Issue 102 JANUARY 13TH, 2020 It's 102 – I got a fever and the only cure is more music! Announcing a new contributor: Wayne Robins. Wayne is a veteran music critic and journalist, former editor of Creem and writer at Newsday/New York Newsday, book author and adjunct professor at St. John’s University. Time passages: It’s hard to believe that it’s been five years since high-end audio legend Harry Pearson passed away. Dan Schwartz and I both worked for Harry and the five-year anniversary seems like a timely occasion to tell our stories of what it was like to work for a man unlike any other before or since. In this issue: J.I. Agnew concludes his ode to cassette tape. Professor Larry Schenbeck interviews musicologist Steve Waksman, who has unique insights into the career of legendary soundman Bill Hanley. Dan Schwartz tells us how he got into high-end audio, and he and I reminisce about Harry Pearson of The Absolute Sound. Bob Wood reminisces about radio station CHAM in the the Great White North. Roy Hall contributes a wonderful story about his zaida (grandfather). Time for some country in these pages as Anne E. Johnson looks at the too-short life of Patsy Cline, and also examines Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice. Tom Gibbs covers Miles Davis and Harry Styles and tries to stay awake for Moby. Wayne Robins tells us why year-end best of lists ain’t what they used to be. John Seetoo looks at BandLab, a company you might not have heard of – but will. Finally, cartoonist James Whitworth finds that breaking up is hard to do, Audio Anthropology uncovers the untruth and other relics, and our Parting Shot captures an American musical master. My Life with Harry Pearson FRANKLY SPEAKING Written by Frank Doris I worked for Harry Pearson full-time for many years in the late 1980s through early 1990s as technical director, managing editor and pop music reviewer and wrote for The Absolute Sound from 1984 to around 2000. I think it’s safe to say I got to know him as well as anyone. Forgive me for being lengthy (and violating Copper's semi-informal word-count rule)…believe me, I could go on and on. Harry was complex, and maybe I can impart a small if rambling glimpse here of what it was like to know the guy. Like most I first became aware of Harry through reading The Absolute Sound, in the late 1970s when I was in my early twenties. When an issue arrived, time stopped. I would sneak the magazine into work and read it under the table, like a kid in elementary school with a comic book, and devour the reviews of the mythical equipment I thought I’d never hear or afford. But especially I’d be amused, entertained, outraged, sometimes shocked and yes, even a little scared at what people would say to each other, which was often nasty, condescending, opinionated, egotistical and impassioned…with HP as the agent provocateur behind it all, who seemed to revel in the maelstrom. It only added to the mystique of The Great HP, who really was a mythical figure to us back then. Over and over again I would read something and think, “Man, I’d never want to be in the middle of all this. These people are crazy!” Yet as a music lover and musician who wanted to hear my favorite music at its best, TAS was a compelling portal into a world of sound I dreamed of hearing. In the early 1980s my friend and fellow audiophile Robert J. Reina (RIP), who I had gone to high school with and who was then writing for TAS, told me they were looking for a pop music reviewer. To make a long story short (maybe someday I’ll tell the long version if anyone cares and if I can remember all the details), Harry hired me. I was thrilled. Good lord, I was a TAS reviewer! I would be known by my initials! I had actually spoken to The Great HP (in conversations that already had ranged from the inspiring to the humorous to the snarky to the incomprehensible). I’m not worthy! But I still hadn’t met him. That would come nine months later when I was invited to one of his now- legendary friendship parties at Sea Cliff (even the name of the town sounded exotic). I had to rent a white tuxedo. I was so nervous I was worried about not peeing in those white tux pants, and wouldn’t drive. (Bob Reina drove us.) I got to the party, a whirlwind of people on the porch. Someone introduced us. The details are now a blur. My first impression of Harry was a man of presence, a good-looking, confident guy, and when he spoke I felt somehow intimidated and put at ease at the same time. Lord knows what his first impression of me was. I can’t remember what he first said to me. (I was having trouble processing the fact that here I was, a few years out of college and had somehow found myself in the center of the high-end audio world.) It was something humorous and complimentary. He then insisted he show me around the house. I was touched…here’s this big party going on with all these big shots and you’re taking the time to break away and show me around? And then for the first time I saw all that mythical equipment, now manifest—the Goldmund Reference turntable. The Infinity IRS V speaker system. The Audio Research SP-11 preamp. I was awed. I had a wonderful time at the party and met so many of the great, great people who have been friends since. And of course, I wanted to hear The System. Harry clearly knew what I was thinking and invited me to come back for a listen. I wasn’t holding my breath, as he had stood me up a few times before. But I wound up coming back a week later. We went to an excellent dinner (Harry always did have good, and expensive, taste in dining out; ask anyone who picked up the bill). Finally, time to hear the fabled Sea Cliff system. I was about to enter the listening room when Harry stopped me, looked at me with frightening intensity and said: “I want you to really think about this before you enter that room. Because if you do, your life will never be the same.” (Holy sh*t, what am I getting myself into?) I hesitated. For a second. He was right. The sound…orders of magnitude beyond what I had ever heard. Soundstaging, imaging and a sense of weight and scale that truly did make you feel like you were in the presence of the performers and the orchestra. Incredible low end, midrange and highs that were more detailed than anything I thought possible. Clarity, transparency…mind-boggling. Fiesta In Hi-Fi, Dafos, that Propaganda record, Lt. Kije…record after record…astounding. But these words are a pale shell of the totality, the experience, the magnitude, the sheer beauty and majesty of the system. I knew my life had been irrevocably changed. To the point where, a few months later at the prodding of Reina (hey, what are friends for?) I refinanced my condo so I could buy an SP-11, Mark Levinson No. 23, Goldmund Studio…seemed crazy but sometimes you just have to go for it. When, a couple of years later, Harry asked me to work full-time for him, I had to think about it for more than just a second as I knew that if I did, my life was really going to change. Especially since, as a now-TAS insider, I knew how hard Harry could be to work for, alternately charming, temperamental, always demanding the best when it came to the writing you handed in (he made me re-write an intro to a piece I did on Les Paul four times before he signed off on it), sometimes pissing manufacturers and staffers off, on occasion refusing to see manufacturers when they had come all the way to visit Sea Cliff, postponing appointments... Yes, Harry could piss people off, including me at times (to nuclear-force proportions on occasion, and I know there are people who view him less warmly than I do), but what friend, family member or lover do you know who doesn’t have foibles? I took the job. I saw it as the opportunity of a lifetime. It was. I essentially became Harry’s right-hand man for more than five years. Harry and I were fundamentally different personalities, but maybe because of that I think we were perfectly suited to work with each other. We were opposites in many ways—he loved controversy while I was pained by it; he would stand people up (including me) while I would struggle to return everyone’s phone calls; he would push handing in copy to the limit and I was always on time (but man could Harry type fast!); I would love going to trade shows, meeting my friends in the industry and hearing new gear while he was mortified at the prospect (until later in his life, and even then he would go grudgingly). Yet we shared so much. Above all, we loved music. I know that sounds like a cliché, a vacuous platitude, but it’s true.