I had a dream and you were in it: An Alternative Liz Phair Top 10

During a break today I stumbled upon this "10 Best Liz Phair Songs", and my initial (and enduring) impression was that this is really a lame list.

I detect signs that Liz Phair is undergoing a small critical reassessment; I haven't seen much written about her in about ten years, but nowadays I come across an article or two a month.  Although she's touring, there's no indication that she's about to record.

Now, as for *my* list... I've chosen what I think are Liz Phair's most memorable and musically interesting songs. A couple are very obscure.

Liz, are you out there?  Feel free to chime in:

Greased Lightning (B-side to "Polyester Bridge, 1998)
Down (outtake from Liz Phair, 2003)
Stratford-On-Guy (from Exile In Guyville, 1993)
6'1" (from Exile In Guyville, 1993)
Supernova (from Whip-Smart, 1994)
Jealousy (from Whip-Smart, 1994)
Johnny Feelgood (from Whitechocolatespaceegg, 1998)
Fantasize (from Whitechocolatespaceegg, 1998)
Extraordinary (from Liz Phair, 2003)
Everything (Between Us) (from Somebody’s Miracle, 2005)

"Speaking In Tongues"- Hi-Res edition (on the Pono)

The Pono is billed as letting you hear old, familiar albums "for the first time," to "fall in love"again with music that you grew up with. True--or simply an aural placebo?  I vote for "true."  On some albums, it certainly does. The Pono remasters, for example, have been outstanding. On others--not so much.

"Speaking In Tongues" falls into the latter category. I hated that album at the time--I thought that it was an artistic letdown.  It was a tremendous commercial success--but this fact alone proves that if you want to be a success with the great American middle, you have to dumb down your sound.

I think that the Heads certainly did in this case. It didn't have to be. The Tom Tom Club released an outstanding debut album a year or so earlier, and Jerry Harrison still rates as one of my fav musicians. I just think that David Byrne had run out of ideas by this time, and without Brian Eno to work his magic, it all fell flat.

I can now hear why. On "Speaking In Tongues," the Heads sound like a band self-consciously working hard to be funky. If you have to *try* to sound funky, you're gonna miss the groove. Funky is not something you can try to be--you simply are, or you aren't. No middle.  "Remain In Light," by contrast, transcends because the band wasn't trying to "sound" funky--they just were, in spadefuls.

The exception, of course, is "Burning Down The House."  The bass-line is a killer, and I've heard it "appropriated" in a recent song. (Since I don't listen much to contemporary stuff, I doubt that I'll ever identify it.) I've listened to this track a number of times on the Pono. Masterful work by both Tina Weymouth and Jerry Harrison.  The conventional wisdom was that the Talking Heads were just a David Byrne backup band, but this track proves that it most assuredly was not.

("Popsicle," an outtake from this album, also beats much of the actual album, by virtue of being an actual song, and not a pastiche.)

The upcoming Sony ZX2

There's a bit of noise about Sony's upcoming Walkman, which the digital talking heads seem to be mistaking for a portable Android tablet (such as how the mobile landscape has evolved very quickly).

It is, rather, a portable high-fidelity device (at a price) which, despite the naysayers, has a certain cachet and demand.

I've been a loyal fan of Sony since my first portable Sony radio from the '60s. I've since bought many Sony Walkman devices, and though the critics drubbed them, they do have a devoted following. (Recently, for example, I used one of my two Sony MZ-RH1s to record Paul McCartney and Mindy Smith--because, after a decade, they just work, and there's nothing quite like the portable Sony recorders on the market.)

I'm tempted to buy one when they go on sale, but probably won't. They're too expensive, for one thing. Plus, I have the Pono. Not as elegant or refined, to be sure, but just as good at rendering high-fidelity audio--and it's a lot less expensive.

More time with the Pono player

I have quite a handful of hi-res audio files, which I have been sampling on the Pono.  Some observations:

There's quite a bit of debate online among audiophiles about the degrees of quality about this-or-that hi-res master, for example.  I haven't spent enough time obsessing over this to have a fully formed opinion, except to say: the critics are right in many cases. Some hi-res files are indistinguishable from the CD version... One example that I noticed: Talking Heads "Fear Of Music."  I'll keep my iPod rip of it. The Pono cannot redeem a poor remaster.  But, so far, these have been in the minority. Currently I'm listening to Steely Dan's "Two Against Nature" (provenance unknown, though it's supposed to be a rip of a SACD two-fer with the underrated "Alive In America" as a bonus).  The audio is clearly superior to CD.  The linked site above says that the then-circulating copy is a rip of a DVDS-audio.  I can't find any reference to a "Two Against Nature" SACD (though I didn't go past page one of Google search).

There was some debate among the early Pono bidders about whether the Pono music store would offer truly new hi-res masters, or simply recycle the stuff already on HDTracks. It's too early to say, except--the Pono version of "Rust Never Sleeps" is *clearly* superior to any other master that I've heard. To me, that's the acid test: when I hear a well-worn album that I've lived with for decades as if it's brand new--like I'm hearing it for the first time--then the Pono is worth the price of admission.

I think that this is where the media critics have gotten lost. Most casual music consumers won't notice, and won't care about (much less hear) the difference between a perfectly adequate 256 K MP3, and a 192khz, 24bit master. But if you have lived with this music and it has become part of the fabric of your life, you *will* hear the difference, because you have internalized every nook and cranny of the sound.

This is of course a niche market, but one that I've been a part of for quite a while.

Some small issues with the Pono that I've noticed: file transfers are very slow, even over USB 3. Not sure what is causing this. And a highly annoying issue: album art. The JRiver media center does not tag every album file with the "official" album art, only the first song.

Day Four (or Five): What's on my Pono? (or, New Adventures In Hi-Fi)

After The Gold Rush (Neil Young)
American Stars 'N Bars (Neil Young)
Back To Black (Amy Winehouse)
CSN&Y 1974 (came with the Pono)
Fear Of Music (Talking Heads)
Harvest (Neil Young)
The Idler Wheel (Fiona Apple)
The Raven (Rebecca Pidgeon)
Remain In Light (Talking Heads)
Retrospective (Rebecca Pidgeon)
Rust Never Sleeps (Neil Young)
The Shape Of Jazz To Come (Ornette Coleman)

Pono Player: Day Two (or, the experience of the early adopter)

I've gotten my Pono player to upgrade the firmware and I've added some albums. Neither of these tasks were very easy, but they weren't impossible, for a reasonably savvy end user to accomplish.  Just the normal hickups of an early adopter process.

The Pono developers chose the JRiver Media Center to manage both the Pono player and associated audio files, and although it seems to work reasonably well, most problems seem to stem from the JRiver software. It's totally unreasonable to expect Pono to build a custom media center from the ground up to work with the player, so licensing a copy of JRiver (retail cost, $49.98--not cheap) is a good compromise.  I notice that it takes a few steps, performed in the correct order, to get the JRiver software to recognize the Pono player. First, you plug the player in to the computer; then, you have to click through a couple of choices on the player (correctly) before the device is recognized by the OS and mounted by the file system (which I prefer--I like to actually see what's there).  Upgrading the Pono firmware takes several clicks on both the device and on JRiver to work correctly, and unintuitively, you have to eject and disconnect the Pono player (assuming you have made the correct clicks) for the firmware to install.  Some users had difficulty with this, but I was able to do it.

Basically, I think that most of us have been conditioned by iTunes to behave in certain ways and expect our media devices to do certain things, and unlearning this will take a few minutes. In many ways, JRiver and Pono are throwbacks to the early 00s, before iTunes obliterated the portable music media ecosystem. I don't have a problem with it, in my Old Skool way. In many respects, the Pono player is very much like an early 00s MP3 player (albeit, with more sophisticated DA converters), and those of us who hate iTunes (even while embracing its ubiquity) will like it.

I fully expect that all these glitches to be ironed out by the Pono team in the coming months, and I don't mind being a beta tester for Neil. (It's the least I can do to thank him for giving "Pocohantas" to the world.)

Will the Pono player sound "better" than my six (or seven) iPod Classics running 256 K MP4 files?  I think so, but it will all come down to how the digital files are mastered. If you've used HDTracks, then you know that some tracks sound better than CD quality (44.1kHz/16bit), and others don't--it depends on what the record label provides. You can take a digital recording originally mastered at 16bit and blow it up to 192kHz/24bit, and sell it for twice the cost of a CD--but it will still "sound" no better than 256 K iTunes CD rip.  This is the snake oil that critics accuse HDTracks of trafficking in (rightly so, though HDTracks is simply using what the record label provides). Will Neil Young be able to strong-arm the record labels into providing decent masters?  Let's hope so.  At the very least, one thing that I *have* noticed in the Pono store is that all tracks are at least CD-quality, including one album (Talking Heads, "Bonus Rarities & Outakes") that is only available elsewhere in the iTunes store in lossy format.  So if you're like me and refuse to pay good money for lossy iTunes downloads, you can support Pono and your fav recording artists by purchasing lossless versions at Pono Music (and other hi-fi audio retailers like CDBaby and AcousticSounds).

Pono player--received today (Christmas present to myself)

Those who stumble upon this post--and know what Neil Young's Pono music player is--are probably early adopters, like me. I got one of the limited editions (chrome CSN&Y).  It's currently charging. I already have hi-rez music to copy to it... Definitely all my Rebecca Pidgeon hi-rez... Duke Ellington's "Money Jungle"... The list is endless. Pono is jumping into the hi-rez party at just the right time, because the music has been available for a while, just waiting for the right audio player to play it. But will it succeed?  Don't know, don't particularly care. I speak as the owner of at least (possibly seven) iPod Classics--the last two purchased last year, before Apple stopped making them. There will always be a market (although a niche one) for portable audio players. I don't care if they make millions--I just need one.

So will the music sound different, and will I be able to tell?  The first is a maybe, and the second is a probably.  I think that my biggest limitation will be headphones. Not sure which model to buy--except to say that it probably won't be Beats by Dre.