Jim Merod, Author at Positive Feedback

The Sony LSPX-S3 Glass Surround Speaker: Modesty's Beguiling Musical Eros

Jim Merod — Sun, 14 Aug 2022 03:12:27 +0000

Jim Merod: a self-portrait. Sony's LSPX-S3 glass sound speaker can be regarded as a leaner, no less enjoyable sonic anomaly which the paradigm-setting Harmon Kardon three-unit stereo playback device, a decade or so back, brought the convenience of music's joyful digital miniaturization. This inexpensive, highly-compatible audio triumph depends not so much on Bluetooth flexibility, but... Read More »

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Miles Davis, "It Could Happen to You": a poem

Jim Merod — Wed, 04 Sep 2019 15:51:05 +0000

Fred Astaire & Miles Davis, a poem by Jim Merod It Could Happen To You, as Miles knew, growing up affluent near East St. Louis, his father's horse paddock down the path from my Aunt Rica's house in Millstadt. More than most in the Depression, Miles had means and interest to see films, among... Read More »

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The State of the Cable Art: van den Hul 3T Mountain Cables, & the Kubala-Sosna Realization Series

Jim Merod — Sat, 30 Sep 2017 00:39:30 +0000

Experience, Direct Witness, Astonishment What It Is Across more than forty years I've recorded live jazz in many locations. The list of venues and places has grown long. The number of musicians—great, very good, extraordinary, iconoclastic and, on occasion, startling—has grown even longer. Jim Merod with Ornette Coleman (photograph courtesy of BluePort Records) Early on,... Read More »

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Coming Up! Monterey Jazz Bash @ 60

Jim Merod — Mon, 31 Jul 2017 20:15:17 +0000

Monterey CA, September 15 – 17, 2017 One of this legendary jazz festival's most star-studded line ups will drive energy and sheer musical glory to its full height this fall in the comfortable expanse of Monterey's bucolic fairgrounds. Tributes to jazz heroes—Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Ella Fitzgerald and Sonny Rollins—will punctuate the weekend. Herbie Hancock... Read More »

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Playback Designs Integrated Single Chassis Sonic Masterpiece: The IPS-3

Jim Merod — Sat, 22 Jul 2017 00:35:36 +0000

What? My first "hi fi" stereo box, in 1957, was an elegantly constructed Magnavox LP changer with a built-in amp-preamp feeding two inch mono speakers. All of this consumed a minimal internal and external footprint. The device sat on splayed legs to raise it to easy access. It made sound of some discernible sort resembling... Read More »

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America's Premier Composer Maria Schneider at Soka University 2/21/17

Jim Merod — Wed, 01 Feb 2017 09:40:25 +0000

Maria Schneider (photograph courtesy of Soka University) Maria Schneider is an unrivaled American composer in the grand tradition of Vivaldi, Bach, Mozart, Schubert, Chopin and Ellington, a transcendent lineage that defines western musical maturity. A once undiscovered orchid, Maria's risen to a plateau of melodic delight and aesthetic delicacy without equal, an achievement accrued in... Read More »

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Before She Became Princess Leia

Jim Merod — Tue, 31 Jan 2017 08:42:49 +0000

Finishing graduate study at Stanford, 1970-72, I was Director of Admissions at the The Athenian School, a small and innovative prep school on Mt. Diablo in the Bay Area. It was funded by the Ford Foundation as a tribute to Dyke Brown, its longtime Vice President, a going away present supporting educational objectives he'd championed... Read More »

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Monterey Jazz 59 - Quincy Jones Takes Charge

Jim Merod — Thu, 01 Sep 2016 19:56:34 +0000

In July, I visited all star music guru Quincy Jones at his mind-boggling hacienda near UCLA with its round ballroom's piano ready main gathering area looking out over Los Angeles. Description fails to capture the elegance and grandeur of Quincy's palace. Three Oscars sit here and there like Olympic paper weights. Q's two dozen-plus Grammy... Read More »

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HI-FI ONE: Rick Brown’s Gang Shakes Up Newport, or Re-visiting THE Show 2015

Jim Merod — Mon, 21 Sep 2015 14:10:32 +0000

Preface Without Mirth How many years will it take to tame, or dissolve, mind-numbing noise suffusing "audiophile" events? Year after year, more than twenty five in my experience, any expectation of focused attention with music and superior audio gear—formerly at CES and now THE Show Newport Beach, as elsewhere, where the claim of audiophile privilege beckons... Read More »

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MONTEREY JAZZ, 2015: "A Man's Gotta Know His Limitations"

Jim Merod — Fri, 14 Aug 2015 06:36:28 +0000

After laughter at the first GOP debate from Donald Trump's chauvinist dump on Rosie O'Donnell, jazz hounds, east and west, now look eagerly ahead to the impeccable vocal art of Diane Reeves on the third weekend of September this year near Carmel. Ms. Reeves is literally at the top of any astute list of jazz... Read More »

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John Fedchock Big Band: Like It Is (Mama Records)

Jim Merod — Thu, 06 Aug 2015 08:53:28 +0000

This kick-ass New York jazz orchestra's fifth album, scheduled for release on Friday, August 7, is leader John Fedchock's eighth publication. Already a powerhouse big band leader and arranger, trombonist Fedchock gained chops and jazz sea-legs working for legendary jazz orchestra guru, Woody Herman. He was Herman's musical director—a ferociously exacting task which earned him praise from the no-BS... Read More »

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Celebrating the Joyous Music of the Great Ruben Estrada

Jim Merod — Tue, 21 Jul 2015 04:43:34 +0000

For more than two decades I've been a fan of vibraphonist/pianist/band leader Ruben Estrada, whose lyrical delicacy and musical intensity define, and extend,the profound artistic heritage he absorbed on his way to Number One world class Latin jazz vibe and timbales guru. Estrada is an enormously modest man. His pride in his playing and his... Read More »

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GTT’s Bill Parish & Audionet’s AMP 1 V2 Truthful, Happy Stereo Amp

Jim Merod — Mon, 06 Jul 2015 22:13:54 +0000

The Always Unimaginable Future The First World War pre-dated the arrival of vivid sonic capture. It's not difficult to imagine that—despite the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914, which let loose animosities ready for release after Europe's and Asia's 1870 conflicts—almost anything might have helped stave off the disaster of that delusional... Read More »

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Red Dragon Audio M500 and M1000 MkII Amplifiers

Jim Merod — Sat, 11 Apr 2015 08:31:08 +0000

Here We Go Again Over many years I've endured hope and disappointment in the service of auditioning and evaluating loud speakers of virtually every sort. At a certain point one becomes braced for the worst or, at least, for the next version of "no cigar" in the process of countervailing but ongoing optimism once again.... Read More »

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Harry Pearson: Audiophiles' Tutto de Tutti Capi

Jim Merod — Fri, 30 Jan 2015 01:12:52 +0000

Walter Benjamin pointed out, during the tragic era when Adolph Garbage-bag stormed Europe with unquenched anti-Semitic malice, that each memorable character type and archetypal personality reflected (with inevitable prismatic distortion) the underlying zeitgeist from which it emerged on the historical scene. Benjamin suffered inordinately from The Fascist Fraud's hateful pomposity. His philosophically refined awareness of... Read More »

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Music Enhanced To an Astonishing Level: The Transcendent Kubala-Sosna XPander A/C Unit

Jim Merod — Mon, 01 Dec 2014 02:23:09 +0000

The First Blueport "Audio Transcendence" Award (With a response by Marshall Nack) What does it mean that the onset of Global Warming coincides with the arrival of a theoretical Golden Age of audiophile possibilities? I'll think about that awhile as the emergence of DSD (direct stream digital), after a quarter-century languishing in audio twilight with... Read More »

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Jon Mayer Solo: LIVE! in Portland

Jim Merod — Thu, 20 Nov 2014 21:33:37 +0000

Jazz pianists are the archivists and barometric interpreters of the Great American songbook, a repository of melodic brilliance that legendary pianist Tommy Flanagan frequently called attention to. One Friday night @ ELARIO'S jazz club atop the Summer House Inn in La Jolla, playing to a packed room, Tommy noted that not all jazz trios or... Read More »

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Primaluna Dialogue Premium Preamplifier - The Real Deal

Jim Merod — Sat, 23 Aug 2014 20:59:11 +0000

Driving North The road from San Diego to Upland, east of Los Angeles, is both circuitous and a relief from decades of treks straight north up Route 5 or, northwest on the 405, to Santa Monica. Kevin Deal's Upscale Audio empire is defined by two locations in the bliss of semi-rural still rugged and hilly... Read More »

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Monterey Jazz @ 57 - Herbie Hancock: Lifting Our Spirits Once More

Jim Merod — Sat, 23 Aug 2014 04:19:39 +0000

Last year, in May, the remarkable (truly without equal) Herbie Hancock gave the commencement address at Soka University, where I teach humanities and literature, as well as coordinating the "Jazz Monsters" concert series which I founded in 2005 after decades of teaching at Cornell, Brown, Stanford, Brandeis, and UCLA. Herbie's eloquent message to our graduating... Read More »

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Avanti Audio Allegro Cables - Big League, Top Flight, No BS Musical Signal Conductors

Jim Merod — Mon, 18 Aug 2014 03:42:11 +0000

I Never Said This Before Imagine the first time your youthful lust for innocent attachment to a mate of some sort, form or beguiling presence clocked you upside the head. Or inside your throbbing noggin. Imagine that virginal moment of longing and suspension—you, the uncertain gangly animal you were, staring at a creature who (for... Read More »

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Audience The ONE Personal Reference Loudspeakers - John McDonald's Personal Mystery Gift

Jim Merod — Sat, 19 Jul 2014 20:08:49 +0000

Plowing Back To Go Forward Long ago I spent considerable time with the Audience design team listening, on multiple occasions; to the development of a multi-driver speaker creation intended to take-no-prisoners and drops a proverbial wake-up bomb on the audiophile world. Those were whopping good sessions of superior fellow-feeling that allowed several chaps with disparate... Read More »

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Red Dragon Audio M500 and M1000 MkII Amplifiers

Jim Merod — Fri, 11 Jul 2014 19:29:39 +0000

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