassan Kuban, From Nubia…
Classé's Mike Viglas watched the audiophile skies, scratched his chin, and thought about his business. As he gazed, it occurred to him that if everyone in audio was moving downmarket to invade his territory, why not take his company and head upmarket? Thus was born Classé's much-lauded Omega series.
Classé has guts. These are uncertain times, but here they are with an audiophile classic: an expensive two-channel Super Audio CD player that will also spin CDs and CD-Rs and sports lots of inputs and outputs, "Your last CD player, my friend!" enthused Viglas after he'd installed the…
'Round back of the player are two sets of outputs: one of XLRs (pin 2 hot) for balanced running, another pair for single-ended. Over at the other side of the back panel, on the bottom, to the left of the socket for the power-supply umbilicus, are two digital inputs: S/PDIF on RCA and TosLink. Above these are the digital outputs: AES/EBU, S/PDIF on RCAs, an AT&T glass output (not seen much these days), and two IR trigger input/output connectors on 1/8" miniplugs.
Digital technology
The Classé Omega is said a no-compromise design. All data and control signals from the transport…
And back to analog
The analog circuitry comprises three sections: the analog filter, the current-to-voltage conversion, and the output driver. All are unusual in the Omega SACD. The analog filter is a second-order passive type. Because of its 12dB/octave rolloff, it doesn't offer the same out-of-band rejection of a more complex, steep-slope filter, Classé's white paper explains. "However, with a corner frequency at 35kHz and 96dB of attenuation at 2MHz, this filter provides more than sufficient noise suppression to prevent both audible artifacts and intermodulation distortion."
The analog circuitry comprises three sections: the analog filter, the current-to-voltage conversion, and the output driver. All are unusual in the Omega SACD. The analog filter is a second-order passive type. Because of its 12dB/octave rolloff, it doesn't offer the same out-of-band rejection of a more complex, steep-slope filter, Classé's white paper explains. "However, with a corner frequency at 35kHz and 96dB of attenuation at 2MHz, this filter provides more than sufficient noise suppression to prevent both audible artifacts and intermodulation distortion."
The…
Next, I turned to the hybrid SACD/CD Lyrinx disc of pianist Caroline Sageman playing Chopin. Morbidly, perhaps, I played Scherzo 3 in C-sharp minor, Op.39. You know...dumm dumm dee-dumm, as the imaginary casket moves toward the loamy earth. I always liked the slow stuff. And I was surprised to read in the booklet that, "even as a child, [Sageman] preferred slow movements, the more dramatic pieces....Still today she has a particular affection for these works which allow her to penetrate the music more easily, to be able to isolate herself." The SACD layer communicated this feeling exquisitely…