Chip Stern, Author at Positive Feedback

Time Stands Still - Neil Peart's Heady Metal

Chip Stern — Fri, 25 Sep 2020 20:24:09 +0000

Freeze this moment a little bit longer Neil Peart GHOSTS…In keeping with my apparent predilection—as an obsessive chronicler of fructifying high end sonics and spiritually inspiring music—to focus my attentions on the fallen, and finally having access to a working computer (again, my long time PC vapor locked on me in pre-pandemic January), Radio Free... Read More »

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RADIO FREE CHIP: The Sounds of Silence

Chip Stern — Fri, 03 Jul 2020 23:41:14 +0000

Do You Believe In Ghosts? A boy hears a sound. He hears sound before he has a name. He hears gurgling, pounding underwater. He hears an ocean of blood swimming around him. Through his veins. Through his mother. He breaks into the light of day. He's shocked that he has a voice. He finds his... Read More »

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Homeward Bound: Reflections on a Musical Legacy

Chip Stern — Wed, 01 Jan 2020 18:51:12 +0000

A boy hears a sound. He hears sound before he has a name. He hears gurgling, pounding underwater. He hears an ocean of blood swimming around him. Through his veins. Through his mother. He breaks into the light of day. He's shocked that he has a voice. He finds his voice and screams. He hears... Read More »

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Radio Free Chip June 2019 - Hal Blaine

Chip Stern — Thu, 13 Jun 2019 17:43:05 +0000

"A dozen of his favorite drummers were me." Hal Blaine Listening and the Art of Drumming… I remember, over the course of an extended sit down with Jim Hall back in the day, for a JazzTimes cover story, how off-putting this master guitarist found what he characterized to be a track meet mentality he sometimes... Read More »

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Aretha Franklin – Some Vibrations Linger Longer

Chip Stern — Fri, 17 Aug 2018 22:01:12 +0000

Radio Free Chip The French have a phrase for it. The bastards have a phrase for everything and they are always right. To say goodbye is to die a little. Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye It’s always too damn soon to say goodbye. I have always believed...well, postulated in any event, the notion that when... Read More »

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Radio Free Chip - A Brief Assignation with Clark Terry, December 14, 1920 - February 21, 2015

Chip Stern — Mon, 04 Jun 2018 18:30:04 +0000

Making the simple complicated is commonplace. Making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity. - Charles Mingus Years ago my friend, the British guitarist Robert Fripp (of King Crimson renown), found the time for a brief assignation at a Greenwich Village bistro. Over lunch, when I inquired as to how his visit to Manhattan was... Read More »

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Radio Free Chip

Chip Stern — Tue, 07 Nov 2017 10:26:35 +0000

Confession is Good for the Soul Those few pilgrims who've remained in touch, and kept up to date with RADIO FREE CHIP's infrequent musings, might just recollect how a persistent and recurring theme of recent columns centered around how contented I was with my rig, how my system had evolved to the point where I... Read More »

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Elliott Carter - A Personal Recollection by Radio Free Chip

Chip Stern — Fri, 01 Sep 2017 15:29:41 +0000

There's an old adage folks like to dust off whence we suffer some loss, as wrenching as it is inexplicable, not unlike a late April ice storm, midst that initial gush of springtime bloom, which heretofore has served to affirm the promise and wonder of life and renewal after such a long, harrowing winter: "They... Read More »

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Segovia - The Blue Guitarist

Chip Stern — Sun, 30 Jul 2017 20:26:28 +0000

RADIO FREE CHIP Ourselves in the tune as if in space, Yet nothing changed, except the place - Wallace Stevens The guitar is a small orchestra. It is polyphonic. Every string is a different color, a different voice. - Andrés Segovia In January of 1987, Andrés Segovia embarked on what turned out to be his... Read More »

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Radio Free Chip - Tweaks Are Us

Chip Stern — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 02:54:08 +0000

Greetings from the underground, fellow music lovers and seekers after audio nirvana. As I may have conveyed in my last ruminations many, many moons ago, I am luxuriating in the aural glow of an extended series of incremental tweaks, which coming as they have, in drips and drabs, have brought me to the point where... Read More »

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