The Entry Level #19
It was unusually warm for early spring, without a cloud in the big, blue sky to tame the sun's dazzling lightfar too beautiful a day to be indoors, but Uncle Omar and I had already planned a little listening session, and I was determined to show him that high-end cables would make a difference in his system. I wasn't necessarily feeling bullish about the task, though. It had taken me a couple of years to convince Omar that he should replace his old boom-box speakers with something better, and it was only dumb luck that finally made it happen: I was with him when he found a gently used pair of B&W DM602 speakers at a junk shop in Jersey City. When they were new, the DM602s sold for around $600/pair, but on this happy day they were tagged at $50. "Do it," I begged him. "Doooooo it!"
The Entry Level #2
It's an early Sunday morning in Jersey City, and I'm sitting on the old orange couch, keeping myself warm with a cup of coffee, wondering which record to play next. The mellow fall sun is peeking through my white cotton curtains, casting happy shadows throughout my listening room.
The Entry Level #20
It was another flawlessly beautiful spring morning, and I was in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, to help John Atkinson pack up the Lansche Audio 5.1 loudspeakers ($41,000/pair). John had only just completed his listening and bench tests (see his review in the July issue), and was not ready to let go of the lovely Lanschesbut the speakers would be picked up by a trucking company that afternoon and sent to our cover photographer, Eric Swanson, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Each Lansche measures 40.9" tall by 10.1" W by 19.3" D and weighs 167.5 lbspacking them and securing them to a shipping pallet is definitely a two-man job. In our case, that job required a lot of wheezing, a little bleeding, and just the right amount of cursing. And because it was only 11am when we met, we were obliged to accomplish the task without the aid of beera crying shame, if you ask mebut we handled it in our usual, manly fashion.
The Entry Level #21
John Cage, Indeterminacy, C.F. Peters No.68142. Copyright 2009, by Henmar Press, Inc. Reprinted by agreement with Wesleyan University Press and the John Cage Trust.
When I began my junior year at Fairleigh Dickinson University, in Teaneck, New Jersey, I'd already fulfilled the main requirements for graduation, but still had a number of credits to put toward elective studies. The courses in yoga and bowling were already closed, so I devised an independent course in experimental music. Thinking about it now, it seems a strange miracle that the university allowed me to come up with such a thing. Fairleigh's music department had long been abandoned, forgotten, traded in for the money that comes with well-publicized investments in business, economics, and a fast-growing foreign-exchange program. To me, however, FDU's decision to neglect the arts was a blessing: There, in the quietest corridors of Weiner Library, was a world full of LPs, turntables, music journals, and moreall a bit dusty, perhaps, but nonetheless beautiful, and all seemingly reserved for me.The Entry Level #22
The Tannoy Mercury V1 loudspeakers ($320/pair; see last month's column) were already carefully packed in their box, pushed into a corner of my messy kitchen, ready to go to John Atkinson for a Follow-Upbut I couldn't stop thinking about them. Their delicate, graceful highs and tight, properly balanced bass had entranced me, and, now, as I listened over and over to a recent reissue of Bill Dixon's amazing Intents and Purposes (CD, International Phonograph LSP-3844), I felt a strange urge to unpack the Tannoys and return them to my listening room. I had to know how Intents and Purposes would sound through the Tannoys.
The Entry Level #23
It was around 7pm on Tuesday evening when I bumped into Nicole and Ms. Little on Newark Avenue, in downtown Jersey City. The girls were on their way to Kristen's shop, Kanibal Home, for their weekly book-club meeting. (Or was it Writing Club? Knitting? Screen printing? Butterfly pinning? I can never keep track.) I was on my way home, not to read, write, or listen to music, but . . .
"Hi, honey," Ms. Little said. "Going home to play with your cartridge?"
I made a face, nodded, sighed. Sensing some sharp-witted remark forming in Nicole's filthy mind, I beat her to the punch: "Yup, that's what I call it."
The Entry Level #24
There are two things that don't have to mean anything; one is music and the other is laughter.Immanuel Kant
We can dance until we die.Katy Perry
I'd always figured I'd wind up with a girl who loved the Mets, hated cats, and had grown up on Sonic Youth and the Pixiesa female version of me, more or less. What could be better?
Was my vision misguided? Maybe. Narcissistic? Probably. A symptom of low self-esteem?
Hmm . . .
The Entry Level #25
There I was, sitting on the orange couch, with just a few hours to kill before my scheduled departure to Denver, ColoradoI'd been invited to the eighth annual Rocky Mountain Audio Fest, where surely I'd be moved to tears by some of the greatest, most advanced, most expensive hi-fi systems known to manand I could not believe the awesome sound coming from my modest little stereo.
The Entry Level #26
I couldn't have known it at the time, but Swans' "Lunacy" (see last month's column) would be the very last song I'd ever enjoy in my cozy listening room. Last timeswhether with things, people, places, or, I suppose, especially with ideascan be difficult to accept, tending to overshadow all other times, their lingering memories leading to remorse and games of "what if."
The Entry Level #27
If there's an audio company that has it all, it's Jade Design, parent of Emotiva, Emotiva Pro, and Sherbourn. Before my visit to the company headquarters, in Franklin, Tennessee, I had invariably seen in the company's founder, Dan Laufman, a special kind of contentment, an ease, a happiness. Or was he merely arrogant? I couldn't be sure.