Top Gun & An Audiophiles Automobile
I grew up with a father who was constantly tinkering with his home sound system. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, that meant tons of controllers, and the rest of the family was left frustrated because turning the television on required a degree from MIT. But when it was working — it was WORKING!
Dad was obsessed with Top Gun when it came out in ‘86. And how could you blame him? It has one of the all-time greatest acoustical openings. The theme song starts on a black screen with bass and an electronic drum machine, pointed and perfectly timed. An ominous bell starts ringing, and by the time the keyboard starts, the hairs on the back of your neck were rising; you knew something amazing was about to happen — like a multi-billion dollar war machine was getting ready to kick ass.
And then a history lesson came on the screen:
On March 3, 1969 the United States Navy established
an elite school for the top one percent of it’s pilots.
Its purpose was to teach the lost art of aerial combat
and to insure that the handful of men who graduated
were the best fighter pilots in the world:
They succeeded.
Today, the Navy calls it Fighter Weapons School
The flyers call it:
TOP GUN
Man alive! It keeps getting better! An aircraft carrier deck appears as the nose of an F-14 slowly enters the frame. Any red blooded American is holding back emotions at this point — some serious red, white, and blue shit is about to go down. The volume is getting louder as the jet engines are revving up, everyone on the flight deck is in silhouette — a perfectly orchestrated display of military dominance — the likes of which few had ever seen.
Then orange flames burst forth from a $50 million aerial demon. We’d like to believe our flyboys brain is mainlining adrenaline, because ours would, but these guys are professional badasses, as calm as a sniper with his finger on a 50 caliber trigger. And BAM!!! 40,000 pounds of thrust explodes with all the might and dominance of our military industrial complex. Kenny Loggins’ “Danger Zone” starts as power in its most unapologetic form soars off into the sky. I get emotional thinking about it. This should be mandatory viewing in every American grade school. It’s so AMERICAN! It’s up there with George C. Scott looking through his binoculars in Patton yelling, “Rommel, you magnificent bastard, I read YOUR BOOK!”
I never saw this film without surround sound as a kid. Dad created a home theater so he could watch Top Gun in as close a fashion as he did in the multiplex. To this day, the first four minutes of Top Gun are an audiophile's dream.
When I was nine or ten years old, I remember sitting in Dad’s Ford and listening to jazz with him. He asked me if I heard all the instruments. I was too young to understand what he meant, but he did his best to teach me.
“Do you hear the drums?”
“Yeah.”
“How about the saxophone?”
“Yeah.”
“Can you hear the bass?”
“What’s a bass?”
“It’s what you feel through the speakers.”
“Yeah, I feel that.”
“OK, how about the piano?”
“Yeah, I hear a piano.”
“You need to listen to all the instruments, especially the ones you can barely hear.”
Dad planted a seed that day that hasn’t stopped growing.
I was never into rap music or obnoxious subwoofers, but I dropped a small fortune for a teenager on the sound system in my car. I wanted to hear every note the wind chimes made in the Doobie Brothers “Black Water,” the horns in Greg Allman’s version of “Midnight Rider,” and Dylan’s guitar picking in “Buckets of Rain.” I did the same with my first surround sound setup in college. I was dead broke and living off Mom’s jambalaya, but I had a $1,500 stereo and a flat screen television. For better or worse, as a young man, I adopted Oscar Wilde’s view on the good life, “Give me the luxuries and I can dispense with the necessities.”
Crisp sound is an obsession of mine. It’s why I love jazz. To listen to four or five instruments cleanly working off one another is literally music to my ears. Same goes with classical music. I laugh thinking about George Plimpton playing the triangle with the New York Philharmonic, but the tiny sound that instrument makes was placed where it was for a reason — to be heard. Hearing every instrument is the intention of the artist who created it.
But, admittedly, it’s not easy to accomplish. Not everyone has access to the Musikverein in Vienna. And few can afford Bang & Olufsen speakers in their homes, so we make do. Well...sort of.
I was talking to a friend who owns a Range Rover — a Long Wheel Base Autobiography model — top of the line. He knew I admired it and graciously said, “Here, take the keys.” I reminded him that I take people up on offers. None of that, “Oh I couldn’t possibly” bullshit. He tossed me the key and said, “Enjoy it.” So I did, and it happened to be Dad's birthday.
An hour later, I picked up Mom and Dad for a day in Blue Ridge, a charming old railroad town in the mountains of north Georgia. But this wasn’t going to be an ordinary drive. Oh no, not by any stretch. Being that Dad is just as much into audiophile stuff as I am, I planned a unique birthday. There wouldn’t be a cake, no cards, or anything of the sort. This present came in the form of being chauffeured around in the company of 29 speakers and 1,700 watts.
Yup, this Rover came with the big boy of audio options. An option that on paper makes no sense. But no one is trying to be pragmatic or rational when it comes to a three-dimensional Meridian sound system.
Dad sat shotgun while Mom enjoyed the comforts of a first-class seat in the back. Once settled, I turned on “Breezin’” by George Benson, and for the next hour no one spoke, with the exception of Dad occasionally saying, “I’ve never heard that instrument before.”
We listened to Brubeck, Miles, Coltrane, Mingus, and Louis Armstrong. We also enjoyed Dave Koz, Peter White, and Gato Barbieri’s “Straight into the Sunrise.” If you want to hear, dare I say, life changing sound, listen to this Argentine saxophonist wake up angles and dance with the devil. He may have made the same deal as Robert Johnson. The only song that used all 29 speakers better was Chuck Mangione’s “Feels So Good.” Of all the music I’ve listened to in my life, that song in that Range Rover on that particular day was the greatest piece of music I’ve ever heard. And I got to share it with Dad.
We spent the day eating and shopping. Dad bought me a set of Grateful Dead playing cards from OAR Finer Goods (a very cool men’s shop), and Mom picked up apple donuts from Mercier Orchards. There are two fly shops off Main Street that are next door to one another: Cohutta Fishing Company and Oyster Bamboo Fly Rods; both are world-class. I put my name on the wait list at Oyster to take a class to build my own bamboo rod; the next earliest class is in 2025.
We spent the drive home doing exactly what we did on the drive there — quietly enjoying music as a family. I drove the Rover back to my friend's house the following morning, but not before I threw on a few songs that exploit the ever-living hell out of a perfectly engineered sound system:
Pink Floyd – The Great Gig in the Sky (1973)
Giorgio Moroder – Opening Theme Song to Scarface (1983)
The Commodores – Machine Gun (1974)
James Brown – Living In America (1985)
Harold Faltermeyer & Steve Stevens – Top Gun Anthem (1986). No sound check is complete without this classic.
