Seeing all the brand-new, but distressed-looking Relic instruments at Fender and on the show floor at NAMM 2024 (see my articles in Issues 210, 209 and 208) reminded me of the perhaps touchy notions of class, status, and their wicked country cousin, insecurity. A book that has affected me in a profound way is Understanding Toscanini by Joseph Horowitz, published in 1994. It clarified class distinctions for me in a way that few books had. I had thought I understood classical music, but I didn’t. For one, the impact of Jews on classical music in America had largely escaped me. Horowitz’s clear-headed examination of Toscanini, the importance of RCA Records, and the realities of “high culture” vs “mid” and “low culture” in classical music were enlightening.
A brand new Fender Super Heavy Relic Series Stratocaster, available for purchase at Sweetwater.com. From the Sweetwater.com website.
The other book with a major influence on me is Class: Style and Status in the USA by Paul Fussell, who quickly became one of my favorite authors. This 1983 book examines the idea of the “selling” of class. How best to sell the public on wide-body jets with hundreds of passengers, endless boarding times and far more people stuck together than ever before? Easy, sell the advertising pitch that this was a “good” thing, when everyone knows that having real status is being able to fly on a private jet with a handful of passengers and always-attentive passenger service. This of course ties in with the idea that by virtue of an expensive purchase, you are now part of the class above yours. Tired of being middle class? Fly first class, buy an expensive stereo or ludicrously-priced watch, or purchase a crazily-priced camera.
Both books helped me to understand the ideas of culture, money, status, and the appropriation of the idea of class. They have also helped me to spot when the assumptions go wrong, admittedly often in a snarky, ironic sort of way. An example of this is the use of gold-plated connectors on audio cables and gear. I like them, and found they have less tendency towards corrosion then lower-priced connectors, but I also realized that a tiny bit of gold flashing really didn’t mean anything about the other qualities of the gear – including sound quality. In fact, there are other plating materials that others consider superior. But still, gold sells. For a while, a sure sign of both bad taste and aspirations to class level-leaping were pointless gold-plated grilles on cars, as if a few cents worth of gold plating made the car any more valuable. I suppose someone might be impressed, but I’m not sure who. Still, there are parts of the world where the Western standard of natural-looking dentistry is rejected in favor of bright shiny dental work, letting the world you have arrived I suppose.
When I taught classes on the history of photography, the idea of the portrait as something that only the wealthy could obtain by commissioning a painter was one of the things that propelled photography as an art form. Suddenly, even the poorest person could have a portrait done, just like the rich folks did. Those inexpensive tintypes were an affirmation of the sitter’s humanity, but also served as an inexpensive assault on the transference of class placement. One of the things that former RCA head David Sarnoff so brilliantly achieved was the migration of classical music, something that was mainly the province of the upper class, which became suddenly available to everyone else through Sarnoff providing free radios throughout the country. The promotional efforts of Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony Orchestra certainly didn’t hurt either. In effect, Sarnoff moved classical music from “high-culture” to mid or even low-culture. Now any schlub with a radio could listen to what was formerly the province of the wealthy cognoscenti.
This kind of cultural shift is fascinating. The first time I saw porn was as a little kid, in Orange, California. One day some kids were in the alley in back of the supermarket a block from our house. I was in elementary school and all these kids were looking a black leather book with grainy black and white photos in it. It was shocking to me of course. I’d never seen that much body hair, and the rest of it I couldn’t actually figure out. Step ahead 40 years, and in our local Clipper Magazine was a full-page ad for a chain of adult stores, right next to discount coupons for a neighborhood pizzeria. In the middle, a lovely headshot photograph of an adult film star. Something that formerly existed in the low-culture shadows had become acceptable. These cultural shifts are constantly changing, and our assumptions don’t always keep up. To my mother, even cleavage on an awards show elicits a derisive snort, so for her that cultural shift never occurred.
Something so terrible that it was a crime to produce, distribute, and even own, truly low-culture, somehow shifted to mid-culture, or for some folks it’s their idea of high-culture. The same goes for music. Pop music was never intended to be any more than faddish, quick-lived, hopefully-charting music that made money. The idea of deluxe boxed sets 50 years later was unthinkable. It was low-culture, kids’ music. Now of course that music is being played on systems that can eclipse half a million dollars. Does that mean the music is has shifted in its cultural level? You might get different answers from an opera devotee, jazz enthusiast, or symphonic lover.
Audiophiles, whether joyfully pilloried by Mad magazine or seen as the latest hipster trend are also subject to this shift. Just think of the term “Yacht Rock,” music for the wealthy to enjoy on their luxury-lifestyle vessels. Hence the photos I submitted to Frank Doris showing signs that warned that no Pink Floyd, Steely Dan, or Eagles were allowed in certain rooms at audio shows. Of course it’s all in good fun, but one of the reasons that young people avoid audio shows is that the music they listen to is almost never played. When I wrote about the New York Audio Show in Issue 175, I mentioned that Frankie Schramm Jr., who accompanied me, was grooving to the tunes in one of his favorite rooms, Pure Audio Project. After hearing “U.G.K.,” a track from Lucki/F1lthy, from their album “Wake Up Lucki,” Frankie declared this was one of his favorite systems. But most importantly, they welcomed his choice of music, happy to move away from the usual often-played fare.
In 1992 a colleague, the filmmaker Nicholas Barker, created a brilliant series for BBC Television called Signs of the Times: A Portrait of the Nation’s Tastes that dealt with class and status divisions as expressed through belongings, decorating, and other attributes. Martin Parr created photos for an accompanying book of the same name. It’s considered a prototype of the reality TV shows that have become so prevalent, but I never agreed with that assessment; it’s really an entirely serious yet ironic series of documentaries.
Signs of the Times by Martin Parr and Nicholas Barker, book cover.
The first segments featured a series of interviews on how people decorated their homes. Reportedly, after it was shown on the BBC, there was a huge increase in domestic disturbance calls. We’re talking serious fights, the kind the police are called in for, as the series unleashed a lot of inner rage among couples, with one person in the relationship usually domineering and the other slowly seething about the things in their homes, and the decorating choices they represented, along with their financial implications.
Part of the success was down to Barker’s direction. The camera lingered, perfectly still, on the items in the house, way past where it was comfortable to viewers. Parr’s own photography is often an uncomfortable linger, so the series was shot in the same style. I still remember a woman talking about her love of rabbits, while the camera spends a long time focused on a bunny doll, bunny toilet paper, bunny embroidered towels, bunny napkins, pillows, ad infinitum, while her husband seethed and challenged her to find one thing or spot in the house without a bunny of some sort. Hilarious but you can feel his pain. Grrrrr! That clip evidently never made it into the series.
Another memorable episode featured a well-known designer, who created a house that was a spotless, soulless, showroom clean example of minimalism with no soft edges. The architecture is modern and distinctive, all glass and light, standing out from surrounding homes. While they interview the couple on their couch, he mentions, condescendingly, that he doesn’t like it when others disturb the home it’s carefully thought out design, while his wife lovingly describes a room with curtains, and that it’s important they have knickknacks around that their children made, that it sends an important message that they care and notice their creations, which to him is just unnecessary clutter. Her diplomacy under resentment is amazing.
Signs of the Times examined perceptions of what was good taste and bad taste in British homes. Interestingly, the series was inspired in part by hi-fi. Barker realized that his apartment had beautiful chrome and glass décor, that was centered around his set of attractive, black stereo components, all proudly displayed. Whereas for his father and his friends, their generation, all they really cared about in terms of interior design was a comfy lounge chair, a good TV, a refrigerator with beer, and a remote control so they could easily watch the game. His father didn't care about anything else in the house; the rest was up to his wife. He had absolutely no interest in decorating. Why the enormous gap between him and his father, Barker wondered? That generational disconnect is what led Barker to the idea for the TV series.
Barker’s follow-up series From A to B: Tales of Modern Motoring in 1993, a couple of years later in 1993, still working with Martin Parr, focused on people and the relationship they had to their cars. Similarly, it also caused an almost equally vitriolic response from viewers mirroring the reaction to the first series. The gender politics of male vs. female drivers plays a role, from both partners and automobile dealers, all adding to this almost dangerous mix. For the women, owning their own car is both about independence and freedom to do as they please, free from other’s rules.
One episode featured a young married couple, evidently tight on money, with the husband obsessed about his Renault turbo sports car that he kept spotless. He wore a Renault racing shirt, and because of the cost of the car, his wife had to wait five years to do an extension on their home. This long-suffering wife had to use a little wheeled cart to do the shopping even in the rain because her husband wasn’t going to allow a drop of water or dirt in his car or park near other cars in the lot. The wife noted, “if I got my way I would get rid of it tomorrow and just have a basic car, but there’s no way while we’re still married, he will not get rid of this car, ever.” If looks could kill, I’m sure her husband would been found impaled by a Renault stick shift. I’ve always wondered if their marriage survived.
Another couple argues about his beloved Citroen 2CV which she feels reminds him of his free and easy college and hippie days, and that she admits to being jealous of, and hating at the same time because of how much time and energy he devotes to it. I wonder how many audiophiles might have had similar conversations? Neil Young told me that the problem with Blu-ray (including his groundbreaking Archives set) was the equipment, that women didn’t like having all that gear, and thus he launched the ill-fated Pono music player as a response.
The point of all this is that those films reminded me that I didn't own a stereo to impress others – I bought it to listen to music. My wife isn’t very interested in the gear, although she has a lovely system with a NAD receiver from the ’80s, my old Advent speakers (the white ones), a Nakamichi tape deck, and a Technics turntable. She’s aware that the only reason for the gear was to listen to music. It certainly wasn’t something she was interested in as objects per se, or as status symbols. Nancy did take my advice on what to buy, and there is a pretty good probability that David Solomon of Qobuz fame sold her the gear as she was living in Atlanta at the time she bought it! It’s a great sounding system and still works fine to this day, with only a re-foaming of the woofer surrounds on the Advents. She was certainly proud of this wonderful little system, attuned to the understated and Bauhaus-inspired design of the NAD receiver. She was in graduate school for art history at the time, and knew more about minimalism then I did. Once it was working it was meant to be used, not stared at. Our friend’s wife used to say, “Mikey loves his record player,” irking the petulant young audiophile to no end. “It’s a turntable!” he’d shout, and, “it’s not a needle, it’s a stylus!” She knew this of course, but for her it didn’t matter; the system played records, hence, his record player.
Our editor thinks owning this vintage gold Audible Illusions Modulus 3 preamplifier gives him a touch of class. If only!
In college, the women I met didn’t care about your stereo equipment. What they did care about was your tastes in music, and how many cool albums you had. Friends used to joke that inviting someone to listen to your stereo was the equivalent of inviting them over to view your etchings. (You youngsters might not get the joke.) My male friends were impressed by my gear at the time: a G.A.S. Thalia II preamp, Hafler DH-200 amplifier, Luxman PD-272 turntable, and B&W DM2 Series II speakers. If you are wondering how a broke college kid ended up with great gear, it’s simple. The local audio shop in Eureka, California had ordered the system for a customer in the, umm, agriculture business, who had to suddenly leave the country for a few years, and the system was sitting in the shop with no customers. Still, I really couldn’t afford any of it and probably should have spent my money on other things, like tuition and rent. I was more of a hand-me-down Advent kid, the pair of which I traded a photo shoot for in high school. The Thalia II pre-amp came from the bankruptcy liquidation sale when GAS went out of business and was like $100 or so, new at their Northridge factory, which Nancy picked up for me on a winter break from school.
Pride of ownership is an issue which is inherently complicated for me. I once owned a BMW 2002, which I loved and worked on, and I knew that owning it was sort of “class-proof.” Which is to say that this was a vehicle known as an enthusiast’s car that would be equally “at home” at a country estate, as well as a being parked in some poor car lover’s driveway. It conveyed pride of ownership, and of course, and I’d be dishonest if I didn’t acknowledge that it made me feel pretty cool. Although its lack of air conditioning when I moved to Palm Springs, well…that wasn’t so special. Still, what I loved was that gorgeous four-cylinder engine, silky-smooth transmission, and understated styling. And it had a sunroof, so hey. I really did love the engineering more than anything else.
Even in college, I learned how differently you were treated by virtue of something as supercilious as a car. When having a Mercedes was the hot thing in L.A., I’d always be impressed, until I realized that as I visited friends in beat-up two bedroom apartments, their driveways were full of leased Mercedes. As Jackie Mason used to joke, in Beverly Hills, everyone’s a producer, but all they ever produced were business cards.
So how was I able to afford that stereo system? Step into the world of unskilled, over-tired, work-study gallery assistants. I was about to have my first solo exhibition at Humboldt State University. While hanging my work, a student worker drilled through two of my prints a few days before the opening. So, I pulled an all-nighter in the darkroom, reprinted and remounted them, and hustled the new prints to the gallery just in time for the opening. Since it was the State of California, every artist had to sign a contract and place value on their work. I arrogantly figured that since Ansel Adams was getting fifteen hundred to two grand for a print at the time, I was worth a grand, (which I obviously wasn’t). A hundred bucks maybe. After the show, I filled out another form asking for what I’d listed as the value of the two damaged prints, and poof, totally forgot about it. Nothing happened for almost a year, until one day, a check showed up, and since I’d spaced out about it, I had no idea what it was for.
Instead of paying off my rent, tuition, books and other things I should have paid for as a responsible young student, Nancy and I headed to the stereo store, where they were now desperate to sell the unclaimed system with the B&W speakers and all the rest, so they cut me an amazing deal. I still have and use that gear today. Ironically, instead of showing it off to friends after I got it, I tended to keep it a bit under wraps, to avoid making it a potential target of theft. So much for elevating my class structure via equipment purchases. (Nancy liked it, so there’s that. Although she still tells me to stop bugging her about the gear, unless she needs some sleep.)
I’ve long thought that the resistance to some of the better-sounding Chi-Fi components, like the Fosi V3 amplifier I’m testing, or the newly-released super-affordable Vera-Fi Audio Vanguard Scout bookshelf speakers and Caldera 10-inch subwoofer, is due more to wanting to show off what is perceived as status-symbol gear to others, as opposed to considering the actual quality of the audio reproduction of less-expensive audio equipment. Think about the astonishingly good amplifiers from Orchard Audio, small, unobtrusive, but quality gear from Leo Ayzenshtat. The same is true of Boris Meltsner’s products at Amped America. While they are priced much higher than Chi-Fi, both companies offer quiet understated products, with no need to hire an out-of-work NFL linebacker to lift your amp. The Vanguard Scout, despite its low price is beautifully made, real rosewood veneer cabinets, a lovely attention to detail. Like Steve Jobs, I don’t have patience for sloppy design or execution, but that’s more about reaching our potential and pushing, then impressing others. A thing of beauty is still a thing of beauty, and hopefully form follows function.
I still have both a passionate love of all things gorgeously made, and a suspicion of them. Part of that suspicion has to do with branding – do you pay more for a “name” brand? – and, do you really need such things as casework machined from solid aluminum? A study found the sales of generic (boxes with blue lettering on them) food was higher in higher-income areas than low-income areas, such was the need to people to essentially validate the enormous sums spent on advertising and marketing, vs. the folks who knew the advertising game and would rather their bucks went to more frivolous pursuits, like buying a British car with Lucas electrics and trying to start it in the rain.
On the other hand, as I’ve stated in previous articles, I think we are truly living in a golden age of music and hi-fi, quality control, technology, musical instruments, and so much more. Not to mention talent. Recording quality has never been better, and engineers, producers, and manufacturers can now record audio at a resolution and accuracy only dreamed about previously. Compare some of Steven Wilson’s remastering and remixing projects, and I think they leave the original releases in the dust. The same goes for what Jamie Howarth’s Plangent Processes technology does for improving the sound of analog reel-to-reel tape and cassettes. Just listen to the 2024 reissue of Bruce Springsteen’s Thunder Road and then a pre- Plangent version. It now sounds the way that Springsteen always expected it to sound, no more machine induced wow and flutter waver for that opening piano.. Heck, cue up Qobuz, find a favorite track with your streaming DAC, sit back and relax, or get up and dance, and realize it’s a great time to be alive.
The Vera-Fi Audio Vanguard Scout speakers have been getting highly positive reviews...at $299 per pair.
Header image courtesy of Pixabay.com/Nike_Noor.
