Podcast #1044: The Beginnings of "Fuzz Tone" - CD Fun Facts - 2022 LG Pricing

This week we further discuss the beginning of the “Fuzz Tone” in music, give you some fun facts of the Compact Disc and rundown the availability and pricing of the 2022 LG line of HDTVs. Plus we read your emails and go over the week's news.

Download this Episode.

Support the show with Patreon!

Listen to the show

Today's Show:

News:

• ESPN's iOS app adds SharePlay to help you watch sports with friends
• Apple TV 4K gets seriously useful upgrade — it’s now a travel essential
• Epson unveils 4K 120Hz laser projector
• Xiaomi launches a huge 100-inch 4K TV in China for $3,150

Other:

• Lutron Caseta Wireless - Smart Lighting Control System - Ready Wholesale Electric Supply
• Matter home automation full release delayed until Fall 2022 | AppleInsider
• Join the Neat Exchange - Social Media for Whiskey Drinkers
• Ara's Woodworking
• Join the Flaviar Whisky Club and get a free bottle

How Sam Phillips Invented the Sound of Rock and Roll

Here is some more information about the story Ara told last week about the broken amp that created a new sound. Full article here…

From the article:

It was around this time that a baby-faced Beale Street regular came into the studio. His name was Riley King, but everyone called him the "Beale Street Blues Boy," a name that later boiled down to simply "B.B. King." With singles like "Mistreated Woman" and "She's Dynamite," King became one of Phillips' first successful artists, and far from the last.

In early 1951, King recommended Phillips' services to the Mississippi-based band "Kings of Rhythm," led by teenager Ike Turner. In their haste to fix an unlucky flat tire on a road trip to Memphis, one of their amps fell out of the trunk and onto the pavement. Upon arriving at Phillips' studio, guitarist Willie Kizart plugged in the amp and got a horrible, fuzzy, distorted noise. The speaker cone of the vacuum tube amp seemed to have broken in the fall, or maybe was damaged during a rainstorm that befell the band on their way to the studio. Whatever the case, the amp was shot and the group, crestfallen, feared their shot at recording a song was over before it had even started.

Phillips, however, had a different idea. Running to the diner next door, he grabbed some paper—the legend differs on whether it was brown paper or day-old newspaper—and stuffed it into the amp, giving it a new, unique sound, a muffled saxophone-like bass. For Phillips, this wasn't just a quick fix, but in fact something better: something different. When you listen to the the song widely hailed as rock and roll's first, "Rocket 88," you'll hear exactly what he created. A sound that helped launch a genre.

"Instead of trying to hide that sound," says Jerry Phillips, "he brought it to the forefront." While this may not have been the first instance of fuzz tone or distortion in a song, it was the first commercially successful song with this soon-to-be-iconic manipulation of sound that would go on to define songs from The Kinks' "You Really Got Me Going" to The Rolling Stones' "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" to The Beastie Boys' "Sabotage."

Rocket 88 (Original Version) - Ike Turner/Jackie Brenston

Fun facts about the CD

• Sony worked with Philips to develop the first CD.

• The Sony CDP-101 was the first CD player and it cost around $900 in 1982. Compact discs themselves were at first extremely expensive at $30 each. CDs were manufactured at only two facilities in the entire world, each owned by Philips and Sony. The manufacturing process was tedious and required masked technicians in labs. There were soon six factories, and the price per disc dropped to $25, and then to $20. As venture capital poured in, there were soon 40 factories manufacturing discs.

• The first portable CD player was released in 1982, but it was not possible to skip songs you didn't like.That technology came out in the mid 1990's. Sony’s first portable CD player, the Discman D-50, was introduced in November 1984. At first, the D-50 was not profitable but as the product gained popularity, it soon became profitable, and Sony began to create a portable CD market. The Discman range was later re-named to CD Walkman.

• The first ever CD was a 1982 album by Swedish pop group Abba called The Visitors

• The biggest selling CD of all time is the Eagles 1976 Their Greatest Hits album, which sold over 38 million copies

• If all the CDs in the world were piled up, they'd circle the Earth six times

• Vinyl sales in 2021 topped CDs in the United States for the first time in 30 years. According to data from Billboard, 38% of all album sales in the country last year were in vinyl format, accounting for over 50% of all physical album sales. This marked the first time more vinyls were sold than CDs in the US since 1991.

LG’s 2022 OLED televisions start shipping this spring

LG today announced pricing and availability for its 2022 line of OLED televisions. That includes four series of 4K sets (we’ve got info for three of them, anyway), as well two 8K models. Full article here…

Download Episode #1044