Copper

Hitting Bottom

Mark Malboeuf, alias badbeef, asked me to comment on a thread in the PS Audio forums about PS’ AN-series speakers in development, and as I thought about it, I realized I...

G. B. Sammartini

When Giovanni Battista Sammartini (c. 1700-1775) shows up in music history textbooks, it’s as inventor of the symphony. Or at least as the first to the use of the word...

Miraculously, Best Buy Lives

Industry News has written many times about brick and mortar consumer electronics stores that have crashed,burned, and disappeared: Radio Shack, hh gregg, Circuit City—even Toys ‘R’ Us, once the 22nd-largest seller of consumer electronics products...

Tubular Bells

When I was a wee lad, back in the U.K., my Dad would, on occasion, sit me down in the living room and place his yellow-spongey-ear-foam’d Sennheiser headphones on my...

"It's All About the Music"

When I encounter an audiophile or a show-exhibitor with a massive, megabuck system playing a tight playlist of only audiophile-approved tracks and they tell me, “it’s all about the music,”...

Dan Fogelberg

There was a time when Dan Fogelberg’s albums sold like crazy, but a lot of people made fun of his sappy sound [me, amongst them—sorry! —Ed.]. The fact is, he...

Sinai

The muezzin woke us up with the Adhan (The Muslim call to prayer). It was dawn in Jerusalem and we had spent the night in my favorite hotel, The American Colony...

Winds From the North

Oh Bernhard Henrik Crusell (1775–1838), where have you been all my life? I was a clarinet major for three semesters. I avidly collected recordings: Reginald Kell, Harold Wright, Richard Stoltzman,...

Rosanna

If you have spent even the briefest of times on the Interwebs in the past 6 months then you are fully aware of the rarefied place that Toto’s “Africa” has...

Sonos: Another Killer IPO?

For the last few years, investors have been somewhat cautious regarding new  IPOs (Initial Public Offerings of shares, as companies move from privately-held to publicly-traded). So far during 2018, however,...

In Search of Meaning, Where There Is None

First off, don’t look at the title and image above and think, “oh, great, Leebs is off on his midlife crisis—finally.” For starters, “midlife” applied to me would mean I...

A Conversation

Well, conversation might not be the word. I was going to write a bit about my bedroom system. But on Sunday I had an encounter so bizarre that I have to write...

The Ondine All-Stars

For the classical record industry, it’s gotten hard to tell whether these are the best of times or the worst of times. The CD revolution of the mid-1980s brought a...

Marianne Faithfull

In the 1960s, British storyteller-in-song Marianne Faithfull fascinated fans as much for her affair with Mick Jagger as for rather mystical voice and persona. As she heads toward her 72nd birthday, she can...

Toys 'R' Us Is Dead

Back in Copper #56, Industry News featured a Jeremiad of sorts, “Debt Is Death (Sometimes)”. One of the poster children for crippling debt mentioned in that piece was Toys ‘R’ Us.  While perhaps not a great...

Concerts

Unsurprisingly, music has played a central role in my life. Music can be emotional, erotic, transcendent, hypnotic and, in some cases, downright terrible. One. Many years ago while visiting Glasgow...

So You Wanna Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star

But first: No, I didn’t forget about Tommy Emmanuel. It just doesn’t warrant a full analysis except to say that, in the here and now, if I could play like...

So a Drummer Walks Into a Bar....

A little light summer diversion: -What is the difference between a drummer and a pepperoni pizza? A pepperoni pizza can feed a family of four.   -What do throw a...

Gut Punches and Heavenly Strains

A few years ago, my old Spica TC-50s finally came to the end of the line. John Bau’s brilliantly constructed wedges from New Mexico could have lasted a bit longer, but the tweeters were...

C.P.E. Bach Sonatas

Clavier-Sonaten für Kenner und Liebhaber (Keyboard Sonatas for Experts and Amateurs) is one of the most significant titles of any music book in history. This collection by J.S. Bach’s second surviving...

Salisbury Cathedral

Go Your Own Way

Feb 4th 1977 was the day that saw, amongst a BUNCH of other stuff I’m SURE, the release of Fleetwood Mac‘s 11th studio album Rumours. Little did anyone know that it was going...

Obsessed With Stereo

I think about my system too much. I mean, really too much. As I’ve written many times, it was stable for more than 20 years. That’s a really long while in anybody’s...

Bird Brains

Acclaimed British biographer Jenny Uglow has published a new study of Edward Lear, that eccentric Victorian whose playful verse has always delighted children, and the child in all of us. Lear was...

Part Deux

[Or: Another Mess O’ Messiaen—-Ed.] This column usually follows a fairly predictable path: first a few words about some music, then a brief clip illustrating the point. Today, let’s switch that...

Guitar Influences, Part 6: Jerry Garcia (an uni...

I was going to write about my new fave guitarist Tommy Emmanuel but, in light of the comments made by several readers (both pro & con) regarding Jerry Garcia in...

Queen, After the '70s

When they officially formed as Queen in 1973, the four skilled musicians in the band – Freddie Mercury (vocals, piano), Brian May (guitar), John Deacon (bass), and Roger Taylor (drums)...

Goodnight, Irene

I do enjoy a Single Malt scotch … the good stuff.  I mean the really good stuff.  The stuff that’s eye-wateringly expensive.  Consequently, even though I do have a selection of perhaps...

Command and Control

I have just read what is without hesitation the most … what is the correct expression here? … profoundly unsettling work of non-fiction that has ever passed through my hands.  It is...

RootMasterSound

By now, it’s no secret that THE Show a few weeks ago was a mild bust. Too many events scheduled for the same place at the same time, etc. I...