April 2024
Rega Research Limited is a name audiophiles know, especially vinyl lovers. They hold Rega’s turntables and tonearms in high esteem, but the company’s speakers, CD players, amplifiers, and other gear have also received glowing reviews. The company is known for both quality and value, and for products that embody elegant design and musicality.
Note: for the full suite of measurements from the SoundStage! Audio-Electronics Lab, click this link.
April 2024
Across the five-plus decades I’ve been discovering new artists—beginning auspiciously with the Beatles on Ed Sullivan—the breakthroughs have waxed and waned. While the mid-’60s remain the benchmark, thanks to the rise of electrified popular music in both Britain and the US, exciting young artists have continued to bloom, both singularly and in bunches.
March 2024
Craft Recordings / Contemporary Records / Acoustic Sounds Series CR00706
Format: LP
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
Jazz saxophonist Art Pepper’s recording and performing life was often interrupted by periods of incarceration for drug offences. Pepper was a heroin addict; he finished recording Smack Up in October 1960, and soon after was arrested for trying to score the drug. It was his third offense, so he was sentenced to 20 years at California’s notorious San Quentin prison. He would record one more session in November (Intensity, released in 1963) before starting his jail term. He was out within four years, but was in and out of prison for most of the ’60s for parole violations. He didn’t record again as a leader until 1975.
March 2024
Of the many figures in popular music whose careers flourished in the 1970s, Bob Marley’s appeal reaches into more cultures and continents than any other musician I can think of. His cultural appeal is also multifaceted. For many Western pop-music fans, he defines reggae music. Activists take inspiration from his songs about the struggles of people in the developing world. His advocacy for pan-Africanism, along with his messages about the plight of the victims of the African diaspora, have made him popular in Africa and in countries where people of African heritage have been relocated.
February 2024
On February 9, 1964, 60 years ago this month, The Beatles appeared for the first time on The Ed Sullivan Show. I remember the buzz that preceded the appearance because the older sisters of some of my friends were talking about it on the school bus. I was only seven, so whatever fuss the media were making about The Beatles didn’t get to my eyes or ears. My dad was working for a local radio station, but it didn’t play rock’n’roll and I don’t remember him or my mom talking about The Beatles.
February 2024
Craft Recordings CR00683
Format: LP
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
In 1953, the original release of Jazz at Massey Hall on Debut Records listed Charlie Parker as “Charlie Chan.” Knowledgeable jazz fans probably knew that Parker’s common-law wife, Beverly Berg, was known as Chan Parker. They also might have recognized that the alto player pictured on the left side of the album cover was Parker, although the photo does not show his face. Parker was with another label and Debut could not release the album with his name listed on the cover.
February 2024
Los Angeles real estate developer Paul Solomon was well established in the city when he began working on revitalizing a large office complex on Century Boulevard. The building is very close to Los Angeles International Airport, better known as LAX. Solomon decided to carve out an area in the 92,000 square feet available and put in a bar that would reflect his varied interests. “One of my passions is jazz,” Solomon notes on the website for the Sam First bar. “Another is architecture, another is photography. Those are my pictures all over the walls. As for the furniture, all the pieces that aren’t built-in are real vintage midcentury pieces, made by people like Herman Miller and Artemide.”
February 2024
After a slow start, typical winter weather finally arrived on the river south of Ottawa, Canada, sending me looking for some suitably restful music. Just as summer calls for songs related to open roads, surf, and sun, winter days demand ethereal sounds that carry me away.
January 2024
DBpm Records—DBPM 001-23-CD
Format: CD
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
Wilco has produced all of its own albums since its sixth release, Sky Blue Sky (2007), but for its 13th, Cousin, the Chicago-based band reached out to Welsh musician and producer Cate Le Bon. Earlier in 2023, Le Bon produced H. Hawkline’s Milk for Flowers, and she has also worked with Kurt Vile, Deerhunter, and many other musicians. Her own work often consists of highly experimental art-pop in which she leverages sound and studio effects to create unusual music that falls outside the mainstream.
January 2024
I’ve been reading high-end audio mags for more than 25 years and collecting vinyl for more than twice as long. About 15 years ago, I began noticing the already high prices of the very best audio gear creeping up. A few years later, I began to wonder if reviewers were equating higher cost with greater enjoyment, especially when prices began to go from already high to there’s no way I or anyone I know can afford this stuff.
December 2023
Rolling Stones Records / Geffen Records / Polydor 602458122565
Format: CD
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
When I heard the Rolling Stones were releasing a new album, just two years after Charlie Watts’s death, I was slightly underwhelmed and plenty cynical. Watts and Keith Richards had been the soul of the band—something Richards has stated often and emphatically. And I would have said that the last thing the world needed was another faded attempt at rock’n’roll by a group of old guys (and I’m speaking as another old guy).
December 2023
Every November, around Thanksgiving Day, I move my holiday music collection into the living room. It takes some effort, because I have to shift a couple of CD storage shelves down to the basement and bring my seasonal CD collection upstairs. Then I bring the holiday LPs up from the basement, and they displace the records I’ve been playing recently. I don’t know how much of my holiday music ends up hitting my turntable or CD player from late November through early January, but it takes up a good bit of living-room real estate.
December 2023
I recently visited a twentysomething relative who works as a lawyer in a large city. Like many young professionals, she lives in a compact one-bedroom apartment, sacrificing living space for the downtown location. She has a large-screen TV, a small desk, and little room for anything else. One thing she does have is a vintage turntable, but it isn’t hooked up. For music, she streams through a Sonos speaker.
November 2023
For a few years in the 1960s, the Byrds were a great American rock’n’roll band; maybe, the great American band. They popularized the 12-string electric guitar, sang in complex, indescribably beautiful harmonies, and did interpretations of Bob Dylan’s songs that even people who thought they didn’t like Dylan could love. The band’s first five albums stand easily beside the best music of the time, and members of the band wrote terrific songs with strong melodies that still sound fresh.
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