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Cliff Kingston
ReviewerI was born in San Francisco during the “Summer of Love”, so you could say music was in my soul. The life-long love affair with music began at an early age. Like many of us, I have fond memories of buying my first records and hearing the array of great songs offered up on the radio during the 70’s. Music opened up my suburban youth to a world beyond the hedges and had a profound impact on me. It was clear that music would be an enduring aspect of my life. I will quickly share an amusing story illustrating my adolescent enthusiasm of music and early “hi-fi” gear. I had a summer job at the age of 15 with the intention of buying my first car. On my way home from school one day, a friend of mine and I stopped into our local stereo electronics store, where I glimpsed a pair of JBL speakers and after a Led Zeppelin and U2 demo song, the deal was done and my fate sealed as I handed over my ‘car’ money. Upon arriving home with the new treasure, my mother angrily exclaimed “how will you get to school on those?” I happily rode my bike to and from school for another year. In retrospect, I grew up in what could be considered the greatest cross section of musical genres and eras during the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s. The core of my youth traversed the 80’s so I was engaged in the British second wave of music, alternative rock, rock, hip-hop and later, Pacific Northwest grunge. But, most importantly I received a solid ‘musical’ education from the masters of English and American Classic Rock out of the 60’s and 70’s. While attending college in San Francisco I was fortunate enough to land a job writing for print magazines and interviewed several artists of the 80’s such as Love and Rockets, Nice Cave, Johnny Rotten, Big Audio Dynamite, The Church, Iggy Pop and others probably long forgotten. Lacking “musicianship” abilities, this was my way to return something to the world of music and share my passion with others. That is the underlying intent of my continued writing efforts today. While my primary career path followed a more conventional track, music was always an integral part of my life. As I matured the inevitable happened; my knowledge of music expanded, my collection grew and as my tastes developed, I pursued a better sonic ‘delivery’ or output of music. I unsuspectingly became a hopeless ‘Audiophile’. I can intimately recall each one of my systems along this trajectory and how certain systems suited my music (or budget), at a point in time in an effort to improve what I was hearing. While Jazz has always been a staple in my music library, over the past five years, I have become deeply immersed and obsessed with bop era Jazz. From Bebop, Hard Bop, to post-bop, modal and free jazz, covering a period from about 1952 to 1968. I amassed a collection of all analog reissues and some originals from the legendary labels of Blue Note, Prestige, Atlantic, Riverside, Impulse and many others. The vinyl experience was heightened by the level of quality found in these reissues and building an all tube audio system that revealed all the attainable musicality, depth and detail possible. For the foreseeable future I will be focusing my writing on some of the Blue Note titles and amazing reissues offered by Music Matters Jazz. In the course of examining these titles and the amazing artists that contributed to Blue Note, the articles will feature interviews with Ron Rambach where he shares the journey and people behind the Music Matters reissues. I keep two systems in play; solid state for Rock and my main, tube system primarily for Jazz and vinyl.
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Articles & Reviews
By Cliff Kingston December 20, 2019
Kenny Dorham’s Round About Midnight at the Café Bohemia
Jazz | Music | Vinyl | 1 Comment »By Cliff Kingston December 20, 2019