Neil Young: Searching for a Sound of Gold Neil Young isnt exactly the promotional type. Fans who shout out song requests at his concerts risk a tongue-lashing. He shuns advertising and endorsement deals. And he isnt interested in what you thought of his latest record. I make albums for myself. If its not good, forget it. Dont buy it, he said in an interview this week at the South by Southwest conference. Yet here he is, tirelessly barnstorming for his high-fidelity digital music system called PonoMusic. This is a technological thing. Our whole team is relying on me presenting it, says the 68-year-old rock star. Hes pitching Pono as an alternative to the industry-standard MP3, compressed audio files that he says have degraded the listening experience. He has spent more than three years getting his company off the ground. PonoMusic is offering both a portable music player and an online store, which will sell downloads whose resolution exceeds that of compact discs or the digital tracks available from dominant services such as iTunes. Pono, named for a Hawaiian word that means righteous, is working with record labels to build an inventory that the company claims will rival the sound of master recordings. The player will play other digital files, but you need to buy new high-res tracks, and it wont accommodate streaming music services like Spotify. Its a stupidly simple concept, Mr. Young said. The fewest amount of pieces, absolute best quality, doing one thing extremely well. The Pono player is a triangular prism. Its shape has been compared to a Toblerone chocolate bar. (The shape allows for more high-tech componentry, the company says.) At this point, only about seven prototypes of the player exist. The company has promised to start delivering units by October, and is preselling them as part of a crowdfunding effort on Kickstarter. The selections include $400 signature models for acts such as Tom Petty and Dave Matthews, who are Pono investors. Launched at SXSW, the Kickstarter campaign hit its initial target of $800,000 in less than a day. By Thursday it had about $3 million from 8,000 backers. SXSW, as the 27-year-old showcase for interactive media, film and music is known, is a platform for musicians to promote not only themselves, but also their various corporate partners. This year, Lady Gaga was set to perform for a small crowd behind a barbecue restaurant on behalf of Doritos. Snoop Dogg received guests at a pop-up dwelling created by Airbnb. Apple is making its official SXSW debut with an iTunes Festival that features big bands like Coldplay and Soundgarden. As music stars and other celebrities try to diversify their careers in entertainment, theyre increasingly looking to technology. Earlier at SXSW, Shaquille ONeal touted his investments in various startups and rapper 50 Cent live-streamed a concert to promote a video app he has a stake in. At the St. Cecilia Hotel, in a sunny courtyard hemmed in by bamboo trees, Ponos chief executive, John Hamm, demonstrated the player. Its surprisingly warm and musical, dont you think? he said. He cued up Spinning Wheel, the 1969 hit by Blood, Sweat and Tears. As the funky song poured through the headphones, he said, Do you hear the cowbell? Its right inside your head! Ponos challenge will be to win over music lovers who are ambivalent about sound quality, especially now that more people are abandoning downloads altogether for the convenience of streaming music. Audiophiles have already found ways of coaxing a richer sound out of digital music. Pono is targeting everyday music lovers, betting that theyll prefer it to MP3s. I dont want to be quoted as saying this is hi-res for the rest of us, but conceptually, this is high-res for the rest of us, said Mr. Hamm, who was schooled as an audio engineer but spent most of his career in Silicon Valley. Neil feels the pain of the artist making something and it not getting delivered to you. How did they drop half of the food on the way to the table? Mr. Hamm, who helped set up Ponos agreements with manufacturers and record labels, wore a blue blazer over a striped dress shirt, and joked about his odd-couple relationship with the companys founder. Neil went through a couple other guys before he found me, he said. Sitting on a couch with his hands clasped in front of him, Mr. Young was relaxed and voluble. His bushy sideburns and long hair poked out from under a black fedora. He talked about mustering support for Pono by traveling around the country and getting musicians like Bruce Springsteen and James Taylor into one of his Pono-fitted Cadillacs and playing them songs by Aretha Franklin and Dave Brubeck. Testimonials from such stars form the bulk of a video that teed-up the Kickstarter campaign. The Kickstarter funds will be used to make Pono players and to keep the company running, he said. Now I can pay everybody whos been working for me for months for next to nothing. The songwriter has always had a zest for engineering. In the 1990s, he took an ownership stake in the struggling model-train company Lionel, and helped develop high-tech gadgetry for the trains. A mention of the 1959 Lincoln he retrofitted with hybrid power led to an impassioned tangent on innovation in the auto industry. That led to the subject of Tesla, which he said had agreed to offer Pono as a future option in its high-end electric cars. Tesla wouldnt comment. Though known for the earsplitting volume of his concerts with rock band Crazy Horse, Mr. Young said his own hearing is pretty good: But its not perfect. Ive been the captain of a destroyer for 50 years, and weve got a lot of kills. Also at the hotel, cheerfully monitoring the upward march of the Kickstarter numbers, was Mr. Youngs longtime manager and consigliere Elliot Roberts, who wore a wool-lined leather bomber jacket and cupped a cigarette in his hand. Laughing with Mr. Roberts before another round of interviews, Mr. Young compared himself to an MP3 file. Maybe we should just superimpose myself over myself saying all this sh-- and compress it down to a minute. By JOHN JURGENSEN Wall Street Journal
Posted on: Sun, 16 Mar 2014 11:00:42 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015