Vol. I No. 12

I happen to be of just such an age that I remember some of the really excellent TV show theme music. I loved the theme which opened every episode of the Rockford Files. There is a 'fatness' or muscularity, a depth or dimensionality, to the song and its movement and sound - the changes occur with a fatness or rich punctuality, something you'd never get with digital. The tones of the instruments themselves have this fatness, breadth, richness: how could you expect to reproduce this with an intermittent numerical sample? Another TV show theme which I remember as being very emotion-inducing was the theme for Taxi.

A subject I have not touched upon is the thought that music of poor quality is not redeemed by existing in all-analog format. There was a lot of unexciting, imperfect, over-rehearsed, pretentious, disingenuous, and music to which many other negative adjectives could also be applied.

Not to apply critical language, but merely referring to my own preferences, Joan Jett and Pat Benatar were female rock performers whose music I did not like. I'm referring to their hits - I didn't hear their other songs. Whereas Heart was a female rock act that had three or four songs I really loved. Maybe what I heard in Jett and Benatar was you could just tell that they were doing it for the purpose of being a success. If the music doesn't sound that great, what else motivates you to play it? Compare how Heart's big hits sound - the excitement and energy is such that this music contains its own justification.

This last phrase describes AC/DC's Back in Black. You have to play music loud to re-create the sound these bands produce in concert. I do not recommend headphones. Use Bose 901's or Audience brand speakers.