CAF 2013: Saying Goodbye

First up, let me give a great big thanks to Paul Elliott, the CAF "staff photographer", for letting me edit, mangle, colorize, and pixelate his batch of truly wonderful images from the show. He did fantastic work during the three days at the Capital Audiofest, and his willingness to add his work to the shots I took was an unexpected and over-the-top gesture and one I am truly grateful for. The combination gave me a pool of over a thousand photos to play with! Second, I want to thank Gary Gill. This is the audio show organizer who almost wasn't, a jazz musician, a DIY aficionado, and pretty much an outsider to the audio biz in every meaningful way prior to doing these shows. I think now, with four under his belt, he's not only got respect but an upward trajectory -- this was a great show and everyone knew felt it.

There were a couple of rooms I’d have loved to spend more time in, it’s true. First, I completely missed both after-hours presentations of the master tapes that Greg Beron has gathered up from his unmentionable sources. The first was my fault — though I blame BorderPatrol’s Gary Dews for a few too many pints, completely preventing me from staying up any later than I did. The second time, I was “encumbered” by my little munchkins who were “visiting daddy at his audio show”, so any seriously late night adventures were just out. Especially since Matt Weisfeld, my regular babysitter, was simply not answering his phone the entire weekend. [Sigh]. It’s so hard to find good help these days.

I would have loved to make the sessions with Alan Silverman of ARF Mastering, or the talk by Mark Waldrep of AIX Records, but that would have taken away from hitting the floor. I did manage to catch Gary Gill, however, tooting his big ass ‘bone. Dude can play!

Roscoe, the king of the DIY room, can really put on a show. As he’s said to me a couple of times now, “Dude, everyone in this joint was a DIY guy at some point.” Totally true — and here’s to hoping he’s gonna be one of ’em!

GAS Audio, the place where old components go to be born again, is now in my rolodex. Shit ever breaks, it’s going to Mike Bettinger and that’s that.

Silnote, Miracle Audio, Monitor and Janszen: wish I’d had more time.

Last but not least, thanks to Dave Slagle and Mike Baird for some hallway jams with that sweet LP-playing boom box. That thing is hilarious.