Seeing all the brand-new, but distressed-looking Relic Series instruments at Fender 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. 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 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.)
When I taught classes in 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, as well as representing the transference of class placement.
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.
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 violence 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.
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 some of 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 segments were on people and the relationship they had to their cars, and it caused an almost more vitriolic response from viewers. One episode featured a young married couple, with the guy totally nuts about Fiat. He had a sports car model, wore Fiat shirts, had racing gloves, kept it spotless, had Fiat posters in the home, and so on. And he always wanted the latest model Fiat that had a few more horsepower, better handling, and so on – and imparted greater status. When the camera turned to his long-suffering wife, who wasn’t allowed to drive the car and had to use a little wheeled cart to do the shopping even in the rain because the husband wasn’t going to allow a drop of water or dirt in his car – well, if looks were bullets, he’d be long gone.
The condescension between couples in both segments of the series was palpable. It was a demonstration of how couples would tolerate one partner’s hobby – or not. At one point the poor wife of the Fiat owner, living in a council estate, asked simply, “maybe we can just not buy a new Fiat, and get a car that she can use?” Her young husband sneeringly ignored her, and you could see the steam rising from her ears. I’ve always wondered if their marriage survived.
The point of all this is that the show reminded me that I didn't own a stereo to impress others – I owned 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 Advents (the white ones), a Nakamichi tape deck, and a Technics turntable. She is 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.
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 agriculture business, who had to suddenly leave the country. Still, I really couldn’t afford any of it and probably should have spent my money on other things. I was more of a hand-me-down Advent kid.
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 a 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.
So how was I able to afford that stereo system? Step into the world of unskilled, over-tired, work-study gallery assistants. I was one of them, and about to have a solo exhibition at CSU. While hanging my work, a student drilled through two of my prints, a few days before the opening. Since it was the State of California, every artist had to sign a contract and place value on their work. I 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. So, after the show, I filled out another form asking for what I’d listed as the value of the two damaged prints. Nothing happened for almost a year, until one day, a check showed up!
Instead of paying off my rent, tuition, books, things I should have paid for, I headed to the stereo store, where they were now desperate to sell those pretty English speakers and gorgeous all-manual turntable that no one else wanted, so they cut me an amazing deal. And I still have and use that gear today. Ironically, instead of showing it off to friends, I’ve kept it a bit under wraps, to avoid making it a potential target of theft. So much for elevating my class structure via equipment purchases.
I’ve long thought that the resistance to some of the better-sounding Chi-Fi components, like the Fosi Audio V3 mono power amplifier I’m testing, or Vera-Fi Audio's Vanguard Scout bookshelf speakers, 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. As I’ve stated in previous articles, I think we are truly living in a golden age of hi-fi, 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 level only dreamed about previously. Look at post-production. Compare some of Steven Wilson’s remastering and remixing projects, and I think they leave the original versions in the dust. The same goes for what Jamie Howarth’s Plangent Processes technology does for improving the sound of reel-to-reel tape. 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.
