JRT Pictures - Curious

.....Clutter

Eclectic Taste

I like singers, good singers like Pavarotti and Elaine Paige. Pop singers like Neil Diamond and Jennifer Warnes. Cult singers like Leonard Cohen and Eva Cassidy. I like Rock bands like Led Zeppelin and Queen. I like listening to good musicians like Jaqueline Du Pre, Nigel Kennedy, and Lang Lang, the great symphonies like Beethoven 6, and niche stuff like the Protecting Veil. I listen via analogue and digital and I have listed my kit below for those interested.

Equipment

Current equipment used for listening to music....

SOURCES: VINYL REPLAY from a Linn Sondek LP12 with Lingo Power supply, Akito tonearm and Adikt cartridge. CD REPLAY from a Linn Majik CD player. BLU-RAY and DVD from a Samsung BD-C5500 player. DIGITAL RADIO and HARD-DRIVE from a Sony RDR-HXD870 Recorder. All visual sources are hooked up to a Samsung flatscreen with sound fed into the amplifier listed below. Lastly FM RADIO from a stand-alone Panasonic ghetto blaster, a great sound for general radio listening.

AMPLIFICATION: Rotel RA-03 integrated.

SPEAKERS: Bi-wired Quad 11L, stand mounted.

The last kit upgrade was a Samsung Blu-Ray player.

Latest Sounds

VINYL: 'The Young Ones' Original Motion picture Soundtrack featuring Cliff Richard and The Shadows and 'Ben Hur' OMS re-issue, both obtained online from the pre-owned market.

CD: Julie Fowlis 'Cuilidh'

DVD-MUSIC: Cat Stevens 'Tea For The Tillerman Live'.

DREAMS

This year I would like a Cirkus bearing for the record deck, a valve amp, and a pair of hi-fi headphones. These could also be my dreams for next year as some new furniture is required, I am told...of course I want new furniture too! Perhaps a stress free chair to go with the headphones!

REDUNDANT

• A Pioneer DV444 DVD Player.
• A Samsung Recorder (not hard drive) with built in freeview.

Both items are immaculate and just come and pick them up!

Music and Its...

1950's

My earliest music memories were listening to a transistor radio in our kitchen, away from the rest of the family, to Cliff Richard and The Shadows playing music and having fun, seemed to me, in the late 1950's on Cliff's weekly radio slot "Me and My Shadows" Soon to be succeeded by The Beatles and their weekly radio slot.

At this time I became an avid film fan as I was packed off to the Saturday matinee at my local cinema every week, the Queens in Whitehaven which was demolished a long time ago, and here eventually the two interests merged as the first pop musicals were thrust upon us and Ennio Morricone penned some music for a small budget film.

1960's

The first LP soundtrack I ever bought was "A Fistful Of Dollars" by Ennio Morricone and I remember distinctly having to spell the name out to the shop owner as I ordered it. Yes I know it was an 'X' certificate (18) but I knew the doorman and young as I was I got in, luckily I always noted the music credits and I was a very good speller, more Morricone followed.

I played all this stuff, Cliff Richard, The Shadows, The Beatles and various film soundtracks on a Dansette, yes yes that Dansette the one with the auto stack and a flip-over cartridge for LP's, it was the family Dansette and it served us well.

1970's

Later I managed to purchase a Hacker record deck with its stereo box upgrade, the 'ultimate' in stereo reproduction, or so I thought at the time before moving on to a huge Japanese music centre. This thing had a record deck, tuner and tape deck all in one with a seperate pair of speakers, weighed a ton and took up a huge amount of desktop space.

1980's

I moved on from the music centre to my first foray into seperates via an all one brand Bang and Olufsen 2002 set up. A definate improvement in both aesthetics and sonics and it was in this auspicious period that I became aware of and started reading about hi-fi.

The pop scene seemed to me to disintegrate during this period and I turned to classical music to fill a void and quench a thirst for 'new' good music. Yep classical. I took the plunge and bought a Linn Sondek.

1990's

The seed was set and the demons satisfied, cue photography.....