Gear Patrol | Spirit of Adventure, Passion for Gear

Show Tunes

Box of Vision is a company that still remembers the days when showing off your music collection didn’t involve a scroll wheel and being a true fan meant owning every album, instead of the five best singles. Subsequently, their archive products are designed to act as a showcase for displaying the complete works of legends [...]

Soul man and Rock 'n' Roll fan

Ahmet Ertegun isn’t a household name — let alone easy to say, but if you’re a music fan, you’ve probably benefitted from his life’s legacy. Despite being the son of the first Republic of Turkey ambassador to the US, Ahmet channeled his love of Blues and Jazz to found Atlantic records. Not up on your [...]

Can Touch This

Old school DJs were just as much showmen as they were beat droppers. Then computers made the whole craft much more nerdy. As it turns out, clicking on trackpads just isn’t as engaging as tearing up vinyl. Replace the laptops of today with an enormous, transparent touch panel display, and the pendulum could swing back [...]

The ultimate 80's action movie mix tape you've been missing

The Blood Bros. are, for lack of a better description, an awesome DJ duo with an awesome goal: creating mix tapes compiled from the best 80′s action movie songs. A quick listen to the first few minutes of each track (after the jump) on their two mixes will have you running in gym sweats or [...]

If His Albums Were the Blueprint, Consider this the Drafting Table

Hip-hop may not be for everyone, but that hasn’t stopped Jay-Z from becoming a household name. Though his rise to fame stems through rapping, Mr. “I’m not a business-man. I’m a business…man” has earned praise from plenty of those outside the game, including Warren Buffet. So when a mind like that puts its attention towards [...]

Because Jack Sparrow Isn't Always a Reliable Source

Few people on the planet have ever epitomized rock and roll like Keith Richards. That’s one of the reasons why his long-awaited memoir Life ($16) is a must read. Filled with Keith’s surprisingly crystal clear recollections about the genesis of classics like “Ruby Tuesday” and “Gimme Shelter”, consider it a rare look into the special [...]

Home Audio, Beyond Black and White

The Yamaha MCR 140 ($399) has two major things going for it. The first is that outside of performing the functions of your typical micro-audio system, thanks to Yamaha’s proprietary yAired technology, it can play uncompressed audio wirelessly from your iPod/iPhone using a simple dongle that eliminates the syncing hassles associated with other tech like [...]

Released yesterday, One Life Stand is the third full length album to be released by this English electro pop group since their formation in 2000. Described by many reviewers as a clear sign of maturation by the band, this 10 track album is certainly much less of an oddball mash up of crazy beats and [...]

After taking it back to the classics with last week’s mix, it’s time to return hard with artists pushing limits and setting high bars in their respective scenes. Some have been doing it for years, while others are relatively new on the radar, but regardless of tenure each of the tracks below is sure to [...]

This week’s grab bag of songs are about as random as they come. In this installment, hear The Strokes lead singer Julian Casablancas’s new first single in his self titled solo act, a classic soul tune, one of the best storytelling raps ever written, and an overlooked 90′s gem of a rock song, all in [...]

Musically it’s hard to point to a consistent sound from this batch of five tracks, so we’ll dismiss any claims of themes for this segment. Bouncing from Indie Rock, to Electro Pop, to Rap and back again, this collection is random, but designed to serve as a great starting point for all of you music [...]

Money Spent on the Tubes, Not Down It

Radios today comes in many forms: FM, AM, Satellite, Internet… and all of them digital. There was a time, though (like your grandparents’ time), when radios ran on tubes and literally took time to warm up when the turned on. You might remember them as the wicker cabinet behemoths with knobs – hardly worthy of [...]

It’s already been five years since the 10x platinum ‘Songs About Jane’. Maroon 5 has released their much-anticipated sophomore album today with a sexier and stronger edge. The band has pulled from Prince, Michael Jackson and Taking Heads as inspiration – the result? George Clinton funk meets George Michael pop. Definitely worth a listen. What [...]

[Review from Wired.com] The Tivoli Audio Music System is exactly what an all-in-one system should be: a cinch to operate. Its uncluttered interface and elegantly integrated functions are so intuitive that you can ignore the user’s manual. (We had it up and running in two minutes.) The system comprises an AM/FM radio, a CD player, [...]