Any feedback/advice on a NAD 340c Amp. Iv had it a while and really need to dust it off.
Yeah i love the product. I have nearly 400 CDs/boxsets and would never sell them. I love going into a shop and buying an album.
I had loads of vinyl and did sell a huge lot of it to a dealer but kept my favourite 100 albums.
I just think a lot of people listen to music differently now. Years ago you put an album on, sat there, read the cover and listened. Now, people put music on their phone and scroll through the phone and texting etc - therefore not really listening and taking it in. That’s why new releases don’t last long in a lot of (young) people minds.
Its no surprise the albums people of my age, 51, loved as a teen are still their favourites and that’s because they listened, loved and obsessed about those albums. We knew the track names, the order, who wrote it and who guested on it etc…Kids now are like - Great a new Taylor swift album, listen once half assed…OK, what’s next?
I would also argue its not healthy to have a bands entire discography at your finger tips. Years ago you bought an album and you played it and gave it time if you were unsure because you couldn’t just go out and buy another one. You had to save up. So you gave an album every chance. If you loved it from the first play - result.
But Ten > Nevermind (imo)
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Spot on post.
I have a really good friend a bit older than me. Almost like a second Dad. He is 70+ but looks like Joe Elliot from Def Lepard.
He has a massive collection of Mowtown and Bluegrass Vinyl. We usually watch the game and then play great music,
I love it. Talking to someone who has seen the Who, Pink Floyd in their Prime. We can be listening to them and then just flip it to Diana Ross, Frankie Valli, the Ronettes, etc. and have the same admiration/love.
I do not get that from any of my friends of a similar age. Maybe it is just my experience, but I think it is an emotional interaction that is sadly dying.
As you say, buying music in the past was a commitment, people didn’t have the fear of buying the wrong album. Now, with streaming sites I feel it has lost that specialness, that excitement, the running to the record shop to buy it on it release, the fact you then usually had to run home before you could listen to it, the joy of lending it to your mate and borrowing some of their stuff.
Regarding Nirvana and Pearl Jam, it surprised me that the Ten album out sold Nevermind in the US.
In my opinion Nevermind was the better album and had a greater impact on Music afterwards, almost like the Sex Pistols - which strangely had Never mind in its title.
But, there is an argument to be had which I touched upon, in that Artwork, a bands branding and also public perception plays a massive part in how they are perceived in history. Nirvana almost made the emoji popular before the Internet, with their, smiley face logo - I know they were not the first to use it - but you see it and straight away know and associate it with Nirvana. In fact, I can’t think of many bands with a more notable emblem that doesn’t mention the bands name, Rolling Stones maybe with the Lips?
But this discussion is exactly what I love about Music and how it should be. No one is right or wrong as it is such an emotive subject but in a happy way.
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I was 17 with the whole Nirvana/Ten/Grunge explosion and it didnt reach the UK fully until mid 92
I used to go to a pub called the Greyhound where on a Friday and Saturday night it turned into a Rock pub with a DJ playing the likes of GNR, Poison, Crue, Jovi, Skid Row etc
Then one night he says im gonna play something new and its taken the US by storm (no internet back then so we had no idea!) and it was Teen Spirit. Everyone in the pub agreed it was shit and never take off.
A few months later and boom. Hair/Glam metal was gone and Grunge was here. I never understood why one had to replace the other on MTV etc but I loved both genres and still do.
Funny story my mate got Ten by mistake. His dad thought he had bought Blue Pearl for the song Naked in the Rain, listened, realised it wasnt and gave him the album. My mate thought whats this shit, didnt listen and just put it on the pile with his other CDs…a few months later Pearl Jam explode and he is like Pearl Jam…why do they ring a bell??? Then remembered the CD!
His dad who gave him the CD plays Bass in a local band and supported the The Who when they were called something else after just starting out.
If you are talking about the band I think you are talking about, that is definitely not them. Neither of them are Chris Bailey.
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I love stories like that.
I also find it strange how a population can go through Fads on one side of the pond and almost unrecognised on the other and also how a bands image - usually defined by the record label can play a massive part how they are perceived.
I was massively into the Kings of Leon, saw them a number of times in small venues on their first Tour etc. So Raw, Cool and Fresh. I think they then changed labels and maybe without intention released sex on fire. I was in a indie venue and the DJ played the Bucket, literally no one on the dance floor apart from me and my GF at the time. The DJ then played S on F and I almost got trampled to death. From that moment they were dead to me and haven’t released anything of note since.
Something similar happened with a band called Slaves now known as Soft play, I was literally at a gig with just their family and some randoms, chatted to the two of them. They then became popular and signed with Virgin and then started producing catchy Pop/soft punk songs to meet the labels needs. The sad thing is you would go to see them Live and they were everything you expected from their early stuff.
Sadly, we live in such a commercial world that bands are churned in and spat out. You don’t have the hands on management of people like Malcom McLaren. The Market is saturated and so bands usually have to comply or die. Although it is slowly changing it has been rare for bands to be given so much licensing freedom since the Britpop era, bands like Artic Monkeys and Fontaines DC have definitely benefited from keeping hold of their Sound.
I am big fan of the bass and its importance in driving through a song. John Paul Jones is probably the lesser known member of Zeppelin yet he was instrumental in their sound and success.
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I read an article a while back that originally Jimmy Page had wanted Chris Dreja to remain on bass with JPJ as a dedicated keyboard player and possible rhythm guitarist.
When Dreja said he wanted to move into photography, Jones moved on to bass and, because he was originally a church organist, was capable of playing the bass lines with his feet when playing the organ.
I really rate John Paul Jones as an all round musician. In fact one of my favourite albums is REM’s Automatic For The People, which JPJ did all the orchestral arrangements for.
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The internet while good for certain things has spoiled a lot of things. Bands set lists when live for example. Back in the day we didnt know a set unless we went to the gig or read a review.
So without internet it took Grunge nearly a year to get as big as it did in US. I think with internet in 91 it would’ve been here sooner. That’s how it used to be…what was big in US took a while to get big over here.
I used to buy Kerrang! magazine and Nirvana and Pearl Jam were started to be mentioned towards the end of 91 but not to a point where anyone (that I knew of) were talking about or heard them.
Pearl Jam really took off with Alive but it was Jeremy and that video that made them big over here.
I remember someone in the pub in 94 saying he had heard from a mate that there was a rumour that Kurt Cobain was dead.
I left pub at closing (11pm back then) and searched through Ceefax and Teletext to see if it was true.
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I never knew that. I will definitely read up on him abit more. I suppose there are people like JPJ and similarly George Harrison to refer to another big band that go a bit under the radar in regards to their contribution to music because they don’t grab the limelight of some of the other band members.
My Mom literally forced Automatic for the people on me alongside Sinead O’Connor. If I remember correctly REM’s album had a yellow cassette which was a bit of a novelty. I brought Monster off the back of it and at the time didn’t get it, as the sound was completely different.
Now I really get it, and I love Let me in which is a post message to Kurt Cobains suicide as Stripe was Francesca Beans god father.
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Happy to be corrected but I am almost certain Nirvana success took off in the UK before the US.
I was 12 when he committed suicide and didn’t really know of their Music or how much I would regret my actions on that day to the point that it still bothers me. One of my class mates and friends a female got upset, and I mocked here for it. I believe her brother had tickets to a Nirvana gig or Reading 94 and I used it against her as childish way of annoying her. I still remember it, I still feel bad.
They were promoted by John Peel and I saw them in a club gig in Newcastle, but I ended up buying their first album from Probe Records in Liverpool which specialised in independent label releases and imports. They were known as a cult band, but far from a household name.
They became huge as soon as Smells Like Teen Spirit was released. By that time they were on a major label with a big budget promotion and MTV coverage. I’m pretty sure they became huge everywhere simultaneously.
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My mate had tickets for the London gig due to be played a few days/weeks after he killed himself.
Back in the day you didnt buy tickets 6 to 8 months in advance especially for theatre gigs.
Thats another thing the internet has spoiled…buying concert tickets. I prefer the old way of ringing up like i did for my GNR ticket in 91 on a Saturday morning. At least the bots couldnt buy them that way!
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Thx for reminding me of those days…what a time to experience great music, being 14,15 and full of crazy emotions and thoughts.
Though i rarely listen to the “Seattle gang” nowadays, when i do, its bliss and a trip down memory lane…
Today i had “man in the box” by AIC on my car stereo…think ive been heard quite well all around the street i was driving on 
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My best music years were 89-95ish.
All my bands released their best in those years or i discovered great albums in those years.
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I never really liked the whole angst ridden grunge thing, although Nirvana did have more about them. My favourite at that time were the Pixies, saw them the first time they played in Ireland in ‘90, absolutely incredible. Still love them, have seen them a few times over the years.
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Have you heard the new afghan whigs one?
40th anniversary, sweet stuff on the record.
And their 1993 Gentlemen still hits hard.
Loved the guardian interview with Greg this week.
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Might be of interest to some…
She had been clean for two years.
July 1988. A sun-scorched island. Nico was 49, rebuilding everything that fifteen years of addiction had taken. Her son was with her. She rode her bicycle every morning. She was winning.
That hottest day of summer, she left home wearing a black scarf tied carefully around her head. She never came back.
A taxi driver found her unconscious on the roadside. Bicycle nearby. Blood on the pavement.
The first hospital turned her away. Then the second. By the time Hospital Can Misses admitted her, she was already dying—a brain hemorrhage that any routine surgery could have fixed. But the doctors saw what they expected: an older woman, track-marked skin, sweat-soaked. Just another addict.
Heat stroke, they said. Dehydration. Sent her home to die.
By 8 PM, she was gone. Nobody knew her name. Nobody bothered to ask.
But her name was Christa Päffgen. And the world had forgotten one of the most important artists of the 20th century.
A child watched her city burn.
Born in 1938 Berlin as bombs fell, her father came back from war broken. Her mother ran into the forest to hide. “Every time I close my eyes,” Nico said later, “I am back in bombed Berlin.” That’s where she learned to see darkness.
By 14, she was modeling in Paris. By 22, she was in Fellini’s films. She was beautiful in a way that terrified people.
Andy Warhol made her a superstar. Then he gave her to a rock band nobody had heard of. Lou Reed didn’t want her. John Cale didn’t want her. But she stayed anyway.
The Velvet Underground. 1967. Three songs.
Femme Fatale. All Tomorrow’s Parties. I’ll Be Your Mirror.
Nobody bought that album. Now it’s considered the most important rock record ever made. Every gothic voice in modern music comes from those three songs.
Then she did something nobody expected: she walked away.
She bought a harmonium—a wheezing medieval keyboard that no rock musician had ever touched. She wrote her own songs. Dirges about death. About war. About being European in a century that had killed itself twice in her lifetime.
Critics called them masterpieces. The label sold almost nothing.
She had invented a whole genre—gothic music—before the world had a word for it. Before anyone knew what to do with a woman singing in minor keys over ancient instruments.
And then she chose to disappear.
By the 1980s, she was living in Manchester, teeth rotting, skin breaking down, her famous blonde hair dyed black. Playing pool in pubs with people who had no idea who she was. She seemed, her musicians said, to be “saying: this is who I am now”—no longer the beautiful face the world wanted to use.
In 1986, everything changed. Methadone. Bicycle. Real food. New songs. She had beaten it. After everything, she had won.
She was supposed to make a comeback.
Then she rode downhill on the hottest day of the year, and three doctors looked at her and saw nothing worth saving.
Here’s what haunts us: If she’d been 22 and blonde. If her name had meant something to them. If anyone had looked twice.
Would the X-ray have happened in time?
She died invisible—the same way she’d learned to live, after spending a lifetime being looked at without being seen.
Almost 40 years later, every dark voice in music traces back to her. Bowie, Patti Smith, Joy Division, The Cure, Siouxsie. They all came out of those three songs and a medieval keyboard she refused to put down.
She is still ahead of us. We’re still catching up.
And somewhere today, in some hospital, another woman is dying because nobody looked twice.
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Thank you for this. I am not aware of her story but will definitely look in it.
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Can only state exactly the same. What a sad story, will definitely follow up on your post. Thx @sandsoftime
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