James Taylor: an American Standard
On iconic singer-songwriter James Taylor's 20th album, American Standard, the lanky crooner adapts the classic American songbook to his easy-rolling musical ways. The result is an American mixture of timeless songcraft.
Where some popular singers use the songbook canon to increase record and ticket sales, Taylor has no need to change himself or increase his audience. He's as comfortable as any man can be, having sold many millions of records the world over for almost 50 years.
Jared Sacks: DSD Present and Future
Some months back, SACD and DSD champion Jared Sacks, founder of Channel Classics, stopped by Casa Bellecci-Serinus in Oakland for an extended chat about the history of his label, recording in DSD, and his new NativeDSD.com download site. I started our conversation by asking Jared to share his history with music and the industry with Stereophile:
Jay Jay French: Twisted Business: Lessons from My Life in Rock'n'Roll
Jay Jay French has a book out, but it's not what you might think, or not exactly.
French earned fame in the 1980s as the lead guitarist for transvestite metal band Twisted Sister, which produced some of the most recognizableand widely licensedrock music in history: "We're Not Gonna Take It." "I Wanna Rock."
Jeff Tweedy: Wilco's Midwestern Yankee Embraces a Country Court
Jeff Tweedy is an artist who transcends time. Waitlet me clarify that. Tweedy, the multi-hyphenate singer, songwriter, guitarist, and co-producer for the midwestern-bred alt-rocking Americana band Wilco, has spent the bulk of his career creating music that crosses the divides between past, present, and future.
Jim Anderson: The Educated Ear
Tune those young ears, Mr. Anderson! After a 30-year career in audio engineering that's seen his name appear in the credits of over 1700 albums, Jim Anderson, who won the 2013 Grammy for Best Surround Sound Album, for his remastering of Patricia Barber's Modern Cool, thinks education is the key to stemming the tide of degraded sound that threatens to swallow the recorded-music industry. Anderson, who's taught for a decade in New York University's Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music, starts his students early.
Jim Fosgate: Of (Surround) Sound Mind
Jim Fosgate fits the category of Classic American Inventor to a T. This softspoken, quietly intense man has earned 18 patents and founded three successful electronics companies. In the late 1970s, he pulled out of the car audio business to follow his quadraphonic bliss, and designed the Fosgate Tate 101, arguably the finest quad decoder of the era. He also created the best-selling matrix surround processor of all time, Dolby's Pro Logic II, and in 2003 won an Emmy for the Development of Surround Sound for Television. He now serves as a senior executive consultant for Fosgate Audionics, a division of the Rockford Corporation.
Jim Thiel: A Coherent Source
There was something odd about the clock on Jim Thiel's office wall. I didn't get it at first, other than noting that instead of the minutes being marked off at 12 five-minute intervals, Jim's clock had 24 markings. That was it: as well as the number "12" in its usual place at the top of the face, there was another "12" at the bottom, where the "6" usually is. The clock that Jim built was typical of everything this laconic loudspeaker engineer is involved in: logical, functional, and different from what anyone else in the same field does. In his cigarette-strained drawl, Jim explained that the short hand of his clock always points toward the sun: directly up at noon, directly down at midnight. That's the way a clock should be, declared Jim, and when you're in his company, it's hard to see how he could be wrong.
Jim Winey: Maggies Man
The Pennsylvania Gazette documented an early connection between music and an American named Winey when, in 1759, it listed for sale as part of an estate "a middle sized organ, having eight stops." Interested parties were directed to one Jacob Winey, a Philadelphia merchant.
Joanna Newsom: Kingdom of the Harp
Talk dirty to me!
"I had to master this record 11 times to get it to sound the way I wanted," Joanna Newsom growled with the knowing grit of someone who's worked through a sonic ordeal.
"Instead of test pressings, we had test lacquers for this one."
"I have no way to listen to music digitally in my house."
Oooh, baby!
At a time when the future of print is troubled, Newsom can make even a magazine editor feel slightly more secure.
"I love your magazine. I love your publication."
Joe Harley: Both Sides Now
Recordings and playback gear are two different sides of the hi-fi coin, and while many people have made careers creating one or the other, far fewer have made significant contributions to both. Joe Harley is one of those few. A longtime principal with the influential high-end audio manufacturer AudioQuest, he also continues to expand the discography of highly regarded recordings he has produced or helped to remaster, of both new and historically significant music.