Items tagged with "CD"
Consider This – REM’s Out of Time
I recently had occasion to interact with REM bassist Mike Mills on social media about his old band’s classic album and commercial breakthrough, Out of Time. I had @ed Mike as part of my reply to a tweet, in order to compliment him on his lead-vocal turn on “Texarkana,” one of my favorite tracks on […]
Phil Ochs: Rare and Unreleased Recordings
by Kevin Frick (Kevin is a collector’s collector. He has always been the hippest with the music & clothes.) When the latest release from the Phil Ochs archive dropped at the end of May, it couldn’t have come at a more appropriate time. The United States is currently experiencing its greatest moment of unrest since […]
Rocktology! Paranoid v Master of Puppets Tourney Results
Black Sabbath’s Paranoid is one of the best hard rock albums of the 70s. Metallica’s Master of Puppets is one of the best hard rock albums of the 80s. So let there be… Monsters of Rocktology! These two great albums went toe-to-toe in our bracket tourney. And led by the lead track, “War Pigs,” Paranoid edged […]
Kid’s Picks: Sharing Music At Home
When people find out that I have two young kids, they invariably say, “Well, they’ll keep you young.” To which I reply, “Yup, if they don’t kill me first.” Both of these sentiments have held true during our coronavirus/COVID-19 quarantine here in southeast Michigan. But as we shelter in place, I’m reminded what a thrill […]
Format Wars: The End of the MP3 Era
In 2002, I saw a photo of Shaquille O’Neal walking through LAX wearing some bright white ear pieces and carrying what I learned was an iPod. It was a sports story and didn’t have anything to do with music or tech, but the device fascinated me. I was similarly fascinated in 1980 when Sony unleashed […]
CanJam NYC 2019
You know what CanJam and the personal audio community needs? Other than a weekend in NYC in the middle of winter, we need a fixed-disc front end for our systems. A CD player, my friends! That’s right, step right up, it’s just down there in the “Things You Didn’t Know You Wanted” aisle. You know […]
David Byrne: American Utopia Tour — Oakland, CA
David Byrne: American Utopia The Fox Oakland 16 August 2018 Oakland, California Music always surrounded me in my home. Growing up in Detroit in the 70s and 80s, I was lucky enough to have parents (especially my Dad) that made an abundance of music part of our daily life. With hundreds of albums at my disposal, […]
Vinyl Production a Victim of its Own Success?
Vinyl production worldwide is currently operating way above its capacity. Expensive materials, expert knowledge and antiquated machinery and techniques have led to supply shortages and quality problems worldwide. In contrast to the CD, production of which is completely integrated and automated with machines available on the open market, vinyl’s manufacturing chain is divided into many small […]
RSD: A Celebration of Collecting
Record Store Day is a great example of the difference between music collectors and music consumers. People who ripped some of their CDs to their iTunes library and dropped the rest of them off at the Salvation Army don’t typically participate in the festivities on the third Saturday in April. Streaming and MP3ing are for […]
Starbucks Bails on CD Sales
Starbucks recently announced that they will stop selling CDs at the registers of their 21,000+ retail coffee shops around the world. Quoth a Starbucks representative: “We will stop selling physical CDs in our stores at the end of March. Music will remain a key component of our coffeehouse and retail experience, however we will continue […]