
New Yorkers love to complain about the summers, with their wafting miasma of hot garbage and urine; about the superannuated subway system, which only sometimes resembles a psilocybin trip gone really wrong; about the purgatorial agony of finding an apartment; about the affronts of existing shoulder-to-shoulder with the stupendously rich.
New York will never make onto a "most livable cities" list, and it attracts a particular kind of person. Despite the influx of suburban corporate workers that has transformed it over the past three decades, the city remains a haven for the strange and those drawn to strangeness, for artists and obsessives, for people hooked on the pursuit of more than ample parking space and an affordable breakfast burrito.
This situation is alluded to in the title of Waylon Jennings's 1992 album Too Dumb for New York City, Too Ugly for L.A. and also by the odd fact that John Waters, the filmmaker responsible for underground art-trash classics like Pink Flamingos, once attended New York University. "I didn't go to class," Waters recalled. "I went to Times Square every day and saw movies. I stole books from their bookshop and sold them back the next day to make money. I took drugs. I probably should've been thrown out." Waters was eventually expelled, after getting arrested with a quantity of marijuana. I think about him every time I teach a class at NYU.
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Denne historien er fra July 2023-utgaven av Stereophile.
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The Beatles in Mono according to Kevin
It's almost too easy to make Dave Dexter Jr. the villain in the story of the Beatles' fumbled introduction to America.

Stromtank S-4000 ProPower MK-II XT
COMPUTER-CONTROLLED BATTERY POWER SOURCE

Aurorasound HFSA-01
INTEGRATED AMPLIFIER

Transforming the music
One of my favorite things about this pastime is the modesty of its aims.

Lou Donaldson
Years ago, at one of the milestone NYC anniversary parties for Blue Note Records, a piercing voice burst out above the clinking glasses and chattering tongues, loudly declaiming (quoted here with several profanities omitted), \"Blue Note never gave me a dime!\"

EMM Labs DA2i
Among the many reasons to be grateful for audio shows,' one stands out: They allow me to set reasonable expectations of what components and whole audio systems can or cannot achieve. They have helped me set standards.

POLICED
THAT'S PRETTY ODIOUS,\" ANDY SUMMERS SAYS TO ME. \"AN ODIOUS COMPARISON.\" HIS BLUEISH EYES DARKEN. ROUGHLY AN HOUR INTO OUR 90-MINUTE FACE-TO-FACE INTERVIEW, I'D ASKED IF IT BOTHERS HIM THAT IN TERMS OF REACH AND STAYING POWER, HIS SOLO OEUVRE WILL NEVER MATCH HIS WORK WITH THE POLICE.

Focal Diva Utopia
WIRELESS STREAMING ACTIVE LOUDSPEAKER SYSTEM

An ultrasonic bargain
The first album I ever bought with my own money-cash earned mowing neighbors' lawns-was a British plum-label pressing of Led Zeppelin II.

MoFi Electronics Source Point 888
A recent high point in my career as a reviewer was writing about the MoFi Electronics SourcePoint 10 standmount loudspeaker for the February 2023 issue of Stereophile.'