Herbie Hancock and Melody Gardot

All People are Equal (The French President’s Way)

Remember the famous statement that all people are equal but some are just more equal? The French president recently just showed again how true this statment: on one hand Nicolas Sarkozy pushes very hard the 3-strikes-and-you-are-out law across France and the EU, on the other hand he infrigened on copyright himsef when he used songs from a band without paying them any royalities for his political campangne. After he got sued by this band he tried to settle with a symbolic price of 1 Euro, which has of course been rejected by the band as being rediculous and an insult.

In my opinion it is one thing to infringe on copyright for private matters in the realm of fair use. But copyright infringment for financial and professional benefits is just something which is unacceptable! And what ever little of credability Sarkozy had left … now much less is left over!

Cables! Cables! Yes, Cables!

Long time I didn’t spend too much thoughts on the cables I used in my hifi system. Neither on the cables which connect the amplifier to the speakers, nor much on the cables connecting the different audio components. Sure, I used my better cables to connect the my more serious parts of my hifi system to each other, and also the speaker cables were thicker cables, but still neither of them anything special.

For some reason I got recently the idea to actually try out some more fancy speaker cables, not to expensive ones, but still more than just the ordinary copper wire thing. I got attracted by the reviews the QED Silver Anniversary XT cable got and that the price per meter is with around 5 pounds reasonable and nothing insane.

When the cables arrived a week ago I didn’t expect anything too special … and I got caught so red-handed! I never had imagined that the difference would be so huge, so much more details! (A bit more detalied information about this cable can be found here.)

Immediately the following question came to my mind: if the loudspeaker cables make such a difference, what then about better audio interconnect cables? After searching the internet for what cables there are available in the price range I can afford (and having got a slight preferences for cables from QED due to my speaker cables) I decided to go for the QED Qunex 3 (some reviews). I bought two pairs initially in order to test whether the quality improvement is worth the price. Those cables now connect my truntable to the phono stage and the phono stage to my amplifyer. And again it took me not long to decide that I need also cables to connect my CD player aswell as my DVD player to my amplifyer. Moreover the special offer I got for those cables were just to good to let go without taking advantage (50% less than I found elsewere on the internet)!

The only component of my hifi system which is not connected with cables from QED is my radio, which I hardly use. But even here I have a better than average cable, in this case from Cambridge-Audio.

War of the Worlds

Recently I stumbled upon Jeff Wayne’s musical version of the War of the Worlds, a novel written by Herbert Wells did write more than a century ago in 1898. Wells’ book is one of the erliest novels which is about an alien invasion on earth.

I first came in touch with this storry in summer 2005 when a friend of mine and I was looking for shelter from a big rain shower in the evening when we were on our way home. We went to a nearby cinema to watch Spielbergs adaption of the novel. We did not expect anything great at all, just to be safe from the pouring rain; which was then precisely what we got, a silly movie and a dry way home afterwards. But anyways, I digress.

I won Jeff Wayne’s concept album, a lovely double LP with a 15 pages booklet inside. Very interesting music indeed! And as an outcome I looked forward to read the original novel which I am doing at the moment. It is just plain fascinating to read old classic stories.

Roy Ayers Vibe Battle

More to Read, More to Listen to…

After having read Coraline my next book from Neil Gaiman is The Graveyard Book, which is an adaption of the famous The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling. Having finished the book I, Lucifer by Glen Duncan and liking it a lot I began also to read his novel Death of an Ordinary Man. From a review on Amazon:

“Man dies, gets to hover around and check out what the family is up to. In the latest example of our recent obsession with a nonsectarian afterlife, Duncan (I, Lucifer, 2003, etc.) takes your ordinary recently dead schmoe, Nathan Clark, and puts him in the ectoplasmic ether, floating through the lives and thoughts of his family and friends. In a well-rendered but confusing start, Nathan requires considerable time to get his bearings and figure out why all those people are staring at his grave. It takes some time for the reader, too, to get acclimated inside Nathan’s head, which is, not surprisingly, buzzing with questions but also seems to be meshing with the thoughts of the people he’s watching.”

What else? A new LP from Miles Davis: Saturday Night In Person at the Blackhawk, Volume 2. And the vinyl Live! at the Village Vanguard (1961) by John Coltrane.

More Vinyls…

My newly found addiction has caused new purchases on eBay:

• Dire Straits (1978) by Dire Straits
• Communique (1979) by Dire Straits
• Making Movies (1980) by Dire Straits
• Love Over Gold (1982) by Dire Straits
• Alchemy (1984) by Dire Straits
• Brother in Arms (1985) by Dire Straits
• Miles in the Sky (1968) by Miles Davis
• Down to Earth (1959) by Ramsey Lewis
• Mwandishi (1970) by Herbie Hancock
• I, Lucifer (2004) by The Real Tuesday Weld
• John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman (1963) by John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman
• Blues and the Abstract Truth (1961) by Oliver Nelson
• Sun Goddess (1974) by Ramsey Lewis

The Beginning of a New Addiction

Long time I have already had a dream of an own turntable. For more than a decade by now. Last week I finally made the decision to get one. My choice, a plain Debut SE II from Pro-Ject Audio Systems. It has been ordered and should come during the next two weeks.

The first few vinyls which I bought on eBay and Amazon are:

• A Kind of Blue by Miles Davis
• Street Fighting Years by Simple Minds
• The Beautifull Americans by Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington
• Tokyo Tapes by Scorpions
• In a Silent Way by Miles Davis

And I am very sure that many more vinyls will follow…