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Nah... the good old days were the 70's

Posted by Bill Way on October 25, 2014 at 00:44:14:
When it was all really new and exciting.
When my college roommate and I, having gotten a pair of Servo-Statik panels with some bad drivers, called Infinity, and Arnie said, "I've got some lying around. I'll send them to you." And he did. Gratis.
When we first started to realize how much goodness was hidden in those grooves pressed in the 50's and 60's.
When someone coined the term "high end."
When that same roommate and I earned much of our college costs by buying old Mac tube gear from the Sunday NY Times classifieds and selling it to Japanese dealers. (Process: get the paper when the first Sunday bundle was dropped off at dawn on Thursday. That bundle included "merchandise offerings." Call every ad, and get on the subway with cash. If there were too many ads, hire helpers, give them cash, and send them out too. Pot dealers made the best helpers because they understood about getting the deal done. We got almost everything for two years, generally sold at a ridiculous markup, and sometimes more. Our Japanese buyers did the same, and their customers paid small fortunes for the gear, which they treasured and enjoyed immensely.)
When the Maggie 1U's bisected the dorm room and met in the middle.
When we had double Advents, then double nines, then double LaScalas.
When we heard the Decca cartridge, and realized everything we knew was wrong.
When some guy modified the Dynaco FM-3... and his name was William Z. Johnson.
When every JBL speaker looked just so f**king cool. (And when we sold the coolest-looking of them all, the Ranger Paragon, which meant we never had to listen to it again!)
When the biggest McIntosh dealers were Pacific Stereo and Hi-Fi Fo-Fum.
When we drove too fast in an Alfa Giulia (or BMW 2002) with the Dahlquist ALS-3's making everything so much better. Yes, Dahlquist car speakers. Oh baby. And no, there was no such thing as a "Beemer" then.
When we walked into Harmony House, heard the original Quads, and realized everything we knew was wrong.
When the Braun tri-amps arrived.
When we realized that a Mac MC-2300 *could* drive the 21 pairs of speakers in the big demo room... in parallel, and that the meter lights dimmed on the loud notes.
When dads would pile the wife and kids into the station wagon and drive two hours each way to a hifi store on a Saturday to buy a "stereo."
When we tested Cerwin Vega's claim that you could plug their speakers into a wall socket.
When, perhaps a trifle stoned, we played with the fast forward and rewind of the Ferrograph 7 for hours.
When we realized that the Bozak Concert Grand was in fact NOT boring, but exceptionally good, as was the Mac ML-4.
When a Mac amp clinic would bring hundreds of people into a hifi store on a Saturday. So many that a salesperson would stand on the counter and shout, "When you're ready to buy, raise your hand!" And they would raise their hands, showing their cash, and wait patiently to get their KLH compact, or their Pioneer receiver, Dual turntable, and KLH speakers.
When we sold so many KLH compacts that we talked of putting in a chute from the upstairs stockroom down to the cash register.
When the music was endlessly exciting, because without the music it's all pointless. Stevie Wonder with brilliant album after brilliant album. Rock going in so many directions, much of it really good - ELP, Stones, King Crimson, Pink Floyd, Elton John, Steve Winwood's 100-or-so bands. Moondog would fly out to do album signings, then return to his spot on the sidewalk on 6th Avenue between 52nd and 53rd Street, and compose in his head, which was covered, as always, with his Viking-style helmet with horns. Orchestras were busy, and for the most part funded. The opera stage was charged with the talent of a young Pavarotti, along with Sutherland, Pliska, Kraft, Merrill, Tucker, Domingo, Milnes, McCracken, Peters, Morris, Corelli, Gedda, Resnik, Bergonzi, Scotto, van Stade, Tebaldi, Horne, Price, Norman, Verrett, Bumbry, Mitchell, and Sills. We organized into teams every year to keep our spot on line for the 2-3 days it took to get our Horowitz tickets at Carnegie, though some of us secretly loved Rubinstein more, and we all knew that tall kid from Shreveport was really exciting.
The 70's were very good.
WW