We’d start slow and build, various noises working towards a certain goal—a moment of…
search
The music we made in Genie Boom was not unlike the music made by the pumps and steam lines and reactors of Firmenich. Michelle drummed on garbage cans, a red school bell, a gas tank, whatever banged. Todd pressed buttons on his Casio synthesizer and Roland drum machine. I plugged five cheap guitars—old Silvertones and Kays, before they became popular—into whatever amps I could find, turned the knobs on my effects pedals all the way up, and screamed the lines from my poems into the guitars’ pick-ups.
Not how. I mean to say: I should tell you something about the circumstances surrounding my personal act of listening.
I live in a one-bedroom apartment. The whole place is maybe 450 square feet or so. I don’t have a “listening room.” I don’t need one, really; I can hear my music, at tame levels, from anywhere in the apartment. I have a living room. Some—depending on where she grew up and how blue her eyes are—might call it a den. It measures approximately 10ft wide by 13ft long, and the ceilings are just about 8ft high. This is where the music is played.
Before I…
The AZ9345 is on right now. And it sounds pretty damn good to me. I’m listening to Smog’s latest album, A River Ain’t Too Much to Love, and god, I love it. I love it. I don’t even know exactly what it is. I keep wondering, “What is it? What’s so great about this album?”
And when I can’t come up with an answer, I try not to question.
All I know for certain is that I have a hard time not listening. It’s the kind of album—I’ve been comparing it to Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska—that shushes you and leaves you shaking your head at the beauty and at the sadness and at…
Seriously: Will you show me around?
I mean, I know where I am. Now, I’m at my other home: the offices of Primedia’s Home Technology Group at 261 Madison Avenue, sitting on the other other side of a low wall separating the desk that I share with Elizabeth, Stereophile’s managing editor, my friend and colleague.
You can see by the comment she left me that she began reading this blog backwards, from the top down. You’ll notice, if you haven’t already, that the earliest entries appear at the bottom of the page. I’m aware of the fact that this might prove confusing for some, as…
On this occasion, however, John had not come over to tell me to run. Rather, he had come to tell me where to go: “Good work, but I think you’ll have to steer more towards audio,” he suggested.
“I know,” I answered.
I feel very lucky to be working with and for John Atkinson. He has a special, quiet, and simple way of motivating, a special, quiet, and simple way of making you want to run.
And I hate running. Running, to me, has always meant trouble: I was late for school, or being chased, or running away from my father’s drunken screams and heavy hands.
“Did…
I was 22 years old, and had just made it back to New Jersey from a four-month trip traveling around the States aboard Amtrak trains.
Actually, the train-riding part of the trip only lasted a month. It was during the middle of November. If it hadn’t been for that hostel-slash-homeless shelter-slash-psychiatric ward I stayed at in Chicago, things might’ve been different. I might’ve gone all the way out to California. But that cold hostel broke my spirit, and I could go no further west. Instead, I traveled straight down the mighty Mississippi to New Orleans—poor, sweet…
I was 22 years old, and had no idea that high-end audio existed. No idea at all.
As a child, I knew—or I should say: I had the vague idea—that, as you got older, your speakers got bigger. A stereo was something you paid a good amount of money for and showed off to your house guests.
I remember my father’s brother bragging about the new Aiwa stereo system he had recently purchased. It was bigger than my father’s.
Soon, my father went out and bought a Kenwood. It was bigger than the Emerson we had before, and even a little bit bigger than my…
We’ve reached the end of the week.
Presently, I’m feeling overwhelmed by the possibilities. And I’m going to try to get around to them all. I have to remind myself that we have time for this thing to grow. It’s kind of like a marriage. We’ve got a lifetime. Maybe. I think some readers are already screaming for a divorce. You can keep the McMansion in Boca, DBailey; I’m taking the kids and the hi-fi.
I just received an e-mail from Todd. In it, he said: "If I had to do one of these everyday, I’d die."
Yes, I’m sure that I will die someday, brother, but not…
I just want to sit here and be alone and think of her and drink Brooklyn Lager and listen to music and feel the cool new autumn wind blow through my open window—as soft and as right as her hand pressing mine—and forgive me, please friends, forgive me, but I’m tired and I’m happy and is there anything so wrong with that really?
I received a voicemail from Eileen on Friday night, which said something like: "You missed my phone call again, and I’m here with Sean and Omar and Allison and Justin and Lauren and Scott and Cheryn, and we’re all waiting for you, and you’re lame."
It’s not that I don’t like all my married friends. These days, it’s hard to get me out on a Friday night; I’m so, so tired from the week and there’s usually nothing I want more than to just sit down. Not only that, but I’ve discovered that I have very little interest in going to the types of rock shows that I found so necessary all…