Playlist innovation:

In this era of access to all music and everything about it, I do enjoy reading artist interviews, and pay attention to artists’ views on the modern music industry. What caught me recently were Mark Ronson’s remarks on songwriting in the age of the playlist in The Guardian:

People listen to the playlists just like they were radio stations. I seriously doubt that records made in the 1960s were purposefully written/produced to be AM radio friendly, well until “The Monkees” and the whole bubble-gum nonsense.

Serious listeners abandoned AM. FM took over. FM went the way of AM (thanks Clear Channel). Now we have music services, which, for a fee, can provide us what we want to hear, not what producers think will be “skip proof”

I think I have skipped maybe 12 songs in the past year, and removed the offending songs from my library.

Want a skip-proof playlist? Radio Paradise 😉

More like the 80s

NAD integrated amplifier, Dual turntable, recordings from 1950s, 1960s. All vinyl, all the time…

The simple answer was “Boston Acoustics”, not me, I know there are tools that will “warm it up”.

I went “B&W”. No one was saying “Bowers and Wilkins” in the U.S. Too much like “Evelyn and Crabtree” (or the other way around, fun nose trinkets).

Modern “flat” speakers are sooooooooo flat compared to anything from the 1980s at a real person’s budget.

Devil’s in the details, watch out for “re-masters”.

So the saxes, the Evanses, the odd-rhythmists, they need warm. Yup. A transistor needs help. So does the computer 😉

MJQ — Django — Rudy Van Gelder re-master (he surely didn’t record it?)

Needs warms. Cold, wintry sound without help.

My attempt is flat speakers proceeded by iZotope “Vinyl” to get me vintage gear, with a T-Racks 5 “Saturator-X” at the front. It’s pretty close to the home stereo. Maybe a little “room”.

The new graphic EQ for the home stereo might be Audio Hijack with a bunch of plugins in front of the audio. It works for me, since that’s what I heard and what I know deep in my ears.

I need to build the amusing “Hey Dingus” command of “Play me some Bill Evans on a 1960’s stereo” — how’s that for a graphic EQ? The AREQ?

Ahh, the magic happens.

I need to add some room! not where it was recorded, but where it is heard. T-Racks 5 — CSR Classik — Room. Reflections only.

I want to be in the room where a performance happens!