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Wednesday, September 29, 2021
Monday, September 27, 2021
Cassettes frenzy 😵💫
I’m deeply into this memory lane journey… cannot stop listening to these stuffs: it reminds to me of music listened through EMT 930st or reel to reel at 7 1/2 ips…
… not perfect but there is a lot of soul in these cassettes 🤩
No boundaries in 🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶
🥇
Sunday, September 26, 2021
Flea-market preys 🥇🎶🥇🤟🥇
Always a fantastic chasing-spot…
… some nice cassettes, too 🤟
Mono pressing, huge soundstage, nonetheless 🥇
I searched for this very disc for 25+ years… now I completed the Argo/Calouste Gulbenkian’s series 🥇
Mono pressing!
Gorgeous red vinyl 😍
🥇
Friday, September 24, 2021
Thursday, September 23, 2021
Tuesday, September 21, 2021
Layla’s 20th Anniversary on Chrome cassettes
What a find!
The Jams and Alternate Takes are 2die4… maybe 5🥳😊🤪😏🤟🎶🥇
Thanking my pal Arnaldo 🥇🥂🥇
Saturday, September 18, 2021
Ian A. Anderson 🥇
Ian A Anderson: Please Re-Adjust Your Time – The Early Blues & Psych-Folk Years 1967-1972, 4CD Box Set
Ian A Anderson
£22.99
Released November 26, 2021.• First-ever box set documenting all of Ian A. Anderson’s seminal early albums – including lots of rare material.
• Curated and supported by the artist, ‘Please Re-Adjust Your Time’ captures an exciting time in British roots music.
• From gutsy acoustic blues to ground-breaking acid folk, the music sounds as vital today as it did half a century ago.
• First-ever box set documenting all of Ian A. Anderson’s seminal early albums – including lots of rare material.
• Curated and supported by the artist, ‘Please Re-Adjust Your Time’ captures an exciting time in British roots music.
• From gutsy acoustic blues to ground-breaking acid folk, the music sounds as vital today as it did half a century ago.
Ian A Anderson is an English folk musician who was a luminary of the late 1960s country blues scene before becoming one of the pioneers of psychedelic/acid folk and founding the now collectable “alternative folk label” Village Thing in the early 1970s.
First issued in 1969, ‘Stereo Death Breakdown’ was credited to Ian Anderson’s Country Blues Band, a moniker which hinted at the music therein. Eleven bonus tracks are drawn from Saydisc EPs (‘Anderson Jones Jackson’, from 1967 and ‘Almost The Country Blues’, 1968) and Saydisc Matchbox albums (‘Blues Like Showers Of Rain’, from 1968 and ‘The Inverted World’, 1969).
The self-produced ‘Royal York Crescent’ (1970) album was Ian’s first on his new Village Thing label. Here it’s joined by three extra recordings from 1969, live at Farnham Folk And Blues Festival and from sessions at Chapel Studios, London.
Recorded at Rockfield Studios, ‘A Vulture Is Not A Bird You Can Trust’ (1971) is now swelled with a quartet of additional sides, again from a studio tenure in Chapel Studios back in 1969.
The fourth and final disc is devoted to Ian’s final Village Thing album, ‘Singer Sleeps On As Blaze Rages’ (1972) which is joined by four extra songs, including three previously unreleased
– the Hot Vultures’ demos recorded at Village Thing, Bristol, 1973.
Subsequently, alongside his music career, Ian was founding editor of the popular folk magazine fRoots and a broadcaster who has presented shows on BBC Radio 2, BBC World Service and Jazz FM. Ian currently presents Podwireless – a monthly podcast dedicated to the world of folk, roots and ‘unpop’ music.
Track Listing:
DISC ONE:
TEREO DEATH BREAKDOWN
1 GET IN THAT SWING
2 LITTLE BOY BLUE
3 (MY BABE SHE AIN’T NOTHING BUT A DOGGONE) CRAZY FOOL MUMBLE
4 NEW LONESOME DAY
5 SHORT HAIRED WOMAN BLUES
6 HOT TIMES
7 STEREO DEATH BREAKDOWN
8 WHEN I GET TO THINKING
9 WAY UP ON YOUR TREE
10 BREAK ’EM DOWN
11 THAT’S ALRIGHT
12 BABY BYE YOU BYE
Bonus Tracks
13 PUT IT IN A FRAME
14 STOP AND LISTEN
15 LOUISE
16 COTTONFIELD BLUES
17 BIG ROAD BLUES
18 TOM RUSHEN BLUES
19 FRIDAY EVENING BLUES
20 ROWDY BLUES
21 WEST COUNTRY BLUES
22 DON’T YOU WANT TO GO
23 THE INVERTED WORLD
DISC TWO:
ROYAL YORK CRESCENT
1 THAT’S NO WAY TO GET ALONG
2 PLEASE READJUST YOUR TIME
3 GOBLETS & ELMS
4 SHINING GREY
5 THE WORM
6 HERO
7 SILENT NIGHT NO.2
8 MR CORNELIUS
9 THE MAKER/ THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE / THE LAST CONJURING
10 GINGER MAN
11 WORKING MAN
Bonus Tracks
12 GET BACK INTO TOWN (LIVE)
13 SLEEPY LYNNE
14 INTERNAL COMBUSTION RAG
DISC THREE:
A VULTURE IS NOT A BIRD YOU CAN TRUST
1 ONE MORE CHANCE
2 BLACK UNCLE REMUS
3 POLICEMAN’S BALL
4 EDGES
5 THE SURVIVOR
6 WELL ALRIGHT
7 TIME IS RIPE
8 WISHING THE WORLD AWAY
9 ONE TOO MANY MORNINGS
10 NUMBER 61
Bonus Tracks
11 BOOK OF CHANGES
12 ANTHEM (YOU CAN GO ON FOREVER)
13 MOUSE HUNT
14 GALACTIC WINGS (AND OTHER TALES)
DISC FOUR:
SINGER SLEEPS ON AS BLAZE RAGES
1 HEY SPACE PILOT
2 MARIE CELESTE ON DOWN
3 SPIDER JOHN
4 A SIGN OF THE TIMES
5 PAPER AND SMOKE
6 PAINT IT, BLACK
7 PRETTY PEGGYO
8 THE WESTERN WIND
9 OUT ON THE SIDE
10 SHIRLEY TEMPLE MEETS HAWKWIND
Bonus Tracks
11 BABY LET ME DANCE WITH YOU
12 DAN SCAGGS
13 LONDON BLUES
14 YOU CAN’T JUDGE A BOOK BY THE COVER
Wednesday, September 15, 2021
Nakamichi 600 Mk II
I paid $ 30 for this machine in minty conditions decades ago… everyone was crazy about CDs at the time and reel to reel and cassette recorders were sold for peanuts.
These days - in a personal grunge mood - I’m using it a lot and, believe it or not, I’m enjoying cassette sound a lot, so raw and with a primitive punch which makes vinyl disc and silver disk to sound a bit “effeminate”, too polished and educated.
A nice picture of a 600 Mk I
Today a friend made my day as he offered to me a spare plexiglas dust-cover for my trusty Nakamichi 600 - a machine he also owns and appreciates - and he added an interesting statement supporting my feelings about the old Nakamichi’s:
“ I have had so many Nakamichis’ over the years. The 500 and the 600 were my favorites. It’s a beautiful, elegant machine.
The one micron head is the reason it sounds so good and performs so well. A dear friend from Nakamichi expressed that this tape head was so expensive to make that they lost money on each 500 and 600 series tape deck!
It was later replaced in 1980 with the BX-1 Sankyo head and transport that nearly everyone used. To me that was the end of Nakamichi.”
Strange or not, I today enjoyed a mighty Nakamichi Dragon in mint conditions and, while undoubtedly the frequency range was more extended and refined on top, the overall sound (I asked for a “Cheap Thrills” cassette which I enjoyed yesterday on Gotorama) was - someway and to my surprise - missing the “magic” I quoted in recent Blog’s posts, this fabled @time machine@ feature.
My pal system was “only” playing magnificent, detailed and tonally correct… what the Dragon did was delivering the perfect “audiophile” sound.
Like a ‘70s Fender Twin Reverb sounds more right for blues and rock, Nakamichi 600 is more right for ‘60/70s rock, unpolished and “bad” sounding as rock deserves!
A question: is so called “audiophile sound” less “musical”?
Mumble-mumble mode 😳
Thanks to Norman and Arnaldo 🥇🎶🥂🥇🎶
Tuesday, September 14, 2021
Creuza de Ma 🌸
I’m right now enjoying the Fabrizio de Andrè’s masterpiece and, folks… as I recently wrote on Cheap Thrills, it’s A M A Z I N G the HUGE power of Music!
The sound of these cheap, yet sought-after humble tapes is awesome, sub bass, ultra definition and natural, organic sound, but most of all tons of music and soul.
I’m in tears 😊 and with an unstoppable wish to song-along 😊
… and “audiophilia” seems just the name of a weird disease 🥳
Cheap Thrills 😏
Yes!!! Cheap thrills, the title of this seminal recording of Janis Joplin and her group… but also my very feeling while listening to this cassette on my trusty, humble Nakamichi 600 deck.
The K7, cassette despite the (presumably) low-fi status owns a seldom heard plus: this beefy, a bit rolled-off (same as my hearing?) sound directly connects to my early musical years: I loved music more than gears and a transistor portable radio was able to give me shivers and a soundtrack for my early sexual explorations, alone and with my girlfriends 😏😀😊😎😏.
I’m constantly surprised about this seldom quoted feature- i.e. audio working as time-machine!
All the hypes and ultra-technical audiophile lingo is easily forgotten, redundant and unnecessary: music flows, remembering the good ol’ days… and that’s what music’s for.
A Satori 😇
Studer C37 T-shaped tool
After the unfaithful Swiss technician tried stealing my C37 which I brought home after 18 months thanking two loyal Swiss friends, I carefully checked the machine when again safely in my hands: some sought-after and pricey E283CC and E188CC tubes were gone - stolen! - and same happened with the T shaped tool placed under the tape-heads cover… also stolen!
The original T-tool 🥇
The original still in-place (mono heads-block), at the Swiss workshop (2018)
I shopped around for the premium tubes needed, but the tool was - WAS - unobtanium.
Mumble-mumble 😏
Thanks to my tape-machines technician who asked to a very, very, very famous Italian artist studio-manager - who also owns and uses a well-kept C37 - the humble tool on loan to be back-engineered.
The replica
After a couple of weeks and 12 man-hour lathing, cutting, polishing and punching, the missing part was revived and finally re-installed in the elastic holder in the heads block.
The stereo heads-block, now “complete” with new T-tool.
… yes! I also re-installed a T-tool in mono heads-block as it was in 2018 😏
Switzerland 🇨🇭 0 - Italy 🇮🇹. 1
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P.S. - I made some more of these tools for friends in my same situation… if interested please contact me 🤟🎶🤟