Music on the Road: What Are You Listening To?

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When I got my first car - a 1977 Dodge Aspen - the first thing I did was to replace the AM radio with an FM radio and a cassette player. My dad pulled out the old and installed the new, and I helped him twist the black and red wires together to spark the connection between the radio and the power source. Often, the wires would become untwisted after being jarred and jangled apart on rocky roads, and I relished the opportunity to take out a pair of wire strippers to pull off the coating and re-twist the cables together again. I fancied myself a Fixer of Car Things.

One of my first cassettes was Guns N Roses’ debut album Appetite for Destruction. I cranked that stereo up as loud as I could and tore up the county roads of suburban northern Indiana. And later, when my son was born, my favorite lullaby to sing for him was “Patience” from the Lies album. In fact, it was a special treat to take my now-10-year-old son to see GNR at the Austin City Limits music festival this year. We agreed that the guitar and bass playing is still up to par but the singing was a little off.

LEXUS RX + MARK LEVINSON IS A KALEIDOSCOPE OF AUDIO SOUND

I have to have music when I’m driving. There’s nothing like belting out tunes while you’re on the road, and because I’m such a music fanatic, good car audio is important to me. With that in mind, Mark Levinson partnered with me at the LA Auto Show this year to talk about their upscale audio products, and the first video I created was with Michael Rippe from Lexus, who riffed with me about some of the music he likes to hear and why the RX has been such a popular model for families for more than two decades.

FEATURING HARVEY BRIGGS OF RIDES AND DRIVES

Harvey Briggs of Rides and Drives accompanied me in my second video at the LA Auto Show in a Lexus RC F. We discussed female vocalists and why it matters to teach your kids about music. We noticed the Mark Levinson brand’s Clari-Fi technology, which improves the quality of highly compressed digital audio by restoring the authenticity, ambience, warmth and clarity that is lost in the compression process.

Mark Levinson, the person for whom the brand was named, started his life as the child of two psychologists. His mom was also a cello player, which inspired him to name his second company Cello. The first products Mark developed were mixers for location sound recording, and he made only a few of them. One such mixer was used onstage at the legendary 1969 Woodstock event, making the Mark Levinson name a symbol of historical know-how.

“The most important thing for me is a system that makes me want to listen, and won’t let me stop, he said. “It’s the seduction of a great live event. It should be like meeting someone who is so fascinating that you just want to keep talking and be with that person. When the playback system sounds like the live event, you know you are doing something right.”

Stay tuned, because next up I’ll post a video of me and my mom singing karaoke. And head banging.

FUN FACTS

  • In a Lexus RX, a Mark Levinson audio system cranks out 835 watts from 15 speakers; in the sporty RC coupe, 17 speakers.

  • Standard for 2020 Lexus RX: touch-screen display, Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, and Amazon Alexa.

  • Mark Levinson is owned by Harman International Industries, a subsidiary of South Korean company Samsung Electronics.

  • The first car radio is believed by some historians to have been introduced by Chevrolet in 1922



Kristin Shaw