About Us

The convenience of portable listening devices means that a lot of people are taking their favorite tunes with them, but they're missing out on A LOT. Those little earplugs you use to listen to your iPod or the mini-sized speaker in your cellphone cannot possibly come even remotely close to reproducing the full frequency range of the audio spectrum and the high fidelity that a pair of good speakers can provide. (Plus be forewarned: studies show those earphones can also damage your hearing permanently).

Even if you burn your own CD from digital downloads, and listen to it on a home stereo, you are NOT getting the same tonality that a commercially manufactured CD can deliver, because your source material is so fractionalized. (You know the old saying, "garbage in, garbage out.")

FYI — in case you're interested, at our small office, we listen to music on a restored, vintage Marantz tuner, connected to a pair of Bose 901 Direct/Reflecting speakers that bring the warmth, power and excitement of a concert hall or movie theater to the room. Only live sounds better. (We urge you to buy some good speakers — even used — which you can often find on eBay for very little money, along with a tuner like a Marantz and a CD player such as any of the Pioneer models. For a small price you will be rewarded with spectacular sound. And you will learn to hate those little iPod earphones! They are a bad joke that consumers have come to accept.)

6. When You Buy Digital You're Losing Another Important Feature

When you only buy digital downloads, you are also losing another very important component of the music experience: the liner notes which often contain interesting photos of the performers and information that gives you fascinating insight into your favorite artists. To say nothing of the credits which are routinely listed in a CD package, telling you who the musicians are who played on each track.

 

7. We Separate the Wheat From the Chaff

It used to be that radio stations and record stores would weed out the good stuff from the bad, and artists thrived or faltered based almost solely on musical merit. But nowadays, with a few big corporations like Clear Channel in the U.S. gobbling up local, independent stations, all we get now are generic, universal playlists. Tons of garbage is being shoved down the throats of consumers that would never even reach the marketplace in years past.

Record companies have been taken over by accountants and lawyers, who sign so-called "artists" to recording contracts despite their lack of any discernible musical talent whatsoever. Big-money promotion is a substitute for musicianship. The advent of "auto-tune" means vocalists can even sing off-key and be brought on pitch artificially through computer software. Cutbacks in school music programs have meant that young people are no longer routinely exposed to a variety of music, or encouraged to learn to play an instrument. Thus there are musically illiterate people making noise instead of music today.

The lack of serious musicianship is readily apparent. As Chicago-based singer/songwriter Ramin Streets observes, "the loss of melody has been a major contributor to the decline in music's standing in [modern] culture. Traditionally, songs have been comprised of four ingredients, namely: melody, rhythm, harmony and lyric. Over the last 300-400 years, the strongest and most memorable music ever written more or less received equal weight in these four areas. Classical music saw heavier weight applied to melody and harmony. Then jazz, blues and later rock each applied rhythm to a greater extent (i.e. the rhythm section using drums, bass and guitar). This gave energy to the songs and to their performances both on the turntable and on the stage. However over the last 30+ years so much emphasis has been applied to beats vs. melody that the rhythm seems to be all we know. Problem is you can't hum or sing a beat. You need melody for that. And, unfortunately, many of our modern producers only know how to address this need by lifting melodies from other people's songs. This can't last. With the proper permissions it's legal but is effectively cheating... The fact that we need video games to get our fix vs. seeing the real hero perform the real licks at a real show only further points to the fact that a deep seated need amongst music lovers is just not being served properly anymore."

 

8. What We Offer Here Is Not Just Good Music...It's REAL!

Today's modern recording techniques in which albums are assembled from separately-recorded components with the musicians doing their parts at different times, sometimes continents apart, has resulted in a loss of synergism amongst performers that only a live recording session can create. Much of today's music sounds very sterile, antiseptic, and artificial. You will realize this — if you don't already — when you listen to some of the albums we sell here that were recorded in the day when the singer and musicians all assembled in the studio at the same time. It was "live," it was "real." If someone made a mistake, they had to stop and start all over again. To cut a good master required enormous skill and perfectionism on the part of all the participants at a recording session. If you listen closely on some of the "old" tracks, you will hear the occasional imperfection — such as Rosemary Clooney's bracelet making a slight noise as she steps up to the microphone to sing. But oh what a voice! These recordings breathe, they pulsate with life! You will thrill to how exquisite they sound!

9. Browse Our Site And Sample Artists You Think You Won't Like

We strongly encourage you to take some time to browse our website and click on album covers by artists you don't even think you'd be interested in, in genres that don't ordinarily attract you. Then listen to the audio samples we've posted. Give yourself the opportunity to experience something different for a change. If you're a young person, listen to the new CD by Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney and hear how great they really were! Or, if you're a Baby Boomer or older, try listening to Matthew West or Adele.

10. Who ARE We, Anyway?

We are located in a colder climate, and with our long winters, we have to find something to do while we're couped up indoors, lest we get cabin fever! Listening to music by the fireside is one of our great passions. So a few mutual friends got together and decided to create our own GOOD MUSIC website in what we think of as a noble effort to share with others the (often obscure) CDs we have discovered.

Our little group consists of a retired music teacher, a retired doctor, a college student (who is a music major), a man who once played in a professional symphony orchestra but who now holds a managerial position in the financial services industry, a housewife and mother of three pre-teen children, two trial attorneys (solicitors) with a combined 40 years of legal experience, a commercial airline pilot, and a former recording studio engineer who now paints for a living. With our diverse backgrounds we each contribute something to the selection of music that's offered for sale here. But don't stereotype us because you might be surprised who brings what to the table! Some of us are literally hands-on in processing your orders, so we are personally involved.

Quite honestly, profit is not our #1 objective. Promoting good music is.

We hope you come back and visit our site on a regular basis because we will be adding more great CDs and new vinyl LPs in the future. Often what we have here will be fresh new releases that we will get before anybody else, believe it or not. That's because we're plugged into some small labels here and there and often know about CDs before they're even released... Happy listening!