Music to ears

Just as beauty lay in the eyes of the beholder, music lay in the ears of the listener. For most of us, not serious audiophiles but casual music lovers, music is about switching on the player or the radio and listening to it. But for the Japanese, many of them serious audiophiles, music is life. And they spend thousands of dollars to get the best speakers, the best amps, the best everything.

The new trend there amongst the more serious audiophiles is having your own source of electricity – utility pole. This long beam of pipe, erected in their backyard, costing anywhere between $10,000 to 40,000 brings in “pure” music. These music fanatics say that when they listen to music using the public utility services or electricity, other gadgets used by neighbours corrupts the quality of sound; thus the need to have a separate pole which brings in uncorrupted electricity to give pure music.

This is really taking fanaticism to a new level. In India, we cannot ever imagine such a utility pole coming up – the rich and famous will use up all the electricity and we mere mortals will be left with only darkness, with tragedy music playing in the background!