Master & Dynamic
Comfort cans that deliver mucho fidelity, warm, spacious tones, and a wicked commitment to badass designery. Mic moves closer to your face than regular cables. Optional input on EACH EAR. MUTE button on Right can. Detachable ear foam pads. Also: boom mic stands, EXTRA cables included, and earpads for sale all in one handy site. The kind of thoughtfulness that makes you wonder: isn’t this just how headphones were meant to be? They also make earphones.
Yuja Wang
If you get Janet Malcolm to profile Yuja Wang, complete with glossy photos, why not like to her playlists? The best quotes concern her admiration for the late Claudio Abbado:
“…Claudio is like intense listening. It makes you feel so scrutinizingly uncomfortable. And that place of uncomfortableness is exactly where you want to be every time you are onstage…”
Rudy Van Gelder 1924-2016
From a 1995 interview with Stephen Cerra. Gelder, that rare techie who sounds like a musician:
The biggest distorter is the LP itself. I’ve made thousands of LP masters. I used to make 17 a day, with two lathes going simultaneously, and I’m glad to see the LP go. As far as I’m concerned, good riddance. It was a constant battle to try to make that music sound the way it should. It was never any good. And if people don’t like what they hear in digital, they should blame the engineer who did it. Blame the mastering house. Blame the mixing engineer. That’s why some digital recordings sound terrible, and I’m not denying that they do, but don’t blame the medium.
Finally, I can shut down phonies who insist vinyl “sounds better.” I’ve got plenty of CDs that sound warm, cushiony, “broken in,” spacious, roomy, and downright earthy, and I started hearing a BIG different in the late 1990s when the remasters began hitting. Who listens to mp3s anymore? Only unsuspecting rubes, certainly not anybody with cans. And even so: wouldn’t you want to see Shakespeare on a fuzzy TV if you couldn’t attend the theatre? See also Richard Brody’s obituary in The New Yorker.
BOOKS LEFT OFF THIS SEMI-RESPECTABLE BILLBOARD LIST
(in no particular order…)
Dance With the Devil, Stanley Booth
Magic Circles, Devin McKinney
Buddy Holly, and One-Hit Wonders, Dave Laing
Woody Guthrie: A Life, Joe Klein
Stompin the Blues, Albert Murray
McCartney: A Life, Chris Salewicz
Lennon Remembers, John Lennon
Song and Dance Man, Michael Gray
Rock and Roll: An Unruly History, Robert Palmer
1966, Jon Savage
Aesthetics of Rock, Richard Meltzer
White Bicycles, Joe Boyd
Always Magic in the Air, Ken Emerson
Heart of Rock and Soul, Dave Marsh
BONUS CARTOON
