LATEST ADDITIONS

On Friday, January 20, five different friends forwarded Chris Morris' <I>The Hollywood Reporter</I> column on the closing of LA's Westwood Boulevard Rhino Records store. Established in 1973, the record store closed its doors on January 19 (although it staged a parking lot sale on January 21 and 22). Rhino owner Richard Foos blamed the store's demise on a number of factors, including pricing competition from national chains, the lack of demand for "a physical product," and "too many other things to do and too many ways to get your music without paying $18 for a CD."

You can't always get what you want, but sometimes you get what you need&mdash;and Quad, bless its cockamamie heart, is the company that gave it to me.

PS Audio's first product, back in 1973, was a standalone phono stage; more recently, their PCA-2 preamp had an optional phono board. The <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/solidpoweramps/106ps">GCC-100</A&gt; integrated amplifier that I review this month has no room inside for a phono board, so they've gone back to producing a separate phono stage: the GCPH ($995). Like the other products in PS Audio's current line, this one is based on the Gain Cell, one module on the input side connecting to the cartridge, followed by a passive RIAA curve (with a claimed accuracy of 0.1dB over the 40dB range of the curve), and another Gain Cell on the output side.

Extra-terrestrial radio is poised to celebrate Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's 250th birthday. From Wednesday January 25 through Friday, January 27, XM Satellite Radio will broadcast live performances by many of the most celebrated Mozartians of our time direct from the Carolino Augusteum, a 17th-century castle and former home of the Archbishops of Salzburg that overlooks the Salzburg Cathedral and the Mozart Platz. Artist interviews and sound portraits of the Salzburg milieu will spice up the proceedings.

Bagheera; "Who dares to steal my perch of power upon the CD player?"

Joey deVilla, <I>aka</I> Accordion Guy in the 21st Century, is disgruntled (trust me, Accordion Guy is at his best when he's not gruntled). His beef? The fundraising dinner held last night for Canadian MP Sam Bulte, <I>aka</I> Hollywood's MP, because of the perhaps coincidental linkage between her advocacy of extremely restrictive copyright legislation and her acceptance of financial support (57% of her campaign war chest) from institutions such as the Canadian Motion Pictures Distributors Association, Canadian Publishers Council, and the Entertainment Software Alliance.