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320Mbps MP3s of the title track followed by Don’t Ask Me Questions.
Category Archives: Music
Recent Album Purchases
I was dragged (kicking and screaming) to The Trafford Centre on Easter Monday. NOT my idea of fun.
While others plundered the fashion houses I went into just two shops – HMV and Waterstones.
HMV
Bit surprised that HMV is still open at The Trafford Centre as the rent must be astronomical. Anyway open it is and although CDs are generally a few pence more there than online I managed to blag a few titles that have been on my wish list for some time.
Black Sabbath – Paranoid. I have very little heavy metal in my collection as it generally isn’t my Tasse de Te but I have always liked a couple of tracks from this album so thought I might as well get it.
Led Zeppelin – Led Zeppelin. I quite like early Zeppelin – up to Physical Graffiti – and this one is quite bluesy which I like.
Jimi Hendrix – Band of Gypsys. I already have Are You Experienced
Small Faces – Collection. No Small Faces stuff in my collection so …
Waterstones
Bought 6 Music DJ Mark Radcliffe’s Thank You For The Days. Turns out he is the same age as me bar a month or so and he also likes Dr. Feelgood
Found a comfy bench and proceeded to read my Waterstones acquisition for what seemed like an hour or two and probably was. I’d been promised a meal at one of The Trafford Centre’s eatery establishments. I wasn’t really gambling on a bloody Burger King!
Topping TP 21 (update)
Back in December I blogged about the recent purchase of a Topping TP21 mini amplifier. A very nice bit of kit – especially given that it is only £50. Unfortunately it is now semi broken. It still works via the headphone socket but something is amiss in the speaker circuitry.
It is only 4 months old and as I was sure there was a 12 month manufacturers warranty I contacted the place I bought it from looking for a replacement or repair. I bought it from a seller on the Amazon Marketplace. Their response so far has been unacceptable – they have offered me £5 subsequently increased to £10 to get the thing repaired myself. No offer to do the repair or even giving me the option to return it direct to the manufacturer.
I have reported them to Amazon proper and am awaiting a response.
EDIT. May 2013. Brand new Topping TP21 received. Well done supplier.
Merry Xmas Everybody
I am a bit too young to have really appreciated Slade even though their first album (which was really their second) Play It Loud was the first album I ever bought. It is numbered 3 in my collection because the second and third albums I ever bought were cooler – Roxy Music (eponymous) and Roxy Music, For Your Pleasure – when I started numbering my purchases.
I love Roxy Music but Slade were the first band I ever really listened to. Before buying Play It Loud I had already bought the single Coz I Luv You and it was really that which brought me to the album in early 1972.
As most from that era will know Slade were by all accounts an exceptional live act but I never saw them live as I was too young to go unaccompanied to late night music events – that occurred from about 1975 on – although I was apparently old enough to trek across Epsom Downs to Tattenham Corner where I would catch the 164 to Mordern via Sutton and then jump on the Northern Line all the way to Drayton Park (now an overground station) to join 50,000 others at the home of football AKA Highbury. That’s about 40 miles by public transport with the first bit (and therefore also the last on the return journey) a mile and a half walk across common land.
I was 13. Would you let your 13 year old do that nowadays?
Actually it was 70/71 when I first started going to Highbury on my own. I would have been 11 or 12.
All Gooners will know the significance of 70/71. My first match was the opening home fixture against Man Utd (my Dad took me to that one). The Utd team included Best, Charlton, Law etc. We won 4-0.
Despite things being different in those days I was still considered too young to go to London at night time for a “gig” so I missed ever seeing Slade live (and also Roxy Music until my wife blagged some tickets in 2011 for Manchester MEN).
By 1975 Slade were considered “Pop” and when 76 came along we were following the early punk bands so a Slade gig was a definite no no.
Anyway there has been some Slade stuff on TV over Xmas which I have managed to watch On Demand when the rest of the household has still been in bed. I have watched quite a few similar music documentaries etc as they have stayed in bed a fair bit this Xmas (nothing new really).
Back to Play It Loud. This is, as any even half hearted Slade fan will tell you, the “skin head” album. That phase of their career was a bit weird really as although it definitely gained them some notoriety their music was anything other than representative of what skin heads were generally listening to.
Play It Loud is however a cracking album and to me still a really good listen. The songwriting of Jim Lea and Noddy Holder is starting to come to the fore and some of the stuff here is really underestimated. It isn’t stomp your feet stuff but it is heavy good time rock with Noddy’s distinctive half shouted vocal really beginning to come into it’s own.
Great music. Get a copy and “play it loud”!
Topping TP21
As Logitech have decided to pull the plug on Squeezeboxes I thought I had better get a Touch before they all disappear from the shops.
It arrived the other day and I decided to put it into the bedroom instead of the Boom. Why? Well I usually listen in the bedroom using headphones while Jane watches TV.
The Touch does have a headphone socket but I thought I would try and find a mini hi fi amp with a headphone out. Thus a bit of Googling brought me to the Topping range of amps from China. They get very good reviews for build quality etc but more importantly audiophile level sound quality.
I only needed one set of inputs so opted for the Topping TP21 Class T Digital Mini Amplifier with Headphone 25 WPC
The Cubes haven’t arrived yet but the Topping turned up today so I have hooked up the Touch and the AKGs and now I am listening to some Miles Davis in bed while Jane is watching I Am A Celebrity. The improvement in sound quality over the Boom’s headphone out is quite significant.
I am looking forward to hooking up some speakers to the TP21 to see how it drives them. have some big Mission 77s in the loft I must get them down and try this little amp with them.
The TP21 is a tiny device not much bigger than say 4 CDs stacked on top of each other and therefore perfect for the bedside.
The Touch is an interesting bit of kit. As it is much smaller than an SB3 it sits alongside the TP21 quite nicely. Strange thing is I am unlikely to use the touchscreen as I control my Squeezeboxes with iPeng on my iPhone all the time.