The Hi-Fi Den

My musical journey this weekend will be Pulse by Pink Floyd. For me, the high point of this two DVD set is disk two, which is the complete Dark Side of the Moon performed live. And since the wife's still out of town, expect the volume to be set at front row live levels.

Yeah, Baby!

Its with a tinge of sadness I write this next selection of what I am listening to. Rush's Moving Pictures from 1981 such an amazing album. Hard to believe it was their 8th studio album. January 7th Neill Peart the drummer and lyricist for the band died of a brain tumour. I broke out the Rush albums and a flood of memories came back to me. I left Ireland as a kid and we moved to Canada, nothing was more Canadian than Rush. Such a brilliant and sometimes critically overlooked band whose fans were rabid in their love of the music. You basically couldn't live in Canada if you did not love Rush. The skill of these musicians was a sight to behold. In university I attended The Presto Tour. Without a shadow of a doubt the loudest concert I had ever attended. They were monsters onstage. Ripping the air apart with music so loud you felt as if your head would explode. My friend who had been to Rush before had basically heavy machine sound deadening headphones on. I should have taken that as a sign. I thought he was nuts until the music began. That night lying in bed I could still hear the band, my ears were ringing. I am sure that took the top end of my hearing away that concert I am lucky I am not deaf. After that I remembered to take ear plugs to Rush concerts. Neill Peart the drummer was the main lyricist and his words are complex, closed, then open. A searcher a story played out in music you can basically chart the words social economic turmoil in Rush songs. Prescient to the control of people through media, loss of freedom. Corporate greed. Listen to Big money, Tom Sawyer, or subdivisions you will understand.

Moving pictures is the beginning of Neill painting the dystopian future a future sadly we are now living. Tom Sawyer "No, his mind is not for rent to any God or Government. Always hopeful but discontent" tell me who has not felt this way. I basically live my life hopeful but discontent and No, my mind is not for rent. I rail against the stupidity of modern reality based TV spoon fed morons.

Red Barchetta a story of a post internal combustion engine society where a young man goes to his uncles farm to race his Ferrari down the roads to be chased by air cars. Laughing because he feels alive and free. The amount of rules we comply with now its a wonder to me. Is anyone actually free anymore.

YYZ one of the best live instrumentals you will ever see and sadly you will never see it again. I lament the loss of Neill the fading of our youth. Neill wrote we are immortal only for a short time. Is this not the truth.

This is a brilliant album I suggest you all pick up if you don't already have it. For a more darkly chaotic album listen to Grace Under Pressure written during the height of the Reagan era. Cold war lyrics abound but these lyrics written in 1983 are so perceptive from the song with such an appropriate name "Distant Early Warning"

"Left and rights of passage
Black and whites of youth
Who can face the knowledge
That the truth is not the truth?
Obsolete
Absolute"

Do we not live in a post truth world now? where people just make shit up and Facebook injects it into news streams until you cannot tell truth from fiction. In the time of writing those lyrics, you could lie but not share it around the world at the speed of light. How slimy fucks now find other same minded people on the internet and the minority acts like the majority just because they shout louder and post more hate and lies. Folks Facebook and the like is the enemy as they do not police the lies and hate. Because unrest and bullshit is profitable.

So getting down off my soap box good music should illuminate and make you think. Make you want to be free, make you want to think for yourself and avoid group speak. Yeah what a fantastic album and band. I have spent the last few days playing a marathon of Rush. My eyes are wide open.

Let the words of Tom Sawyer roll through you. We salute you Neill Peart where ever you are.......

Tom Sawyer - Lyrics Neill Peart Music - Rush

A modern-day warrior
Mean mean stride
Today’s Tom Sawyer
Mean mean pride

Though his mind is not for rent
Don’t put him down as arrogant
His reserve, a quiet defense
Riding out the day’s events –
The river

What you say about his company
Is what you say about society
-Catch the mist – Catch the myth
-Catch the mystery – Catch the drift

The world is the world is
Love and life are deep
Maybe as his skies are wide

Today’s Tom Sawyer
He gets high on you
And the space he invades
He gets by on you

No, his mind is not for rent
To any god or government.
Always hopeful, yet discontent
He knows changes aren’t permanent –
But change is

What you say about his company
Is what you say about society
-Catch the witness – Catch the wit
-Catch the spirit – Catch the spit

The world is the world is
Love and life are deep
Maybe as his eyes are wide

Exit the warrior
Today’s Tom Sawyer
He gets high on you
And the energy you trade
He gets right on to
The friction of the day

MN100



Moon Records is a Canadian record publishing company established in 1973 after Rush and their SRO management company run by Ray Danniels were unable to find a record label interested in signing them. Moon Records served as an outlet for the band's first single, "Not Fade Away", and self-titled debut album Rush. Moon was distributed by London Records of Canada.[1]

I was working with London Records Canada when this album first came out. However, Neill Peart was not on the first album. It was a great band but unfortunately, the initial album didn't sell that well. However, it created enough interest from Mercury records in Chicago and from there it was nowhere to go but up.

Good bunch of guys. Ironically Geddy Lee was in town signing autographs of his new book at the local Costco stores a few months ago.

Best regards

Art

Thats for the Info Art. I know you were in the music biz so any other shares on bands would be very much appreciated.

Today I get back into posting about the vinyl I am listening too. Today I have Lenny Kravitz 5 spinning on the deck. So much going on here from slow funk beat songs to full blown drum driven rock. For a slow jam "If you can't say no" is sublime. The choppy guitar the slow snare drum in the background. The jangle of the rhythm guitar is so hypnotic. Supersoulfighter very anthem with a dose of funk and great drums and guitar. Lenny has a 70's super group vibe going on with his music. You cannot really feel down listening to his album. On 180g vinyl it has a fat meaty bottom end you don't get on streams or CD. Vinyl is very full sonic range. Its analog so get a more direct from tape feel to it. Even when its a full digital recording they are capturing the full spectrum before the compression needed for streams and CD are applied. A properly setup turntable and clean records (This is a must. I do wet clean for zero dust playing).

Fabulous album its a rainy Sunday here I am in my home office with Blue the doggo asleep in his bed under my desk while I put in a few hours on a project I am doing.

Fly Away has rolled up next which is a really nicely paced rocker.

Slap this on your turntable and let her play. I have said this before vinyl is more interactive and thoughtful. You have to select a album clean the record put it on, once its on you listen all the way through you are not going to sit and move the stylus to the next song thats just nonsense. So you listen to everything and discover songs you missed as you skipped past on streams or had music set to shuffle.

I find vinyl very conducive to high quality focused work in my office. Use the music as a soundtrack. I select for the mood I am in and I like the break 23 mins in to flip the album. You can time your work bursts to this. Mind games for high performance focus.

Audiophile Records

When I was a kid growing up vinyl was vinyl that was it. Mass produced along with cassettes of mid level quality. My brother and I had saved our coins for a very nice stereo. We had a basically top of the mid range rig. I had all the toys the vinyl cleaners the stylus brushes the upgraded cartridges. I got some HiFi mags and I read them and looked for what I could afford.

Your standard vinyl when cleaned and played on a good system sounded nice. Audiophile 180g vinyl was rare and expensive. I remember getting a 180g Blue vinyl Moody Blues live at Albert Hall. And the difference in sound was crazy. That album cost me $29 at the time when your average record was $5-8 so it wasn't like I was going to be buying a lot of Audiophile grade records.

Fast forward to today and the world of vinyl has changed. Believe it or not vinyl is the ONLY growth area in music sales. And to feed that market we now have some new variants of Audiophile. Keep in mind none of this tech is new its just now widely available.

45RPM Albums

Seamus you say 45's are 7 inch singles. Well now we have 45 RPM albums. A album that would have shipped on one record is now shipped as a double album mastered at 45rpm. The theory is on a 45rpm record you can fit more data which is the highs and lows cut into the grooves. So far I have Alan Parsons "I Robot" and Miles Davis "Porgy and Bess" and they do sound very good to me. I also have the 331/3 versions so I can compare. The sound is fuller but not full enough over a 180G 331\3 to justify the cost. I paid $49.99 a piece for those. So for now I will sticking to 331/3.

Half Speed Mastered

Half speed mastering is an art form and here is where you get a huge difference in sound quality. Vinyl records are only as good as the masters that are used to create them. If you cut a better master of course the resulting vinyl will have a more precise grooving cut.

There is art to this and then sorcery. The sorcery comes in understanding the physics of a spinning record. How the inside grooves rotate slower than the outside and how you have to compensate for this is the mix. With half speed mastering you are cutting the master more precisely at a slower speed.

There is even cutting the grooves from the inside out to compensate for the tendency of vinyl to have poorer sounding inner tracks. All of this wizardry goes into high quality masters. Now my first experience with this was buying Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield on 180g and the sound was sonically full and the highs were bright the bass was deep and solid and the sonic recreation was as good as its going to get. The only sound better is I also have the same album on a half track reel to reel now this is the top end of audiophile and I don't have a lot of this yet. But as I rediscover my love of vinyl I am also rediscovering cassettes and reel to reel.

So why such a fascination in vinyl again. The sound is better than streaming sonically its fuller than CD. Now sound is very subjective. I may be sitting there swearing I can hear the top end in a Monk record and my friend may say you are nuts but it all depends on how you cared for your ears. People lose their hearing its a fact. I took care of my ears I never listen to music with in ear buds as you are not moving the air like a speaker or over the ear headphones you are vibrating the small space between the tympanic membrane and the ear bud. Prolonged use of those and boom your hearing degrades. I always used ear protection in my garage when operating any tools.

So protect your ears. So my quest now is to replace my whole older collection of records with new audiophile versions and yes they are worth the money if you have a good stereo system. If you do not have a good turntable with a good cartridge and matched pre-amp, amp combo then stick to normal vinyl as you will not reap the rewards.

I will do a post on equipement soon. Any questions or thoughts please post them as I know we have lots of audio experts in the club.

How to Collect Records

Record clubs folks its that easy. Yes I am scouring ebay and the like but I am a bit of a snob and am now almost exclusively collecting 180g vinyl. Even 200g vinyl. Before Covid I would frequent a couple of local record stores and I snapped up a lot of albums I used to have. But I also joined record clubs. So news flash for me new 180g vinyl sounds better. I look for half speed mastering first and any mix that came off the original tapes through an analog rig. Lots of early mixes were hybrid of digital mix converted for vinyl. Now you have pure analog mixes and they better in my opinion but people also say nah, you can't hear the difference you snob.

So before Covid hit I had signed up to a local vinyl club. They have their own record plant to they are not only creating the masters they are taking the original tape masters and mixing them for the best possible vinyl experience.

Each month I get a curated choice from three genres. So I look and say yes I want that Jazz album, or that pop or that Irish local bands. And they throw in a sampler of new artists plus a test cut of one of the other artists this is a surprise. Its €33 a month and I get three albums plus artwork or lyric sheets, turntable mats etc.

I liked that one so much I joined three other vinyl clubs. So each month I have 9-12 albums coming in plus I buy off a site called Back to Black that sells a full catalog of 180G albums. Short batch releases and special coloured vinyl sets. Plus every artist now has vinyl releases. I just got three new limited edition albums straight from the artist.

I like the curated sites where someone is selecting the albums and you can sign up for the surprise me. I have had lots of cool finds this way and some albums I was nah.... thats not staying. These I have successfully traded with friends so vinyl trading is also a part of this hobby.

I have so many fond memories of spending the whole afternoon in record stores. Picking albums based on what was playing. When I was in university I would frequent a store that was run by a record nut. And all the workers were super knowledgeable. Much like John Cusack's place in High Fidelity. Got so many great albums and introductions to artists I did not know.

I like the slower pace of Vinyl. Place a record on and listen to the whole album. Yes I play as background when working but I also have vinyl nights. Instead of TV I sit and dedicate a few hours to listening. I go for the whole experience sitting enjoying the music. Focusing to hear everything a good album can present to you. Slow down time where the stress falls away. Its very meditative.

Viny Clubs

Loves Vinyl (Dublin Vinyl Club)
Back to Black (Online vinyl store)
The Record Hub (Online store)
The Retro (Vinyl club that sends you three used albums per month)
The Sound of Vinyl (Online store)
Gearbox Records (Vinyl Club)
Experience Vinyl (Vinyl Club)
Vinyl Me Please (Online magazine and store)
The Abbey Road (yes that Abbey Road Studio they have online store of half speed mastered albums)
Super Deluxe Edition (Online store)

I add more here as I go. I have lots more but have run out of time to finish. Be back later.

New Vinyl

Space asked what vinyl I got my dirty mitts on lately and here is some of the new vinyl. Anything vintage will have a V next to it

Everything listed is 180G Audiophile releases anything half mastered will have HM beside it. 45RPM LP will have 45LP

Beachboys Pet Sounds - The album that inspired the Beatles
Aretha Franklin - I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You
Charles Mingus - Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus
Justin Hayward - Songwriter (V)
Mike Pinder - The Promise (V)
Miles Davis - Kind of Blue
Miles Davis - Porgy and Bess (45LP)
Cranberries - Everybody Else is Doing it, So Why Can't We
Eagles - Hotel California - I traded this for Cream Disraeli Gears
Chet Baker - Live In Paris, 1960-63 - Live In Nice, 1975
Dave Brubeck - Take Five 2017 Compilation
Rory Gallagher - Deuce
Rory Gallagher - Live in Europe
Jeff Wayne - War of the Worlds
Moody Blues - Days of Future Past
Moody Blues - In search of the Lost Chord
Moody Blues - On the threshold of a Dream
Moody Blues - To Our Childrens, Childrens Children
Moody Blues - A Question of Balance
Moody Blues - Every Good Boy Deserves Favour
Moody Blues - Seventh Sojourn
Moody Blues - Octave
Moody Blues - Long Distance Voyager
Nina Simone - Pastel Blues
John Lee Hooker - Boom Boom
Prince - Sign of the Times
John Coltrane - Giant Steps
John Coltrane Quartet - Crescent
The Doors - Soft Parade
Hannah Georgas - All That Emotion
Kathleen Edwards - Total Freedom
Van Morrison - Moondance
Nick Cave and the bad seeds - Ghosteen
Duke Ellington and John Coltrane -  Duke Ellington and John Coltrane
R.E.M - Outa Time
R.E.M - Monster
R.E.M - Automatic for the People
Thin Lizzy - Jail Break
10 CC - How Dare You (V)
Marillion - Script for a Jesters tear
Marillion - Fugazi
Marillion - Misplaced Childhood
Marillion - Clutching at Straws
Eno - Another Green World (HM)

There is lots more but I am tired of typing will add as I go. If you want to know more about any album let me know.

NICE! I've decided to live vicariously through you for the next week.

No Probs Space I got about 500 Albums now so its gonna take a while to post LOL

You have inspired me to do some listing, Boss. Stay tuned.
Jeff

Jeff, thats great news I need to see suggestions of what I should be hunting.

You can also throw in reviews of your faves if you have time.

This is a great article on half speed mastering at Abbey Road. I have stuff from this guy. Its top end sound.

https://www.whathifi.com/features/holy-grail-vinyl-art-half-speed-mastering

Pretty happy just got the new anthology album of The Style Council.



Long Hot Summers tells the story of the band. Led by Paul Weller who some coined the Modfather for his confident song writing and incredibly catchy riffs. I always enjoyed Wellers ability to hide biting social commentary within a catchy upbeat three minute pop song. The pinnacle of that being the Jam's Town Called Malice. Fast upbeat tempo masking the dark commentary of Britain at the time. Record unemployment, Thatcher who took the hatchet to the common worker. Weller stood as a acerbic spokesman for the youth of the day. I remember these albums coming out in 1983. Backed by a collapsing Communist regime the social upheaval the rise of MTV and a whole different way of making music.

This compilation covers the whole catalog of The Style Council and their carefully coiffed look that acted as a stealth cover to deliver a payload of clever lyrics that while incredibly dark contain hopeful themes that are held aloft on jazz like music. Heavily influenced by Bluenote records, Jazz masters and the Euro techno beats its hard to pin them down. Many missed the message entirely preferring to dance to the catchy beats.

Listen carefully to My Changing Moods, Shout to the Top, The Walls come Tumbling Down... the lyrics are a product of the time. Weller attacks the ruling class with fervour. Always one to celebrate the working families at the time.  

I have been a 30+ year fan of Weller I always liked how annoyed he seemed at everything. I loved how he was always taking the piss in his lyrics. I can't think of another writer who has had such a long career of political messaging that are wrapped in such finely crafted pop music.

Yes I have all the original releases but I really wanted this compilation to return to those warm summers of the early 80's when I was at the height of my youthful vigor. Attending University, everything was new I was kicking at the tires of life and music like this was the backdrop the canvas of life we enjoyed so much. Not to be a downer but I cannot see any music like this out there right now. They say music comes in waves but right now the top 40 is pretty dismal or maybe I am just showing my age.

Give me the Jam and The Style Council every day of the week. Grab this if you can or dig out your originals and dance in your kitchen to that Long Hot Summer beat.