Have you guys seen those
Vincent Audio ads? (See page 128 of the April issue, or page 130 of the March issue or, even better, page 183 of the January issue.) I love them all.
I want to meet the girl. I would talk to her like I was Johnny Gill. Don't tell me your name, honey. Just put on this red dress and slip on these high heels. And sit down on this faux leather couch and hold this plastic martini glass. Sit back and get all cozy right here next to this tube amplifier. Yes, that's good. No, wait—let me put this fake Stratocaster around your neck. Yeah, that's right. Gorgeous, gorgeous! No, don't smile! Don't even look up. Yeah, that's it.
Classy.
I'm just messing around. Seriously, though, I love the ads. I feel like I've seen them before. In some past life, ensconced in my psyche through genetic memory or something, like how I just know that the first movement of Mahler's Second Symphony is detailing a funeral. I just know it. Everything comes back, like Levi's or Chuck Taylors or double-blind testing. We'll always talk about the same old things—the weather, politics, pornography. I look forward to these ads with each issue. And I mean no disrespect to the model or to the company—she looks lovely, really, and so do many of the products—but I hope that the photographer and the model were laughing during the photo shoots. There's just something gloriously cheesy about it all. How seriously can you take these ads?
You would never think—would you?—that people would be cancelling their subscriptions over these ads. But they are. Oh yes, they are. In 2008, people are cancelling their subscriptions to
Stereophile magazine because of some attention-grabbing advertisements.
Pornography!, they shout.
Trash!, they cry.
Not in my house!
Who are these people? No, don't tell me. I don't want to know.
People are also hollering about the
Upscale Audio ads. Maybe there's something wrong with me—maybe I should be working at
Playboy or
FHM—but I happen to love these ads, too.
Class, please open your April issues to page 160, and see if you can point out the pornography. Anybody?
No, it's not the tubes. Good try. No, it's not the Musical Fidelity Supercharger, but you're getting closer! No, it's not the word "Steelhead." Give up? Can't find the pornography?
People are cancelling their subscriptions because Upscale Audio's Kevin Deal is, apparently, dressed in drag. Funny thing about that, though: He's
not dressed in drag.
He's dressed as Elvis! Maybe the people who are offended by these ads also have something against rock and roll. I wouldn't be surprised.
Anyhow. I don't know if this is true for other niche hobbies or pastimes or pursuits—whatever you want to call this—but it certainly seems true of high end hi-fi: The things that are controversial today were controversial twenty, thirty, forty years ago. Today, in 2008, we are offended by the same things that we were offended by in the very beginning, back when J. Gordon Holt was wearing Chuck Taylors and smoking cigars. We fight for the same things. We are separated by the same things.
Why is this? I have no idea. I suppose it
needs to be this way. I suppose
we need to be this way.
