despite being unable to convince any of my buckeye-crazy friends to come out, i went to see emily at the paradise last night. i really regretted not going down to new york to see her last summer, and was relieved when i read she was going on tour again.
the show had a pretty weird vibe, but was excellent. my only complaint would have been that it was an hour or two too short... emily said "that's it" as she played the last notes of the last song. after playing the whole album, they didn't really have anything left for an encore. oh well, i hope she comes back soon.
on the way out, there were a few people hovering around the merch table, but nobody was really buying anything, so i picked up her album on vinyl. i just felt like... it would be a really beautiful album to listen to on a turntable. if only i had one.
i thought about stopping by tweeter after work, but instead decided to give harvard square's audio lab a shot instead.
it was like walking right into high fidelity.
there was some guy from belgium who had been in the store maybe 15 years earlier, and was in town again so decided to stop by. we talked about the iPhone a little, in fact.
and i could not tell if another guy in there worked there, or was just a regular customer. i imagine that i could go back every day this week and he'd be there.
after some brief conversation, i ended up taking home a pro-ject debut III. i liked the minimalist design, and i figure it was best to get out of there before he got the $4400 models back in stock.
also, how could i resist? it's silver.
after a brief taxi ride home (the box was a little bulky for early evening T travel), i arrived back in brookline anxious to play my new records.
the guy at the store noted that it required a little assembly, so i carefully took out the parts and opened up the instruction book. it begins:
Dear music lover,
it started dawning on me that this was indeed a special device.
i struggled with terms like azimut and anti-skating while trying to assemble this device. the instructions almost seemed backwards... they tell you about switching between 33 and 45 after you already put the, umm, platter? on the... hub. you see, there's no lever, or button, you have to remove the platter and switch up the belt. that would have been handy to know, when i put the belt on in the first place! oh well.
and i still have no idea what the little weight hanging off the string by the wire next to the arm is, but it seems like such a beautiful and elegant solution to whatever it does. this whole thing has reminded of emotional design... the admiration of its design makes its use more enjoyable. for example, the power switch is difficult to find at first; it's actually underneat on the left. but it leaves the base clean with elegant beauty, so in the long run the 45 seconds it took to find it aren't so bad after all. i guess.
their faq is awesome:
Historically, Pro-Ject and other high-end record players have concentrated on sound quality at the expense of comfort features found on consumer class products.
...
On the other hand, a record player is not a product which will play "straight out of the box". By carefully reading the instructions for use and by following an equally careful step-by-step assembly you will quickly learn about the product and how it works. Our entry-level Debut models are as close to "plug-and-play" as a record-player can get.
so plug-and-play that it only took me an hour of setting up before i could play anything... oops, playing at 45 rpm, flip the thing, change the belt, there we go. sounds ok, i guess. what's up with that popping and snapping? and this getting up every five minutes to flip records over is starting to get a little old.
but it's clear, from all these details, and the exquisite packaging that emily's and thom's records have, that these are truly labors of love? anyway they are fun. i'm going to stop by audiolab tomorrow and tell the guy how much fun it was setting it up, and thanking him for recommending it.
oh and emily's show tomorrow is going to be broadcast on INTERNET by the npr tomorrow, so you should check it out! hopefully they will have more bandwith than tsn broadband.
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