Dec 212009
Topic: Townsman Sethro: A Rare Audiophile Who Manages to Avoid Becoming a Complete Asshole
Concept: Sethro is one of my oldest friends, the drummer in our band, and my dentist! He’s also the one audiophile friend from whom I’ll take any advice. Sethro rarely posts his thoughts. In fact, he doesn’t do a lot of talking in real life either, but get him talking and he’s got some novel ideas and insights. I thought I would interview Sethro regarding his ability to be an audiophile while resisting becoming one of those assholes who start buying late-period Steely Dan albums that were primarily made as dick-waving devices in high-end stereo stores.
Senor Moderator, if you only knew how many times I had had this same thought! Well, technically, none. But now that you mention it, yes: Holly does have that same sort of lockjawed backwoodsy drawl that makes you want her to burst out with, “Virgil Cane is my name / And I worked on the Danville train….” And in the old days when she still had a beard the resemblance was even more uncanny.
I should perhaps gently point out that there’s this thing called dialects, see? Linguistics fail.
I’ll take late peiod Steely Dan over Dave Matthews to show off my stereo any time.
Beatles LOVE is the Stereo Show- off CD of choice for me..esp now that you can go 5.1 with the DVD version… I just got a real 5-cable 5.1 set up (analog!) and now I am that asshole (time to crank up Goucho!)
Gaucho? Any audiophile worth his weight in salt knows that it’s Two Against Nature that needs to get cranked on the hi-fi!
I’ve got the DVD version of Love, but I don’t have the set up for it. Matter of fact, I’ve bought a few 5.1s in the past few years. Perhaps my Secret Santa will gift me one?
TB
Gotta go to bat for what I think is the ultimate audiophile album, “Bellybutton” by Jellyfish. Any time an album is so obsessively hyper-engineered that it breaks up the band, you gotta believe it’ll make your high-end ribbon speakers sing.
In all seriousness, I’ve heard it’s the go-to album for geeky L.A. studio engineers who want to test studio monitors.