CyberRoach

It was last year that I saw Sam Philips at The Triple Door in Seattle but I still wanted to post some pictures and a small write-up of this concert!

This was the first time I have seen Sam Philips live and she and her band were absolutely fantastic. Really! First the warm-up: Seattle's own Robert Deeble opened with well... it's hard to describe. His music is somewhere between indie folk-pop, minimalist and... well head over to his website and check it out for yourself.

The concert was sold out, something that surprised me given that Sam Philips isn't exactly well-known - or so I thought. Apparently she contributed some music to the TV show  Gilmore Girls and even appeared on screen in a season finale. We arrived 2 hours early and still got fairly decent seats but the place was packed.
I primarily own Sam's older stuff such as "Martinis & Bikinis", "The Indescribable Wow" and "Omnipop" and am not familiar with her latest stuff but I figured it should be good :)

After Robert Deeble and his colleague had finished Sam Philips and her band set up:

• Drummer Jay Bellrose with a rather eclectic drum set
• Violinist Eric Gorfain with a variety of violins, including a Stroh violin with a sizeable metal horn, a banjo and some guitars
• Accordionist Ted Reichman sitting a bit more in the background.

Soon they started and I was very impressed with the cozy atmosphere of The Triple Door and how well it worked with Sam's style and her accompanying musicians. Especially Jay Bellrose was a joy to watch, pulling one little noisemaker after another out from behind his drum set: rattles, shakers - I felt reminded of a busker and his props. In a big arena this would simply not come across as it would be invisible to the vast audience. In the intimate setting of The Triple Door most people in the audience saw the use of the little noisemakers and the fun that Jay's play exuded.

Eric Gorfain's Stroh violin did not only sound unique he seemed to enjoy playing it quite a bit. He also switched back and forth between the various violins, a guitar and a banjo and seemed to master all these with ease and enthusiasm. The big variety brought some new interesting interpretations to older Sam Philips songs, especially the ones from her first 3, 4 albums.

Sam Philips did change it up as well, at times playing an acoustic guitar, then a very heavily distorted guitar during "I Need Love" or a more moderate electronic guitar during most of the other songs. Speaking of "I Need Love", Sam's new interpretation of this 14-year old song was excellent, a nice new twist on something very familiar. Another surprise was her singing of "Animals On Wheels" when Sam just took a cassette player (think old-school Walkman) and played the instrumental track from that - accompanied by her singing. For some of the vibrato passages she rapidly shook the cassette player, introducing wow/flutter with nice results. Fun to watch and to listen to! Call it a one-woman-Karaoke-show-with-manually-induced-sound-effects but it worked for me :)

Throughout the evening Ted Reichman stayed in the background, consistently playing away on this accordion and weaving dense tapestries of sound. Here and there he would throw in some unexpected embellishments and demonstrate his skill. Overall he was a great addition even when he didn't have the stage presence of his colleagues and perhaps purposefully chose to stay out of the spotlights.

In the end a very enjoyable concert with many old favorites (some of them interpreted in delightfully new ways) as well as the songs from Sam's new "Don't Do Anything" album. Great eclectic music well and enthusiastically played to an appreciative audience - what more can you ask for? I look forward to Sam's next concert in the Seattle area!

Posted by CyRo at 10:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last Friday we went to have dinner with friends at the Redmond Town Center. While leaving the restaurant I saw a speaker in a store window that looked oddly familiar – especially the tweeter looked like a typical Aurum Cantus ribbon tweeter.

While I still checked out the store the owner Peigen Jiang came out, told me that they had literally opened that same day and we agreed to meet on Saturday morning for a listening test.

Fast forward to Saturday: I showed up with a stack of my CDs and Mr. Jiang gave me a run-down of his company eFicion and the speakers that he had set up for demonstration: eFicion was created out of the desire to build better and more affordable speakers and at the same time have the designs manufactured in China for lower costs. Currently eFicion offers two models for test listening sessions in their store:

• Ficion F200, a larger ported bookshelf speaker with an Aurum Cantus ribbon tweeter and an Aurum Cantus woofer.
• Ficion F300, a fairly large two-piece speaker with an Aurum Cantus Air Motion Transformer, a rear-firing ribbon tweeter, and a midrange and a woofer also all by Aurum Cantus.

I was very curious about how these speakers would sound, having enjoyed Aurum Cantus Leisure 2 SE and Music Goddess speakers for years at home.

Mr. Jiang explained the rest of the system (components by Balanced Audio Technology) while I checked out the finish and craftsmanship of the speakers. They are beautiful and meticulously built. The finish is flawless and far superior of the typical China-made OEM speakers - no comparison! The F200 speakers were in natural cherry and the F300 speakers in rosewood veneer.

First up was the F200 and Sniff ‘n’ The Tears with “Driver’s Seat”: highs were very smooth and although just bookshelf-monitor-sized the speakers had a surprising amount of fairly low base. But unlike my Aurum Cantus L2 SE which are just a tad boomy the  F200’s base was dry and very neutral. I moved on to Norah Jones’ “Turn Me On” which is beautifully recorded and has some very prominent vocals as well as a clear base drum. Again the F200’s ribbon tweeter reproduced the vocals very clearly, transparent and without any discoloration. Despite the speakers being away from the soundboarded back wall by at least 3 feet the base was very authoritative yet dry.

No doubt – the F200 is an amazing speaker, especially given the relatively small size and the very fair price of $3400/pair. Very neutral, surprisingly deep yet dry base and very detailed highs and vocals.

Next up was the F300 and well… let’s just say I haven’t heard speakers like that before. Neither in the price range nor in this range of sound reproduction quality. I am not a professional audiophile, just a bumbling amateur but wow, did these speakers sound good! Mr. Jiang played “Jun Fukamachi at Steinway”, a direct-cut LP transfer CD from First Impression Music. I must honestly say: rarely have I been so impressed and impacted by music. The F300’s AMT tweeter is unbelievingly transparent and neutral and when closing my eyes the grand piano was right there in the room! Truly an amazing experience! I played some other CDs and just as expected vocals were effortless and neutral, base was very deep yet neutral and if I had $15K I would have taken these speakers home that very same day!

But I don’t… sigh!

Overall I was very impressed with Mr. Jiang’s creations and his willingness to explain the details, provide background information and let customers like me take the time to listen to their own CDs. Personally I think that locally designed speakers like this deserve more attention, especially given the excellent price/performance ratio of these products!

So, next time you are in Redmond Town Center, stop by at the eFicion store, right next to Matt’s Rotisserie & Oyster Lounge. Or look them up on the web at http://www.eficion.com!

Eficion LLC
Redmond Town Center F225
7525 166th Ave. NE
Redmond, WA 98052
Tel: 425-882-1717

Thanks Mr. Jiang for two hours of wonderful music!

Posted by CyRo at 09:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Thanks to the wonderful folks at SAP I had the chance to see the Stevie Wonder concert at the SAP Arena in Mannheim, Germany on September 23rd 2008. Honestly, I am not a big fan of Mr. Wonder but of course I know a lot of the hits like "Sir Duke", "Happy Birthday", "Superstition" and of course the cloying "I Just Called To Say I Love You". So yeah, I was looking forward to the concert but I expected a "Best Of"-kind of show: Stevie playing all his hits, the audience hearing all their favorites and everybody going home happy and the whole thing being pretty boring.

Boy was I wrong...

First of all I was blown away by the massive size of the band: besides Mr. Wonder there were 2 guitar players, 1 base player, 1 drummer, 2 percussionists, 2 keyboarders, 4 background singers, 1 trumpet and 1 saxophone player. And each one of these artists was top-notch and most were able to showcase their skills with extensive solos.

Stevie and the band did a lot of improvisation, players were clearly adding their own little touches, jamming, simply having fun and enjoying the increasingly enthusiastic audience.

The concert started out slowly with many unfamiliar songs - at least to me but from the audience reaction it was clear that the audience was waiting for "the hits". Sure Stevie played some minor favorites but most of the material was fairly obscure. Again, keep in mind that I am not a huge Stevie Wonder fan.

Stevie definitely tried to get the audience engaged, there were a lot of interactive "sing along" and "repeat after me" segments, Stevie even delighted folks by singing some German folk songs in his own way - nice touch!

After about 1 hour things started to heat up and the audience got more and more engaged. Stevie also started to play some more familiar songs yet at the same time kept experimenting with improvisations, extensive solos and even had a segment where he used a vocoder. Unexpected but very cool and definitely something I have not seen connected with Stevie Wonder before!

Despite the concert not being sold out (one staff person spoke of around 7,000 tickets of 11,000 seats sold, not sure if that is true) the crowd was really warmed up now. And so 1 1/2 hours into the concert Stevie was ready to unleash the barrage of big hits.

The light and stage show had continuously become more brilliant, more aggressive up to this point. In the beginning the lights were fairly subdued and primarily in the background. Spotlights and some moving lights, nothing to obvious. Later high intensity LED strips in the foreground above the stage were added (see the vertical strips in the pictures). More and more moving lights got added as the show went on and the 7 giant LED bars behind the stage got used more frequently.

Towards the end the giant LED bars showed highway and downtown traffic footage of an American city overlayed with live images from the stage to create a unique composition.

In the 1 hour finale Stevie unleashed a non-stop crescendo of big hits, with lots of improvised segments in between: "Sir Duke", "Superstition", "Master Blaster", "Higher Ground", "Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours" and so on. One big hit followed another and the audience was on its feet and making noise like a sold-out venue.

Mr. Wonder and his band clearly enjoyed this enthusiastic response, played extensive solos and just had a good old time.

Overall, the concert was truly awesome and Stevie Wonder and his band really played their hearts out. Passionate and skilled musicians enjoying themselves and an enthusiastic audience appreciating the outstanding performance - what more can you ask for?

Stevie Wonder's daughter Aisha Morris was one of the female vocalists and also had a solo. She received a very enthusiastic response from the audience as well.

Mr. Wonder also made multiple references to the impending US elections and heavily endorsed Barack Obama. Needless to say the German audience responded favorable to that :)

So, enjoy the pictures and definitely try to catch Stevie Wonder in concert, even if you are not a big fan! If you appreciate watching a master at work you will enjoy him and his band!

Posted by CyRo at 03:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It was a few weeks ago, July 12th, when we saw Eddie Izzard presenting his STRIPPED tour at the Paramount Theatre in Seattle. For those unfamiliar with Mr. Izzard let me just say that he is different from other stand-up comedians. Not only is he an accomplished actor ("Mystery Men, "Ocean's Twelve", "Ocean's Thirteen", HBO's "The Riches") but also a cross-dressing transvestite comedian with a wide variety of rambling monologues on often rather absurd topics.

Interestingly enough STRIPPED saw Eddie Izzard switching into "bloke"-mode as he referred to it at the beginning of his act. No high-heels this time!

The show was fun with a wide range of topics and he genuinely seemed to enjoy the audience's reactions. He was quite puzzled though when a joke about Huskies (the local university team nick name) failed to generate any laughter :)

His favorite topic seemed to be Noah's ark and intelligent design in general - very pointed, considering Seattle is the home of the dubious Discovery Institute, a fundamentalist Christian "think" tank advocating creationism and other anti-scientific beliefs. Eddie spent lots of time on why "intelligent" design isn't so intelligent after all.

After the show Mr. Izzard came out the side-entrance to greet an enthusiastic crowd of perhaps 80 fans. He refused to give autographs ("I am too tired!") but did Q&A for about 40 minutes, entertaining all kinds of fun questions and a few bizarre ones.

There was also at least one far-traveling fan from Alaska who begged Eddie to include AK on the next tour, guaranteeing sold-out shows!

Mr. Izzard even got a marriage proposal from a die-hard fan with a "Cake or Death?"-necklace but turned it down :) Some folks were shouting things like "Don't do it!" and "You can do better", rough crowd!

Overall: good show with great Q&A afterwards, thanks Eddie!

Posted by CyRo at 08:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wow, what a great event this was! Two days of non-stop classic gaming goodness in Portland as over 200 attendees played, traded, bought and sold classic and new video games!

What set this event apart was the large number of private collectors that sold and traded at their own booths. Some of the people sold their extras and duplicates at unbelievable prices!

There were about 25 vendors total offering everything from very early Odyssey games (complete with full-size TV overlays), handhelds, VFD table tops, to Atari rarities, custom-made dust covers, Vectrex, ColecoVision games and newer things like PS3, Xbox 360 etc. Even some more unusual systems showed up: NEO GEO, Commodore Amiga, Philips CDi, various store kiosks and much more.

The kiosks were set up for play, so were a few arcade machines, like this Pac-Man (one of the first 1000 made, see the blue speckles on the side).

Overall there were tens of thousands of games and consoles for sale and trade!

There were also many rare import games and game related items as well as some real classic game treasures.

John, Rick the two organizers and Lee, all from NWCGE. Nice referee shirts from Twin Galaxies!

ATARI 2600 CHAMPIONSHIP

The first highlight of Day 1 was the annual Portland Atari 2600 Championship!

The initial qualifying round was a high-score match of Fastfood with last year's champion James R. achieving the fantastic top score of 11309 points!

Twelve people made it into the second round where they went head-to-head with Surround. I was amazed how filled up some of the screens got, the players demonstrated a lot of skill here.

The surviving six players James R., Lee, Jordon, Mike (last year's runner-up), Anthony and Hans now faced the Quarter Finals with a high-score round of Super Cobra.

To the big surprise of everybody James R. and Mike - last year's #1 and #2 both got eliminated and dropped out!

The Semi Finals had a head-to-head in Space War and Lee and Jordon moved on to the Finals. Scores were close, both matches were won 10-8.

In the Finals then Lee and Jordon faced off on the ingenious Ebivision Pac-Man, the best Pac-Man game on the Atari 2600 bar none. Lee got the high-score with a solid 17230 points with Jordon being a close second with 15090 points!

First prize was $100 in gift certificates, second prize was $50 and third prize was still $25.

HIGH SCORE MOVIE WITH Q&A

The second highlight of Day 1 was the showing of the movie HIGH SCORE from Jeremy Mack with the star of the movie Portland's Bill Carlton participating and staying for a Q&A session afterwards.

I had seen Bill in Seattle a few months ago and the showing here at the game expo was definitely much more in depth and quite enjoyable. Bill also signed a lot of memorabilia while I chatted with his girlfriend and learned that Bill now ones dozens of classic arcades. That guy is serious about classic gaming!

For the people with energy left Portland's premier classic arcade Ground Kontrol gave out discounts to show attendees.

SUNDAY - DAY 2

Sunday proved to be just as busy as Saturday with some additional vendors showing up and many of the private collectors starting to aggressively discounting their goodies (leading to manic rushes)!

Scott Boothby brought his full-size home-built R2-D2 and drove it through the exhibition hall prompting Anthony from Portland's Ground Kontrol to go into Luke Skywalker-mode.

Day 2 also brought some additional contests: 8-player Bomberman by the Portland Hobby Fair, Call of Duty 4 contest and the N64 Championship!

There were also numerous raffles: Video Game Wizards raffled off a new Nintendo Wii, Josh a Dreamcast kiosk and Deepend Gear two new Wii Fit sets for various charities.

I had to leave before the N64 Championship finished but I was told it was awesome!

Overall the 2008 NWCGE Portland Retro Gaming Expo was an awesome show, well worth the drive from Seattle! A big thanks to Rick, John, Chuck, Toby, Jon and Billy to get this organized!

I can't wait until next year!

Posted by CyRo at 07:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today is the opening day of the 2008 Portland Retro Gaming Expo at the Holiday Inn Airport hotel. Almost 100 people have showed up so far for the best deals on classic and modern video games, to participate in contests and to win prizes!

Just to give you an idea of the kind of deals that are happening here:

• Nice Toploader NES $35
• PS2 JP Space Invaders Deluxe box $50
• Genesis Virtual Reality Set in box $25

I saw tons of Nintendo NES, SNES and SEGA Genesis games and stocked up on some Xbox and Xbox 360 games as well. There were even some Vectrex games for less than half of going Ebay prices!

On the collector's side booths range from "I cleaned out my basement!" to "Here are all my duplicates!".

Video Game Wizards, Recycled Gamer, Billy Galaxy and many more professional video game traders showed up as well. In total there are about 20 booths with anything related to classic and current video games.

On the contest side there are tons of single game contests, the highlight so far was the Atari 2600 Track & Field contest. Very arthritic in nature :)

Some unique things I saw:

• Amiga 500 in a giant box
• SEGA Dreamcast development kit
• Xbox development kit
• SEGA Dreamcast display kiosk that's being raffled of
• PS1 display kiosk
• Various prototype and lab-loaner carts

Still happening today:

• Atari 2600 Championship @ 5:00 PM
• Showing of the movie HIGH SCORE with the start of the movie, Bill Carlton being present and answering questions!
• A few more single-game contests

The show goes on tomorrow with N64 contests and more selling and trading as well as more prices and competitions.

For more information check out http://www.retrogamingexpo.com/

Posted by CyRo at 12:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Saturday and Sunday is the Jet City Retro classic videogame show in Seattle's University District in the Deca Hotel. We showed up there early this morning and although things were still a bit slow there were some awesome deals! I bought quite a few games and played a few rounds of Vectrex, Frogger and watch some folks jam on Rockband in the free game rooms.

Show banner with a nice Nintendo graphic, show floor on the right

Before the opening of the show, tons of goodies are waiting to be unpacked! On the right: Nate (the organizer) being interviewed by KIRO 710 News Radio.

The Rockband room has a full setup with drums, mic and 2 guitars and if you ever wanted to try this game with a "full band" this is your chance! The second free game room has some arcade machines, a MAME cabinet, some classic consoles (Vectrex etc.) and lots of cartridges on loan!

For more information check out www.jetcityretro.com!

Posted by CyRo at 07:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I recently bought Amy Winehouse's "Back to Black" CD and while I liked most of the music (ranging from great to OK) the audio engineering is just awful. I am used to some extreme levels of clipping and distortion due to the increased loudness levels but "Back to Black" is downright ridiculous! Listening to the CD on Aurum Cantus Music Goddess speakers with the fabulous G2 ribbon tweeter the lack of smooth trebles was very frustrating. The CD sounds muffled, flat and well... clipped! Bass is very accentuated which I am sure sounds better on small speakers but on the Music Goddess it sounds very boomy. Since I bought the CD from an Amazon seller I first thought that it might have been a pirated copy it sounded so bad, but no - it's 100% legit!

I understand that popular music has to obey the perceived marketing laws (level it out as loud as possible!) but it's pretty sad when music is engineered to sound better on shitty speakers. There is plenty of popular music out there that's not ridiculously over-leveled and still commercially successful, for example Norah Jones' "Come Away With Me". It hardly gets more popular than that one with multi-multi-platinum and diamond certifications, so enough with the loudness-madness already!

OK, I'll get off my soap/speaker box now :)

Posted by CyRo at 07:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Starting Sunday, September 23rd around 4:00 PM in the afternoon the first few hardcore HALO fans lined up at the Best Buy store in Bellevue - site of one of the four official launch events in the US. By the evening the number had grown but only a handful stayed throughout the night. Then on Monday, September 24th, the line grew and by 10:00 PM Monday night, the line was around 800 - 900 people long, snaking around the Best Buy, along the parking lot almost all the way to Home Depot.

The Best Buy and Bungie/Microsoft folks kept the crowd entertained with tons of swag: t-shirts, caps, posters, Clix-models, inflatible HALO chairs, squishies and tons more! Master Chief made the rounds for photo opportunities, the Mountain Dew crew replenished the thirsty crowd with "Game Fuel", there was pizza and Bungie/Microsoft employees signed pretty much everything that was asked of them.

Mountain Dew not only had folks refill the cups with Game Fuel but they also had "Respawning Stations" with portable arm and hand massage which was very popular! Some RedBull Minis also made a quick run past the line.

Then at around 11:00 the first celebrities started to show up: Warren Moon, former QB of the Seattle Seahawks (1997 - 1998) and today a radio broadcaster for Seahawks radio. Mr. Moon went around, shook hands and signed tons of posters and stayed for the official store opening.

Next was the man himself: Bill Gates made the rounds past the first part of the line, shook hands and was ambushed by tons of photographers. He stayed for quite a while and was enthusiastically celebrated by the crowd - he seemed to genuinly enjoy his celebrity status and mingling with the crowds.

There were a few other folks, Laura Foy (formerly G4tv, but Microsoft these days), also Jeff Bell (Corp VP Global Marketing), Don Mattrick (Senior VP Interactive Entertainment, formerly EA), Marty O'Donnell (HALO music composer) and others. Then a few busses with Bungie folks arrived and the crowd got showered with swag items and went totally nuts. People shouted "Bungie, Bungie" and at some point one half of the line shouted "HALO" while the other half shouted back "3" which went on for quite a while.

Finally a few minutes before midnight the Best Buy folks cleared the entrance and made room for the buyers to enter the store and at midnight exactly the first few lucky folks were allowed into the store. In there was a group of photographers and cameramen interviewing buyers and getting the first reactions. Soon the deliriously happy buyers emerged from the store, shouting to the waiting crowd and holding their treasures up in the air. The Legendary Edition seemed to be quite popular! Best Buy continued to let small groups enter the store and the line was still pretty long by the time I left.

All in all a great event, the fans kept it going all night long and the Microsoft and Bungie folks as well as the people from Best Buy, Mountain Dew and Clix fueled the frenzy.

Posted by CyRo at 11:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you have never heard about NWCGE but know your Nintendo and Atari and live in the Pacific Northwest you owe it to yourself to check out the NWCGE 2K7 Show!

Held at the Holiday Inn and Conference Center, 8439 NE Columbia Blvd in Portland, OR on September 29 and 30, 2007, this is the biggest and best in the Northwest! Last year saw some great contests and phenomenal deals on rare items!

Head on over to the NWCGE website and check it out!

Posted by CyRo at 07:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)