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Theme: Pushback meets pushback

Interview: Food for the Soul: Lessons from Vermeer with Nina Heyn and Ricardo Oskam

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148 Comments

  2. Re: vinyl-
    My 14 yr old son is crazy for vinyl. Cover Art is one of the big draws to the old albums…he (and I, too, back in the 70’s) loves the size (actually see the art!) and pictures, art, etc; it goes with the playing of the album. I definitely see this with some teens and cash, and hard cover books. All are tactile, they encourage participation, imagination, and create its own environment. Also The interest in playing instruments is on the rise here. Electric guitars, piano, drums, etc. Jazz is hugely popular now, as well as playing the 70’s bands…I think this all leans to the turn back to imagination, which I find a real miracle. A pushback on those nudges mentioned in the show. It isn’t every teenager, but a large number.

    Also to note, I have a friend who works in a large bookstore. She has noticed a marked renaissance for book ownership. Shop for, touch, flip books…the screen readers are being abandoned.
    (I’m in W. TN)
    -And my friends who run a small farm have almost doubled revenue as folks look to get away from the Markets.

    1. Good for your son ! Not all vinyl records are equal, but some vinyl records can sound dramatically better than “the same music” on CD, or via streaming. It can be the difference between recognising that it’s Elvis singing, and actually having Elvis there in the room on front of you. There are a number of reasons for this, but at the end of the day it boils down to the fact that we’re dealing with a music business, not a music charity. Perhaps the main thing to understand, is that most music is targeted towards “on-the-move” situations, in which the music is competing against other sounds. To counter this, the music is compressed. i.e.The quiet parts are made louder. This destroys the dynamic range of the music and is non-reversible. Of course, much modern music is constructed in the studio around sophisticated compression strategies, in which case there is no point in seeking out a vinyl record, but for something from the 1950’s / 1960’s, like Miles Davis’ “Kind of Blue”, you get yourself the 45rpm Analogue Productions reissue and a good chain of sound reproduction, and the reason why some people go wild about this music suddenly becomes crystal clear. This is a promo of that business, but they really do seem to be doing a great job: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2LdW3zUsvg

    2. Exactly, was about to write this myself! They can actually read the lyrics in the sleeve too lol. Wish I’d gotten into vinyl myself, got caught in that middle ground between CDs and the transition to digital… you certainly can’t pick up vinyl cheap at flea markets anymore!

    3. That’s encouraging news.

      Last Saturday or Sunday, in the early morning, I went to the coffee shop and there was a line of people down the block. I thought they were enrolling in some race but they were in line to buy records! I wished I’d never sold my vinyl but I needed money in college. I had an awesome collection.

    4. Vinyl has a much better and more realistic sound…Cd’s have to compress the sound so much ..and they are digital. As a pro musician, I really dislike digital sound. And digital cameras etc etc. A very good friend pressed the first CD in this country ( he was an audio engineer and owner of a great recording company) and he went back to vinyl because of the sound.

      1. Hi Karen. There are a number of steps from room-sound to audio product (i.e. vinyl-record/cd/digital-file), and thus multiple opportunities to irretrievably mess up the sound. i.e. Just because it’s on vinyl doesn’t guarantee it will sound good. Moreover, many new vinyl records are cut from digital files (and this is undeclared on the cover). Some such records are terrible. But digital-audio has come a very long way since the 1980’s, and some records “cut from digital” are the best ever releases of classic recordings. On a good system, they sound absolutely amazing. (e.g. https://mofi.com/collections/ultradisc-one-step/products/mfsl45ud1s-010_charles_mingus_mingus_ah_um_180g_45rpm_2lp_box_set_preorder). I cite this particular record because there was recently a bit of a scandal around the MOFI company. HiFi enthusiasts had assumed that MOFI’s records were “all analogue”, but then someone sussed them out, and NOT because anyone could hear a difference with their expert ears and >$100k audio systems. e.g. Here is the (pre-scandal) verdict of a record-store owner / audiophile comparing his collection of copies of this one album. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZ6XT44cnNw i.e. It’s not as simple as “digital vs analogue”.

  3. Re the US Second Amendment, I only recently understood the US perspective on this. The 1775 “Powder Raid” story brought it home to me.
    It is for those occasions when saying no does not work.

    1. Yup. And increasing the chances that those occasions do not happen.

  4. I was cleaning the house the other day (shock!) and came across some lovely, silly books for literate people I’d read years ago.

    Check out Jasper Fforde (that’s the correct spelling): his Thursday Next series and the Nursery Crimes Division series.

    My personal favourites: The Eyre Affair (Jane Eyre has been kidnapped from the book – literary Detective Thursday Next is on the case) and The Big Over Easy (the murder of Humpty Dumpty).

    Warning: you really have to have to be well read to understand the humour.

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