Idea

Idea


  • Rock Chronicles, Part 1 โ€” Joe Cocker, with a little help from his friends

    In 1966, a gruff-voiced blues singer was looking to put a band together that might finally propel his straggling career to the next level. Joe Cockerโ€”born John Robert Cocker in 1944โ€” lived on Tasker Road in the English city of Sheffield. As early as 1960, at the age of sixteen, Cocker was already well under…

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  • “No, I have the best system in the world!” #2: The Personal Triumph of Audio Perfection

    I know, the best system in the world is in the ear of the beholder. So howโ€™s this: What I have is a system thatโ€™s best-ish, in that it has tamed the upgrade beast in me and made me very happy.

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  • Beatles Let It Be Reissueโ€”how good is this album, really?

    The Beatles will never be irrelevant. Ask any question about John, Paul, George, and Ringo and youโ€™ll instantly have six people who wanna know the answer, six who think itโ€™s absurd to even have to ask, and six more who think they have a much better question. Itโ€™s a never-ending cyclone that has insinuated itself…

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  • A Tribute to the First Lady of Love, Donna Summer (1948-2012), Queen of Disco, Pt 1

    Back in 1967, Aretha Franklin won theย respectย of the public and press, not to mention her musical peers, who crowned her Queen of Soul or Lady Soul. As disco began to supplant soul in the mid-seventies, two women each sought to become successor to Arethaโ€™s throne: glorious Gloria Gaynor and diva-esque Donna Summer. The former got…

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  • Booker T. & The M.G.โ€™s: a Tribute to the Beatles

    A 12-year-old kid is at a local Woolworthโ€™s store on Ashland Avenue on the South Side of Chicago. Itโ€™s the early โ€˜70s, and heโ€™s spending his few allowance dollars on cheap โ€œcut-outโ€ vinyl albums, shelved at the front end of the checkout counter, neatly tiered, four rows high and ten albums deep. That twelve-year-old was…

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  • Groovinโ€™ with Booker T. & the M.G.โ€™sโ€”beginning of an homage

    I was born in the โ€˜60s, a decade when records and radio waves were in perfect sync. You could hear every kind of music, at any time of day or night; all you had to do was cruise up and down the AM dial. We had a station in Chicagoโ€”WVONโ€”that played great urban music. My…

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  • Irreconcilable Differences?

    How did music become science? Or an ugly and personal battle royale over what speaker measurements mean? Or a mud-slinging political brawl over whether some gear writers are on the take? These are questions that Iโ€™ve pondered many times over during my years as a music editor in the sometimes blood sport universe of high-end…

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  • Uncensored secrets of my audio feet fetish

    Iโ€™ve been pursuing good sound quality for decades. Along the journey, I learned about various elements that make up a good audio system. And one important lesson I learned is this: Sometimes, those small, seemingly less important elements turn out to be game changers. In an audio system, we pay most of our attention to…

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  • Nearfield listening โ€” what you hear may surprise you

    If youโ€™ve ever had the chance to spend time in a large recording studio, the sort of venue too expensive to put on a credit card, your eyes were probably first drawn to the mixing console, wide enough that it might take five engineers to operate. Next, you no doubt noticed the main speakers, those…

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  • A Word with Twisted Sisterโ€™s Fearless Jay Jay French

    โ€œ I just saw Bob Dylanโ€™s show and it was the worst $@#% Iโ€™ve ever heard in my life.โ€ โ€” Jay Jay French โ€œI just saw Bob Dylanโ€™s show and it was the worst $@#% Iโ€™ve ever heard in my life. Iโ€™m saying this from a loving perspective.โ€ Thus began my interview with Jay Jay…

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  • My Audio Revelation

    Iโ€™ve always loved listening to music on a sound system, even going as far back as when all I had access to was my parentsโ€™ outdated, low-fi stereo system. It was in my collegeโ€™s music library, where I worked, that I was introduced to quality sound, although at the time I had no idea what…

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