My tastes have changed over the years. And because I've always been interested in music reproduction that surely has something to do with it. My folks had a heavy wooden console stereo when I was growing up. Like Gunbei, we had the first stereo records, with the train, the ping pong balls, the speedboats and race cars. The first records I ever bought with my own money were Beatle records. At first it was tough to decide whether the stereo version at $3.29 was really worth the dollar extra than the mono one. I was playing them on a bulky portable GE stereo that had detachable speakers. In high school I'd talk to my steady girl for hours, playing her record cuts over the phone.
About 1970 I got to college and my first roommate had a real component stereo. Soon I sent off my $450 and got a whole system from Dixie Hi-Fi Wholesalers. By then I'd expanded my tastes but not really broadened them. It wasn't about sonics, it was more about the energy the music contained. I scored everything by Hendrix; pre DSOTM Pink Floyd; Cream; Grateful Dead; Jefferson Airplane; Procul Harem; Quicksilver.
After I graduated there was a girl living downstairs who'd been in a car wreck. She laid in bed for a year and listened to WXPN constantly. It was all jazz. I spent hours sitting in a chair next to one of her Dynaco A-25's. When she got better she got a gig spinning records at our university radio station. I helped out on a couple of theme artist radio shows; one was Rahsaan Roland Kirk, a unique jazz reed player.
By then, I'd grown an ear for jazz and I started to add some to my collection. Still it wasn't the sonics, it was about artistic integrity, the reaching, the energy. Stereowise I was more concerned about getting pop & tick-free albums. I hated sweet sounding music, like Grover Washington. My only Coltrane album was and still is Ascension. I went through a McCoy Tyner phase; then discovered Keith Jarrett and Eberhard Weber on the ECM label. They cost a buck more than the regular releases but the platic lined, paper inner sleeve was some kind of justification. I hadn't given up on rock but it was getting more difficult to find satisfying records.
It's amusing to me that people still thrill to the latest remix of DSOTM. Great all time record sure, but when it came out it was such a departure from the art-rock I'd come to expect from Pink Floyd. DSOTM felt like a huge sellout at the time. Echoes had way more innate character. It had humor. I guess you had to be there.
By 1980 getting a good-all-the-way-thru rock record seemed almost impossible. Most LP's had a couple of hits or were too contrived. Buying new releases was like girly magazines: after a couple of weeks the flash wore off and I craved a fresh fix. I felt like a tool of the record biz. I gave up buying music altogether. My system had marginally improved, mostly to make it less noisy and more durable. During this buying hiatus I did some soul searching about the records I had. My final conclusion: my collection reflected one person's taste and had no deeper meaning. It was all keepers but a hodgepodge nonetheless.
In the late eighties I finally gave in to the CD craze. I got a tape deck and transferred 200 of my delicate, tick and pop free LP specimens to metal tape. Because the ECM records had so impressed me I decided to collect the entire label. At least then I'd have something, like collecting all the stamps of one country. I'd also developed a special fondness for Sun Ra, because his bands put it all together everytime: virtuosity, humor, exploration and energy.
Finally I'd have to say that it was the performances on the CD's I already had that drove me to improve my stereo. I sought to eliminate distortions I heard, like screechy flute, soprano sax and upper register piano. But ultimately it isn't about accuracy, it's about being able to listen without being distracted by anything other than the musical message, the emotional content, the energy.
My self-imposed subscription to the ECM label has turned me on to lots of stuff I would have neither experienced nor known existed. The production values are always high, the muscianship beyond reproach, and best of all, the music is so complex that it is impossible to remember. My collection is always fresh to me though it's sometimes hard to decide what to play. I admit my old rock LP's get a play now and then. I still marvel at their fundamental greatness. They do sound wonderful on a nice rig, better than ever.
So yes, my tastes have changed over the years. But audiophilia has been a servant to my tastes, not their master. Tastes aside, being a stereo nut is fun all by itself :^)
