What struck me the most about this cyber-generation was their perception of what "good stuff" was and where it was made. Most of us who remember big ugly TV's made out of fake wood in neo-Spanish styles will usually snort in outrage at the mere mention of goods that are made in China. This generation sees nothing wrong with that, and more importantly, perceive goods that are made in USA as junk.
That was this brainiac kid's perception, and it seemed to amuse him when I bristled at the mere mention of this. He had never heard of ( nor didn't seem to care ) of Caterpillar bulldozers, Chris King headsets or Krell amplifiers. The fact that we made good stuff in Canada seemed unfathomable to him. His smirk revealed to me that he thought that I was simply making that up on the spot. I guess he was oblivious to the country of origin of the Bombardier train that he took to work that morning. I am certain that he didn't give rat's ass about Moon Audio, the ( heavily counterfeited) Canada Goose Parkas or that quintessential Canadian invention; the Robertson screw.
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| We eat these when it's cold outside, tastes like Tim Horton's donuts. |
Hell, we are responsible for the mighty Canadian Space Arm that was fitted on the Space Shuttle and later the ISS. We could slap around Russian satellites with impunity, flick small asteroids out of orbit and open a very large space-beer should the opportunity present itself.
Needless to say, when I tell people of his ilk that my stereo was made in Scotland, they flat out don't believe me. They put on smiles that are usually reserved for doddering old men or violent mental patients.
What everyone seems to agree on however, is that if Scotland is known for one thing, it must surely be whisky ( or whiskey, the spelling debate rages on, even in my spell-check). Even the most loutish Canadian beer swiller is aware of fine Scottish single-malts. Pretentious hipsters and status-seeking real estate mavens alike revel in blathering on about the most obscure Scottish distilleries that they can think of. I am sure that their mangled mispronunciation would get them a few stiff slaps on a Saturday night in Glasgow.
Some people dream of taking a vacation in Scotland to tour all of these distilleries. Devout Linnites will often include a tour of the Linn factory in Glasgow on their bucket list. It's a Linn thing. Some car enthusiasts dream of touring the Ferrari plant. Some might want to combine booze and stereos and do both while in Scotland. There's the problem.
I was fortunate to have had a friend who had a Linn shop. As a friend and eventual employee, I got to mess around with equipment that some can only dream of owning. I did however, miss out on an opportunity. Linn's founder, Ivor Tiefenbrun used to invite all his dealers to Scotland. Everyone would eventually get their turn. One day it was the Canadians' turn. I didn't get to go, but judging by the tales that I heard upon my friends' return, that may not have been a bad thing.
The visits at the Linn factory were supplanted by lots of good booze. It doesn't matter if it's Linn or Ferrari, a power point presentation always takes on a new dimension when lubricated by some fine local alky-hol.
Ivor would take that one step further however. He would take his dealers out on the sea in a large boat to indulge in what can best be described as a booze cruise. There would be copious quantities of food as well as every type of Scottish whisky imaginable. The boat was equipped with a Linn audio system of course, but that just probably added to the malaise. I guess you can guess the rest. High seas, lots of food, insane amounts of booze and a bunch of audio-selling landlubbers. The sea was angry that day...scratch that... everybody hurled until their guts were inside out. From what I gathered, they were pretty far from Glasgow, so it took a while to get back. I was glad that I had stayed behind, my feet planted firmly on terra firma, and going to the local pub, rather than some lurching boat, after we locked up the shop.
My co-worker at the Linn shop and I had become good buddies, and as well as being a barfly, was a dedicated Linnist. Even though he was obsessed with the Beatles, I didn't hold it against him, and we drank many a pint. More importantly however, is that he had the keys to the shop.
The shop was housed on the first two floors of an old Victorian greystone. One particular evening after many pints and a meal that consisted of nothing but bar peanuts, we decided to grab a couple of six packs and head to the store.
The listening rooms were set up like comfortable living rooms and filled with insanely expensive Linn equipment. It seemed like a great idea. We got to the shop and turned on the lights.We cracked open a six pack of beer ($8.00 Cdn) and fired up a six pack of Linn Klimax amplifiers ( $95,000 Cdn).
He had a Beatles compilation. It was yet another re-mastered Beatles CD, among hundreds of other re-masters that was supposed to reveal never heard before nuances. Yeah, yeah, so maybe I heard a truck rolling by outside the studios, or maybe there was an orchestra playing in the next studio or maybe the engineer cursed. I still didn't like the Beatles.
I dug up a CD that I liked and was familiar with. Jimmie Vaughan's Do you Get The Blues. It was ( I thought) a great sounding, well recorded CD. Jimmie's band was like a Gospel set-up featuring a trio of back-up singers and Hammond B-3 organ. There was no bass guitar, as the B-3 took care of bass duties as well. I was stoked. I cracked another beer and let'er rip with 2400 watts of Linn amplification at my disposal.
Something wasn't quite right though. As they might say in Glasgow, it sounded like shite. In my alcohol-induced haze, I wasn't sure what to make of it. I was disappointed, because that CD had always sounded great. In the back of my head, there was a little voice that was still more or less sober and he was telling me that the mastering was shite.
I already knew this, but the boozy haze made it difficult to understand. High resolution audio systems, Linn in particular, are merciless when it comes to revealing bad recordings or shitty guitar players. You can suck but you can't hide if your music is played on a Linn system. This is the cold, hard reality of high end audio, but as time progressed, everything started sounding weird when booze and high end audio were combined.
This is a good reason to keep drunk people away from your stereo and also why crappy stereos have tone controls. Hundreds of thousands of equalizers have been sold over the years. These were not all sold to commercial establishments in need of sound reinforcement. A lot of them were purchased by people who sit around and fiddle with the sliding knobs for hours as they would get progressively more and more hammered. Yes it's true that nothing messes up sound more than an equalizer ( the sonic equivalent of putting a bucket on your head and hitting it with a ball peen hammer), but give a bottle of whisky to an equalizer knob-fiddler and bad things will happen. I have replaced enough blown woofers on warranty to know this is true.
In had one guy who kept blowing up (literally) his tiny Paradigm bookshelf speakers. Bad enough that he had purchased Paradigms in the first place, but he was driving them with a big ugly amp that used as much juice as a couple of pizza ovens ( and probably sounded like pizza ovens). He kept returning the much-abused speakers for warranty work. He was seemingly proud of his dubious achievements as he kept repeating the mantra of drunken idiots everywhere . " That's rock n' roll, man". He couldn't fool me, man; I was convinced that he was shithouse-liquored when he fried his speakers. I can only imagine what musical abomination he was subjecting these speakers to. The last time he brought his speakers back, one of them had quite literally caught on fire. It was burned to a crisp and all that was left was a charred wooden shell. Needless to say the warranty was not honoured. He should have bought cheaper booze and a better stereo.
Other than crappy stereos, wedding bands and 80,000 watt sub-woofers in Hondas, booze can also be blamed for bad sound. It plays tricks on your mind and for some reasons that are not yet fully understood by academics, causes a dip at around 1000 Hz.
This is why cocktail parties always seem to get louder. There are always one or two obnoxious people who can't handle their booze and almost completely lose the ability to hear themselves. Hence all the shouting and idle threats. These often seem to be the same people that make a beeline for the stereo. They either crank the volume, crank the treble control ( if there is one) or switch to some horrible dance music station. Usually it is all three at the same time.
This results in a few things; the collective volume level of conversation increases even more, people start breaking things as they attempt to dance and a living room fight might ensue. Either way, when the host wakes up the next day to deal with the aftermath, he can be assured that the volume knob on his ghetto blaster will be broken as drunks made repeated attempts at cranking it to 11.
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| Pabst Blue Ribbon is right around the middle. |
As booze dampens mid range perception, the natural tendency is to crank the volume. Sometimes it results in playing the same song over and over again. If you happen to have neighbors that indulge in cheap street-level drugs, you can almost be assured that they will blast techno music all day and all night. They will be using speakers that are the electronic equivalent of crystal meth, and it is a given that said big honkin' hollow-bodied speakers will be on the floor, and most likely up against a wall (the wall adjacent to your bedroom, of course).
I can't be too judgmental, because I have probably annoyed more than my fair share of neighbours over the years. I have been known to play the same song over and over as I accompanied it with an invisible fiddle. When I lived in a small apartment building with walls so thin that I could hear the neighbour writing on a piece of paper, I was known as that " crazed hillbilly upstairs". I would indulge in pedal steel guitar-heavy listening sessions that would twang all around the building.
The frequency and length of these listening sessions would eventually taper off. Audiophiles are familiar with a phenomenon called "listener fatigue". For any non-audiophiles reading this, that is a condition that happens after an hour or two of listening to sub-par audio systems. It sounds harsh and annoying and your brain tells your ears that he can't take it anymore. The same happens when a speaker is driven beyond its limits or an amplifier is over-driven to the point of clipping.
As much as my neighbours wanted to come over with a hockey stick and beat me with it, they knew that the sessions would rarely last long or go much past 9:00 pm because I would develop a type of listener fatigue. The booze started to make the music incomprehensible at a certain point and I would simply turn the stereo off. It would also become increasingly difficult to chose the next CD. I just couldn't decide what to listen to next as I stared blankly at all the CD's. All that tiny writing didn't help either ( at least records were huge and even after many beers you could still see the cover).
I eventually moved to another apartment that had better acoustics. It wasn't the reason that I moved there, but it certainly helped. I made some upgrades to my Linn system and started messing around with Mac Minis and computer audio. Everything sounded great, but something was still amiss. After a few drinks, the system just didn't sound right. It didn't engage me the way that I expected it to. It wasn't just the sound emanating from the speakers; some of my favorite tunes didn't sound right. It seems that after a few libations, I had the attention span of a squirrel and would quickly flip from song to song. I would eventually give up to go sit in the backyard and throw pine cones at unsuspecting neighborhood cats.
I eventually gave up drinking altogether for various reasons. It was nothing earth-shattering, there were no cops involved and I wasn't blowing tweeters; I simply didn't feel like it anymore. The guys down at the liquor store miss me, but I now have a few extra bucks in pocket. My Linn system is sounding as it should and when I turn it on the next day, the volume isn't set at jet engine levels. I have also stopped playing invisible fiddle altogether.
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