Tom Petty "The Waiting"

Tom Petty was part of the background music of my youth in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. Even then he was a staple of classic rock radio—though I didn’t listen to the radio if I could help it. He was not among my favorite artists. In fact I placed him in the same tier as Styx, Yes, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Bon Jovi: bands I knew a little but who didn’t really merit further consideration. I changed my opinion during my second year at college, when I drove with my friend Theo to visit our friend Simone at Wheaton College. In a late night revelation, I realized that Tom Petty was the tits.

As is to be expected with such revelations, lots of marijuana was involved. Simone’s hall was hosting a keg party the night we arrived, and Theo and I hunkered down in her room and started smoking. Word got around that “those stoner dudes in Simone’s room” had pot and people kept opening the door and begging us for joints. For some reason, our mood was exclusionary, and we refused to share with anyone, laughing as they begged. One guy pleaded that if we just gave him some pot, he would definitely get laid. We told him he’d do fine on his own.

Every time someone came in to ask for pot, the music that was seeping through the door in muted bass tones would suddenly switch to brilliantly crisp stereo. Door opens: “Baby don’t it feel like heaven right now…” Door closes: “mumble, mumble” bass throb, dull snare. Door opens: “Yeah, I might have chased a couple of women around…” Door closes: “mumble mumble.” Normally, Theo and I got stoned listening to things that weren’t being played on the radio: early Bob Marley, side 2 of Electric Ladyland, or Black and Blue-era Stones (I might have also listened to The Clash and/or R.E.M., but Theo wasn’t into that stuff.) It seemed hilarious to me that anyone would choose to listen to FM radio fare like Tom Petty.

But cutting through my purist hipster snobbery was that enhanced musical awareness that you get when extremely stoned, as if you’re truly hearing every instrument in a new way, and a radio-friendly two and a half minute song stretches out in your perception until it feels like a 25-minute long jam band epic.

Every time the door opened, I heard Tom Petty in a way I hadn’t before, and I realized that he was doing the same thing as the Replacements, and Husker Du, and The Beatles and The Fleshtones, and whoever else I was fetishising at the time. I realized that Tom Petty was valid, that Tom Petty was awesome, that Tom Petty was not some shitty early ‘80s radio rock to be discarded once I’d discovered punk. Door opens: “The way-ay-ting is the haaaaaaardest par-art!” And then those chords hit and it was like a flower of light unfolding in front of me. “Holy shit,” I said to Theo, “this song is AWE-some. Tom Petty is amazing!” He looked at me strangely, as if I’d stated the obvious. “Oh, yeah,” he says, taking another pull on his joint, “I’ve always loved Tom Petty.”

Life's Unattainables

When we saw this picture (reblogged from ffffound), our immediate thought was “We want some of that, yes please.” But there was no brand name or model number included in the post, so we were dubious. Was it just another of those “design concepts” that people are always posting, super-desirable products that tantalize us but are not actually available for purchase?

A little research reveals that the answer is both no and yes. What you see above is the Legno turntable, produced by the Italian company Montegiro. You can actually buy it. For $13,240. In other words, you can’t actually buy it.

We have heard of aficionados who spend $30,000 on just the right kind of speaker wire, so who knows? Maybe $13,240 is a bargain price in the rarified world of high-end audio. But until Walter White breaks into our house and leaves a huge pile of cash on our ottoman, we’ll have to add the Legno to the long list of life’s unattainables—right up there with Beyonce’s phone number and the power of flight.