ANALOG CORNER
I went everywhere!
Attending the two-day Making Vinyl Berlin B2B conference on May 2 and 3 was an obvious decision for me, even if Day 1’s “Physical Media World Conference” panel discussion was more about optical digital media than it was about analog vinyl.
The two previous Making Vinyl Detroit conferences I’d participated in had been successful, well-attended events. This year, organizers Bryan Ekus and Larry Jaffee invited me to participate in a music journalist’s panel discussion on Day 1 and then to run two vinyl-related panels on Day 2. The venue was the famous Hansa Studios in the Meistersaal, where, in the shadow of the Berlin Wall, David Bowie recorded the albums “Heroes” and Low. This was a symposium not to be missed, especially for this big David Bowie fan who regularly wakes up in the morning and reminds himself that he’s still alive and Bowie isn’t. Plus, the building houses the Emil Berliner Studios, where mastering engineer Rainer Maillard has his lacquer-cutting facilities.
Maillard famously wheeled his lathe down the block to the Berliner Philharmonie to record, direct-to-disc, a Brahms symphony cycle conducted by the orchestra’s conductor at the time, Sir Simon Rattle. Maillard is someone I certainly wanted to speak to!
The only problem was what to do during the break between Making Vinyl Berlin, which ended on the evening of Friday, May 3, and the May 9 opening of High End 2019, in Munich. It was only a few days, so it didn’t make sense to come home. I could take a well-deserved vacation somewhere in Europe, but if I did, it would be without my wife, who has a real job.
I did once take a much-needed solo vacation that she didn’t believe I would take. I invited her to join me in Hawaii after a late November Los Angeles and Orange County Audio Society gala, but she didn’t want to go, even though, at the time, she wasn’t working. Part of the reason was that she didn’t believe would go. So when she saw me packing my snorkeling stuff, she said “Why are you taking those things?” What followed shall remain private.
