So, a couple of days ago, an impromptu RTH West Coast gathering occurred over Burmese food and over-priced but delicious Philz Coffee, and surprisingly, after Mr. Mod, E Pluribus Gergley, Slim Jade, and I had exhausted discussions about the weather, possible driving routes south, and the pros and cons of life at a California institute of higher learning, the conversation turned to music. Mr. Moderator shared a recent experience: he had visited the home of Townsman Sethro who apparently is quite the audiophile and who had wanted to demonstrate his amazing new configuration of speakers and audio technology. To do so, he played Blonde on Blonde. Mr. Moderator, who appeared to have become a bit jaded about the benefits of speaker placement, then described the epiphany of the experience by saying that it sounded like Dylan was sitting right there in front of him in the room.

Which got me thinking to the first nice stereo I owned: it was in the early ’90s, I was still in grad-school but I finally had a decent paying job and was able to buy a small system that had pretty good sound. Rather than breaking a bottle of champagne over it’s bow, I wanted to chose a meaningful song to listen to, and I chose this:

I chose the song because one of my best friends was in the band, I loved the song, and I figured the variation in sounds (coyotes, the rising swell of distorted guitars) would be a good way to test out the new stereo. I was not disappointed.

So…what would be the first song you would choose to play on a really great sound system? Or what have you chosen in the past?