AXPONA offers an opportunity to meet with people from every part of the music industry. Performers this year included vocalist Lori Lieberman, guitarist Toronzo Cannon, and harpist Anne-Sophie Bertrtand. Also present at the event, vocalist Anne Bisson was selling and signing records and also singing live and “unplugged” over backing tracks, in performance that stood out for their intimacy.
Also appearing at AXPONA were representatives from Delmark Records, Analogue Productions, Mobile Fidelity, Impex Records, and MA Recordings. The event provided an opportunity to rub shoulders with recording engineers and producers. True to form, I ran into the president of Impex Records, Abey Fonn, and recording engineers Jim Anderson and Ulrike Schwarz before I’d even made it up to my hotel room. Abey must have wondered who this stranger was coming up to her (as the music editor of TAS, I’ve emailed her countless times, but she’d never seen a photo of me), but once that was settled I took a picture of three people I would see several more times over the weekend.
Jim Anderson and Ulrike Schwarz gave several talks at the Luxman Suite about Patricia Barber’s Clique! over the weekend. Jim produced and recorded the album, and Ulrike acted as technical producer. In the Luxman Suite, Jim and Ulrike played music from the album, and between songs they discussed the recording sessions for the 2021 release. One interesting revelation: During the recording sessions, Patricia Barber doesn’t immerse herself in the technical part of recording, and it’s everyone else’s job to keep her in comfort zone and “in the moment.” In this and other discussions, that bridge between technology and artistic expression helped clarify why an event like AXPONA would happen in the first place.
At the record booth for Elusive Disc, Abey Fonn discussed Impex’s recent reissue of Kenny Dorham Matador, an album that was originally released on the United Artists in 1963. To put it lightly, Matador was overdue for a quality remastered vinyl pressing.
“Our mission is always to find really great titles that are underserved,” Abey explained. “Bob Donnelly, who does the research, is the man behind a lot of the title selection. He came across this title because he owned the original. It sounds terrific. We talked to Universal, and we were so lucky that we were able to get an analog master tapes. We didn’t get a safety copy, we got the master that was sent to Bernie [Grundman]. When we heard the tape, we knew there and then.”
Impex made a point to be as true to the original album cover as possible.
“We even reached out to the manufacturer who made the original jacket,” Abey said. “They no longer make this paper. But Stoughton was kind enough to help us source a paper that was really similar to the original.”
When asked how the album was selling, Abey laughed.
“If I knew it was going to do this well, I probably would have pressed more,” Abey said. “It didn’t walk out the door, it flew out the door.”
Fortunately there will be a repress.
The next day in the Luxman/Magico “Prosperity” Room Abey Fonn discussed an upcoming Impex release of previously unreleased material. You’ve heard Friday Night in San Francisco, the tremendously successful guitar trio performances by Al Di Meola, John McLaughlin, and Paco de Lucia. Released in 1981, it sold millions of records, and the album has been reissued several times, including some recent Impex vinyl pressings. Soon you’ll have the opportunity to purchase Saturday Night in San Francisco, which contains tapes Al Di Meola discovered of performances that took place at the same venue (the Warfield Theatre) on the following night (and the last night of the tour). During her talk, Abey explained why Impex will have the privilege of releasing the album.
“Sony was deciding what label could be a good candidate for it,” Abey said. “Impex did really well with Friday Night, and thanks to The Absolute Sound it got the attention of Sony Music, so they kind of were talking about Impex Records.”
“Al didn’t really know who I was until when he was on tour in Japan,” Abey explained. “During one of his tours one of his fans went up and brought the Impex 45 for an autograph. When saw what I did with the album he was very impressed.”
“That’s how he connected with Impex, and when he went back to Sony he put two and two together, and here I am almost three years later with a test pressing. It was a labor of love, and there was involvement not just with Sony and myself and our team but Al was involved, his engineer was involved, and John was involved. So there were a lot of hands.”
It was a stroke of good luck that someone showed Al Di Meola a copy of the 45rpm reissue of Friday Night in San Francisco—and it’s interesting how often musicians never hear or aren’t even aware of audiophile reissues. As Abey put it, “They just see royalty statements.
They don’t know what label is what.”
After Abey’s introduction, she played a test pressing of Saturday Night in San Francisco. That was the first time that test pressing was shared with the public, and for me (and, I suspect, many in that room) that listening session was the highlight of AXPONA.
I’ll have more to share about Saturday Night in San Francisco in a video interview with Abey Fonn.
By Jeff Wilson
This will take some explaining, but I can connect the dots between pawing through LPs at a headshop called Elysian Fields in Des Moines, Iowa, as a seventh grader, and becoming the Music Editor for The Absolute Sound. At that starting point—around 1970/71—Elysian Fields had more LPs than any other store in Des Moines. Staring at all the colorful covers was both tantalizing and frustrating. I had no idea who most of the artists were, because radio played only a fraction of what was current. To figure out what was going on, I realized that I needed to build a record collection—and as anyone who’s visited me since high school can testify, I succeeded. Record collecting was still in my blood when, starting in the late 1980s, the Cincinnati Public Library book sale suddenly had an Elysian Fields quantity of LPs from people who’d switched to CDs. That’s where I met fellow record hawk Mark Lehman, who preceded me as music editor of TAS. Mark introduced me to Jonathan Valin, whose 1993 detective novel The Music Lovers depicts the battles between record hawks at library sales. That the private eye in the book, Harry Stoner, would stumble upon a corpse or two while unraveling the mystery behind the disappearance of some rare Living Stereo platters made perfect sense to me. After all, record collecting is serious business. Mark knew my journalistic experience included concert reviews for The Cincinnati Enquirer and several long, sprawling feature articles in the online version of Crawdaddy. When he became TAS music editor in 2008, he contacted me about writing for the magazine. I came on board shortly after the latest set of obituaries had been written for vinyl—and, as fate had it, right when the LP started to make yet another unexpected comeback. Suddenly, I found myself scrambling to document all the record companies pressing vinyl. Small outfits were popping up world-wide, and many were audiophile-oriented, plus already existing record companies began embracing the format again. Trying to keep track of everything made me feel, again, like that overwhelmed seventh grader in Elysian Fields, and as Music Editor I’ve found that keeping my finger on the pulse of the music world also requires considerable detective work. I’ve never had a favorite genre, but when it comes time to sit down and do some quality listening, for me nothing beats a well-recorded small-group jazz recording on vinyl. If a stereo can give me warmth and intimacy, tonal accuracy, clear imaging, crisp-sounding cymbals, and deep, woody-sounding bass, then I’m a happy camper.
More articles from this editor
Read Next From Show
See all
AXPONA 2024: Robert Harley on Electronics
- Apr 19, 2024
We Bring you Full Coverage of the 2024 AXPONA Show
- Apr 18, 2024