Featured
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- Category: Music Everywhere Music Everywhere
JBL Link Portable Wi-Fi Bluetooth Speaker
August 2020
The Portable is the latest member of JBL’s Link line of Wi-Fi speakers. It’s distinctive in that you can lift it right out of its charging dock and carry it anywhere in your home that your Internet network is available. It seemed a bit costly at its original price of $179.95 USD, but for this summer JBL has halved the price, to $89.95.
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- Category: Feature Articles & Reviews Feature Articles & Reviews
What's a Movie Lover to Do?
August 2020
How to Find and Stream Your Favorite Classic Films
For anyone in love with the art of film, we live in a glorious age of immediate gratification. Within seconds of your being overcome with a sudden yearning to see it again, or for the first time, you can find and watch almost any title in the history of film.
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- Category: Vinyl music Vinyl music
James Booker: "Classified"
August 2020
Craft Recordings CR00281
Format: LP
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
Take every story of wild rock stars, rockabilly cats, and legendary jazz over-indulgers, and set them all aside. No one -- not Keith Moon, Jerry Lee Lewis, or Charlie Parker -- could hold a candle to pianist James Booker for combining outrageous behavior and audacious musicianship.
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- Category: Blu-ray movies Blu-ray movies
"An Unmarried Woman"
July 2020
Jill Clayburgh’s Radiance and Depth
The Criterion Collection 1032
Format: BD
Overall Enjoyment
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After establishing shots of New York City set to composer Bill Conti’s jaunty main theme, we discover a jogging couple: Erica (Jill Clayburgh) and Martin (Michael Murphy). She’s happy and carefree; he’s quarrelsome, nervous, withdrawn. When he steps in some dog poop and begins having a conniption, she placates him, and they then run home to make love. There we’re introduced to their 15-year-old daughter, Patti (Lisa Lucas), and this well-to-do family’s domestic life. It all looks perfect. Later, as Erica and Martin are taking a walk, he trembles as he tells her, “I’m in love with another woman.”
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- Category: Music Everywhere Music Everywhere
Aomais Go Waterproof Bluetooth Speaker
July 2020
Midsummer -- the perfect time for a Bluetooth speaker that can, um, go with you anywhere. But unless you, er, go for a behemoth, such as Grace Digital’s EcoBoulder, you’re liable to find the sound of most smaller speakers somewhat anemic when you use them outdoors. In addition, most of them lack convenient handles.
Laura Nyro, Curated
July 2020
I first heard Laura Nyro’s songs the way many of us who weren’t quite in our teens did in 1968. The 5th Dimension scored a hit in June of that year with “Stoned Soul Picnic,” a song Nyro had written for her second album, Eli and the Thirteenth Confession, which Columbia Records had released in March. The 5th Dimension weren’t really hip, and the single stuck out on AM radio as something your parents would like. A year later, they dented the charts again with “Wedding Bell Blues,” a song from Nyro’s 1967 debut album, More Than a New Discovery.
Ran Blake & Andrew Rathbun: "Northern Noir"
July 2020
SteepleChase 31899
Format: CD
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
If you’re a regular here, or on any of the other SoundStage! Network sites, it’s safe to assume you love music and listen to a lot of it. It’s also likely that you appreciate the subtleties in the characteristics of various musicians -- whether you like jazz, rock, classical, or country. Your ear, to say nothing about your equipment, is sensitive enough to tell the difference between Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page, or Carla Bley and Paul Bley, even if they’re playing the same composition.
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- Category: Blu-ray movies Blu-ray movies
"Matewan"
June 2020
John Sayles’s Vision of 1920s West Virginia Rings True
The Criterion Collection 999
Format: BD
Overall Enjoyment
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Independent filmmaker and screenwriter (and novelist) John Sayles has been interested in depicting social injustice in most of his films, and in none so prominently as Matewan (1987), based on a massacre that took place on May 19, 1920, in Matewan, West Virginia. On that date, coal miners organized by the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) confronted 12 agents from the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency, who were working for the mine owners. The mayor, two citizens, and seven agency men were killed, and others were wounded.
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- Category: SoundStage! Encore SoundStage! Encore
Active, Powered, or Passive Speakers for the Studio?
June 2020
Founded in 1991 in the United Kingdom by Peter Thomas and Adrian Loader, The Professional Monitor Company (PMC) has gained a sterling reputation for equipping some of the world’s best-known studios with their loudspeakers. Prior to starting PMC, Thomas was employed at the BBC, the famous UK broadcaster, while Loader worked at FWO Bauch, a British audio distributor. In this video, PMC’s Chris Allen first talks about the company’s history in pro audio, and then explains the important differences between active, powered, and passive loudspeakers -- things every person setting up a studio needs to known to attain the best-possible sound.
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- Category: Music Everywhere Music Everywhere
DuoTen Waterproof Bluetooth Shower Speaker
June 2020
Nothing gets me started in the morning like a brisk shower, especially when accompanied by Vivaldi or Vampire Weekend -- and it’s surprising how many waterproof shower speakers are now available to assist me. I recently reviewed the Jensen SMPS-626; and now it’s the turn of the new DuoTen.