He used a wind-up Victrola sitting on a shelf directly in front of the cows, just below a framed reproduction of an Alpine landscape painting. He said the music and the mountain scene relaxed the cows, causing them to give better milk. Harold played the same Gustav Mahler symphony every day. I remember how quickly each disc ended, how I had to run over and change it, and how cross he got when I played the discs in the wrong order. I remember how the room smelled like hay and wet cow pies, how half the sound from the Victrola was a scrapey, hissing noise, and how Mahler’s (and Harold’s) Austro-Bohemian German-ness dominated the room.
These sensuous farm memories entered my mind after watching a movie, Desperate Man Blues, about a notorious radio disc jockey and 78rpm record collector named Joe Bussard, who explains that he found many of his most valuable discs by knocking on the doors of houses without electricity, in one case walking waist-deep through a swamp to get there. Joe Bussard is legend. Watching him in his wood-paneled basement playing rare discs from the 1920s is the purest illustration of what an evolved, music-loving record collector looks like.
Joe wears plaid flannel shirts, drinks beer, and sits in a gray steel office chair at the end of a long wall containing thousands of brown-sleeved, unlabeled, deliberately disorganized 78rpm discs. In front of him are several turntables, including his current favorite, a Technics SP15 with an Audio Technica ATP-12T tonearm. To his side is a 1970s-looking equalizer amp with faders that he plays like a dobro (which he also plays) and a shelf with a row of cassette decks.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der December 2020-Ausgabe von Stereophile.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
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Louis in London
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Hegel H400
STREAMING INTEGRATED AMPLIFIER
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How many times have you been told by parents and teachers that everything successful must be built on a strong foundation?
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Every product listed here has been reviewed in Stereophile. Everything on the list, regardless of rating, is genuinely recommendable.
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Pull down the shades, find a comfortable seat, and come with me on an imaginary journey to the year 1956. The Eisenhower-Nixon ticket wins reelection, the United Methodist Church begins to ordain women, and a can of Campbell's tomato soup costs 10 cents.