Byg Actuel collection completed🥇

 

Look at these covers… amazing 🔝

An impressive collection, indeed… worth a life-long search 🎶

Tom Waits’ Bone Machine on cassette…

 

… sounds so righteous and unpolished to reach me so strongly and sincerely, almost painfully!

Thanks to my pal Arnaldo for the gift: you made my day, mate 🙏

Steve Eliovson, guitar-player 🌸

 

Steve Eliovson’s Dawn Dance (without forgetting beloved, late Collin Walcott greatly shining on the disc) still gets quite a bit of comment nowadays, after 41 years from its issue as ECM 1198 in 1981. Mr. Pete Young is in Johannesburg, so he took a short trip to Westpark Cemetery to search for the grave of ECM's Steve Eliovson. 

It's an enormous cemetery with a huge Jewish section, and he found his grave in a far corner around 1km from the entrance. His grave looks well maintained, and a few stones had already been left by other visitors (a tradition in Jewish cemeteries around the world). 

PS. - He shares the cemetery in good company with none other than Hugh Masekela.

Thanks to Pete Young for sharing the above (graveyard) picture and the effort in finding Steve’s rest-place.

🎶🌸🎶

Remembering Don van Vliet aka Capt. Beefheart

 

Today it’s twelfth anniversary of his passing 💔

"I think that everyone’s perfect when they’re a baby and I just never grew up. I’m not saying that I’m perfect, because I did grow up. But I’m still a baby.” - Don Van Vliet in Rolling Stone magazine, May 1970. 

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/the-odyssey-of-captain-beefheart-rolling-stones-1970-cover-story-237400/

🥇🥇🥇

☮️

 

Sir Paul McCartney on-duty, 53 years ago

 

Sir Paul McCartney and STUDER J37 on December 1969, recording his first solo album 🍏

Location: Home studio, Cavendish Avenue, St.John's Wood, London.

Largest Garrard 301’s plinth ever?

 

Notice Shindo RF-773 13” arm and SPU A cartridge 🔝

Stalin hated jazz 😏

 

As per (beloved) Tom Waits’ words 🥇

Superstition

 

Telefunken AC-701

 

As found in Telefunken ELA M 250 / 251,  Neumann KM54, Schoeps M221b and more microphones. 

🥇

Dark Side of the Moon’s mastertape

 

Pink Floyd The Dark Side of the Moon EMI Tape Box Folio – Side Two is a limited edition of 250 replica prints revealing the rarely seen EMI tape box for The Dark Side of the Moon Quadraphonic discrete master, held deep within the EMI archive. 

At the time that Pink Floyd recorded The Dark Side Of The Moon, Abbey Road Studios was already known for shaping the future of music technology. 

Recording of the album began in May 1972 in Studio Two at EMI Studios (as Abbey Road was known). The sessions were rich in Abbey Road’s legendary gear, including the iconic EMI TG12345 MK IV console - which had a compressor/limiter on every channel – the Hammond B3 organ – played through the Leslie Speaker - and microphones including the: AKG D2O, Neumann U48, Neumann U87, Neumann KM86, and the Neumann KM84. Abbey Road was to be Pink Floyd’s home for 38 days over a seven-month period. 

The Dark Side of the Moon emerged the following year and was released on 1 March 1973, never to achieve the coveted UK number 1 position. At the time, perhaps this multi-layered album, with its light and shade and a genre impossible to define was too esoteric, but it quickly found its way to becoming the authentic, complex and deeply personal album to fans around the world. 

This unique item is an exclusive collaboration between Pink Floyd and Abbey Road Studios. Each handmade folio is numbered and includes a 500gsm box card black folder (37cm x 37cm with a 5cm lip) which encases the two replica litho prints (30cm x 30cm), recreated in exact life size dimensions and cradled with transparent corner holders. A numbered certificate of authenticity accompanies each edition. 

Sound engineer notations of this superior Quadraphonic recording remain unchanged, reproduced with original details such as tape marks and box condition details for complete authenticity. Accompanying documentation reveals detailed explanations of the tape box’s coded markings and a contextual history of the Quadraphonic sound process, channelled through Pink Floyd’s vision at Abbey Road. 

The quadraphonic discrete master details the tracks: Money, Us and Them, Any Colour You Like, Brain Damage, and Eclipse. The Client ‘Harvest’ refers to Harvest Records, formed in 1969 by Malcolm Jones, a trainee manager with EMI. The Harvest label was created to nurture the emerging underground rock scene and most of the signings to Harvest were British acts including Pink Floyd. 

Folio Dimensions – 370mm x 370mm

Monomia 🎶

 

My pal Gab is so fond and… obsessed about old, classy cinema speakers and amps from obscure Italian brands (Cinemeccanica’s the most famous 🥇).

He enjoys his goodies in glorious mono 🔝

Gab in his workshop (photos courtesy of our common friend Roberto Marzi 🙏)

If a man is his own obsessions, Gab is as obsessed as I am about my beloved open-reel studio machines 😏

All my empathy and kudos to Gab 🥇🎶🥇🥂

Happy 73rd birthday to Tom Waits 🥂

 

Back to the roots - Hiraga Class A 20W is back 🥇

 

Fond aural memories 😏 which I re-discovered, again, after five years since I sold my Hiragas’ Le Classè A 30W amps: the 20W is a beauty 🥇 and an evergreen for Gotorama. 🎶🎶🎶

A weathered jazz festival poster