Robert Baird

Say what you want about eBay and their fees, which are no doubt passed on to the customers, but photos do not lie.

Playing the blues gets old fast. Since this most fundamental American popular music, stopped being the African-American party music of choice, and became a traditional music, celebrated as the precursor of rock'n'roll, blues players face a stark choice: change, or be content with playing small clubs and bars.

A lesser known but no less active music town is Northampton, Massachusetts.

It may now be more accurate to say that Brooklyn, New York is the record shopping capital of the world.

It's hard to fully illustrate using just sound, the scene of a now 60-year-old man jumping, growling and working the stage like a mad man.

It had been years since Stereophile's last San Francisco Hi-Fi Show, when we'd hired him as a solo act, and yet the conversation was once again instant vaudeville, and I was again the straight man.

"The last time we saw each other, I think I just shook your hand and handed you a check."

"What, you didn't bring a check this time?"

"So this is your 16th solo record?"

"Is that all? Bach was doing a cantata a week. How many songs did Schubert write?"

"But he didn't do the words."

For Grace Potter it seemed inevitable that the clock was going to strike Midnight.