Week Thirty-Six Kinshaw-Chameleon!

What a STRANGE week I have had! I went on a closest-to-vacation I will get this year by way of small city break to Liverpool, which was fascinating on a few levels. It’s the whitest place, bluntly, I ever went and felt odd after Watford’s full multi-ethnicity. Which means the most fabulous selection of odd little grocers and delicatessens, from the Yiddisher street near me for bagels and fish balls, to the Reindeer Café at Wing Yip, to the POLSKI SKLEP signs in other windows! Let alone VB & Sons’ cash and carry emporiums to buy Basmati in really big bags. But that’s LAHNDUN and in Liverpool, they have a few really deep-rooted communities, one of which is a port-related and shipping thing, I guess, for it is Spanish.
This means better, more authentic tapas than I have had in London and best of all, the Music Festival. This meant live bands in a bandstand with a PA in the square and six upright Joanna Pianos dotted around the Liverpool 1 billion pounds shopping precinct. It also has a vibrant arts community to go with it and I shall be describing my oddest talk ever, in a separate story.
And yet that break (while it meant shopping with attitude for MeJulie as well) was not why this was not up yesterday. I was on an urgent gig for Home Cinema Choice. Editor wanted to go play but print deadlines and tides, dude. So what was supposed to have been my gig anyway sweetie! was my gig anyway! It was a mild-depression job as I am unlikely to be able to spend £100,000 on building a room before putting £20,000 worth of Quadral speakers alone in there!
It meant a drive to Sutton Coldfield to do it. But it gave me guilt attacks, for being so delicious a way to spend a day and call it ‘˜work’. I met the speakers’ designer and we talked about stuff and I learned there IS such a thing a passive crossover that can truly be marked ‘+2dB’.
Meanwhile, on a HARDCORE RETRO tip, TA-er ‘nath’ has been in touch about Kinshaw Chameleon car amplifiers. Launched at the legendary venue of Cliveden, (of Profumo scandal fame, where the staff were so posh, they looked disgusted at my scruffy attire and at first thought I was a kitchen porter using the wrong door!) Made by Hayden Laboratories, who imported Denon car audio and doomed not to fly, despite being of breath taking quality. Anyway, I have an old large format transparency, and thought they were all gone but maybe, just maybe, the 25 unsold of the 55 ever made, after they did get the design to stay thermally stable, are still out there, nath! And my mate Simon Elliot, who presented them to me in his Fiat in 1998 and still a true friend, is going to track them down!
So, even more to catch up on, so this shall have be a high output week!
Adam Rayner On Line Editor