“Learning to Live Together: The Return of Mad Dogs & Englishmen”: https://bit.ly/3CWe4l7

1

Everybody’s dead. Well at least the two stars, Joe Cocker and Leon Russell. And Carl Radle and Bobby Keys and…Jim Gordon’s in jail.

I actually saw Mad Dogs & Englishmen. At the Capitol Theatre, in Port Chester, New York. The mania from the Woodstock movie was selling tickets, but Joe was a star already, with two albums played incessantly on FM radio, where all the action was. His cover of “With a Little Help From My Friends” became a staple of the FM rock format just after it was released in 1969. And I knew about Mad Dogs & Englishmen.

Today there’s too much information, yesterday not enough. I read about the tour in “Rolling Stone,” a couple of other places, but I had no idea who most of these people were, Leon Russell being the exception, I purchased his debut solo LP back in March, I still prefer his version of “Delta Lady,” and you’d be surprised how many people know “Roll Away the Stone,” and I learned that he co-wrote those Gary Lewis & the Playboys hits, I loved “She’s Just My Style,” a Beach Boys flavored track, but I did not know the details of his years in the studio, the dues he’d paid.

As for the band’s third star, the other breakout? The first time I became aware of Rita Coolidge was when she was singing on stage.

Back then there was an almost impenetrable barrier between the players and the audience. There was no social media. No way to easily look up their address. Maybe if you were in L.A. you could see them driving around, hanging out, but if you lived in the rest of the country they were exotic animals, who dropped down into your town and then jetted out, to where the action was.

And it was only about the music, at the Mad Dogs & Englishmen show they weren’t even selling any merch. The Fillmore East didn’t sell merch, wasn’t the music enough? Concert t-shirts didn’t really become a thing until the seventies, and although the Mad Dogs & Englishmen tour took place in the spring of 1970, it might as well have still been the sixties, with Kent State… Once rock became corporatized, blasted on stations all over the country, then the merch became a big deal. People in backwater hamlets were just as infatuated, just as eager to get attached as those in the cities. I could compare the musicians of yore to the techies, maybe even the bankers, of today, but it’s not really a good fit. With the bankers it’s just about the money. With the techies…well, it used to be about innovation, pushing the envelope. But the musicians of yore…IT WAS ABOUT THEM! Not only did they sing the songs, they wrote ’em.  They embodied the lyrics, you felt that you knew them. Then again, Joe Cocker did not write, and as a result he was kind of a cypher, and the endless testimonials to his character in this film ultimately tell us nothing about him, he’s dead, you never want to speak ill of those who’ve passed, I mean what was Joe really like? I don’t know, nor do most other people.

So you know the history… The band goes on the road, the double live album comes out only a couple of months later and Leon Russell becomes an overnight superstar and Joe Cocker disappears. Not only did Joe not record for two and a half years, ultimately releasing the substandard “Something to Say,” he grew an enormous beer belly, there were pictures, he seemed completely burned out.

But Leon’s comet burned very quickly and flew by soon. One can state that Leon’s peak only lasted three years, three solo albums and then a bloated triple album set and then he went country and he never could recapture the magic. He was seen as stealing the spotlight from Joe, using the Mad Dogs & Englishmen tour to his advantage, so there was little good will to sustain him, and by the end of his life he was barely able to walk, getting around on a scooter, playing clubs, even Elton John couldn’t resuscitate his career. Maybe because Elton and Leon both played the piano, could both be flamboyant, in dress and in their playing, but their roots were completely different. Elton was from England, Leon was from Oklahoma.

Oklahoma, have you been there?

I’ve been to every state surrounding it, but never to OK, despite knowing the musical by heart. But a certain creativity came from the flatlands of the oil-producing state. Not only Leon, but Dwight Twilley, who with his partner Phil Seymour released one of the iconic tracks of the seventies, “I’m on Fire.” And sure, Jimmy Webb came from Oklahoma, but soon left. Garth Brooks went to Nashville to make it. But Leon Russell was constantly going back to the Sooner State, Shelter Records set up a studio in Tulsa and…if you were from the coast you just couldn’t understand it, there was nothing there, thank god you left, why in the hell would you want to go back?

But Leon Russell is Oklahoma through and through. That’s what you see in this new movie. It’s the way he talks, the cadence. Slow, with a drawl. And with attitude. They don’t talk this way in the north, or on the coasts. And his roots were different. There was a bunch of country, soul and gospel mixed in with the rock, so the ultimate sound is unique. And for a while there, it resonated throughout the country.

So you want to see this new movie for Leon.

But the star of the show is Chris Robinson, another musician people have a bad taste in their mouth about, another one hated by many, but when Robinson steps to the mic, be prepared to be wowed. He doesn’t sound like Cocker, but he evidences the same blues roots, filtered through years of rock and roll. Robinson doesn’t shout, he just emotes with extreme intensity, and the music lives in him just like it lived in Cocker, he moves to the sound, he can’t help himself. I was watching thinking how he also sang the Zeppelin hits with Jimmy Page, and he even sang with Phil & Friends, Phil Lesh’s side project.

I know you don’t want to hear this, you just want me to pour endless love on Tedeschi and Trucks and the oldsters, but I’m being honest here, when Chris steps up to the mic you’re convinced he’s a national treasure, and he’s still here!

Not only so many of the old band are gone, so is the sound. This concert was filmed at LOCKN’, one of America’s hippest festivals, but it gets very little media love, it’s for fans of the music as opposed to those who just want to parade, be seen and post. But that’s today’s world, all the focus is on the Spotify Top 50, but that’s just a smidge of what’s truly happening out there.

So it’s a reunion of the oldsters, paired with the Tedeschi Trucks band.

Let me just state straight that Derek Trucks is an incredible player. Like Jeff Beck he uses no pick. And as much as he’s lauded, he still doesn’t get enough respect. He’s genius, probably the best of his generation. And his wife Susan Tedeschi has the pipes to sing these old songs, as well as the ability to play guitar, despite getting only a tiny bit of press, which flummoxes me, then again, Tedeschi Trucks has a significant following, that can keep their large band on the road.

Today everybody’s a solo performer. The music is made alone in your bedroom and the creator makes all the money. To create a sound like Tedeschi Trucks, which is akin to the Allman Brothers, but with its own twist, it takes a lot of players up on stage, which means it costs A LOT OF MONEY!

It’s not about the money…it’s about the money. That’s a classic music business aphorism. And you see all these people on stage and one thing is clear, no one is getting rich, you’ve got to be doing it for the love of the music, the love of playing, because that’s all there is.

It used to be different. No money was made on the original Mad Dogs & Englishmen tour, but there was plenty of money in the music business back then. Most of it in the records themselves, a ten dollar ticket was unheard of. Then again, managers and labels were famous for screwing the artists, hopefully you wrote something and regained the rights via copyright reversion in this century, but if they’re still alive, so many of these old players are broke. Because you’re hip, and then you’re not.

It’s different today, because no one is as big as those of the past, they don’t have the mental footprint. And you can’t possibly make the money of the techies and the bankers, even though musicians keep complaining they can’t. In other words, there’s a bifurcation. Either you’re in it for the money and fame, or you’re in it for the music. But if you’re in it for the music, you must be really damn good, because you’re gonna earn your keep on the road. Watch Derek Trucks and the rest of the band, are you as good as they are? If not, keep your day job.

So yesterday you used to shine incredibly bright for a few years, and then you fell back to earth. The band broke up. You were so burned out you sat at home, licked your wounds and adjusted your perspective and then, in the nineties, if you’d had success, you went back on the road with the reunion tour. But people wanted to see you, commensurate with your impact the first time around.

2

So first we’ve got the camp reunion, Rita Coolidge, Pamela Polland, Claudia Lennear, the Moore Brothers, Leon… It’s been half a century, almost none of these people played together ever again. Rita Coolidge went on to become an icon, but she appears so normal here it polishes her image, she’s throwing off no star vibes, no divadom whatsoever, but when she steps to the mic, she’s still got it.

Ditto for Claudia Lennear, another cultural icon, often referenced as the inspiration for “Brown Sugar,” sexiness incarnated, she ultimately punted the music business and became a school teacher. She couldn’t be more normal in this film. But then she steps to the mic, and she’s still got it.

The Moore Brothers? For all their writing credits, they get no history, no backstory in this movie, hell, Matthew Moore WROTE “Space Captain,” which is one of the highlights of this film, if not THE highlight.

And Pamela Polland?

If you were reading the music news you knew who she was, but she never broke through, I had to look on Wikipedia to see that she’s been making her living in Hawaii, playing music there, literally off the radar screen. And now she’s 77, 71 when the concert was filmed in 2015, it took the producers that long to raise finishing monies, but she’s still lucid, SHE’S STILL THE SAME! She’s a rock chick, but not in leather like Lita Ford, but an equal of the guys back then. Sure, there was a ton of sexism, but the women got record deals, and they didn’t have to sing pop tunes.

And I know all this because I lived through it. But almost everybody testifying other than the old band members WASN’T EVEN ALIVE WHEN THE ORIGINAL TOUR TOOK PLACE!

So they’re talking about the old show and you realize it’s just history, moving images from the original concert film, they’ve got no idea how it really was. An oldster in the flick states that they didn’t think there was one person over thirty in the original Mad Dogs & Englishmen entourage. Music was a youth business. The oldsters had given up, hired house hippies to tell them what to sign, twentysomething managers were making it up as they went, inventing, formulating a business that is a smooth running machine today, at least in comparison.

So this is not the movie I thought they’d make. I figured it would be a concert film of the 2015 show, with a few interstitial conversational moments, like the rock movies of the seventies, but no…this is really a documentary juxtaposing the old with the new, with music at best equal to the story.

You see they’re constantly referring to the original Mad Dogs & Englishmen movie, a 1971 production that almost no one saw. Distribution was sketchy at best. It wasn’t quite like “Cocksucker Blues,” but prior to the VCR and digital TV, almost nobody had seen it, it was a secret, all the money was in the double live album. The players of today are testifying about the film, not realizing it was a dud upon release, almost nobody was aware it came out, you had to be a big rock fan to know about it, and then you had to find somewhere they played it, which was essentially nowhere.

And the original film is 57 minutes. And the new one is 111 minutes. “Learning to Live Together” is essentially the two shows put together.

But really, it’s a peek into the way it used to be. When you see Leon Russell and Chris Stainton play the piano, you’re wowed, you can’t believe they’re actually playing those notes you know so well, sans flaws, sounding almost identical to the originals.

And then there’s a horn section, adding a broadness to the sound that you can’t get anywhere else, never mind a flourish.

And the endless backup singers… Nobody ever carries this many on the road. They’ve got the music in them, they’re singing along, and since they’re pros they’re singing in tune.

So…

I finished watching the movie and I felt sad. Because what once was is no longer. Did you see that Commander Cody just died? This is a regular thing now, old rock stars kicking the bucket. Cody, real name George Frayne, passed away at 77, you’d think from hard living, but the truth is the Big C got him. There’s not a single boomer who doesn’t know “Hot Rod Lincoln,” but they’ll never hear the original sing it ever again. Same deal with David Bowie, Glenn Frey…

But Mad Dogs & Englishmen were unique. It was a lark, pulled together for one tour, with little rehearsal. Leon Russell called up some friends…

That’s right, you had to know somebody. Which meant you had to live in L.A. and hang out. There was a community. You only wish there was this community today.

And it was a big band and it was a one time thing. Either you saw that tour or you never did, like the Beatles there was no reunion, until LOCKN’.

Where they’re playing the music once again.

But there are no originals being written as good as the songs of the past. Not only is there no McCartney and Lennon writing “With a Little Help From My Friends” and “She Came In Through the Bathroom Window,” Wayne Carson Thompson is gone and there is no under two minute gem like “The Letter” anywhere and Leonard Cohen left us “Bird On the Wire,” but the heir to Mr. Cohen has yet to appear. Dave Mason is still singing “Feelin’ Alright,” a song so good it’s been covered endless times, who is covering the music of today? And Bob Dylan is still plying the boards, but if you think what he’s doing today is anywhere near equal to what he did back then, you’re a blind, boot-licking apologist.

So we’re used to beats. And electronic sounds. And there’s nothing inherently wrong with either, but a real band, like Mad Dogs & Englishmen, evidences a humanity absent in the digital world. It’s people with practiced skills coming together to present a cohesive sound that looks easy yet is anything but.

At some point “Learning to Live Together” will come to you. Probably on some streaming service. You should definitely dial it up. Because irrelevant of the film’s arc, you’ll get a look into a world that is soon to be gone forever. And if you were there the first time around, you’ll weep. As for the Tedeschi Trucks Band keeping the sound alive, you’ll be thrilled, but you’ll also notice they inhabit their own world, which doesn’t really cross with the mainstream.

Then again, what does.

And what is mainstream.

You watch this new movie and you get depressed, but you also gain hope. You see it can still be done. You just have to take the road less traveled. You’ve got to pick up an instrument, practice really long damn and hard, build a band and then…

Building a band and keeping it together is nearly impossible. But a sole performer is inherently something different.

As for songs?

I’ve yet to hear new classics, but there are tons of old numbers just waiting to be redone, even reworked a la Joe Cocker.

And I could say you can only do it with a little help from your friends, a summing note equivalent to the summing up scene in this movie, but I don’t want to leave you with a cheap shot.

But I think of the words of “Space Captain.”

We’re never gonna learn to live together. But as big as the generation gap was fifty-odd years ago, the truth is all the youth were on the same page. They drank, smoked dope and listened to music.

It was the music that kept us together. It was our reference point. It’s what we talk about in our old age. What the songs meant to us, where we first heard them, the shows we attended. Ultimately, the music is bigger than the players, which is the way it should be. Ultimately no one owns the sound, the inspiration…then again, we can say all of us own it!

“I lost my memory of where I’ve been

We all forgot that we could fly”

But “Learning to Live Together” will remind you. And you’ll realize you’ll be caught up in the music until you die. You can try to deny it, but if you’re a boomer, everybody was in, everybody knew the music, everybody went to the show, everybody had to get closer.

And it was clear the stars were on stage.

And the truth is they were just regular people.

But not to us. To us they were untouchable stars.

You’ll remember that watching this movie. You’ll ponder your own life path. And then you’ll just crank up the music and feel good once again. The music brought us together, and it still can. Because we’re all just birds on a wire, trying in our own way to be free, and the music helps get us there. It inspires us, it sets our minds adrift, we remember what once was and still can be. And there’s nothing more powerful than that.

Can’t wait to try the Eagles MoFi Vinyl/CD test you described. At the end of the piece, you mentioned SACD. I have an SACD player and you might have one as well. Many high-end Sony Blu-Ray players will also play SACDs.

Super-Audio Compact Disks (SACD) were made only by Sony. They were meant to replace CDs and they were indeed way better sounding. They used a technology called Direct Stream Digital (DSD), which is a 1-bit system with an ultra-high sample rate of 2.8224 MHz, 64 times higher than a CD’s rate of 44.1kHz. It’s difficult to measure how this system differs from regular PCM digital audio used by CDs, but most engineers are of the opinion that DSD is equivalent in quality to PCM digital using a 24-bit, 88.2k sample rate.

I know that’s a bit wonkish, as Paul Krugman would say, but let’s put it this way: SACDs sound a fuck of a lot better than CDs. And I’d love to run a comparison of DSD to vinyl.

Best,
John Boylan

_____________________________________

As president of ABC Records, Herb Belkin knew the product he manufactured was junk. At the height of the vinyl crisis, they were ripping out latches and pressing records on melted down plastic raincoats. When he heard his young kids in the back seat of the car arguing about which friend had the better servants, he knew it was time to leave town and he ended up in cozy Sebastapol, CA running Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab. From the moment they unleased the Original Master pressing of the Supertramp album, discerning ears everywhere took notice. Their “Abbey Road” was an audiophile landmark. You have not lived until you’ve heard their pressing of Queen’s “A Night at the Opera.” At one visit to their office, I noticed a turntable rolling over and over the same album. Turns out they were testing the pressing by playing it continuously for ten days. Herb passed years ago and the label has been rescued from bankruptcy by people who believe in the MoFi tradition. But there is a reason record collectors pay hundreds if not thousands of dollars for original pressings of the Original Masters series.

Joel Selvin

_____________________________________

You nailed it in the PS Bob. The vinyl – when mastered all analogue – always wins for the reasons you stated. The SACD is great – much better than the cd – but the vinyl still wins.

Merck Mercuriadis

_____________________________________

I was in need of a laugh this afternoon, and you certainly provided it with your line about, ‘you have to be an electrician these days to listen to music’, too true! In between internet speeds for streaming, hardwired gear in the house and the outdoor system, my system in the office, it drives me round the bend!  I’d decided to streamline our systems, guess what? After much hair pulling and forelock tugging, I caved and called a specialist, ends up he’s an electrician who tells me all he does now is home systems, no more power points for this bloke, it’s just figuring out the wiring, he was as cool as they come and had the whole place rockin’ in three hours, bravo you major electrical legend!

Chris Grierson
Melbourne Australia

_____________________________________

All new vinyls released these days are produced from digital copies of the masters. You are listening to digital ALL THE TIME unless you listen to a disk produced in 70s. What you are hearing is the mastering differences.

Riza Pacalioglu

Ex Abbey Road Engineer

_____________________________________

I’d just like to point out that nowadays vinyl masters, cd masters, and streaming masters are all made independently. There is no one master anymore. The mastering engineer who does the vinyl is often a different person from the engineer who does the digital. That said, before even adding your equipment into the equation you’ve already got 3 objectively different masters, each with their own flavor. The purpose of this is to get the most out of each medium.

And yes, good speakers are good, but even the best speakers in the world will sound different in every different room you put them in. If you really care about this kind of thing it’s a good idea to treat your room and/or run something like Sonarworks to get an accurate picture. You can do this to headphones too.

My best,

Egan Frantz

_____________________________________

Hahaha that was funny! The better the system the bigger the CD/vinyl difference. The SACD makes it smaller but the vinyl still has a relaxation thing and digital is “noisier” (to the brain and that’s what produces the listening fatigue. You can listen to vinyl for hours with no fatigue

Michael Fremer

_____________________________________

Vinyl from 2010-now is a scam. A beautiful sounding (at times) scam but a $ play by artists. The jump the shark moment for me was when I was in the check out line at Whole Food and instead of chocolate bars tempting me it was a $35 vinyl of Bryan Adams “Reckless”. This was the day after my girlfriend went to Fleet Foxes at the Palladium and brought home a quad disc Vinyl of their latest album which cost her $55 at the show. Want to be annoyed? Try having Sex while having to get up every 2 songs to flip the record. If the Stones can sound 10x better and still have 6 songs on a side then they could as well. Don’t give me the 180 gram crap. Yes it potentially sounds better but a WAV file still sounds better as it sounds EXACTLY how it sounded to the artist when they left mastering. That’s what I want and I don’t want to pay 15k for a needle which is the price quoted to me at Ahead Stereo on Beverly when I walked in and asked them how much a needle would cost to make Ok Computer translate exactly as it sounded to the band in mastering.

Michael Patterson

_____________________________________

Oh yes Bob I have an OPPO BD-83 – plays anything thrown at it dvd-a sacd Blu ray audio PAL/NTSC – they don’t make them anymore but you can find used ones on ebay, the best part of this machine is the d/a converters and the fact that you can turn off the display to decrease noise, I’d recommend one, although the transport is a bit dicey, they figured out that problem with the later models

Marc Federman

_____________________________________

Bob you’re gonna get a lot of vinyl geeks like me loving this review. I agree vinyl is a bit of a pain but when I have the right vinyl, on the right turntable playing through the right speakers and amp, it is bliss. My gear is mostly mid-fi compared to yours and my favourite combo is my Dual turntable with my Sansui amp, there is something about that idler wheel sound. You have a very nice turntable must sound amazing?

I listen to a lot of my music though my computer but when I want to have some fun I fire up one of my three turntables.

Doug Gillis

_____________________________________

I have been playing vinyl on a hi-fi system for over 40 years; as soon as I could afford quality equipment. You are right it all depends what your playing it on! The market is flooded with cheap record players, which you can plug into your system…….There is also the big question of the vinyl boom; was the original recording an analog recording (AAA)? There is so much vinyl out there that is digital recorded, which defeats the purpose!

My brother (Tim Hinkley, Van Morrison, The Who, The Rolling Stones, Alvin Lee, Jody Grind etc) and I have formed a record company, Reel Analog Records. Our intention is to release vinyl from the original analog tapes, cutting to the master with no digital interference.

Perhaps you would like a copy of our first release, “The Scrubbers Vol I”. An album recorded in Steve Marriott’s home studio? There is some controversy regarding this recording as the tapes went missing and a track ended up on a Humble Pie album…….. I have attached the press release for your info.

Kind regards,

Chris Hinkley

_____________________________________

Thanks for another great article Bob. If you own a Sony BluRay player there is a pretty good chance it will play SACD. I didn’t know this until I discovered it by accident recently when for some reason I played my dual layer copy of Stones’ High Tide and Green Grass.

Even Brande

_____________________________________

I do have an sacd player and the sound is far superior to cd and vinyl. The sacd reproduction is much closer to actual instruments. I suspect that an sacd reproduces a much broader range of overtones. I’m surprised that with your upscale rig you don’t already have an sacd player with HDMI.

Edwar Bogan

_____________________________________

I’m not sure vinyl is a fetish but it is a bit addicting. When I was a young man I absolutely loved going to record stores and flipping the bins. I was into “alternative” music mostly and I discovered a lot of cool bands just from looking at the covers- they didn’t play most of this stuff on the radio. I grew up in Seattle and my friends and I discovered the early “grunge” bands this way before that genre existed. I bought the very first Nirvana album, Bleach, on black vinyl for less than $20, I remember seeing the limited white vinyl version for $40 but thought that was way too much money, I just wanted the music. I think the last record I bought a few years later was Nirvana Nevermind.  Around that time vinyl was disappearing and I happily stocked up on hundreds of CDs instead.

Then about six years ago, my daughter started getting into vinyl. She was a teenager at the time and her friends were buying records and cassette tapes again! When she told me this,  I found a couple milk cartons of my old vinyl records in the basement and hauled them out to show her my collection. The memories came rushing back and I suddenly realized I really missed my old vinyl records!  There is something about holding that piece of artwork in your hand, and reading the liner notes while you listen. So I went out and bought another record player and found a vintage stereo system, and started collecting again.

Collecting vinyl nowadays is more expensive, especially for the limited edition, colored vinyl, 180g weight version. But I think the collectibility is also a huge part of the appeal, especially when you realize that the record you got for $49 sold out quickly and is going for $120 online. It is definitely addictive that way. By the way, my original Nirvana Bleach album has sold on Discogs for as much as $400 but the white version usually sells for twice as much (lesson learned, always buy the limited colored vinyl!). And my first press Nevermind has sold for as much as $2,000. I am a music lover, but I now buy limited re-released versions of records that I already own, just because they are so cool. So I guess it’s not just about the music.

Ian Wilson, vinyl addict

_____________________________________

I got both of the new Eagles albums on MOFI One step vinyl – today!  Haven’t listened yet but I will on my cabin system tomorrow.  I have most of these special editions, including Donald Fagan The Nightfly, Marvin Gaye, SRV, and Simon and Gar.   They are all incredible and I highly suggest you find any you can and buy them!   They are the best music you will likely ever hear and what is that worth??

Steve Miller

_____________________________________

Still have my SACD, another Sony format failure, but I love jazz on SACD – Charlie Byrd Trio is one my personal faves.

Good write up, Bob… I am always a sucker for  geeky audiofile shit.

Chadd Barksdale

_____________________________________

Get an SACD player.  You’ll be amazed at the difference

Cheers
Kieran Stafford

_____________________________________

Awesome! It’s always a pain configuring sound equipment but the payoff is those joyful moments immersed with sound. I still have SACD on one of my high end DVD players.

Blake Einhorn

_____________________________________

Use a quality DAC for the digital and it will surpass vinyl.  You are comparing a CD player to a turntable that is twice the price. Plus, get real speakers.  Computer speakers of any type don’t cut it.  Look at companies like Schiit Audio and Spatial Audio Labs for great gear that won’t bankrupt you.  Eagles in hi-res played on a good system is outstanding. Silent background, no snap, crackle, pop.

John Seymour

_____________________________________

Because you asked.

One of my DVD players (a Sony) plays SACDs. I have around 25 discs. They sound good. What kicked it off for me was the excellent SACD reissues of ABKCO’s Rolling Stones albums.

Harold Bronson

_____________________________________

Yes, vinyl requires effort. I will always contend that digital is the fast food of music; analog is the home-cooked meal. There is a place for both, but at the end of the day, which would you rather consume? It is why people will spend four hours preparing a meal that is eaten in twenty minutes.
That digital fatigue is music being pieced together from ones and zeros. Trust you ears. They know the difference, even if you can’t actually hear it.

Dave Recamp

_____________________________________

I find it surprising that nowhere in your lengthy post do you mention the importance of using a top quality cartridge when playing vinyl. You are right that good speakers are important but the cartridge is what defines the sound. Sound quality is determined there. I’m surprised you don’t know this.

C Hoff

_____________________________________

I do have SACD player and CDs.  It’s a great format and Sony Blu-ray players typically can play the CDs. Stones and Dylan catalogs were not enough to convince the masses to jump in.   There are still new releases periodically.   Check out Intervention Records.  The Flying Burrito Brothers first two and The Church Starfish. Great adds to the SACD collection
Dan

Dan Timmons

_____________________________________

Nothing like vinyl and the proper gear.  In my home office, I have a Technics 1200 turntable into a Marantz 2250B receiver straight into JBL-100s speakers.   Both the Marantz and the speakers are restored.

The sound is so rich, so 3-D, tons of bass with no sub woofer, highs like cymbals are super crisp, etc.  It FEELS like you are in the room with the musicians playing.  Friends bring their vinyl test pressings over to listen on my session as the sound is so pure.

Total cost, roughly $3K.  Best money I  ever spent.  Well, the extra money I spent on my Fosgate audio upgrade in my Subaru is a close second…

David Weitzman

_____________________________________

Hi Bob, I do have sacd. For me the biggest difference between the two is multi channel. Some people don’t even like it. It’s all in the mix. For example Dark Side of the Moon is done splendidly. Jeff Beck Blow by Blow, not so much. There are guitar solos coming from the rear speakers. I like my sound stage to be in front. It’s a matter of taste.

For sound quality I don’t think you’d hear much difference. SACD has been around about 20 years. It never caught on. These are just my opinions. Enjoy the vinyl. Its great. Russ Wilson

_____________________________________

I’m stunned. You don’t have an SACD player? To my ear, they sound the best. You get all the clarity of digital, but with the warmth and punch of analog. Seriously, with your HiFi set up, you NEED an SACD player. To preview, find Hotel California on Apple Music and make sure you’re all set up to playback 192/24 and that’s what an SACD disc will sound like (mostly, an actual disc might be even better).

Love your writing!

Jeff Shattuck

PS – Get an SACD player.

_____________________________________

I’m happy this tech stuff makes you happy. And I’m impressed at your knowledge of it all.
My best moments listening to music happened on cars and on beaches and bedrooms with a.m. radios or low budget record players. But I get it. I’ve played on and produced records and spent thousands of hours in recording studios. It’s delightful when you can hear it all as intended. But back in the day, the big studios would have a low-reach radio transmitter that you could hook up your mixes to, so you could go out to the parking lot and sit in your car and hear what it sounded like in real life.

C’est la vie…..

Wally Wilson
Nashville

_____________________________________

Yes! An old OPPO BDP.  Still working, ’tis wonderful for the SACDs I have.

Brandy Gale

_____________________________________

I enjoyed your comments regarding the Mofi 1-Step Eagles release. While I haven’t heard this particular release, I own a few others (Monk, Mingus) and their sonic quality is mind blowing.

But you’re totally right in saying that the whole premium vinyl movement is a fetish. While I stand alongside you in the minuscule percentage of listeners who listen critically on a home rig (VPI table, Sumiko moving coil pickup, McIntosh phono preamp and integrated amp, Dynaudio speakers), I’m not blind to the fact that the whole thing is a bit crazy – especially in this age of digital streaming convenience.

From a sheer production standpoint, premium vinyl is profoundly antiquated and nearly impossible. To achieve the sonic greatness that vinyl is capable of, there are so many spots in the chain for things to go awry. It really embodies the “weakest link” analogy in every sense. Starting with a well-engineered recording and mastering to getting a well-cut lacquer and then the metalwork (plating, stampers, etc) to the vinyl compound, manual pressing, cooling, sleeving, storage and transport. It is a minor miracle to open a jacket and remove a record with zero issues. There are only a few plants that are capable of consistently achieving excellence – with many more startups who’ve chased the vinyl goldrush without the experience and equipment to deliver quality wax. And don’t get me started on colored vinyl.

But I find the physical activity of listening to vinyl at home tremendously satisfying. During Covid, my record collection provided me the musical connection I was missing from the live experience. The immersive sound of a well-tuned stereo reproducing a beautifully recorded performance transported my mind to concert halls, small clubs and recording studios without leaving my listening chair. It’s not the same, of course, but it’s damn great in its own way.

Regarding formats, I think they all have their place. Vinyl is for critical “active” listening. Well-mastered CD/SACDs on a quality player (which I have) provide a near-identical sonic experience and can be had far cheaper and without the production variables inherent in vinyl – but not nearly as fun. Digital & streaming for discovery, portability and unreleased live recordings.

In an age when there’s never been more competition for our entertainment bandwidth, vinyl is an inconvenient and strangely satisfying investment. Part of what makes it so great is that it’s not so easy to get.

Thanks again and maybe see you back at Middlebury Snow Bowl someday!

Billy Glassner

Big Happy Dinosaur

_____________________________________

There is a lot to unpack here Bob but the test you tried to perform between vinyl and CD has way too many variables to really shine a light on the debate. That being said, from a strictly frequency standpoint, vinyl will never be able to compete in the bass department with CDs.  That’s why the remastered versions of all the old greats, like the Beatles and the stones, gives the opportunity to remix the low end (kick and bass).  On vinyl you generally have to low cut mixes anywhere from 60-100 to get a clean translation to vinyl.  The records would literally be destroyed by the lathe if you tried to cut the low end levels we’ve come to expect in music today.  Did someone say sub bass? Now there are tools that can be used to increase the upper harmonics of the bass so that they can be experienced through vinyl or smaller speakers that can’t reproduce low sounds. Also as far as loudness, and it’s personal preference if it’s a good thing or bad thing, vinyl will never be able to approach the loudness levels and limiting we’ve come to expecting today’s music.  It’s not just a loudness level either, it’s the sound and vibe of digital brick wall limiting.  As far CD quality vs HighRes (anything above 16bit / 44.1 for the sake or argument), the highres files will definitely sound better but again, there are so many variables and you need a system that is sensitive enough to really represent and display the differences between say 96 and 192. Whats your DA converter? What’s your preamp? Is your room treated and tuned? Are you using further software to flatten the frequency response? What is the frequency response of your record player vs your CD player? Cables? Speakers? Etc. And your 750 dollar CD player might not be a great quality benchmark

Also any record that you listen to today has almost certainly gone through multiple conversions between analog and digital, whether that’s through the recording process, the mixing process, or the mastering process.  There are obviously records where that might not be true but I would imagine a lot of this “reissued, remastered” vinyl isn’t being made directly off the “master tapes”.  As for CDs sounding this way or that way, it’s all in the recording, mixing and mastering.  Anything can sound like anything. It’s just vibrations and electricity and zeros and ones.

Anyway. Just some thoughts to bounce around.

-jonny wexler

_____________________________________

You don’t seem like a shed guy.

Tom Quinn

_____________________________________

Bob:  is this a Larry David/Curb Your Enthusiasm episode pitch?

Burt Berman

_____________________________________

I would have hung myself with my bathrobe belt before going thru all that.

Steve Lukather

_____________________________________

I have superior equipment but I can’t operate it. Do you do house calls?

Bill Siddons

Eagles

There was something wrong.

You’ve got to be an electrician to listen to music these days, assuming you don’t take the easy way out and just listen on your phone, which is surprisingly good.

My desktop Sonos app would only see the Sonos system in the house, not the Sonos system in the shed. The music was streaming on the Playbar in the bedroom, what was wrong? After realizing I was seeing the wrong Sonos system, we’ve got two, don’t ask why, it’s historical, I kept resetting the app but I could never log in to the right one, the one in the shed. Tearing what little hair I have out for forty five minutes I ultimately realized my iMac in the shed was on the wrong wifi network, it had defaulted to an inside network as opposed to the much faster one created by the Orbi mesh network, which technically isn’t mesh, but is actually a bit better, not that it’s cheap.

Damn.

Not only did I switch to the Orbi network, I deleted the networks generated by the main router. So no default could happen, so it would be all Orbi all the time.

But I still could not get music on my stereo system. The TV system in the shed worked fine, but not the stereo, what was up?

So I disconnected the Bridge attached directly to the ethernet cable twice, but that didn’t work, but then I remembered there was a Bridge hidden on the stereo rack and I unplugged and replugged that and voila! I can hear music! But then the desktop app asks whether I want to update it and I’m worried it’s going to install the new app which won’t work with one of my old Bridges but I took the risk, and it all worked. I need everything to work. Of course I could have just used the iPhone app, which was up to date and worked fine, but I’m a stickler, I get satisfaction when everything works right, it makes me feel good, it’s that extra one or two percent that gets you to the ultimate, which was what I was trying to achieve listening to this new MoFi Ultradisc vinyl Eagles album, but…

It sounded great, but it sounded slow.

I’d opened the package and the album was on two discs, which surprised me, because it’s barely thirty seven minutes long, but I thought this was just to ensure the ultimate sound, but then, wondering if the turntable was on the fritz, I decided to look, was the vinyl 45RPM? Well, I had to unscrew the turntable compression disc to look and it was, problem solved, or was it? I didn’t see any buttons, could my turntable even play 45 RPM?

I fired up Safari and went to the EAT website. Found the manual. Turns out it can, you’ve got to use a special tool to move the belt to a wider spot on the idler wheel. A SPECIAL TOOL? Where in the hell was that? In storage somewhere. But then I decided to take the risk, I’d already removed the compression disc, now I had to remove the vinyl record and the mat and the plinth and I looked at the belt and decided a round pen should work, and it did, flawlessly, so I put it all back together and the music was playing at the right speed and it sounded INCREDIBLE!

Too often CDs are too bright, there’s no bottom, certainly on the original ones. But just to make sure the vinyl was superior, I pulled up the MoFi CD, I was stunned, the bottom was right there, it sounded…just about as good?

I was completely flummoxed, in this vinyl era, with the craze in full force, shouldn’t the vinyl be a revelation?

So I started to A/B. Over and over again.

Then I realized I had to break out the headphones.

Now I’m using a $1300 EAT turntable, a $750 Sony CD player wherein the disc moves, not the lens, and it’s got its own disc weight and…through the speakers my mind is doing tricks, I decided to go closer, I decided to connect the top of the line $2000+ Sennheiser headphones, and then I started A/B-ing again.

And the CD and the vinyl sounded remarkably similar. But did this make logical sense? The original recording was analog, shouldn’t the vinyl reproduce the music better?

Turns out it did.

On the vinyl the you can hear the bass guitar, you can almost see Randy Meisner picking out individual notes. I kept going back and forth, it was definitive.

And the vocals seemed just a bit more separated and pristine on the vinyl. But really the difference was the background vocals, on the vinyl they were actual people, not just a sound.

But let me reinforce, these two sound sources, the vinyl and the CD, were REMARKABLY similar. The average person would never be able to pick one or the other on a consistent basis, never mind the volume level adding in an extra variable.

So, now since I’d dedicated all that time getting my Sonos system up to speed earlier in the week I decided to stream via Amazon Music HD, CD quality, and it sounded very good, but when I dropped the needle on the vinyl once again you could hear the difference, so…

I emphasize the price of the tools I was using because most people don’t invest this much in their stereo equipment, and inherently get inferior sound.

Then again, there are people who invest a vast multiple of what I’ve got, the tweaks, who are accused of liking the equipment more than the music. And I’m sure this MoFi stuff would sound better on their systems, but…

The floor was shaking. The music was enveloping the complete room. It was up front and center, dominant, it was not a playlist streaming on crappy speakers in the background and I thought of how in the seventies getting closer to the sound was every fan’s dream. And the truth is when you hear Don Henley sing “Witchy Woman” via 45 RPM vinyl you’ll have an experience you can get nowhere else, it’s definitely him, inside the speakers, but…

Do you want to change sides every two tracks?

Do you even want to fire up the big rig? I’ve got to turn on the amp. I’ve got to hit the right source button after the protection circuit does its bit, the phono preamp is on all the time, but I’ve got to turn on the turntable, go through the rigamarole of dropping and screwing down the vinyl and then drop the needle…

Playing a CD is a bit easier.

But the modern way…you just push a button, it’s fast and easy, anybody can do it, even a baby. Turns out convenience is a key selling point. It’s what killed piracy, Spotify, et al, were just so much easier.

And computer music started out sounding inferior, but now you can get CD quality files, even better, and if you’ve got the right playback equipment…

In other words, vinyl is a fetish.

But I was excited breaking the shrinkwrap. I loved opening the box and going through its contents. This is an old world experience, today everything is on demand, the goal is to own nothing. Do humans have an inherent desire to own things, does it speak to something inside our brains? Or is it about feeling superior because you’ve got something nobody else has?

So if you’re on a quest for the ultimate sound, akin to what we were once on in the seventies, buy the vinyl and take a listen. But don’t bother unless your equipment is superior, you won’t hear the difference, which is why the #1 investment you should make is in your speakers. First and foremost your headphones. AirPods are great for walking around, but for critical listening you need something much MUCH better. Or you could start from scratch and invest in speakers and amplification and a way to get the music to them, a turntable, CD player and a Sonos Bridge system.

But the truth is I do almost all my listening at home via my computer speakers, a three-way Genelec system that costs a bit over $1500. Is it worth it? ABSOLUTELY! You’ll never be able to go back to the crap speakers of yore, you’ll wince when you hear the cheap stuff.

But there is a law of diminishing returns.

If you want to get really close to the music, buy the MoFi Eagles CD. If you want the ultimate, if you need the ultimate, buy the vinyl, but you’ll need to be very hands-on, you’ll have to get satisfaction from the vinyl experience otherwise it’s not for you.

I’m still listening… 

P.S. Now I’m reconsidering. While writing this I listened to the entire Eagles CD. And when I was done with it my ears felt fatigued, I decided to drop the needle on the vinyl once again, and it just had a different feel, and there was just a little more definition to every element, and air between them. The bass on the CD was mushier than the vinyl. Maybe it’s the difference between people and machines, analog and digital, vinyl is a pain in the ass but the more I listen to the vinyl the better it feels, it feels human, my ears are definitely not burning out on it. God, it sounds like there’s a band inside the speakers, I can see each individual player, I can pick out their sounds…

P.P.S. I was listening to the CD layer of the MoFi Eagles disc. There’s also an SACD layer, but I don’t have an SACD player, do you?

James McMurtry has a great new album “The Horses and the Hounds” that addresses the world from an adult perspective. We discuss the life of a modern troubadour, releasing music to generate publicity and ticket sales, for McMurtry it’s all about the live show. Despite being self-deprecating, James oozes with insight. This is a chance to get into the head of one of our foremost singer-songwiters.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/james-mcmurtry/id1316200737?i=1000536376920

https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast