Records To Die For

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Records To Die For
2009 Records To Die For
Stereophile Staff  |  Feb 08, 2010  |  First Published: Feb 08, 2009  |  0 comments
A crime of passion? Depraved indifference to the importance of tuneage? Death by music? The simple fact is that most audiophiles got that way by having too many records. That's right—very few got into this rewarding, non-contact sport because they were aroused by shiny brushed-steel boxes or supersexy speaker grilles. It's because they wanted to hear their piles of music—their Mahler, Monk, or Rick James—sound the best it could. (And, okay, yes: It is cool to show drooling friends your designer gear.)
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Records To Die For
2008 Records To Die For
Stereophile Staff  |  Feb 02, 2009  |  First Published: Feb 02, 2008  |  0 comments
The value of music as a commodity, and as one of mankind's wonders, has never been in such flux. Retail record shops are dying, the former major labels are focused on making records for kids (the same kids they're suing), and the business overall remains wedded to an incredibly short view (get a hit or get out), but the music itself continues to trickle through to those who want it—and, yes, on some level would die without it.
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Records To Die For
2007 Records To Die For
Stereophile Staff  |  Feb 09, 2008  |  First Published: Feb 09, 2007  |  0 comments
This year marks the tenth time I've written an introduction to Stereophile's venerable annual feature "Records To Die For." Looking back, I'm proud that readers always find it useful and entertaining. I'm also amazed, on some levels, that our writers—hardware or software, deadline-phobic or not—manage to find something worthwhile to say, year in and year out, about music—which, after all, is why we became audiophiles in the first place.
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Records To Die For
2006 Records To Die For
Stereophile Staff  |  Jan 21, 2007  |  First Published: Feb 21, 2006  |  0 comments
I sat down to write the introduction to the 2006 edition of Stereophile's annual "Records To Die For" extravaganza, and what popped into my head? Why, death, of course. After that, dead rock stars. What a concept. I mean, talk about dying for music.
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Records To Die For
2005 Records To Die For
Stereophile Staff  |  Jan 29, 2006  |  First Published: Feb 01, 2005  |  0 comments
Last year, during a particularly painful moving experience, I had the opportunity to reflect in a very personal way on the virtues of our annual "Records To Die For" feature.
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Records To Die For
2004 Records To Die For
Stereophile Staff  |  Jan 16, 2005  |  First Published: Feb 16, 2004  |  0 comments
It used to be that, when I sat down to write the introduction to Stereophile's ever-popular annual "Records To Die For" feature, it quickly became an exercise in racking my meager brain for jokes about "dying for" records. But being funny, in print or otherwise, is tremendously difficult. I'm sure Groucho had a much more apropos, not to mention funny, quip about the trials of being humorous—but, as with the aforementioned jokes, I can't seem to think of it right now.
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Records To Die For
2003 Records To Die For
Stereophile Staff  |  Jan 18, 2004  |  First Published: Feb 01, 2003  |  0 comments
Once upon a time, when I was a mere sprout in journalism school, there came the moment when everyone had to decide which sort of writing and/or editing he or she wanted to pursue in the workplace of the real world—a harsh reality that was then fast approaching. Most of my fellow students, who ranged in age from 23 to 62, chose one of two paths: murder or scandal.
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Records To Die For
2002 Records To Die For
Stereophile Staff  |  Feb 19, 2002  |  0 comments
Introduction
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Records To Die For
2001 Records to Die For
Stereophile Staff  |  Feb 20, 2001  |  0 comments
Many years ago, I awoke one Saturday morning to find my girlfriend, with whom I'd had a knock-down, drag-out fight the night before, out on the street in front of our house having an impromptu yard sale. The sale featured my record collection. We broke up. I still have the records.
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Records To Die For
2000 Records to Die For
Stereophile Staff  |  Feb 21, 2000  |  0 comments
February 2000—We are now comfortably past all the millennial hype, which, by New Year's Eve, really had risen to a nauseating fever pitch. But it's hard not to look back to the times, the places, and, most of all, to the faces and personalities that populated the last hundred years.
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Records To Die For
1999 Records To Die For
Stereophile Staff  |  Feb 06, 1999  |  0 comments
One of the benefits of being music editor of Stereophile---after, of course, unimaginable wealth, unquestioned power, and hot and cold running editorial groupies---is that every year in February I get to write about death. That, and the rather odd personality traits of the Stereophile writing staff.
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Records To Die For
1998 Records To Die For
Stereophile Staff  |  Feb 07, 1998  |  0 comments
Death. It's something we all wonder about. Ever try to imagine your own? There you are, flinging yourself out of the trenches and over the top, clutching your blunderbuss and your copy of Alice Cooper's Killer. Or perhaps you wake up, the room's in flames, and you scurry about, choking, one arm around your cat, the other around your Leopold Stokowski boxed set. Or maybe you envision a mythic/gothic/celtic/druidic Bergmanesque kind of death—you, the leaden sky, your copy of Saxophone Colossus, and black-draped Death, all pasty and balding, leaning on its scythe with the same easy grace shown by members of the New Mexico Highway Department when they slump over their shovels.
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Records To Die For
1997 Records To Die For
Stereophile Staff  |  Feb 03, 1997  |  0 comments
When I first heard about "Records To Die For," I had to laugh. "Desert Island Discs," maybe, but Records To Die For? Laying down your life for a record? World-class hyperbole. Throw yourself on a sword for a glob of petrochemicals? Not me. If your house was burning down, would you a) grab your child, b) grab your photos and other irreplaceable items (cats, loved ones, etc.), or c) grab your records?
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Records To Die For
1996 Records To Die For
Stereophile Staff  |  Feb 29, 1996  |  0 comments
Records To Die For creates one of two problems for the Stereophile writer: either she can't come up with the names of two (or, in the case of new writers, five) recordings of world-class music in world-class stereo sound, or he comes up with so many his hard-drive crashes trying to narrow down the choices.
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Records To Die For
1995 Records To Die For
Stereophile Staff  |  Feb 06, 1995  |  0 comments
"I've got a great idea, RL," said John Atkinson to me one fine fall morning five years ago, as we relaxed over cappuccino and croissants in the slowly rotating editorial suite of the imposing Stereophile Tower that---surmounted by a heroic statue of J. Gordon Holt, thumb down, lip curled, great bronze cigarette glowing triode-red---rises like a Tube Trap of the Gods to dominate the downtown skyline of our round brown town of La Villa Real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco de Asis. In a paroxysm of the editorial euphoria that comes upon him when he suddenly envisions page after page of Stereophile copy which he himself does not have to write, JA then outlined for me the annual list of the Greatest Performances recorded in the Greatest Stereo Sound that has since become the "Records To Die For" we all love and hate---one of Stereophile's most entertaining, annoying, and downright fun features.
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