AXPONA, Accolades, and Accidental Discovery
A reminder at the top that we will be exhibiting next week at AXPONA in Schaumburg from Friday through Sunday, and that the store will be closed from Wednesday through Saturday in order to facilitate this. Two rooms this year! Well two systems, anyway, in two adjoining rooms. Are we crazy? Perhaps. Come see us in room 1234 and decide.
I’m feeling Musing-esque tonight, but I really shouldn’t count this as one because it is almost entirely made up of other people’s work. I will preamble it a little, and by so doing hammer it into a semi-Musing, by saying I am listening to a lovely record of Stravinsky works played by the London Sinfonietta conducted by Riccardo Chailly. The record was made in 1979, and I note that Chailly was born in 1953, making him roughly three years older than I am, and 26 when he led this ensemble to make this wonderful record. I noted the scant age difference at the time and it reminds me, today, of a line the comic Natasha Leggero laid on an audience member who admitted to playing a lot of Call Of Duty at age 40. “When Napoleon was your age, he had conquered half of Europe.”
It is on the Italian Dischi Ricordi label and I bought it from Berkshire Record Outlet in the early ‘80’s. BRO still exists, and it is and was then a source for screaming deals on largely classical recordings. Of course, back then, it was almost entirely vinyl. I just checked now and they still have vinyl: 14 titles to be exact. And 21,506 CD’s.
In the ‘70’s and ‘80’s, a regularly mailed catalog, more primitive than the image you have in your head from that word, would arrive and I would rip into it, looking for what I wanted, knowing that “when they’re gone, they’re gone” was the rule. More than once, I missed out on something because I was too slow on the draw and there were none left. The list largely comprised “cut-outs”, a term that, if you aren’t Riccardo’s and my age, you may not be familiar with. Cut-outs were records that were, either temporarily or permanently, undesirable to the label that created them. Someone walked into a warehouse somewhere and decided they were never going to be able to sell all these Mason Proffit records at $5.98. Or these Riccardo Chailly records at $8.98. Let’s blow them out.
And then, they would ship either all of them, or enough of them that looking at the amount remaining no longer made them nervous, to a cutout distributor. The records would be defaced in some way- hole drilled through jacket, corner clipped- so that they could never be sold for full price, and then put on the market. Most record stores in Milwaukee had a “cut-out section” at the time, and sometimes a store would sell nothing but. BRO was the national champion of classical cut-outs and I bought a bunch. My “Nine Masterpieces Conducted By The Composer Igor Stravinsky” has the whole corner of the box set, all the inner sleeves and the booklet sawed off for about an inch and a half on one corner, but the music is unperturbed and the price was low, low, low.
The beauty of this quirk of the record industry was that it encouraged risk taking. The barrier to entry was low enough (cut-outs typically ranged from $.99 to $2.99 a (black) disc) that you could take a whirl, or even several whirls, on something you didn’t already know everything about. I used to come home from NMC, Dirty Jack’s Record Rack or Ludwig van Ear, where I wound up working, with a large bag of records for a small amount of money. And later, Berkshire and others would deliver sizable boxes of records also for a relative pittance. Of course, they weren’t all gems, but some of my favorite records came into my possession this way. The world of recorded music has, for a long time, been sufficiently gigantic that one person’s “we gotta move these refrigerators” was my “right in here please!”
I suppose streaming sort of fills that niche today. You can hear almost anything before you buy it in its entirety. Or hear, but not buy anything. But it seems to me there is a difference between low risk and NO risk. A subtle devaluation when you have no skin in the game. But it is a beautiful thing that the musical world is your oyster. And I hope for you that streaming, if you do it, encourages what I have always hoped hi-fi is about- knocking down the barriers to music, kicking over genre prejudices and encouraging experimentation. Pick something at random once in a while and take a chance. It’s what I often did with cut-outs, and there is no better gem than the one found this way.
And now, on to the work of others. It is exciting and humbling to be recognized for what a business accomplishes in the course of “just doing our job.” We think the world of our customers and our vendors. All of you are indispensable to us, as we hope to be to you, so when we hear nice things, it just makes our day, month, year. Life even.
The first of those recent occurrences is that we were recognized by AudioQuest as Dealer of the Year for our efforts in 2022! Here is how our dear friend Rick Blair put it:
Ultra Fidelis
“It’s pretty much impossible for me to imagine a more deserving recipient of this award than Jonathan Spelt’s Ultra Fidelis. Jon and AudioQuest go way back. And, right from the start, he grasped our “Do No Harm” ethos, jibed with our noise-dissipation technologies, and spread the gospel of great sound. Whether he’s hosting an open house, interviewing Bill or Garth, publishing a blog, or working an event, his passion is obvious and infectious. I couldn’t imagine a better, more knowledgeable, or more enthusiastic ambassador for our brand.” —Rick Blair, Regional Sales Manager | Upper Midwest
Thank you from the bottom of our hearts, Rick, Bill and everyone at AudioQuest who also work so hard to help us bring sonic excellence and musical happiness to all of you. We couldn’t be prouder.
Then, a few months ago, we heard from our recent customer and new friend John C. expressing his pleasure at achieving a level of musical performance in his home that fulfills him day in and day out- no easy task as he is a hard-working musician with a ready reference for what the real thing is. We are equally pleased to have helped him achieve happiness as we are gratified by our AudioQuest award. You can read John’s story here.
Thanks to each and every one of you reading this for helping us do something we love for a living!
We hope to see you at AXPONA next week.