Tag: Music

“Racing Mount Pleasant” by Racing Mount Pleasant

by James Wallace Harris

I discovered Racing Mount Pleasant while watching Best New Albums of 2025 – Ranked by Katie from Cordes Records in Australia. She inspired me to watch other YouTubers report on their favorite new albums of 2025. I’ve collected all their recommendations into a Spotify playlist “2025 Albums to Try.”

Of all the albums I’ve tried, Racing Mount Pleasant is my favorite. It’s by a group, Racing Mount Pleasant. To make it even more confusing, my favorite song on this album is “Racing Mount Pleasant.”

Racing Mount Pleasant currently has seven members and was formerly known as Kingfisher. According to Wikipedia, the lineup consists:

  • Sam DuBose – vocals, guitar
  • Callum Roberts – trumpet
  • Connor Hoyt – alto saxophone
  • Samuel Uribe Botero – tenor saxophone
  • Kaysen Chown – strings
  • Tyler Thenstedt – bass, vocals
  • Casey Cheatham – drums, vocals

I’m currently obsessed with their song “Racing Mount Pleasant.” Phil Spector was famous for producing a Wall of Sound back in the 1960s. Spector got this sound by using a rotating lineup of over two dozen studio musicians, now known as the Wrecking Crew.

I mention this because Racing Mount Pleasant feels like a rock orchestra. I love their sound, especially the song “Racing Mount Pleasant.” You can hear the album version on YouTube:

I love this song. I’ve been playing it over and over for weeks. I used it as a test song for my review of the Fiio K13 R2R DAC. However, as I listened to the music played through five different DACs using three different sound systems, I was amazed by the diverse textures the instruments made. I wanted to know which instruments produced which sounds. That’s when I began researching the song and found out the band had seven members. But what really helped was finding this video of the band playing “Racing Mount Pleasant.”

I loved this album so much that I bought it on vinyl. That’s rare for me. I might even get it on CD. The music is so dense that it feels like it’s coming from a giant orchestra. The band plays at a relentless pace, projecting a sense of joy.

Most of my fellow baby boomers are stuck in the past musically. Most of the time, so am I. But for some reason, a few of us have stayed on the trail, hoping to find new artists. Discovering Racing Mount Pleasant is one of those discoveries that makes trying all those thousands of albums over the past seven decades pay off.

JWH

DAC Compare: Fiio K13 R2R vs. Geshelli J2 vs. AudioLab 6000A

by James Wallace Harris, 12/20/25

On the surface, this essay might appear to be about audio equipment, but it’s really about wants and desires, perception and marketing, the limits of our senses.

A DAC is a Digital-to-Analog converter. Most people own several, even though they might be unfamiliar with the acronym. They are critical to audiophiles because they determine how well digital files are recreated as analog sound in your amplifier and speakers.

For most music listeners, the DAC is built into their computers, smartphones, amplifiers, or CD players. Some audiophiles will spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on an external DAC, hoping to hear details in their music that are not produced by integrated DACs.

I’m not really an audiophile. Maybe I’m a half-ass audiophile. I do want to hear music in all its richness, but I just don’t want to spend the kind of bucks that audiophiles are willing to part with.

Some audiophiles are purists and shun digital recordings. They want vinyl records that were produced with analog equipment and to play their LPs on analog amplifiers. This route requires no DAC. I’ve spent a modest amount of money pursuing the analog sound, and it’s always been elusive. Watching YouTube videos from analog purists makes me think I’d find sonic greatness if I’d only shell out a few thousand dollars more.

On the other hand, other audiophiles who embrace digital technology claim that if you spend enough money, you will hear more details from every note and instrument, from a larger three-dimensional soundstage, and experience greater sonic textures and thrills.

For over a decade, I’ve been chasing three mirages. The first is analog sound, the second is high-resolution music, and the third is better DACs. I gave up on vinyl because it was never apparent that analog sounded superior to digital, even after much testing. I gave up on high-resolution music because it only sounded slightly better than CD quality, and only if I concentrated mightily hard. However, I’m still a sucker for DAC hucksters.

Since Covid, I’ve been hearing reviews of R2R DACs, and I’ve been hankering to own one. Unfortunately, R2R DACs were more expensive than the more common Delta-sigma DACs. Then Fiio came out with the K11 R2R headphone amp/DAC for $159. I thought I’d buy one and see if there really was a difference. Before I could pull the trigger, Fiio came out with the K13 R2R headphone amp/DAC for $320 that claimed to be even better. So I bought one for my birthday.

A couple of years ago, I purchased the Geshelli Labs J2 DAC with upgraded Sparkos SS3602  op-amps and AK4499 DAC because the Cheap Audioman had convinced me it was the best Delta-sigma DAC for under a $1000. (It was just over $500 with the upgrades, so I thought, what a bargain.)

I already owned an AudioLab 6000A because of Darko Audio. It has an ES9018K2M DAC. It sounded great to me, but watching audio equipment reviews online leaves a never-ending desire to explore those greater musical dimensions they claim they can hear.

When I got the Geshelli Labs J2, I thought I heard more detail. After a year, I became tired of having to get up to turn on the J2 before turning on my AudioLab 6000A with a remote. I removed the J2 and used the DAC in the AudioLab 6000A. I wasn’t really sure I could hear a difference anymore. I never could decide if the external J2 sounded better than the internal DAC of the 6000A.

But I kept listening to reviews. Many of my favorite reviewers went through countless DACs, apparently searching for audiophile nirvana. Some claimed that DACs costing $5000 or $10,000 would get me there.

Reviewers consistently claimed R2R DACs had the smooth sound of analog music, projecting larger soundstages. I felt the soundstage for the AudioLab 6000A was as large as my den, but then what did I know? Maybe it wasn’t.

I wasn’t willing to risk my retirement savings on a $5,000 DAC. Some reviewers were honest enough to admit that those expensive DACs didn’t reveal their riches unless your amplifier and speakers also cost at least $5,000.

I decided I just had to hear an R2R DAC to see if I could actually hear a difference, so I bought the Fiio K13 R2R.

To be honest, I was disappointed with what I heard using it as a K13 R2R headphone amp. The music sounded far more exciting through my Sennheiser 560S headphones and Fiio K5 Pro headphone amplifier. The music presented by the K13 was very nice, but it was missing all those exciting details I heard from the ESS Sabre DAC of the K5 Pro.

I’m not unhappy with the K13. Its smooth sound, especially on female vocals, is quite pleasant. However, for headphone listening, I especially enjoy the details.

I then hooked up the K13 and J2 to the AudioLab 6000A’s analog inputs. I also compared the sound from the AudioLab 6000 CD transport using its internal DAC. The R2R DAC did sound smooth and pleasant. And I’ve been enjoying it for days. It’s just fine, but I don’t think I’m an R2R person after all.

Here’s the thing: there are differences between the three DACs, but do they really matter? My bedroom stereo, using a Bluesound Powernode 2i and Klipsch RP-5000F speakers, sounds the richest, most detailed, and dimensional of all my systems. However, I think that’s due to the room. My main stereo is in the den. It doesn’t have a back wall, because it opens into a dining area and kitchen. One wall is floor-to-ceiling glass, and the other two walls have wrap-around windows near the ceiling.

I’m sure the rooms make a bigger difference than the DACs. And I imagine the Polk Reference Series R-500 speakers sound different from the Klipsch.

For years, my only source of music was a clock radio. It had only one speaker. It was no larger than three inches in diameter. I loved that radio, and the music I first heard on it from 1962 to 1968 has stuck with me my whole life.

The most excitement I got from listening to music this year wasn’t from the equipment, but from consciously trying new music I hadn’t heard before that was created in the last ten years. Spotify estimated my age from the music I played to be 28.

I do know the DAC in my $89 Wiim Mini sounds bad. But it seems any DAC costing over $200, despite its technology, sounds pretty damn good. Maybe if I spent more than $2000, I would hear a difference, but would it be a night-and-day difference? I don’t know. Unless I win a mega lottery, I ain’t going to find out.

In my testing, playing a CD through the AudioLab 6000A sounded the best by far. But I’m not ready to go back to CDs.

I think watching audiophile reviewers on YouTube is making me dissatisfied with my equipment. I have to wonder if the differences they hear are really psychological or physiological?

I’ve found that what makes the biggest difference is volume. Listening at 85 decibels makes my stereo systems sound great. At 85 decibels, I hear more details with a larger soundstage by using any of my DACs.

After that, convenience matters. Audiophiles claim that separate components sound better than all-in-one units. Calling up albums on my phone via Spotify is just too damn convenient. Powering on with a remote is too damn convenient. I wish I could power up my integrated amplifiers with my iPhone and ditch the remote.

My advice. Spend a middling amount on an integrated system and play it loud.

JWH

Back to Vinyl, Again

by James Wallace Harris

Decades ago, I donated hundreds of LPs to the library after realizing I hadn’t played them in years. At the time, I had almost two thousand CDs. This was around the turn of the century, before streaming but after MP3s. It was obvious that LPs were an outdated technology. They were inconvenient to use.

About a decade later, when I heard about the vinyl revival, I got intrigued when enthusiasts claimed analog sounded better than digital. At the time, I was chasing hi-rez audio with SACDs. I bought a turntable and a few LPs. I was disappointed with both formats. Although they sounded different, I didn’t feel a night-and-day difference. I quit buying SACDs and gave my turntable and LPs to a friend.

My theory was that either I didn’t have expensive enough equipment to hear the difference, or my ears were old and I couldn’t hear the difference.

A few years later, I bought another turntable, a much cheaper one, when I discovered the library bookstore was selling old LPs for 50 cents each. I’d buy $10 worth at a time of old records from the 1950s and 1960s. Each time, I’d pick albums that I’d never heard of before, just for fun. But after buying about sixty albums and only finding a couple of gems, I stopped. By the way, one gem was the soundtrack to Pete Kelly’s Blues. I also ordered from Discogs a few favorite albums that I never found on streaming.

However, the deficiencies of the LP format kept annoying me. The pops, hiss, crackles, and skips. Also, I’d have to get up every time I want to hear something different. Streaming is just so damn convenient. So I packed up the turntable and put it in the closet and shelved the records.

Several months ago, I decided I needed to get rid of stuff because I’m getting old and need to manage fewer possessions. I gave away the turntable, but for some reason, I couldn’t part with the records.

Then, a few weeks ago, I had a realization. I missed shopping for records. Starting in 1965 and until streaming killed the record store, I would shop once a week and usually buy one or more albums. That gave me great pleasure. I suddenly wanted that again. I guess it was nostalgia, but I also missed having a reason to get out of the house.

I bought another turntable, the third, since the vinyl revival. This time, a slightly better one, which I plugged into my Audiolab 6000 phono stage. The combination sounded great. And I started shopping for records. It’s different this time. It means going around town looking at used records. Memphis has a few record stores in rundown buildings and some antique malls with a couple of vendors who sell LPs. A few places like Target sell new records, but the selection is very limited and the albums are very expensive.

It’s not the same as the old days when I shopped at Peaches. I do feel a bit of the old thrill flipping through the bins, hoping to find an LP that will turn out to be a new favorite. I loved finding an album I would play over and over for a couple of weeks. I still do that with streaming, but so far haven’t in record stores.

The temptation is to look for used copies of old favorite albums, but I decided against that. I make myself buy unknown albums, ones I missed decades ago, hoping to discover an overlooked gem. So far, no luck.

I’ve been lucky at Shangri-la Records in getting old albums in great shape and with little surface noise. But my other sources haven’t been so good. Paying $9 for an unknown jazz trio and having it play with lots of pops and crackles is disappointing. I like the music of The Don Scaletti Trio, but I’d like them more without the extra sounds. Interestingly, this group isn’t available on Spotify to hear clearly.

I doubt I will buy many albums. I will risk buying some new albums by current artists. I’ve been watching record reviewers on YouTube, and there are zillions of albums to try. There seems to be a world of new music that I never noticed.

If I wasn’t trying to recreate an old joy, I wouldn’t mess with vinyl. CDs sound better, and streaming is just too damn convenient. I’m going to allow myself to buy an occasional album, new or used, to recreate a ritual I fondly remember from when I was younger. That ritual involves shopping for the album, and then sitting in a chair and doing nothing but listening to the two sides of the album for the first time while studying the cover.

Mostly, I listen to music via playlists on Spotify. I listen to music like most people do when watching a movie at the theater. It’s the only thing I do. All my attention is on the music. I prefer playing songs from playlists because I’m not interrupted, and every song is one I know I love. However, I think it’s important to sometimes listen to whole albums. LPs are good for that because it’s inconvenient to listen to specific songs.

When I was young, I used to listen to albums with friends. But I have no one who wants to do that anymore. Actually, most of my friends have stopped listening to music. Some still go to concerts, or to bars to hear tribute bands play their favorite music from decades ago. A few have a handful of songs they listen to on their phone as background music while they work around the house. I’m not sure streaming was the main reason why record stores died. My generation, which grew up buying LPs, stopped buying. And newer generations never developed the habit.

I feel lonely regarding my love of music. When I shop for records, I seldom see other people. When I do, it’s usually old guys like me. I know some young people do buy records because of the vinyl revival, but I don’t see them.

JWH

POSITIVELY 4TH STREET by David Hajdu

by James Wallace Harris, 6/10/25

2025 is the 60th anniversary of my living through 1965. I discovered Bob Dylan in 1965 when “Like a Rolling Stone” came on Top 40 AM radio. That was when rock and roll matured, becoming rock. I’ve never been able to forget the sixties. That’s mainly because I was an adolescent during that decade, and few people can forget their adolescence. To compound the biological factor, we were Baby Boomers, believing the whole world was watching us lead some kind of revolution.

I thought Bob Dylan epitomized the decade when I was a teenager growing up with his albums The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan in 1962 through Nashville Skyline in 1969. I’ve been listening to those albums for sixty years, and I’ve read a lot about Bob Dylan. He wasn’t my hero, but someone I admired and envied. While watching the recent film A Complete Unknown, I couldn’t help but feel they got everything wrong. Although the film and acting were dazzling.

Bob Dylan is legendary for hiding behind a mask. He has always worn an enigmatic persona. I think to understand Dylan requires not looking directly at Dylan but at everything that surrounded him and how he reacted. Of course, that belief may only be a delusion on my part, and it’s impossible to know the man.

Of everything I’ve read, Positively 4th Street by David Hajdu provides the best account of Dylan, Baez, and the Folk Revival movement of the late 1950s and early 1960s. I just reread it for the third time because it was selected by my nonfiction book club. I assume the others voted for it because of the film A Complete Unknown. This 2001 book is out of print except for Kindle and audiobook on Amazon.

A Complete Unknown claims Dylan broke with the Folk Music crowd when he went electric. Positively 4th Street documents how he left Folk Music with his second album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. The Folk Music Revival was about rediscovering, recreating, and reinterpreting historical music from many subcultures and countries. As soon as Dylan and others started writing their own songs, they became singer-songwriters. That was a new music genre. Those artists left folk music behind, and changed pop music, and rock and roll.

The Sixties can be remembered in many ways. There was a great deal of turbulent political change. Many histories of the Sixties are quite ugly. But the counterculture remembers it as a transcendental revolution. I did for most of my life. On this third reading of Positively 4th Street, I’m seeing evidence that undermines that perspective.

In my book club’s discussion group, David wrote:

I almost gave up on Positively 4th Street because of the gossip and drama described in the personal lives of some of my most admired musicians who were icons of the age of the folk era in the late 50s and early 60s.


I am not one for gossip that appears in People Magazine and ET describing the drama of celebrities, but when I learn about the personal lives of some of the great artists I wonder how they ever produced things of such beauty, truth, and goodness. 


So I got thinking, is “narcissistic arrogance” a necessary ingredient for a person to create great art?

My reply was successful people often come across as assholes because of their relentless self-promotion. After reading David’s comments, I paid attention to their validity while rereading the book. It became quite apparent that these icons of the Sixties were chasing fame and fortune first. To reach the top of the creative heap means brutal competition. That often meant demeaning their peers. I need to rewatch A Complete Unknown to see how it interprets this aspect.

To think Dylan broke with the Folk Music Revival crowd when he went electric in 1965 is to miss the mark by a mile. Dylan had already blown through several artistic phases by 1965. Who can imagine where the man is at sixty years later.

I was thirteen when I first heard “Like a Rolling Stone.” I thought it would be fantastic to become a singer-songwriter like Dylan, or an astronaut like Wally Schirra, or a science fiction writer like Robert A. Heinlein. I couldn’t imagine what it would take to become successful like those famous men. Years later, I learned I didn’t have what it takes, but more importantly, I didn’t really want to be successful like Dylan, Schirra, and Heinlein. Reading Positively 4th Street reveals the low-level personality details I didn’t understand at thirteen.

Positively 4th Street is a wonderful, detailed history of a tiny creative scene that occurred from 1959 to 1966. David Hajdu culled the significant facts to tell this history, making it vivid and maybe even somewhat close to the truth.

While reading, I’ve listened to the folk albums mentioned in the book, and I’ve discovered that I don’t particularly like songs from the folk music revival. They are historically interesting, but they don’t press my emotional buttons like rock and roll or classic rock. It’s understandable why Dylan quickly fled the movement. The Beatles and the British Invasion buried the Folk Music revival.

Still, Positively 4th Street is an engaging history to read.

JWH

Pop Culture vs. Social Media

by James Wallace Harris, 1/1/25

I began pondering the differences between generations that grew up with pop culture versus generations that grew up with social media when playing Trivia Pursuit. I then noticed the same differences while watching Jeopardy. Pop culture is about what most people know, while social media is about knowing the details of subcultures.

I’m often surprised by how much young contestants on Jeopardy know about the 1960s and older pop culture, but old and young players are very selective in their knowledge of 21st-century trivia. For years, I thought people my age just couldn’t keep up with popular music after 1990 because of changing mental conditions. But now I wonder if it’s because popular music shattered into countless genres appealing to various subcultures. In other words, there became too many art forms to remember their trivia.

I was born in 1951 and my personality was shaped by the pop culture of the 1950s and 1960s. Pop culture was primarily television, AM radio, movies, books, newspapers, magazines, and comics. People watched the same three television networks, CBS, NBC, and ABC. They often saw the same hit films and listened to the same Top 40 songs. They usually read a single daily paper. Some people read books, usually, paperbacks bought off twirling racks which sold in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions. The most common magazines seen in people’s homes were National Geographic, Reader’s Digest, Saturday Evening Post, Life, and Time.

The by-product of that limited array of pop culture was people within a generation shared a common awareness of what each other liked. You might not watch Leave It to Beaver or Perry Mason, but you knew what those shows were about.

People growing up since the Internet, especially since the explosion of social media, didn’t have popular culture, they had social media that focused on subcultures. Social media might be all about sharing, but people’s shared interests have broken down into thousands of special interests. People on the internet crave contact with others who share their interests, but no one group, not even Swifties, makes up a popular culture.

There are songs on Spotify with billions of plays that are completely unknown to the average American. The Academy Awards now nominate ten pictures for the Best Picture category, but most Americans have seldom seen them before they were announced. Hundreds of scripted TV shows are produced yearly yet it’s quite easy for all your friends and family to have a different favorite. My wife and I struggle to find shows we’re willing to watch together.

Mass media has broken down into specialized media devoted to subcultures.

Pop culture was a product of mass media. It inspired group identity through common knowledge. I’m not sure it exists anymore.

Social media is a byproduct of individuals trying to find others sharing similar interests. It isolates people into smaller groups. It promotes individual interests that limit people’s ability to overlap with other people’s interests. It makes people specialize. You become obsessed with one subculture.

I wonder if the MAGA movement is unconsciously countering that trend. They think they want to return to the past, but what they want is to be part of a large group. Their delusion is believing that if everyone looked alike and thought alike, it would create a happier society. I’m not sure that’s the case. The 1950s were not Happy Days, and the 1960s wasn’t The Age of Aquarius.

I’m not sure that happiness comes from the size of the group you join. Some happiness does come from interacting with others and sharing a common interest. I also think people might be happier knowing less about subcultures, and more about pop culture. But that’s just a theory.

Could people withdraw some from the internet to become more physically social? I don’t think we can give up on the internet, but do we need to use it as much as we do?

I liked it when my friends watched the same TV shows or movies. I also loved that my friends knew about the same albums, and would play them together, or go to the same concerts. Pop culture was popular culture. Will we ever see that again? And is that a delusion on my part. Am I only remembering a more social time from youth that naturally disappears after we marry?

JWH