And one song rules them all

Sometimes I hear a song on one of our systems here and I think “This song… THIS song makes it all worthwhile”.

Sometimes it is a song and sometimes it is an album.

Yesterday it was Dark Side of the Moon

It was on a somewhat modest system here these days: EMM Labs XDS1 into a EMM Labs PRE2 into the Audio Note Kegon amps on the Marten Coltrane Supreme speakers.

I attribute my overwhelming emotional response to the Kegons finally ‘settling in’ on these speakers and, primarily, that it has been my personal unfounded but hard to shake sneaking suspicion that the EMM Labs players were, like, DESIGNED to play this one SACD really, really well, ever since I first heard it on their old red-label CDSD/DCC2 back-in-the-day.

A lot of the power that this particular album has, for me, is that I heard it so darn many times growing up [still growing up, I know… or is that out? or gray? or comfortably numb?] that I can flash back to those days of hearing it, if one can call it that, on all sorts of inferior equipment and how, OMG, if I had only heard it like THIS back then, if I had only known just how awesome these songs really ARE…!

But there are other songs/albums that – by themselves – make this all worthwhile – and other reasons for their power over me.

Several months ago [or has it been a year already? Time is going by at warp speed, and warp 9 at that], it was a bootleg, and coincidentally Pink Floyd again – of one of their Meddle [i.e. Echos] tours. This was on a much more expensive Audio Note UK front end: CDT-Five transport, Fifth Element DAC and M9 Phono preamp.

In this case it was just the ability to hear this rare concert from the late 60s, hear the musical innovation and exploration that Pink Floyd was doing back then that just about nobody has equaled [except Miles Davis, who was also exploring the underpinnings of music at the same time, for awhile – Pangaea, Agharta, etc.. Oh! and the Grateful Dead – Dark Star etc. Can’t think of anybody else.], and hear it in such a manner as to be overwhelmingly confident that I am getting very close to the full impact of actually Being There.

In both these cases there was both an emotional and intellectual underpinning, as well as a historical perspective and the knowing that it really can’t sound much better than this – that tipped me over the edge. …

… where I think: it really was worth spending lots of dollar signs $$$, to me, JUST to hear this whenever I want, JUST to have these intense feelings, the joy and the awe, in my life..

We have talked about drug-like sound, and striving to get to those euphoric musical states of mind. This is that.

But… it was one of those REALLY good trips [,man :-)].