Finger-Pointing

Street art, Silver City, New Mexico.

There’s a Kind of Hush

From Audio Classics in Vestal, New York, here’s a gorgeous, 16-pound Sherwood Electronic Labs S3000 III FM tube tuner from the early 1960s. Sherwood was founded in Chicago in 1953,...

Piper Payne – A Mastering Engineer For Next Gen...

After establishing her reputation as a mastering engineer in Oakland, California for artists like Third Eye Blind, The Go-Go’s, and LeAnn Rimes, Piper Payne merged her company with Infrasonic Mastering...

Richard X. Heyman: Still Going at 67,000 Miles ...

Richard X. Heyman has long had a habit of paying homage to his various influences while simultaneously carving out new and exciting paths ahead. In his earliest days in the...

What if Elvis Had Lived?

Let’s go back to August 1977. Elvis Presley’s records were not being played much on Top 40 radio. He released one single in the summer of 1977, “Way Down,” that...

Retail Therapy

I never trained as a psychologist. Instead, in my retail career I maintained an open mind, had probably more patience then than I do now, (but not that much less),...

Classical Music for a Desert Island, Part Three

Part One and Part Two of this series on desert island classical music albums appeared in Issue 172 and Issue 173. To recap: this list reflects my taste. Yours may be entirely different....

Pianist Sarah Cahill: The Future Is Female

Pianist Sarah Cahill has never been interested in the established musical canon. Her whole career, she has sought out composers to collaborate with, most notably Terry Riley and Lou Harrison....

Around the World In 80 Lathes, Part 24

J.I. began his overview of Danish-made Lyrec record cutting lathes in Issue 173. All Lyrec disk recording lathes, from the SV-2 to the SV-10, had similar features. They were all...

The Elusive Del-Vikings

You’d think the Del-Vikings would be pretty simple to research. The popular doo-wop group, formed in 1955, had a few hits over ten years. What could possibly be complicated? As...

Neighbors

Bukhara. It was the razor wire that really got my attention. The concrete paving of the back garden and installation of a 10-foot perimeter fence was bewildering, but the addition...

The New York Audio Show 2022, Part Two

Even though Manhattan is the center of the photography universe, amazingly, it’s never had its own major photography festival. Sure, there are events like PhotoPlus Expo, held each fall at...

Back to My Reel-to-Reel Roots, Part 25: Half-Fu...

Ken Kessler looks again at the availability of reel-to-reel hardware – and drools with envy  All it took were the words of a semi-troll/moron replying to an Instagram posting. Up...

Steven Page (Formerly of Barenaked Ladies): Soa...

Barenaked Ladies (BNL) is a Canadian rock band that helped define the 1990s. As a rock outfit they found a way to marry musicianship and humor in a manner that...

Wordless Expression

Tape vs. Vinyl: An Old Pawnshop Favorite

I just received my reel-to-reel tape copy of Jazz at the Pawnshop from AudioNautes Recordings last week. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this recording, who I suspect...

Pilgrimage to Sturgis, Part 32

The Bhagwan played his sitar for about 20 minutes. Most everyone left for home during that time. When he looked up, he seemed surprised to see that there were still eight...

The History of A&M Records, Part Eight: Hor...

In 1975, A&M Records established a subsidiary jazz label called Horizon Records. John Snyder (who had previously worked with producer Creed Taylor) was the label’s creative director, and left in...

The Golden Decade for Popular Music…The 1950s?

I belong to a music-listening group consisting of five people who get together once a month. Everyone gets a turn to be the host who provides the playlist, wine, and...

Unholy Racket