[patrick-turner]

Andre spake to us all with .......


rOn Thursday, July 11, 2013 5:16:25 AM UTC+1, Phil Allison wrote:

BTW it is perfectly possible to enjoy rock / pop music with one pair of

ESL57s or ESL63s.

Back in the day, my favourite LPs were by people like Jimi Hendrix, Janis

Joplin, Rory Gallagher, Jeff Beck, Fleetwod Mack and Linda Ronstadt.

Lack of dBs was never an issue.

... Phil

It's great to see you're still in fine fettle, Phil. -- Andre


Interesting prose from Andre as usual.

But I had a customer with 3 stacked pairs of ESL57 and I sold him an 8585 tube amp to drive them. I'd worked for this fellow for over 10 years to restore his amps. The guy liked a wide variety of music including classical, pop, jazz - whatever. Room wasn't all that large. Anyone could say he "had an unecessary excess of audio gear" but that's just what the man liked, and he had the dough to pay for it, and to maintain it all. Pancreatic cancer claimed his life last year though, and his 4 sons have his gear now. Rather than be predjudiced about Jimmy's capabilities to set up a system with stacked Quads, I tried to point out the technical issues involved. Most often, when I take the time to do this, many if not most readers are quite unable to understand much I have said.

I once was very interested in yachts at age 33, post divorce, and I built a couple of models to explore in detail what I might build on land for launching by say age 40. Not 68 feet. I figured about 50 feet would be fine, but then I realised the bit about tearing up $100 bills abd throwing them overboard, and having to fund the running of the yacht by trafficking drugs or some other nafariousness. Nah, I chickened out, and I kept my house, and I woke up that yacting is mainly for poseurs, and that a bicycle would offer me all the opportunity to get away from the maddening crowd, in addition to living in a ruined sheep paddock, where Canberra is located.

In 1970s, to be social, I was a bit taken in by some of the pop, but I think I failed to really connect mentally with it because the "stars" such as Fleetwood Mac were so drug riddled and such "false people", and their songs spewed forth BS ideas. I considered most pop stars to be ****wits who were useless at doing anything constructive, and just because they gesticulated and screamed around a stage making noise like tomcat with cracker up arse didn't make them appeal to me at all. The syrapy BS of the Beatles was "girly music".
Mick screamed he couldn't get any satisfaction. What the **** was wrong with the little short git?
Anyway, I spent most of my 20s with folk because people sang about stuff that actually mattered sometimes. I quite liked Rye Cooder, and Taj Mahal.
Now, having heard all that stuff more than once, I prefer music without words I am meant to understand so some but not all opera seems OK, but some pure instrumental classical has far more appeal. Of course some classical is just written to antagonise the piano player's abilities, and to assault the listener. I find Bruckner and Mahler a bit over the top. My radio picks up more than one station and has on/off switch, and at times there's nothing on anywhere that I like so I turn off. The radio saves me from collecting music, and the costs of buying stuff I'd later get bored with.

I visited a local arts center here today, there was a folk trio there, trinket and clothing sold off tables and harmless old hippies, harmless young ppl, good food, and better than inside a shopping mall with musak.
Patrick Turner.