Well... this is a bit strange. But actually fits in well with hi-fi, and what the hobby has become. Ole Anderson beamed up a few days ago. What, you ask, could Ole have in common with anything audio related? Good question.
Actually, with few exceptions, the mainstream hi-fi scene is what Ole represented-- that is, Kayfabe. Dependent upon suspended disbelief. An idea that has underscored almost all audio-journalism since Gordon Holt broke away from the mainstream in the '60s. It is the idea that what we want to believe is really real.
Vince exposed the business. Yet, before that the inner mechanism of pro-wrestling was always denied, or at best shrouded in a vaugeness few understood. It has been the same with audio. Before about 1977 (not an arbitrary date, but the time that Mark Davis from MIT psychoacoustic laboritories made it known to the general public in his correspondance with Peter Aczel), the mystery of audio gear was exposed. It's a distinction highlighted (using pro-wrestling terminology) between the 'marks' (fans believing it is real) and the 'smarts' (those understanding that it is all a 'work'--i.e., a show for effect).
Smarts tend to be ASR oriented. Marks follow the
Stereophile/Absolute Sound path.
However it is, and for those who might have grown up on it and today might might want to relive it, the link below highlights Ole in perhaps one of the best 'angles' ever invented in the pro-wrestling business. Featuring poker-face Gordon Solie, who sold it in a way no other could...
www.nytimes.com
