When Srajan Ebaen was a little boy he loved to help in his uncle’s in French restaurant. They lived in a small German village, filled with many pragmatic eateries that served large meals with sausages and potato.  The uncle opened his “La Pergola” as he felt that the  tired assembly workers form the neighboring BMW manufacturing facility are in desperate needs for some embellishment of their boring Bavarian life. The uncle’s ploy was success and the restaurant was booming.

During the first year the uncle spent a lot of efforts cooking, searching for better vendors and training the employees to serve the food with the distinctive French’s “Oo lala!” During these years the little Srajan desperately wanted a new bicycle and he started to help his uncle. Initially he was washing dishes but then uncle allowed the little Srajan to serve food to customers. That was a very prodigious moment in the life of the little Srajan as he had discovered his life-long calling.

“The food is not what is cooked and eaten but what is served…” – his uncle taught little Srajan – “…do not worry what we cook, juts smile when you bring the food out, be polite, say ‘bon appetite’ and do not forget to lick own lips when you are putting the plates on the tables.” Srajan did just that. Soon little Srajan was riding a new bicycle, making all kids in his village to envy him.

The restaurant business was flourishing and the uncle spent less and less time on kitchen. Soon, the uncle stopped cooking and employed a family of Slovakian refugees. They did not cook well but at that time Srajan was in his teens and his good delivering and presentation skills were very much refined. He was running across the tables, jingliering with 11 dishes in one hand, lighting the customers’ cigars with other hand and dropping compliments to women. His hospitable charm and his ability to sexy position the Slovakian’s bad food within those pretty French ornamented dishes was top notch and those tiered hungry BMW workers, hypnotized with the Srajan’s presentational ballets, did not feel that the food was not tasty anymore.

Then the difficult times came. The European economy was down; the uncle got sick and needed a lot of money for his medications. The Slovakian refugees were long gone and now in the “La Pergola’s” kitchen the East Germany convicts-escapee were broiling the dead rats and marinated peppers in pig’s fertilizers. That required a new round of Srajan efforts. Srajan was not little boy anymore but a mature and creative maître d'. He kept inventing the new and new means to hide the misery of the “La Pergola” food. The special light effects, the incredible coupons promotions, the fish in the soup whistling the “Ode to Joy”, the walking across the restaurant on his hands holding the dishes in his legs… and many-many other techniques Srajan used in order to keep the customer attention on his servicing skills and do not let them to acknowledge the actual taste of the food they swallowed…

As anything else it came to it’s end. Another day the 4.000 cockroaches that lived in “La Pergola” declared a war to the cockroaches in a Polish restaurant, attacked them, defeated them and took home 400.000 prisoners. The cockroaches were not able to be confined on kitchen anymore and they flooded to the dining aria, and since the cockroaches did not eat the “La Pergola” food they were forced to eat lipsticks from the customer’s purses.

The Srajans waiter’s acrobatics was not able to save the situation anymore - the angry villagers caught the “La Pergola” workers and beat them long and violently, whipping them with BMW’s timing belts.  Srajan was forced to run away from the Village and then out of Germany, as each passing BMW reminded him the heavy scars he has on his body. He ran to United States where he was trying to making living working is the small circuses. It was not very successful as clowns vacancies were filled and for other jobs Srajan have no qualifications. Srajan decided to run, secluding himself on a island - Mr. Ebaen moved to Cyprus and nowadays he is practicing audio-sales.

Romy the Cat wrote:

When Srajan Ebaen was a little boy he loved to help in his uncle’s in French restaurant. They lived in a small German village, filled with many pragmatic eateries that served large meals with sausages and potato.  The uncle opened his “La Pergola” as he felt that the  tired assembly workers form the neighboring BMW manufacturing facility are in desperate needs for some embellishment of their boring Bavarian life. The uncle’s ploy was success and the restaurant was booming. During the first year the uncle spent a lot of efforts cooking, searching for better vendors and training the employees to serve the food with the distinctive French’s “Oo lala!” During these years the little Srajan desperately wanted a new bicycle and he started to help his uncle. Initially he was washing dishes but then uncle allowed the little Srajan to serve food to customers. That was a very prodigious moment in the life of the little Srajan as he had discovered his life-long calling. “The food is not what is cooked and eaten but what is served…” – his uncle taught little Srajan – “…do not worry what we cook, juts smile when you bring the food out, be polite, say ‘bon appetite’ and do not forget to lick own lips when you are putting the plates on the tables.” Srajan did just that. Soon little Srajan was riding a new bicycle, making all kids in his village to envy him. The restaurant business was flourishing and the uncle spent less and less time on kitchen. Soon, the uncle stopped cooking and employed a family of Slovakian refugees. They did not cook well but at that time Srajan was in his teens and his good delivering and presentation skills were very much refined. He was running across the tables, jingliering with 11 dishes in one hand, lighting the customers’ cigars with other hand and dropping compliments to women. His hospitable charm and his ability to sexy position the Slovakian’s bad food within those pretty French ornamented dishes was top notch and those tiered hungry BMW workers, hypnotized with the Srajan’s presentational ballets, did not feel that the food was not tasty anymore. Then the difficult times came. The European economy was down; the uncle got sick and needed a lot of money for his medications. The Slovakian refugees were long gone and now in the “La Pergola’s” kitchen the East Germany convicts-escapee were broiling the dead rats and marinated peppers in pig’s fertilizers. That required a new round of Srajan efforts. Srajan was not little boy anymore but a mature and creative maître d'. He kept inventing the new and new means to hide the misery of the “La Pergola” food. The special light effects, the incredible coupons promotions, the fish in the soup whistling the “Ode to Joy”, the walking across the restaurant on his hands holding the dishes in his legs… and many-many other techniques Srajan used in order to keep the customer attention on his servicing skills and do not let them to acknowledge the actual taste of the food they swallowed… As anything else it came to it’s end. Another day the 4.000 cockroaches that lived in “La Pergola” declared a war to the cockroaches in a Polish restaurant, attacked them, defeated them and took home 400.000 prisoners. The cockroaches were not able to be confined on kitchen anymore and they flooded to the dining aria, and since the cockroaches did not eat the “La Pergola” food they were forced to eat lipsticks from the customer’s purses. The Srajans waiter’s acrobatics was not able to save the situation anymore - the angry villagers caught the “La Pergola” workers and beat them long and violently, whipping them with BMW’s timing belts.  Srajan was forced to run away from the Village and then out of Germany, as each passing BMW reminded him the heavy scars he has on his body. He ran to United States where he was trying to making living working is the small circuses. It was not very successful as clowns vacancies were filled and for other jobs Srajan have no qualifications. Srajan decided to run, secluding himself on a island - Mr. Ebaen moved to Cyprus and nowadays he is practicing audio-sales. The 6moons' staff biographer, Romy the Cat

Anyhow, Srajan Ebaen made his business to jump across small manufacturers who can’t afford full-scale-marketing, extracting monitory and other benefits from them, providing them with some “exposure” services. That is cool I see no problem in this. Srajan’s 6moon acts as “CNN of audio” providing superficial, shallow, semi-sensational and in very many ways stupid coverage of bits and pieces about the happenings. Well, we all know our CNN and I do not think we ask too much from it, thank God they are not Fox News…

There is however a moment in Srajan Ebaen endeavors that I found remarkably smart and in my view Srajan was the very first who did it among all hi-fi-jouwhorernalists. Most or not all audio-writing people are trying to more or less degree to make an appearance that their wringing not about trumpeting of new audio boxes but about their interest in Sound. They have established the specific ways how an average audio moron shall be approached and what kind buttons inside a fuck-up mind of audio person need to be pushed in order to ignite into the person a Pavlovian Reflex a of buying. The cretinism is called “audio-reviewing” and this is all what audio-media is all about. How Srajan come to the picture in this ceremony? Well, Srajan did something incredibly smart in my view.

A few years back (I do not read 6moons “reviews” regularly but among what I glanced I would estimate that it took place 2-3 years back) Srajan looks like realized that his reviews are as idiotic and as empty as any other audio reviews and he decided to change the format. If previously he tried to assess (as ignorant and primitive as he could) Sound of objects under reviewing then later on he decided completely abandon this practice. Those 2-3 years back, the 6moons swatch mode from something that I call “soft rape” to the right in your face “blatant violence”. Ironically, after Srajan stopped make pretenses that he care about sound or about the performing attributes of audio playback and converted his “reviews” from  masqueraded and prepaid sales pitches to juts extended news announcement I think the whole format of 6moon’s efforts become… better. Reading the 6moons articles is like gliding CNN – you know that a building fold down somewhere but to know a reason and the framework of the new you need to flip the chenal or better to shut down TV.

I think what Srajan did – the voluntary disassociation the content of his site from serious thinking and from thoughtful audio journalism was a genius move. It might sound like my criticism but in fact I do find that it was a very good direction for 6moon to go. With brain-deprived marketing efforts and with readers, manufacture and trades people looking for a very superficial promotional coverage the 6moons is a perfect dynamic model to serve the demands. With all my dissatisfaction about 6moon capacity and content I have to admit that the new “easy come and easy go” 6moon’s mode is what a doctor prescribed for today audio marketing to serve the demands of the idiocracy-level of intellectuals that invested high-end audio. I think Srajan was the first who recognized and adopted it, good for him. It is bad for Sound but Sound is not longer a pretend commodity of industry attention.

Romy the Cat wrote:

I think Srajan was the first who recognized and adopted it, good for him. It is bad for Sound but Sound is not longer a pretend commodity of industry attention. The Cat

Well, I think you missed what I aimed. It is not the question how much Srajan own or Srajan’s writer’s mind was spend to cook up the 6moon articles. You would hardly see any analyses, research or any attempts of demanded assessments at 6moon, or any general audio thinking coming from that site.  I do not think that Srajan ever was able to furnish it to from beginning but his accomplishment was that in contrary to many others Srajan in the end completely abolished any pretends to do it. The Srajan capacity of audio journalism is juts extended headlines gateways and I think there is nothing wrong with it.

Ironically what Srajan end up to be is exactly what I vocally proposed in 2001. During that time I advocated to kill all motherfuking reviewers and eliminate the entire reviewing practice. Instead I proposed to let manufactures to talk about own products and ideas by means of specialized marketing portals where journalist would do juts images editing, microphone holding and semantic correction. Slowly Srajan turns itself into such a portal, I think it is a good thing. The more different manufactures have way to talk to people via recourses like Srajan’s the better it will be. Srajan juts need to learn how to eliminate own presents from editorial duty and it will be more beneficial for… Audio.