In 1966, French rock star Serge Gainsbourg, a party-hearty lothario, asked a teenage protégé named France Gall to sing a new song he had written. Les Sucettes was ostensibly about lollipops, but the lyrics contained multiple heavy innuendos. One line claimed that "lollipop juice" flowing down a girl's throat could transport her to paradise. Gall was only 18 and not particularly worldly. After the recording and the associated video¹ began to gain public attention, someone finally clued her in. She was so mortified she hid for weeks.
She never spoke to Gainsbourg again and declared later that she'd felt "betrayed by the adults around me." In the recording industry, women have often received the short end of the stick.
John Lennon cribbed most of the lyrics for Imagine from a Yoko Ono poem but declined to give her a songwriting credit; this didn't get corrected until 2017. In 1996, the Los Angeles Times reported that the three young members of TLC-whose second album, CrazySexy Cool, went platinum four times over-received less than 1% of the $175 million revenue their music had generated. The trio declared bankruptcy.
And then there's Astrud Gilberto.
The male gaze
On March 18, 1963, Astrud Gilberto accompanied her husband, pioneering bossa nova guitarist and singer João Gilberto, to the A&R studio in midtown Manhattan. João, nine years her senior, was well-loved in their native Brazil, but Astrud, at 22, was unknown. João's music, sung quietly in his native Portuguese, had drawn the attention of Stan Getz, whose lyrical, mellow tenorsax style was an excellent match for the emerging Brazilian genre. Samba-derived but not percussion-heavy, Getz's seductive bossa nova interpretations solidified his reputation as a jazz titan.
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German kitchens, Japanese amps, and Afropop gems
BRILLIANT CORNERS - I have a day job at a museum. One of my favorite things about working there is taking the elevator from my office down to one of the floors open to the public; I walk into the galleries through a discreet panel in the wall. This makes me feel like I'm in one of those horror-movie manors with a tunnel concealed behind a bookshelf. Sometimes I startle people, which I kind of enjoy.
EDITOR'S PICK - RECORDING OF THE MONTH
The record business was awash in money and power. Vinyl LPs were still five bucks, and while the pressings could be suspect, the music-buying public still snapped them up en masse.
The Butthole Surfers wipe out
REVINYLIZATION - Music's lunatic fringe drifts further out every hour. As it should. In this century, with computers playing an ever-larger role, music continues to fragment and become infinitely more varied. This splintering is either the essence of what keeps it relevant as an art form or something profoundly disturbing, to be hated and feared.
You're only lonely
AURAL ROBERT - The least surprising story in music today is the inevitable passing of irreplaceable talent. Tenor saxophonist Benny Golson died at age 95 the day I finished this salute to another fallen star, Southern California singer/songwriter John David \"JD\" Souther.
PS Audio Aspen FR5 - LOUDSPEAKER
I remember the first PS Audio product: a simple phono stage. It was so simple - a passive RIAA eq filter flanked by a pair of primitive op-amps - that when the schematic was made public, I built one myself; I was in the midst of my DIY years. I thought it was, to use a word from that time, nifty.
TEAC UD-701N - STREAMING PREAMP, D/A CONVERTER
In Gramophone Dreams #88, I described the sound of TEAC's VRDS-701T CD transport as \"dense and precise in a way I had never previously heard from digital.\" I went on to explain, \"by dense, I mean there was a tangible corporeality effected by seemingly infinite quantities of small, tightly packed molecules of musical information.\"
Sonus faber Sonetto V G2 - LOUDSPEAKER
Here's a hard truth: A written review of a full-sized speaker any speaker, really-is, at best, semi-useful. We all listen differently, we have different musical tastes, our system electronics are different, and our listening rooms vary a lot. You will gain a general picture of a speaker's capabilities and foibles from John Atkinson's measurements, and I can tell you how the speakers sound to me, in my room. But that's it. You need to hear them for yourself before making a buying decision. The best I can do is tell you how my music brain felt when the speakers were in my house and making music.
STEREOPHILE'S 33RD ANNUAL - PRODUCT OF THE YEAR AWARD 2024
When Stereophile's Product of the Year Awards were first published, in 1992, we decided that unlike some other publications and their awards schemes, we would keep the number of categories to a minimum. That way, we would avoid what the late Art Dudley once described as the \"every child in the class gets a prize\" syndrome.
Moon 861 - POWER AMPLIFIER
It is unusual to begin a review with a detailed discussion of setup. But setup protocol for the Moon 861 power amplifier ($22,000 each), the top-level amplifier in the North Collection from Moon, which I reviewed bridged in mono, proved crucial to its sound.
Mobile Fidelity, PrimaLuna, and First Watt redux
GRAMOPHONE DREAMS - It's important for readers to remember that I've spent my adult life as an artist and mechanic. Making things. Working as a tradesperson during the day then at an easel or workbench at night.
