Gen-Z Meets Lo-Tech (and loves it)

While delivering our sixteen year-old grandson to jazz band rehearsal where he plays trombone in the college Jazz ensemble, he mentioned that he has been acquiring old jazz LPs (Chet Baker, Miles Davis…!!), and hopes to find a player of some kind to play them on. “Have I got an offer you can’t refuse!” I exclaimed. “How about I make a long-term loan of our fantastic, monster, heavy and hard-to-move “stereo system” that I set back up a couple of years ago and never use?” Now the system is set up in his room upstairs at home. The current setup includes a fifty year-old Pioneer amplifier, fifty year-old Klipsch Heresy Speakers, a fifty year-old Garrard turntable and some old CD player. Gen Z embraces ancient technology and listens to Chet Baker!

This stereo lived for many years at Artichoke Music, long before I joined the Artichoke family in 1981. The amplifier had been purchased at an army PX store during the Vietnam war. We sold LP’s and cassettes at the shop and many a demo LP, cassette and CD was played through its magnificent speakers (originals copied from those in Royal Albert Hall, made by Philips-Holland). The modern CD player was added shortly after Artichoke moved to southeast Hawthorne Boulevard. I have a vivid memory of Kate coming into the shop with her brother, Mike (before our marriage) with a 3-song demo of her songs she had just finished recording. I popped the cassette into the player and was totally knocked out by her music, particularly her song, “Old Salt” with Johnny Cunningham’s gorgeous fiddling. On the word “bound”, the last word in the last line of the song, Kate sings a low F. When that resonant note came through those speakers, the strings on the instruments hanging on the walls began to vibrate. Really.