Copper


Well-Played

Issue 118PARTING SHOT

Busker James Anthony Johnson playing a broken-in Martin. Taken on Congress Street, Austin, Texas.

Mirandized

Issue 118AUDIO ANTHROPOLOGY

It has the right to remain silent, but who’d want that? From Audio, January 1964.   Multiroom entertainment, 1956 style. From Electronics Made Easy.   Look at that finish. Try that with a brush...

Three Outstanding New Releases…and a Couple of ...

Issue 118TO BE DETERMINED

Jaga Jazzist – Pyramid Pyramid is the seventh studio album and first new release by the Norwegian eight-piece jazz-fusion group Jaga Jazzist in almost five years. It’s the long-awaited follow-up to 2015’s Starfire, and finds...

Often Snubbed, Punk Rock is Alive and Well!

Issue 118FEATURED

In the spring of 2018, an historic event took place in Newark, New Jersey: the Misfits, a local and legendary punk band that disbanded in 1983, reunited for a single area show...

Unusual Musical Collaborations and Cameos (Part...

Issue 118FEATURED

It often comes as a surprise to music fans when they hear that their favorite artists, in any category, are themselves fans of other musical genres. Even more surprising is...

Poet’s Love: Schumann’s Dichterliebe

Issue 118SOMETHING OLD / SOMETHING NEW

Completed in 1840, Robert Schumann’s song cycle Dichterliebe (Poet’s Love), Op. 48, sets 16 poems by Heinrich Heine for solo voice and piano. Today it is considered one of the great examples...

The Music Lesson

Issue 118MUSIC TO MY EARS

I have found a book written by one of the best bass players on the planet about how to study Music and Life. I capitalize Music and Life because Victor L....

The Long-Lost Record Label Concept, Part 2: Sel...

Issue 118REVOLUTIONS PER MINUTE

In Issue 117 J.I. talked about the origin of the term “record label,” and the evolution of record companies over the decades. Here, he has some additional and provocative perspective. – Ed....

Sonic Youth: No-Wave Wavemakers

Issue 118OFF THE CHARTS

They never had a Top 10 album, but Sonic Youth amassed legions of devoted fans during its nearly three decades together. That makes them an ideal subject for Off the...

(Going for) The Absolute Sound…for Less

Issue 118TWISTED SYSTEMS

Besides being the name of the legendary high-end audio magazine, the phrase and the magazine The Absolute Sound was created by the late Harry Pearson (founder of said magazine) in order to...

Symphonies and Social Movements

Issue 118TOO MUCH TCHAIKOVSKY

Even when artists write manifestos, they are (hopefully) aware that their exigent tone is borrowed, only echoing and mimicking the urgency of the activist’s protests. . . . The people...

A Visit to Audio Classics: Vintage Vibe, Modern...

Issue 118FRANKLY SPEAKING

Founded in 1979, Audio Classics, located in Vestal, New York, is one of the world’s foremost dealers of vintage, used and new audio equipment. They specialize in classic McIntosh components and are...

Peace Parade, the Protest, and J.C. Superstar

Issue 118TRUE-LIFE ROCK TALES

In Issue 117 Ken talked about his involvement with the LA and Broadway productions of Hair and how it led to the spinoff Peace Parade musical show…and romance. The story continues here in the years...

Rolling Stone’s Super Bowl Hail Mary Pass

Issue 118DEEP DIVE

All of this talk about the new NFL season has me thinking back to my days as the publisher of Rolling Stone magazine. Each summer the business and editorial sides would huddle...

Rumer: Nashville Tears

Issue 118FRANKLY SPEAKING

Rumer has one of the most beautiful and captivating voices I’ve ever heard, a sublime mix of purity and expression. Her 2010 debut album, Seasons of My Soul, went platinum in the...

The Music Lesson

Issue 118

I have found a book written by one of the best bass players on the planet about how to study Music and Life. I capitalize Music and Life because Victor...

Pat Quilter of QSC: Sound Reinforcement and Sol...

Issue 118THE COPPER INTERVIEW

Since Quilter Sound Company was founded in 1968 and incorporated as QSC Audio in 1973, QSC has grown to become one of the most recognized global names in sound reinforcement....

Issue 118

Issue 118Opening Salvo

I recently got a fortune cookie that said, “Music melts all the separate parts of our bodies together.” Whaaaat? I’ve read fortunes that were uplifting, meaningless, silly or even depressing, but never...

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How Products are Made, Part 2: The Design Process

Issue 117DEEP DIVE

In our first installment of this series we looked at the first step in getting a product to market: the initiation process. At this point the company has an idea of what...

Issue 117

Issue 117Opening Salvo

This was the hardest issue I’ve ever had to put together. Not because the writers were late on copy (quite the contrary), or things went awry in production – it...

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I Know What I Like, and I Like What I Know

Issue 117PARTING SHOT

So say Genesis in “I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe).” Taken at a fix-it shop in Dripping Springs, Texas.

Nothing Comes Close

Issue 117AUDIO ANTHROPOLOGY

You know, they might have been right. From Audio, November 1958.   Then again, maybe not! From Audio, February 1965.   Now that’s what we call home entertainment! From Electronics Made Easy, 1956.   Tracking at...

A Conversation with Sota Sound Inventions

Issue 117THE COPPER INTERVIEW

Sota Sound Inventions offers turntables ranging in price from the $1,250 Moonbeam IV (complete with tonearm) to the Statement Series Millennia Eclipse starting at $10,750. Sota was founded in 1980 by...

Two Classics Remastered, and Two Up-and-Coming ...

Issue 117TO BE DETERMINED

AC/DC – Back in Black (24/96 Edition) Early 1979, AC/DC was in the studio working on their sixth studio album Highway to Hell with legendary producer Eddie Kramer, who had been assigned to them...

Close Encounter of the Musical Kind

Issue 117SITTING IN

How great would it have been to drink coffee with Mozart, share a pint with Brahms, or take a shot of Stoli with Tchaikovsky?  Just to sit around and talk...

Bill Watrous: Eight Great Tracks

Issue 117TRADING EIGHTS

It’s easy to dismiss the trombone as a backing instrument that carries the middle and lower voices in arrangements. At its worst, it’s a sluggish, blatting elephant. At its best,...

Busking: All the World’s a Stage

Issue 117FEATURED

Did you hear the one about violinist Joshua Bell? During part of an experiment conducted by The Washington Post in 2007, the Grammy nominee and best-selling recording artist played his Stradivarius violin...

Ten Great Guitar Solos

Issue 117FEATURED

Full disclosure: I am not a musician – I play no instrument (I can whistle pretty well, though). I did play the drums (in high school and college), and I’ve...

The Long-Lost Record Label Concept – Part 1

Issue 117REVOLUTIONS PER MINUTE

The record label, that round paper label in the middle of each record, has existed in one form or another since records first became flat (some believe the Earth will...

About Faces! (and the Small Faces)

Issue 117OFF THE CHARTS

They were Mod until they turned psychedelic. They were Small Faces until they became just plain Faces, only to become Small Faces again. This London-based band, started in 1965, is...

Eight-Tracks: Taking the Plunge

Issue 117EUREKA MOMENTS

Eight years ago, The Village Voice ran an article on the opening of The Eight-Track Museum in Dallas – a destination open to the public and a celebration of everything associated with this...

The Golden Age of the Fab Four vs. the Fab Five

Issue 117TWISTED SYSTEMS

The Beatles vs. The Rolling Stones. And the winner is… Now that I have your attention, we are going to pretend to be Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, click our heels...

Of Tubes and Men

AND OTHER ILLNESSESAUDIOIssue 117MUSIC

I got new tubes! No, really! “Why is he telling me this?,” you wonder. It’s where I got them and what they are that’s not insignificant, although a couple of...

Beethoven and . . . Britten?

Issue 117TOO MUCH TCHAIKOVSKY

Remember Beethoven? Late in 2019 the classical-music world set out to celebrate a Beethoven Year, but then the pandemic got in the way. Has this become an odd moment to chat...

An Outgrowth of Hair

Issue 117TRUE-LIFE ROCK TALES

The first time I met performer Susan Morse was in the spring of 1969 at the Psychedelic Supermarket head shop on Las Palmas Blvd. We were looking at the cool...

John Grado of Grado Labs, Part Two

Issue 116THE COPPER INTERVIEW

In Part One (Issue 115), John Seetoo and John Grado talked about Grado’s reference vinyl discs, the “Grado sound,” the use of wood in headphones and cartridges, company founder Joseph Grado...

The Natural Horn: Recent Recordings

Issue 116SOMETHING OLD / SOMETHING NEW

French horn is a notoriously difficult instrument to play at a virtuosic level, but that’s nothing compared to the challenge of playing its predecessor, the natural horn. This instrument looks...

Travis Wammack – Memphis Royalty

Issue 116MUSIC TO MY EARS

We’re going to visit a guy today who is known to guitar players but not to the general public. Travis Wammack recorded his first record when he was 12 years...

Colored Vinyl: Eye Candy, But is It Ear Candy?

Issue 116REVOLUTIONS PER MINUTE

Records, from the age of shellac to the vinyl era, have traditionally been black. Artwork was typically confined to the small round paper label on the record itself and to...

Wanda Jackson: the Queen of Rockabilly

Issue 116OFF THE CHARTS

In the tiny town of Maude, Oklahoma, Wanda Jackson came into the world in 1937. Her dad bought her a guitar and took her to lots of western swing concerts...

Four Weddings and a Funeral

Issue 116MUSIC'AL NOTES

The bride and groom walked down the aisle to the wedding canopy while the whole orchestra played the wedding march. That is the whole Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. In the late...

Let the Good Sounds Roll

Issue 116EUREKA MOMENTS

When I was growing up having a real car stereo was almost as important as owning a solid home system, maybe more. The radios that came standard with most cars...

Images of the Past: On the Road with Nektar

Issue 116TRUE-LIFE ROCK TALES

Things work out, I’m happy, I have the job as road manager for Nektar, a British progressive rock band, as told in Issue 115. First concert is in Fort Wayne, Indiana....

Me and the Dead, Part Two

Issue 116TWISTED SYSTEMS

In response to reader jeffstarr who commented on my Dead article, “The Rocky Road to Unlimited Devotion” (Issue 114), he asked why I had to dislike the Dead just because I became...

Bananagun and Khruangbin Take on the World

Issue 116WAYNE'S WORDS

Bananagun: The True Story of Bananagun (Full Time Hobby) Khruangbin: Mordechai (Dead Oceans) Bananagun had me won over with their name, a readymade punch line for a mild risqué joke often attributed to the...

Talking with Carl Marchisotto of NOLA Loudspeakers

Issue 116FRANKLY SPEAKING

Carl Marchisotto is the president of Holbrook, NY-based Accent Speaker Technology, manufacturers of NOLA loudspeakers. Before then, Marilyn and Carl owned Acarian Systems, makers of Alon speakers, and Carl worked...

Audio Shows 101: What to Expect As A First-Timer

Issue 116FEATURED

A guide for newbies to make the most of the audio show experience. Since audio shows have been sidelined for the year, I felt it might be a good time...

What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been

Issue 116PARTING SHOT

"I call shotgun!" We can guess what's on that iPod: "Tears of a Clown," "Send in the Clowns," "Cathy's Clown," "Everybody Loves a Clown," "Death of a Clown" and a...