Holiday gift suggestions for the truly desperate
December 11, 2002 -- "Gradually, everything you said you'd never do, you do," Robyn Hitchcock once told me. "If you're lucky you get to shake hands with Arnold Schwarzenegger." Well, for those of you holiday shoppers who never shop online, maybe this is the year when you'll be desperate enough to try it for the first time. Me, I do it all the time, both for myself and others -- this year I bought everything from Amazon. If you're inclined to do the same, here are a few products that I've had hands-on experience with this year and found acceptable (or better):
The Velodyne Deco surround speaker system is one of the best of the very best compact 5.1-channel speaker systems. The secret: the sub, being a Velodyne, is superb.
If you're looking for something larger, the JBL N26 II is an impressively neutral-sounding budget bookshelf-sized speaker. Three pair of these would make an excellent six-channel system. I'm not recommending any horizontal center speakers because they rarely blend in as well as an identical clone of the other satellites. Note that I am talking about the Series II version of the N26, which has a fiberboard enclosure, as opposed to the Series I version, which has a molded plastic enclosure. If you're looking for floorstanding speakers, sorry -- I rarely review them. But as a companion to the N26, I did try the JBL PB10, and as 10-inch down-firing 150-watt subs go, it's not bad. If you're buying a cheap sub, a speedy 10-incher is better than a bloated 12-incher.
Not all of the receivers I reviewed this year (including the noteworthy Rotel RSX-1065 and Marantz SR8200) are available online but you may be able to find the JVC RXDP9VBK, a THX EX Select model, though regrettably it omits Dolby Pro Logic II, the new surround format that adroitly translates two-channel music mixes to 5.1-channel surround. The best of the budget receivers I've tried lately is the Harman Kardon AVR 225, more modestly powered than the JVC, but with a warm and intelligible midrange.
Looking for a progressive-scan DVD-Video player to go with a new HDTV? A good but affordable choice is the Panasonic DVD-RP62K -- the video processing is excellent, removing many of the jagged diagonals lesser players allow to slip by.
Hard-drive-based digital audio servers are big this year and I was impressed by the Rio Central.
You can also carry your hard drive around with you. That's what I do with my Archos Jukebox though I use the 6GB version of the 20GB product listed there.
To go with the portable hard drive, I recommend noise-cancelling headphones, especially for use on planes or buses. I use the Sony MDR-NC10 (since superceded by the MDR-NC11). These little earbuds are ridiculously expensive, but they can spare you a lot of engine noise and the fatigue that comes with it. And they're so small as to take up almost no room in a shirt pocket. That's I prefer them to larger models (although bigger ones do offer better noise cancellation).
There are my suggestions. These links take you to Amazon, in case you haven't already noticed, but of course a prudent consumer may wish to shop around. Whatever you do, be sure to order from a reputable retailer -- preferably one you've heard of -- to ensure a fair deal and adequate customer service. Don't forget to allow for shipping time (in a pinch, give your loved one an IOU greeting card). Good luck and Happy Yuletide.
Get around, get around, I get around
November 19, 2002 -- Practical Home Theater at Wal-Mart? It's true! The leading book on home theater is now sold through one of America's most mainstream retail chains (or at least its website). In addition to the usual suspects (Amazon, Barnes & Noble) the book is also being sold through a whole bunch of online booksellers, many of them overseas, and some of which I've never heard of before. You can find a selection of them listed here, and if I've missed any, let me know. Be warned that some retailers are displaying outdated covers or other information. However, thanks to the efficiency of the print-on-demand medium, you'll always get the new edition, as long as you avoid buying through used-book vendors. In any event, I'm kind of awestruck to see the book being sold all over the world. My words are scattered to the wind.
Listen to the frogs
(they'll never lie to you)
November 11, 2002 -- All right, I admit it. I listen to frogs. In lieu of the low gurgling sounds you'd expect, frogs actually produce a shimmering wash of sound, each tiny voice like a dot in a pointillist painting. Nothing fills me with a peaceful feeling like listening to ocean waves lapping on the shore, even though I don't live anywhere near the beach. And I love songbirds, even though headline-grabbing mayors have silenced them in the park I live next to by spraying all the insects to death in an overzealous attempt to eradicate the overrated West Nile Virus. Fortunately I can still listen to birds and other natural sounds on CDs and I've acquired 10 discs of environmental audio almost overnight thanks to Echoes of Nature: The Natural Sounds of the Wilderness, Parts One and Two. Each five-CD set costs about what you'd pay for one full-price CD, and the recordings by Kim Wilson are clear, ungimmicky, and devoid of dopey musical supplements. Recommended for stressed city dwellers.
Second edition hits the streets
October 20, 2002 -- For months now people have been asking me when the new edition of my book Practical Home Theater would burst upon the scene and I've been hemming and hawing and mumbling: in about a month. Well, my intended pub date of October 1, 2002 slipped a bit, but I'm pleased to announce that the 2003 Edition is now available through 1stBooks and other retailers (barring a few who may have old stock). The new edition has a slightly less eccentric cover, a vastly improved index, a new chapter on how to hire a custom installer, and various minor updates too numerous to list here, all of which should maintain its position as the definitive work on home theater. You can order through Quiet River Press.
My masters' voices
October 19, 2002 -- New releases by hero musicians still make my blood run faster and this month I'm doubly overjoyed. First, Robyn Hitchcock has reunited with his old band the Soft Boys for Nextdoorland -- also check out the re-released and much augmented version of their classic Underwater Moonlight. I've been a fan of Hitchcock's skewed pop since the latter album was released in 1980. And I've always admired the chemistry of this version of the band, in which Hitchcock's verbal and melodic gifts mesh with equally melodic playing from guitarist/songwriter Kimberley Rew and bassist Matthew Seligman, not to mention drummer Morris Windsor, a longtime Hitchcock associate both in the Soft Boys and his other band the Egyptians. At the end of this month I'll realize a long-cherished ambition and see the Soft Boys live. They were one of those great lost bands who should've hit big and never did (I suspect the band name didn't endear itself to insecure members of the punk generation).
After months of anticipation I've also scored the new album from guitarist and songwriter Bert Jansch, who enters his fifth decade in showbiz with Edge of a Dream. His mostly acoustic guitar playing, an indelibly personal folk-blues hybrid, still has much of the old crackle. Jansch is also a much underrated songwriter whose lyrics and song titles ("Sweet Death," "I Cannot Keep from Crying") hint at grand passions though his delivery is strictly matter-of-fact -- perhaps too much so for the closer, a lament for the World Trade Center massacre. But Jansch is still very much the grand master. His lengthy discography is full of great songs waiting to be rediscovered along with acres and acres of commanding guitar work. If you'd like to explore it, the major works include his self-titled debut, which shows his playing and writing powers already fully developed, and Rosemary Lane, a fresh yet erudite exploration of the traditional music of the British Isles. I'm also fond of such minor albums as Nicola, an endearing attempt to reinvent the confirmed folkie as a pop star, and From the Outside, a record he ripped out of his gut during the darkest hours of his life.
My new PAL
September 10, 2002 -- I just got back from a business trip to Toronto where the Tivoli Audio PAL was my late-night hotel room companion. PAL stands for Portable Audio Laboratory and it's a portable radio with rechargable (and nontoxic) nickel metal hydride batteries. Part of the pleasure of using this mini mono music box is spinning the infinitely adjustable tuning dial. The PAL was co-designed by audio industry legend Henry Kloss, who recently passed away at age 72, with input from longtime associates Tom DeVesto and Gordon Cook. (The full story of who did what is something I'd like to write someday if I can convince a client to assign it.) Tivoli scored big with its first product, the Model One ($99), which has a place of honor in my livingroom. The PAL ($129) looks like another winner. Both can be ordered at tableradio.com.
Linda Thompson returns
August 8, 2002 -- FedEx brought the new Linda Thompson album today. I dropped what I was doing and listened to it. Her first album of new material since 1985, Fashionably Late is low-key but incredible -- in fact, credible. Linda had retired after her previous album One Clear Moment due to vocal problems. Her voice is back under control, a little weathered here and there, but on the best tracks it has a Stradivarius-like beauty, and Linda understands human emotion like Albert Einstein understood the universe. Hats off to Edward Haber for a first-rate production job. Ed also produced the best-of compilation Dreams Fly Away: A History of Linda Thompson and the rarities compilation Give Me a Sad Song on Linda's behalf. Her half-dozen albums with former husband Richard Thompson (who performs on one track of the new album) started with the tuneful but intense I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight and finished with the overwhelmingly powerful Shoot Out the Lights.
Pride of ownership
July 17, 2002 -- The wheels of the United States Copyright Office grind slowly but surely. In April I sent in the copyright registration for my book. A few days ago, it returned, and it's been pinned up on my bulletin board ever since.
I no longer fret about the fact that magazine publishers buy all rights to my stories and reviews. In fact, I love seeing my writing appear on their websites -- along with a bio-tag saying "Mark Fleischmann is the author of...." Everyone wins.
My business partners used to ridicule my stated desire to own and control a substantial chunk of my work. It took me years to find the right way to sell it to the public. But now my book is out and it literally makes money for me every day.
My product, myself
May 16, 2002 -- When not mulling over my glorious past, I keep a vigil for sales of my book. Each quarter I will receive a royalty statement from my publishing partner 1stBooks Library. For more recent information I have access to other piecemeal information.
First of all, 1stBooks allows me to track sales through its own website. So far, excluding copies I've bought myself, that amounts to a couple of hundred copies.
Then there are the sales rankings of other online retailers. On any given day my rank on Amazon.com fluctuates between about 3000 and 16,000 (out of a possible range of 1.5 million). That places me in the top one percent. Practical Home Theater is the first book that comes up when you type "home theater" into Amazon's search engine.
But how many copies am I really selling on Amazon? Probably two to four copies per day according to one fellow writer who seems to have it all figured out.
At that rate my best guess is that the book will make back my investment less than a year after its initial publication in January 2002. Maybe sooner. After that, if the current trend remains unchanged, it'll bring in enough to pay for my medical insurance. And possibly a utility bill or two.
The rest of my income comes from writing for magazines such as Home Theater, Audio Video Interiors, and E-Gear. My life is free and independent -- that's how I like it -- and the fates have been good to me.
In the tradition of Nick Drake
April 10, 2002 -- On his previous CD Nine of Swords Scott Appel recorded both published and unpublished Drake material (the latter with some embellishments).
He continues to combine Drake's material with his own on Parhelion, successfully emulating Drake's unique guitar tunings and fingerpicking style. Nick's late parents Rodney and Molly Drake have said that no one has evoked Nick's spirit as successfully as Scott.
What is so appealing to me, however, is the way Scott has refracted Drake's otherworldly feel through the prism of his own extraordinary musical intelligence. I find Parhelion not just accomplished but haunting and addictive.
UPDATE (June 2, 2003) -- With Scott's untimely passing you can no longer buy his albums directly from the artist but they are still available through such retailers as rockinworld.com, gemm.com, and netsounds.com.
A day in the life
March 18, 2002 -- I've been awake since seven a.m. but my mind doesn't switch on until eight or nine. While I come to, a streaming analog feed pours out of a vintage Proton 320 table radio. I lay in bed trying to figure out what day it is. It's Monday. And outside, it's raining heavily, but I don't care -- my schedule won't allow me to leave the apartment until much later if at all. I struggle out of bed, put on sweatpants, and commute unbathed from bedroom to home/office.
I like to spend each morning setting up the day's work schedule and thinking about what I'd like to do. The PC comes to life and I check email at three addresses (business, personal, and a third address set aside for commercial mailing lists). I'll be rechecking the business address almost hourly -- this is how I handle most business communications. Once I spent hundreds of dollars per month on long-distance calling. Now my whole phone bill is less than $50/month. My cable modem is my real lifeline.
Not that I'm totally digital. The to-do list sitting on my desk is not a fancy spreadsheet, just a slip of paper listing my assignments and other obligations. I glance at the calendar pinned on the wall in front of my face (also paper). No appointments till Wednesday. Today I'll be keeping a vigil for a shipment of review speakers that I've been tracking online at the UPS website. Until they come I'm a prisoner. Maybe later I'll get a chance to go to the bank and deposit a check from one of my three magazine clients.
I write regularly for Audio Video Interiors, Home Theater, and E-Gear. Two or three assignments are outstanding for each of them -- that's a good full workload. I'm actually calmer when I have more work (or "cuttlebone," as my colleague Richard Jaccoma used to put it). It's when I start running out of things to peck at that I start quietly going berserk.
The lineup includes lots of speaker reviews (I'd rather not disclose the editorial plans of my clients by naming manufacturers). Stacks of cartons clutter up my bedroom. Speaker reviews involve a good deal of physical setup and other logistical work -- some days I feel more like a shipping clerk than a writer -- but my editors love them and appreciate how hard I work to deliver a steady stream of them. I've also got a surround receiver on deck, a DLP projector, and some interviews with big cheeses in the consumer electronics industry. My work is about having fun and sometimes it actually is fun.
This week I'll also be following up queries sent to prospective clients by USMail. And I'll be doing work related to my recently published book, Practical Home Theater. That means nagging a few reviewers who have already received copies, reading the second edition of a competing book, writing a new chapter, and doing minor fixes throughout the text. I work on the next edition of my book for at least a few hours twice a week -- I'm determined not to let it go stale.
I go over two reviews in progress, expanding some grafs, deleting others, adding a new thought here and there, and cocking a sharp eye for factual errors, errors of interpretation, or missed opportunities in general. Everything I write is subject to this process. I never write anything in one pass. Even three isn't enough. Stories accumulate under the weight of constant human attention.
I bathe, dress, have lunch. The afternoon session will be the most intense part of the workday. I will try to write the lead for at least one new piece. I'll push and push until I can't write anymore. Sometimes I sweat like a longshoreman. Then I'll go back to the other works in progress and make them accumulate more value. If the phone rings, I may be tense at first, as I shift out of writing mode. But then I'll become friendly and chatty after having been cooped up all day.
The radio goes back on at five p.m., signaling my first break since lunch. I soak up the news and relax for an hour or so, then start making dinner, as National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" gives way to "Marketplace."
I used to work until seven o'clock. Nowadays I force myself to stop writing at five but keep checking email until seven or eight. If I have equipment to set up or review -- as I normally do -- then I'll be doing critical listening/viewing with a notebook by my side until late in the evening. If a friend is with me, I might dispense with the notebook, while still making mental notes for use when I return to writing the next day.
At ten o'clock I turn off the big projector and surround system and watch the news on a 19-inch video monitor. As soon as the weatherman is done, at about 10.45 p.m., I tidy up the apartment and go to bed. This is the life I have chosen for myself, the life I love, for the freedom, the quiet, and most of all, for the act of writing.
How I got my groove back
February 14, 2002 -- Today marks the first anniversary of the day when etown.com and Collaborative Media came to the end of the line. Some remember our widely read online publication fondly; others, not. I recognize the validity of both points of view. Indeed, making sense of the debacle would otherwise be impossible. Feats of creativity and pathological selfishness were both part of daily life. I'm happy to report that most of the creative people I've kept in touch with are doing better than ever, and they have my best wishes, now and always. I'll leave you with these wise words from Robert Fripp: "When we behave rightly, we can handle the repercussions. When we act wrongly, the consequences overwhelm us." Happy Valentine's Day.
Amazon gets hip
January 31, 2002 -- Now I'm really excited. My book Practical Home Theater passed another milestone today with simultaneous debuts on Amazon.com and BN.com (better known as Barnes & Noble). Online sales through 1stBooks have been proceeding for a few weeks but now the biggest online retailers are carrying it too.
Along the way there have been a few surprises. One is pricing. It varies from bookseller to bookseller. Sometimes a given bookseller's prices will change from week to week, along with stated availability. The world of bookselling has surprised me with its volatility.
Regardless of where you buy, or what the discount is, I receive a healthy royalty for each book sold, fulfilling an ambition that goes back years. If you click through from this site to Amazon, I also get an extra royalty from Amazon.
By the way, if you get a "temporarily out of stock" message from some web retailers, take it with a grain of salt. Practical Home Theater is a print-on-demand title, so there's no inventory, but the book is perpetually in stock, as paperback copies are printed five days per week. Hardcovers are printed once per week. The single sample I've seen is pleasantly solid.
A book is born
January 9, 2002 -- Today my book Practical Home Theater was published. I began writing it on February 17, 2001, three days after the death of etown.com. It actually became available before the end of that calendar year as an e-book but today marks its publication in paperback and hardcover editions.
I'm hoping to keep it in print for the duration of my career (about 20 years). However, each year will bring a freshly updated edition. The second edition will surface toward year-end in what I hope will become an annual ritual.
My goals for the book are: (1) To own the copyright in my work and license it to produce income. And (2) to preserve and extend my writing career. These are the same ideas I have had for a long time. The difference is that now I am free to pursue them.
The book is enjoying a grace period in these first few days of its launch. There is still no way of knowing what effect public comment may have on it, or me, so I just live in a happy bubble of vague expectancy. But I know the book is not perfect because the almost daily routine of rewriting it has already begun.
Say BBY to etown
January 2002 -- Etown.com was once the world's most widely read consumer electronics publication. Has anyone wondered what has happened to its once enviable database of reviews and other material? The answer is that etown's copyrights, trademarks, and other assets will remain in the hands of Best Buy, the retailer that invested tens of millions of dollars in etown's parent company Collaborative Media. Best Buy staged a sale of the assets on December 13, 2001 in the Minneapolis offices of its attorneys. No one else showed up, so Best Buy bid on the assets and accepted its own bid. I hope they got a good price! Let me add that I have no animosity toward Best Buy. Wish I'd bought the stock in 1995.
News 2001