Boy, what a roller coaster of a year, huh? Ups, downs, some sideways, but we’ve made it. And the holidays are upon us, just like that! Bet you need some gift ideas, right?
Well, the staff of thousands at Wow and Flutter have the solution for you – come see us on December 18th from 12-4PM at Mill No. 5 at 250 Jackson Street in historic Lowell, MA for our final show of the year! We’ll be chock full of a constellation of LP and 45 goodness, and we’ve restocked the World-Famous $2 Fun Bins™ with some funky stuff for you to dig. After (or, before) you check us out, you can take in the amazing Mill No. 5 shops and get in your last-minute holiday shopping! Let’s goooooooooooooooooo!
Happy Record Store Day, everyone! I was lucky enough to get everything on my wishlist at Vinyl Destination today! Reviews will be up this week, but here’s a beeeaaauuutiful photo of my sweet, sweet vinyl haul
I’ve been a big fan of Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab‘s half-speed mastered releases since they opened everyone’s ears in the early 80’s as to how GREAT vinyl could sound (and, how crappy the major label pressings were.) They’ve been on a roll lately, tearing off a new bunch of Miles Davis discs, and they’ve started to dip into the Stevie Ray Vaughn catalog, remastering his first two classic discs.
[Mobile Fidelity]
For about three years now the company has been issuing select releases, at a higher price point, that have been pressed using the company’s “Ultradisc One-Step” (UD1S) pressing process. Single albums are spread over two discs, at 45RPM, leaving more room for the grooves and higher fidelity. They come in a fancy box and super heavy-duty packaging, with reproductions of the original artwork and liner notes. Recent releases have been pressed on the company’s “Supervinyl,” which is a new version of the really pure vinyl compound used in the company’s earlier JVC Japanese-pressed discs. Bottom line: this is the best sounding vinyl you’ll find – super silent where it’s supposed to be, and clear as a bell. They’re pricey ($125!) but well worth it.
The latest release is the landmark 1960 release by the Bill Evans Trio, Portrait In Jazz. This is one of my favorite jazz records, and it features the groundbreaking trio of Evans, Paul Motian on drums, and the transcendant bass playing of Scott LaFaro. Up until this time (if you can believe it) the full melodic potential of the bass had never really been explored the way that LaFaro did on this and the subsequent Trio releases. His solos here are just astonishing.Orrin Keepnews’ production is incredibly crisp and clear, one of the best engineered and “real” recordings you’ll hear. Of all the MoFi discs I’ve listened to, I’ve never been as blown away with the sound quality as I was with this release. It really does justice to the source material. These are limited releases (6000 in total) – if you already love this record, order one now before they’re gone.
I’ve loved the
Talking Heads from the(ir) very beginning.
Their entire career arc – until it came to a crashing halt with Naked – was one of joy, exploration, funk,
noise, and flat-out weirdness. It says
something about how the world has finally caught up with them, that when you do
your weekly shopping at Market Basket and hear “Take Me To The
River”, it just sounds like the jam that it is rather than the
eyeballs-open-oh-my-god-what-is-that-coming-out-of-the-speakers effect it had
on everyone in 1978. Although: when I
hear “I Zimbra” or “The Great Curve” in the Produce
section, THEN the world will have fully caught up.
Of course I’ve been
engaged in David Byrne’s post-Heads work, although given how musically
promiscuous he’s been over the past almost 30 years with solo work and
collaborations, it’s a bit of a task to keep up. I’ve liked selected singles of his like
“My
Fair Lady” (released in 2004 as part of a Wired magazine collection
produced under Creative Commons) and his track “Who” with St.
Vincent, what’s and of course his two collaborations with Brian Eno, especially
2008’s Everything That Happens Will Happen
Today.
[Nonesuch Records]
Nonesuch released
Byrne’s 2004 disc Grown Backwards on
March 15th on vinyl for the first time (hard to remember the “no
vinyl” days, I know.) The quality,
inside and out, is typical for Nonesuch’s recent vinyl re-releases (including
the spectacular 180g remaster of Nashville by Bill Frisell.) Although this is the lighter 140g vinyl, the
pressing quality is great, and Greg Calbi’s mastering is likewise.
Grown Backwards is, on the one hand, a typical
Byrne outing, running the gamut from songs like the opener “Glass Concrete
& Stone” (now one of my new favorites) to “Glad”, with its
Talking Heads-like cute/quirky/insightful lyrics (“I’m glad I’ve got skin,
I’m glad I’ve got eyes/I’m glad I got hips, I’m glad I’ve got thighs/I’m glad
I’m allowed to say the things I feel”)
The tunefulness of the original material is on par with the same year’s “My
Fair Lady.” And, strings! Lots of them.
So, the album’s a keeper just based on those.
What
really clinched the deal for me were the two songs lifted from the opera
canon. Yes. Opera.
Byrne’s voice has always been an almost-operatic
sweet tenor, just “off” enough in places to make to make it sound
more like a natural yawp, but the rest of the time quite sweet (rather like
one-time Talking Heads guitarist Adrian Belew (his voice is all-the-time
great.)) “Au fond du temple
saint”, from an 1863 Bizet opera, and Verdi’s “Un di felice,
eterea” are the standouts on this record.
“Au fond du temple saint” is a duet with Rufus Wainwright(!)
and is, hands down, the best track on this record. The twin voices complement each other – in
parts where Byrne’s seems to falter, Wainwright’s soars. And vice versa. There aren’t a lot of «««««-rated
tracks on my iPod, but: welcome to the club, “Au fond du temple
saint.”
The nice thing about
Sight Unseen records is that they often (not always!) surprise you. Grown
Backwards turned out to be a satisfying confirmation of David Byrne’s
creativity. Get yo’self a copy.
I was not always
such a voracious music consumer (shocking, I know.) Yeah, I’d always been immersed in the music
scene and had lots of bands that I loved, followed and went to see, and I DID
work in a record store for a couple of years.
But collecting? That was for those Goldmine nerds chasing a mint condition Beatles butcher
cover. Nope, I bought stuff to PLAY.
Then, this happened:
1000 songs!
Yes, the iPod. 1000 songs
in your pocket! For the first time I
could carry around all of the music I owned and listen to it, any time I
wanted. Problem was, I had way more
stuff on vinyl than I did on CD. So the
bulk of my collection (maybe less than 100 LPs) was essentially languishing on
its shelf.
So I got
working. If I know how to do anything,
it’s research stuff, so me and the Google figured out how to record LPs to WAV
files with my audio rig, split the tracks, convert them to MP3s, stuff them
into iTunes, then sync them to my iPod.
And for a good couple of months, I was on Cloud 9, walking around with
my shiny white iPod and my Koss PortaPros, shunning the radio.
After a while, that
little box got too small. So as soon as
iPods with bigger hard drives became available, I upgraded. And after a while longer, those pops and
clicks on some of my records weren’t so cute, so I found the magical Burwen
noise reduction units (hiss and pop-and-click) on eBay and put them in my tape
loop. And once those iPods got big
enough, I switched over the superior Apple Lossless format. And all those files needed a bigger house in
which to live, so I got them a nice NAS drive.
Which came in handy when I got a pair of Sonos speakers. Etc.
Now, I wasn’t afraid
of those garage sale finds anymore! But
there’s something about garage sale records: they’re generally, um, pretty
filthy. And people, some of those dirty records
are worth taking a chance on. I wasn’t
going to let a little dirt and dust keep me away from checking out those 50
cent treasures! So, the thing that
really turned me into a vinylvore was this little game changer, the Nitty
Gritty 1.5 vacuum record cleaner:
CLEAN CLEAN CLEAN those records.
This was the portal
to the Land Of Vinyl. Now everything was
in play (so to speak). If a record can
be cleaned (and it’s astonishing what a good cleaning will do), it’s playable,
and nothing is off-limits. You see
something cheap that’s interesting? (I’m
looking at you, old-ass John Renbourn album.)
Dollar bins? Yes please! And, it’s liberating. I’ve gotten into so much great music that I
would have otherwise have passed on because noisy=unplayable.
Like anyone
possessing superior musical taste, I saw High
Fidelity upon its 2000 release and thought immediately –
“You
get me.”
So much of the movie and Nick Hornby’s original book has wormed its way into my life since then. I’ll try to spare you in this blog from endless quotations of this titanic cinematic achievement – that will get old real fast. However: today I have to lead off this post with a quote from Barry, lecturing his customer on Echo and the Bunnymen: “The Killing Moon” EP – it’s almost impossible to find – especially on CD. Yet another cruel trick they played on all the dumbasses who got rid of their turntables.”
I am not one of
those dumbasses. I’ve been spinning
vinyl since before college. And while I
will admit a flirtation with other formats (I reliably “saved” many
of my LPs by dubbing them to cassette, then wearing those out in whatever car
or Walkman I was driving), and YES I BOUGHT A LOT OF CDs, the light on my
turntable never dimmed.
When I got to college, I was lucky enough to have, as my second roommate (and good friend) someone who knew folks (with employee discounts) at Acoustic Research in Canton, MA. AR made a suspended turntable that they sold for 99 bucks. WITH a cartridge. The thing with suspended turntables is that they’re WAY better isolated from the vibrations that would otherwise pollute your cartridge with low-frequency sludge and random footdrops. (the very expensive but wonderful Linn Sondek is the purest distillation of the AR concept.) I LOVED that cheapo AR – it was built like a tank and nothing short of picking the deck up and shaking it like a cocktail shaker could make that thing skip.
So when, a couple of years out of college, AR released a vastly improved (and much sexier) version of their turntable, I fastidiously put away my spare change to buy it, with the best arm (Linn Basik Plus) and cartridge (the classic Shure V-15 VMR) I could afford. I’ve had it ever since:
Yeah, we’ve been
through a lot together. I even tracked
down an old radio shop in Chicago a couple of years ago that sold me enough new
old stock replacement styli for my Shure to keep me pretty much set for life. But getting a dream “deck” is not
when my music consumption really spiked.
More on that in my next post on Thursday.
I am a massive fan of Courtney Barnett. She showed up on my radar NOT when her 2015
album Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit,
was released, but instead when she appeared on the 2016 finale of Saturday Night Live, performing “Nobody
Really Cares If You Don’t Go to the Party” and “Pedestrian at
Best.” Her performing style is
completely without artifice – she tears it up, but you always know she’s having
as much fun as you are. Her songs are
literate, funny and often moving, the best ones almost stream of consciousness,
like “Dead Fox”, and “Depreston”. “Elevator Operator” is firmly
planted in my long run playlist, and will never
leave my iPod.
Anyway. After
Sometimes I Sit And Think, I waited – like everyone else – for a
followup, and was more than “partially” rewarded the following year
with the album she did with Kurt Vile (yes folks, not just a clever nom de
plume) Lotta Sea Lice. The two had jammed together and decided to
record a collaborative album, which turned out to be greater than the sum of
its parts. These kinds of pair ups can
often be just the two artists dividing things up – five tracks for you, five
tracks for me – but these guys melded their styles so well you’d have been
forgiven for thinking that they were not bandmates of, say, twenty years or
so. Every track is charming, especially
Vile’s Over Everything.
Barnett returned
last year with her excellent Tell Me How You Really Feel, and recently it was Vile’s turn. Bottle It In treads the same turf as Sea Lice (n.b. that’s good!), but it’s a
little more electric in nature.
Supporting players like Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon add extra feel and
texture to the songs, and Vile unspools a filthy guitar solo on “Check
Baby” (containing the all-world lyric “rub my belly with a stick of
hot butter”.) You’ll like
this.
[A word about sound
quality: it’s excellent. I got the 180g
split-color vinyl pressing; Matador Records is definitely sourcing from a good
pressing plant, as my copy was clean and free from surface noise.]
When you’re
seriously into music, it’s easy to get obsessive about what you listen to it
on. Some people simply spend their money
on the best headphones they can afford, then connect it to their iPhone or
laptop, and stream their music. Or maybe
their system is a pair of great powered speakers like the Audioengine
A5s connected to a preamp-equipped turntable. Still, many music lovers build a good,
standalone, two-channel stereo with at least an integrated amplifier, a
turntable, probably a CD player to play
all those CDs you bought in the previous decade(s), and a pair of passive
loudspeakers. Then, you listen. And maybe one day you’re listening to your
latest find, and think: hey, I think my system should sound better. (this usually happens when you hear someone
else’s audio setup and you go, hmmmmmm.)
So you come into some money (tax refund, money from Granny) that’s
enough to cover a new pair of speakers, and you shop around for a
“better” pair. Or, you fry
your amp and replace it or upgrade to something with more/better power. Eventually, you get to a place where your
system really makes you go, “ahhhhhhh.”
Then,
one day, you’re walking around town and you wander into the sound room of an
audio store. Fool! There before you, someone is auditioning a
pair of speakers; AND they’re listening to a record that you know and love, and
so you draw closer. Your brain whispers
to you things like “I’ve never heard those fingers on the bass strings
before”, or “wow, this really
sounds like you’re in the front row.”
Excited, you look at the price tag of those beautiful speakers, and
after you get over your shock, you smile, and head back out to the street. But, you know what kind of great sound is possible (albeit with probably more dollars
than you have at your disposal.)
Really great and
reputable audio stores are in the business of selling you the best gear that
will work in your space, at a price that meets your budget. But they always have available
no-holds-barred “dream” components that, even if they’re way out of your budget, you just have to
hear. That was the case the other night
when I was in Chestertown, MD, a really fun little college town on the eastern
shore. I always visit The Listening Room when I’m there. It’s been in its current location for over
two years now, having moved from its original location in suburban
Baltimore. The owner, Mike, has done a
great job of renovating his building over that time, and it’s a welcoming,
no-pressure place to shop for gear and vinyl.
The front of the store houses a great
vinyl store, with reasonably priced new and very clean vintage vinyl, and the
audio stuff is in the back. Well worth a
visit if you’re visiting the Chesapeake Bay area!
I was there this
past weekend to see what a top-shelf system sounds like. Magnepan is a US maker of highly-regarded
planar speakers, and their rep was on hand to show off their top of the line
speakers, the 30.7s. It’s an imposing, four piece, four-way
speaker system (a “wall of sound” if there ever was one) that doesn’t
always make the rounds or is even available to listen to in stores – most of
the time you’ve got to visit their Minnesota factory to hear them. But Magnepan is on a tour right now showing
off the 30.7, so: good timing!
The magnificent Magnepan 30.7s
I was lucky enough
visit in the morning before the special event that night, and spend some a
little one-on-one time with the Magnepans and the incredible electronics
driving them: Oracle Delphi
MkVI turntable fitted with an SME Series 5 tonearm and Dynavector TKR
cartridge, a Rogue
Ares Magnum phono preamplifier, an Aurender A10 network music player,
Rogue RP-9 stereo
preamplifier and Rogue
Apollo Dark monoblock power amplifiers, and Straightwire
cables. The Listening Room has a lot of
great vinyl for testing, so I had to give the Mobile Fidelity Ultradisc
One-Step pressing of Bill Evans’ Sunday At The Village
Vanguard a try. This is a really
well-engineered and warm recording of Evans’ legendary trio playing at the
Vanguard in 1961, and the half-speed remastered MoFi version is peerless.
When
the stylus dropped on the first track, Gloria’s Step (Take 2), I felt like I
was actually at the Village Vanguard. (I
saw Bill Frisell play there a couple of years ago, so I know what the room
sounds like.) I picked this disc because
the great Orrin Keepnews recording is really sympathetic to all of the players,
especially bassist Scott LaFaro. Planar
speakers characteristically have a “boxless” sound, and these
Magnepans are the best examples of that sound.
These speakers reproduced LaFaro’s bass so well you would swear that you
were “in the room” in Greenwich Village. Next up was Analog Spark’s sparkling pressing
of Ella
Fitzgerald Sings The Cole Porter Songbook .
Although this is a mono recording, it’s really well-mic’d, and the
Magnepans reproduced Ella’s voice so well.
At the very
well-attended event in the evening, there were smiles all around as people took
turns listening to their favorite discs on the 30.7s. A fun event all around. If you ever get a chance to drop into a
listening session like this with dream gear, whether it be at your local audio
store or an event like Classic Album
Sundays, satisfy your aural curiosity and go!
I’m lucky enough to
have a dedicated listening room. After I
got married, my stereo bounced around to a bunch of different places, even
(horrors!) getting boxed up for a couple of years. Most of those rooms weren’t optimal – usually
a place where the TV was always on, hence little opportunity to really listen,
so it was off to the iPod. Which wasn’t
bad at all – certainly better than nothing, but not the same as having a space
where you could settle in and just LISTEN.
Then, about 15 years ago, we did the basement over so the kids (and
their friends, TBH) could have a place to hang.
Part of the plan included a room that was perfect for listening, where I
could put my speakers exactly where they should be, and LOTS of wall space for
vinyl. And yeah, you could crank it up
without any complaints from everyone else.
Recently, though, I
had a chance to do the same thing upstairs in a room off the kitchen. My kids are out of the house, and it became
more convenient – and nicer – to walk down the hall rather than down to my
underground lair. Basically. This room was a blank slate – it wasn’t as
private as my old listening room downstairs, but I was able to turn it into a
comfortable place that could double as my home office as well as a music
room. However, as part of the deal with
my wife, the bulk of my vinyl collection had to remain downstairs 🙁 but all of
my vinyl has been digitized to my NAS drive, I can access that over my Sonos.
🙂
The whole experience
has been a revival of my yearly back-to-college ritual – pack up the stereo at
the end of the summer, set it up in the dorm room, get everything where you
want it to be, tweak things here and there.
There’s that sense of newness, the promise of an amazing year, and the
social bonding around music (parties, late night listening) that never gets
old. The vinyl revival taps into those
very human feelings, which is why it’s lasted longer than the most jaded
techies thought it would. It’s easy to
just call up a Spotify playlist and listen, and that (still) is an amazing
feat, but the ritual of putting on an LP, or even a CD, and sitting down to
listen is something that, once experienced, never leaves you. Now, please excuse me as I slip into
something more comfortable…
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