the internet dredges up a techno-ghost from tony’s hazy memory

Right now, KEXP is playing “Doriella DuFontaine.”

For you Hendrix fans out there…you’ve probably never heard this one. Lightning Rod, a member of the Last Poets, rapping about (among other things) a fine woman he steals from another guy, with funky bass and guitar by Jimi and drums by Buddy Miles. Definitely somewhere in the ancestral stream of hip-hop.

Last time I heard this I was probably 18 and at college; Bill Charlton, one of the guys on my floor, was a Hendrix fanatic with access to lots of bootlegs and we spent many, ahem, pharmaceutically enhanced hours in his room with his “quad system” (let’s see who bites for that one).

Damn, I still wish I had that stereo…we were on the 17th floor, and regularly got complaints from the 5th floor on weekends. (I shit you not. We were notorious.)

Excuse me, o digital ones…even if only three people get this, I must lay out the specs, which I can still recall, because I lusted for that system:

A German RekoKut turntable, liberated from a radio station
Marantz Quad Amplifier
Scott Preamp
Scott Tuner
Teac reel-to reel
Nakamichi cassette deck which, pre-auto reverse, used to flip the tape for you
Two giant custom built speakers; don’t recall the exact components — Bill made them himself
Two — oh, God, what were they called? I know — Allisons! These were a pair of speakers each about 4 ft tall which looked like the Transamerica Pyramid building in San Francisco. Super high end at the time, with a directional speaker system that was similar to what Bose does.

Note: no mention of the yet to be commercially available CD player. I think CDs existed in 1978, but no one had figured a way to make them economically viable.

I wonder what happened to that? Bill got older, probably sold his baby to fund some other toy. Maybe he regrets it now. I know I do.