Category: Music

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Just Because

Eurythmics: Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) (1983)

I still wonder how the 80s produced such a bumper crop of incredible music and the 90s were such a wasteland…

Or maybe that’s just my perspective.

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Released 41 Years Ago Today

Alec R. Constandinos: Romeo & Juliet (1978)

So many memories attached to this one, but the one that stands out the most was taking the record into Jerry’s Audio in Phoenix (one of many high end audio stores at the time) and having it played through a pair of Gale401‘s. At the time the Gales were my dream speakers, priced somewhere in the stratosphere and completely unobtainable on my $2.75/hour Broadway Southwest Sales Associate budget, but to my young ears (that could actually easily still hear to 20kHz!), they sounded even better than the JBL L100s. I knew all the salesmen at Jerry’s and one of them (a notorious hard rocker) came running into the listening room yelling, “What is this disco shi…” He stood there for a minute listening and finally said, “Damn, that sounds good.” Romeo & Juliet was supposedly one of the first records mixed down from a 48-track master and even today it does sound damn good.

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Want!

When I finally get my first full paycheck (which is going to be a while because of the multitude of unpaid holidays I have to endure this time of year as a contractor) and have a bit of wiggle room, this is going to be my first splurge.

I have The Man Machine on black vinyl; in fact, it’s one of the few recordings from my original collection to have survived the purge in the late 80s and remains in pristine condition, but damn…that red version is so sexy. I originally spotted it on Instagram, which in turn led me to Discogs. The pressings aren’t that rare even though they seem to have been limited to distribution in France, but they aren’t cheap, either.

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Jean-Michel Jarre Does It Again

Chills upon hearing the first track. Just like 40 years ago after rushing home with the newly-released Equinoxe.

Once again I am twenty years old, skimming over a vast sea of golden dunes in my landspeeder under a double sun in a wheat-colored sky with the love of my life at my side.

“Not Even Death Shall Part Us” (1978) by yours truly, based loosely on a STAR WARS pre-production painting by Ralph McQuarrie. Yes, I used to paint.

In 1978 as the original Equinoxe was spinning on the turntable I called my friend and mentor Kent and after holding the receiver (yes, Virginia, it was a phone with a wire connected to the wall) up to the speaker I said, “Can you hear that? Landspeeders!” It’s been a long time since a piece of music had me bouncing off the ceiling.

I won’t say Infinity does this—and a lot of the same criticisms I had with Jarre’s last sequel, Oxygene 3, apply here as well—but it’s still a worthy followup to the original work.

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