#1374, Monday, February 23: Listening like the Steppenwolf

Post 1374, Day 54 of 2015
- 1,515 days since I started this blog -

Daily Comment

I was reminded over the weekend of a book I read almost fifty years ago: Steppenwolf, by Hermann Hesse.

I learned a lot from it back in my teen days. But the most enduring, practical takeaway (not the most meaningful, or philosophically deep) was about how to listen to recorded music. It wasn't about the fidelity of the recording, it was about listening through to the recording event.

When the book was written, about ninety years ago, all recordings were made the same way: An actual performance was cut directly to the shellac master used to press phonograph records.

That meant that, despite the primitive recording and playback equipment, it was easier to hear into the performance than it is now.

It isn't impossible now, of course, but it is difficult, since the performance is put together piecemeal, and nothing of the original is left in the final product, although the occasional album is still made with live sound in mind... But I'm digressing. Here's the reason why I was reminded of this aspect of my early encounter with Hesse's book:.

I don't remember exactly when it came to me, probably a few years ago, but yesterday (Sunday) I found an mp3 of a cassette recording of the soul review I played in from 1973 to 1976. This was an early recording, made, I think, in February or March of 1974, three or four months after I started working with Primitive Love, and formed The Love Machine backup band.

The recording is dreadful, no two ways about it. It was made on a Radio Shack cassette deck with two buck-a-piece (with desk stands) microphones, by the drummer I hung out with in those days. But the performace is something pretty special.

I had forgotten how amazingly good the singers were, but the recording leaves no doubt in my mind that they were world-class good. The band is good, too, but the singers! Wow!

Of course, this stimulated a lot of thought and a lot of memories. Including the point made in Steppenwolf about listening through the defects in the recording to the event. All I can say is, wow!

There are stories attached to these recordings, but I won't be telling them here. I am going to give you a taste, and I think, if you can hear past the tape hiss, the over-ambient 'space' (the microphones were probably 20 feet from the stage in a small club, but it sounds like the stage is at one end of a canyon), the absence of any information at the frequency extremes... If you can listen through to the performance, you might hear the same magic I did back then. Here's taste one, a cover (they all were covers) of Blue Magic's 'Stop to Start'.

This is one I had to fight everybody to do. Nobody knew reggae back then. And I really had to push hard to get this one onto the set:  The Wailer's 'I Shot the Sheriff'. This is a few months after the US release, and a few months before the monster hit by Eric Clapton, which I've always thought is/was awful, and made us pull the song from our set list.

Food and Diet Section

Today's Weight:                   206.2 lbs

Previous Weight (2/20):           206.4 lbs

Day Net Loss/Gain:                - 0.2 lbs

Diet Comment

Essentially, flat after a weekend where I ate well, right up until Sunday night, when I made the mistake of not eating before my gig.
 

Food Log

Breakfast
A Quest bar.

Lunch

Roasted turkey breast chopped salad: baby kale, baby spinach, chard, cole slaw mix, black beans and balsamic vinaigrette. Quest bar for dessert.

Dinner

Quest bars.

Snack
A Quest bar.

Liquid Intake
   Coffee:  28 oz.   Water: 96+ oz. 

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