At 80 Charles Lloyd can musically pretty much do whatever the hell he wants, though he did likewise at age 30 in 1966 when he fronted a group featuring 21 year old Keith Jarrett, 24 year old Jack DeJohnette and at 31 the group’s “elder statesman” Cecil McBee, and produced the classic Forest Flower (Atlantic SD 1473), recorded live at the Monterey Jazz Festival.
Max Townshend's Rock Reference Master turntable (photo: Dan Meinwald).
The day was more unsettling than I'd imagined. Flying the evening of 9/11 to attend Hi-Fi News's 2002 Hi-Fi Show and AV Expo produced more relief than anxiety, though I did have a Rod Serling moment when my room at the Heathrow Le Meridien turned out to be 5911.
With more than 15,000 views on YouTube in two weeks, young record collector and audio enthusiast Malachi Liu's first visit to editor Michael Fremer's listening room clearly resonated with viewers. He's soon off with his family to Portland, Oregon but before leaving and after returning home from summer music camp, he paid a second visit.
I got into one of my snits this morning while reading the "Circuits" section of the New York Times. Michel Marriott was heralding the introduction of yet another portable music format, DataPlay. Each encased DataPlay disc, about the size of a quarter, can hold 500MB vs CD's 650MB. Prerecorded discs will sell for between $18 and $22, blanks for $5, and the first player-burner for $350! I yucked so hard that coffee got up my nose . . .
The Buffalo Springfield box set reissue fans have long awaited is finally here and it was well worth waiting for. Neil Young points out in the enclosed heavy paper full color "one sheet" that all five records were cut directly from the original master tapes, not tape copies. Each record has a Neil-created "SPARS code"
Last spring while in San Francisco to speak to the S.F. Audio Society, AnalogPlanet editor Michael Fremer had the opportunity to speak on camera with Siegfried Linkwitz, whose name will be familiar to many audio enthusiasts as the co-inventor of the Linkwitz-Riley crossover network.
Jonathan Carr (above) sat on the edge of an Ekornes Stressless chair, polishing the blades of my system's AC cords with an almost sexual fervor and intensity. Carr, the talented designer of the Lyra phono cartridges, was on a mission. First we played "You Turn Me On, I'm a Radio," from an original white-label pressing of Joni Mitchell's For the Roses (Asylum/Atlantic SD 5057). After the polishingalmost an hour's worthwe played it again. The difference was not subtle but enormousas if we'd changed an expensive component. The increase in clarity and focus and the diminution of grunge and hash were easily noticeable, as was the overall richer, warmer sound.
A friend of AnalogPlanet editor Michael Fremer texted a few weeks ago "There's a kid on WFMU who sounds like you! He's talking about vinyl and different pressings and mastering engineers". Fremer responded "cool". Then came another text: "He just name checked you!"