Music

The Song from My Soundtrack series continues with Sandy Gross, co-founder of three hugely successful speaker brands: Polk Audio, Definitive Technology, and Golden Ear Technology.

It was the summer of 1967. At least I believe it was 1967, as that was a time long ago and far away. In those days, I was in high school in Brooklyn, and a professional slot car racer.

This is the first of what will be a reoccurring feature here on the Tech^2 blog. The idea is simple: pick a song that has had a significant impact on your life in some way, and describe why. I’m starting with me to get the ball rolling, but over the coming weeks and months I’ve got the staff of S+V lined up, plus various luminaries and heavyweights in the A/V and music industries, all with interesting stories and songs from their own lives.

Now before you say something like "Wow, Geoff, you're a genius. This is a brilliant idea!" Let me say yes, of course, but allow me to give credit where credit is due. The brilliant geniuses at RockPaperShotgun sort of came up with it first with their Gaming Made Me series. I highly recommend you check them out, not least because they have some of the best writing on the web.

So to start, here’s me on “Baba O’Riley.”

The 2013 Grammy Awards have safely come and gone (is anyone else amazed that no one was electrocuted during the onstage rain shower?) and all anyone is talking about after the show is how Auto-Tune is destroying the music biz.  Put performers on a live stage without technologic backup, and many of them will fall apart, in ear-shattering glory. Fun. had some issues with pitch that were hard to ignore, and Frank Ocean’s performance was a little shaky without the benefit of pitch-correcting software. People are up in arms that without Auto-Tune, many current artists would be crooning on a cruise ship in the Baltic Sea. But have things really changed?

With CES a few days away, and my yearly pilgrimage to that great abomination in the desert (Las Vegas) imminent, I figured it was a good time to compile some excellent driving songs.

The key to a good driving song is not that the song has something to DO with driving, that's lazy and often highly inaccurate. Similar to my article on Pop Music in the Movies, the key is the feel. The key is a fast, *ahem* driving beat.