Copper
“When Did THEY Do THIS To US?”
The other day I had the opportunity to meet with a local journalist who anchors one of the local TV morning news programs. He had been trying to upgrade the...
The 50 Best Albums of 2018
For me, 2018 was a blur, and seemed to pass faster than any other year before. Was it the politics? Was it work? Friends and Family? No idea. In all...
Joni Mitchell
In 1943, Alberta, Canada released a musical wood sprite into the world who came to be known as Joni Mitchell. A polio survivor whose damaged fingers made her get creative...
Fairchild, Part 1
I truly enjoy the research involved in these pieces, refreshing faded memories, absorbing facts overlooked or misunderstood in my youth, and especially—ending up somewhere completely unexpected. That’s how I came...
Berlin Stories
KaDeWe “How can you stand to be here after all that happened to your family?” Her name was Anna and she lived in East Berlin. I met her at the...
You Know It Ain’t Easy, Part 1
Montreal, 1969 Over the last year or so, I have run across 2 people with incredible stories about how they planned ways to meet John & Yoko, and managed to actually...
The Volume Of A Pizza
Numbers, and the mathematics that describe them, can help you with many interesting things, including the volume of a pizza. There are some wonderful surprises hidden in plain old numbers....
2018 Was Really Something
Over more decades in audio than I care to dwell upon, I’ve attended concerts and demos that assaulted not just my ears but my intellect and my emotional stability. Somehow...
The Revenge of The White Album
By now, you know whether The White Album re-issue is for you. I’m happy to go on record, so to speak, as saying that most of these Fabs reissues aren’t...
Telling the Story
Every picture tells a story. That’s utterly true, regardless of Rod Stewart. And if every picture can speak, so can all the music ever made. It’s always useful to remind...
Tom Fine: New Mercury Living Presence Analog Re...
[Tom Fine is a second-generation audio engineer, specializing in mastering and analog-to-digital transfers. The son of audiophile pioneers C. Robert and Wilma Cozart Fine, he grew up steeped in music...
Gibson to Close Memphis Factory
Regular readers of Copper, and especially of Industry News, have no doubt noticed that Ye Increasingly-Olde Editor has an obsessive streak big enough to be seen from space. I credit this to three things: growing up...
Val and Ed…and Amy
How would you react if you were suddenly face-to-face with one of your idols? I hope you’d be more prepared than I was on that day in 1984. I remember...
François Couperin
The Year of Couperin is drawing to a close. What, you haven’t celebrated François Couperin’s 350th birthday yet? There’s still time, and I’ve even got a playlist of new recordings for...
Christmas and Us
When I was a kid, on Christmas Eve I heard my parents taking presents from an unused room next to the bedroom I shared with my younger brother. The full...
Killing In The Name
At this point, you might be forgiven for thinking that I am picking bands for my piece JUST to piss off our Editor. Nothing could be further from the truth, it just...
The Police
For some reason, The Police are best known today for two particularly creepy songs: “Don’t Stand So Close to Me,” in which ex-teacher Sting references Nabokov’s Lolita while describing a female student’s...
50 Ways to Read a Record Part 9
In Copper #73 we discussed an interesting but purely theoretical method of scanning phonograph records with a laser. We’re about to look at a real-world product—more or less— which plays records using a...
Trade Shows
Politics. “Roy, I need you to be on your best behavior,” said my friend Tony who worked for Epos Acoustics, an English loudspeaker company. “I’m going to bring Margaret Beckett...
Keith Richards Will Still Be Here When You Are ...
This article is about preservation. No one exemplifies this more than the legendary Rolling Stones guitarist, Keith Richards. Oh, sure, his survival despite years of damage from drug and alcohol...
Beethoven’s Last Christmas
In 1825 and 1826, Ludwig van Beethoven was nearing the end of his life. He had fallen ill, was bedridden for over a month, and clearly felt his end was...
All I Want For Christmas…
…is Peace. And no, I don’t even mean the large-scale, unobtainable kind of peace involved in the World Order. I just mean, can we kindly for once remember that the whole deal...
Messiah
On Sunday, December 9th, my family and I went to Los Angeles’s Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, to hear the Dream Orchestra and the Opera Chorus of Los Angeles doing...
Stocking Stuffers 2018
It’s that time of year again; maybe you’re still in need of a few things. And so I’m offering this simple phrase (no, sorry!) uh, these can’t-miss gift suggestions, a mix of the...
5400 Hours of Fun, Part 3
[We previously featured Ken Fritz’s amazing speaker and listening room project in Copper #72 and #73. We’ll wrap up now with some of the details. I hope you’ll find this inspirational— although I doubt...
Happy Holidays!
Welcome to Copper #74, the second of three December issues, and one of our biggest issues ever. We hope that those who celebrate it had a pleasant Hanukkah, and wish a very...
Who Knows Where the Time Goes?
Welcome to Copper #73! While the saying, "days drag, years fly by" is annoying---it does seem to be true. Welcome to December: notable for three issues of Copper! ...and, oh, some holidays. For...
50 Ways to Read a Record Part 8
In earlier installments of this series, we’ve focused upon the various types of phono cartridges—pickup cartridges, if you prefer. Though wildly different in their internal construction, all these cartridges have...
A Tale of Two Bankruptcies
Not all bankruptcies are alike. The two forms generally seen in business are Chapter 7 and Chapter 11; the “chapter” part refers to the section of the Federal Bankruptcy Code...
50 Ways to Read a Record Part 7
We’ve looked at a variety of methods of making music—or at least generating a signal— from a record groove. We’ve seen phono cartridges that use coils and magnets, all kinds...
5400 Hours of Fun
[Ken Fritz has abilities and ambition that put most of us to shame. Ken decided to build his own speakers—and the listening room for them. As you’ll see, he did...
5400 Hours of Fun, Part 2
[Ken Fritz has abilities and ambition that put most of us to shame. Ken decided to build his own speakers—and the listening room for them. As you’ll see, he did...
Tom Fine: New Mercury Living Presence Analog Re...
[Tom Fine is a second-generation audio engineer, specializing in mastering and analog-to-digital transfers. The son of audiophile pioneers C. Robert and Wilma Cozart Fine, he grew up steeped in music...
Monster and Sonos: Back in the News
Some companies seem to have a hard time staying out of the news: think Gibson, Sears, and Monster Products—which most of us still think of as Monster Cable. We last looked at the bumpy ride of...
Early Music in the Bay Area: Sackbuts and Crumh...
It’s well-known for its fog, iconic bridge, wineries, redwood forests, and cable cars. It’s also known to early music enthusiasts as a world-class early music research center, for being home...
Bessie Smith Part 2
I am always interested in transitory events whether they be political, biographical, or musical. The emergence of the blues as first a song form and eventually an art form is...
Stand Back
January 29th is not JUST my Mum’s birthday, it’s also the day, in 1983, that Stevie Nicks and then husband Kim Anderson were making their way up the PCH to...
Heart
I am awake. Not a slow-opening-of-my-eyes awake. More a slap-in-the-face awake. My eyes open wide and I see the nurse standing over me. A few days before this, I had...
Food, Wine, and Advice
One. When I moved to Manhattan in the mid-seventies things were not expensive, but I was almost always penniless. My wife, a student at Parsons School of Design, worked part-time...
Dylan, The Beatles, Mick Jagger, The Fugs, and ...
If I titled this story “The Strange Life & Times of Richard Alderson,” chances are: a) My readers wouldn’t be too excited b) You probably wouldn’t read past the title,...
Information
6: “What do you want?” 2: “Information.” 6: “You won’t get it.” 2: “By hook or by crook, we will.” 6: “Who are you?” 2: “The new number 2. You...
Immaterial Science
Back in Copper #66, I wrote a Cynic column entitled “Nothing New Under the Sun?“—and judging from the comments on that article, my point was either unclear, elusive, or misunderstood. I’m about to comment...
Silence Isn’t Silent, Redux
Let me tell you about Bernie Leadon. Bernie came to some notice in the late ’60s, as a member, first, of Dillard & Clark, and then of The Flying Burrito Brothers. And...