LATEST ADDITIONS

Here in the office, I am (like most jerks in the corporate world) constantly juggling several tasks at once. Sometimes these tasks seem to have absolutely nothing to do with one another, and nothing to do with the making of a magazine. So it goes. To keep everything from crashing down at my nervous, trembling feet, I scribble little reminders on yellow Post-it notes and stick them to everything around me: Post-it notes on my computer screen, Post-it notes on my telephone, Post-it notes on my calendar, Post-it notes on my stapler, etc.

A couple of months ago, I heard <a href="http://www.wnyc.org/news/articles/128092">an interesting segment on NPR</a> about Sam Hillmer's <a href="http://www.myspace.com/representingnyc">Representing NYC</a> project. Hillmer, a NYC school teacher, partners his students with indie-rock musicians to create hip-hop albums. The children are given an opportunity to express themselves and gain real experience in the art of commerce, while the musicians get to contribute to the working-class communities they've recently moved into.

Musical Fidelity's founder, <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/features/575/index3.html">Antony Michaelson</A>, arrived at my house to help me set up the two chassis of his sleek, limited-edition, $30,000 Titan power amplifier. (The task requires at <I>least</I> two people.) A week later, a representative of Musical Fidelity's US importer, KEF America, dropped by to listen and to deliver three of Musical Fidelity's new V-series products: a phono preamp, a DAC, and a headphone amp. All three fit comfortably into a small paper bag; the price of the three was $700.

What’s the point of having a blog if I can’t occasionally indulge in self-promotion? So if you’ll forgive my blatancy for a moment, today marks the official pub date of my new book, <I>1959: The Year Everything Changed</I>. Unlike my last book, which was entirely about foreign policy, this one actually might be of some interest to the readers of this space, because it covers not just politics but also culture, society, science, sex—as the title suggests, <I>everything</I>. More to the point, there are three chapters (out of 25) that deal explicitly with jazz. (Key jazz albums of 1959 included Miles Davis’ <I>Kind of Blue</I>, Ornette Coleman’s <I>The Shape of Jazz to Come</I>, and Dave Brubeck’s <I>Time Out</I>.) There’s also a chapter about the creation of Motown (another 1959 phenomenon), and a jazz-blues vibe infuses the whole book.

FM radio, once the mainstay for those seeking exposure to new music, is under attack from satellite radio, Web radio, and corporate playlists. Do you still listen to FM radio?

On June 2, <I>Stereophile</I> reported that HDGiants.com, formerly known as MusicGiants.com, had <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/bust_and_booms_on_the_download_front/">… for Chapter 11 bankruptcy</A>. The future of the high-quality music and video download site that had most recently begun offering "Super HD" 24-bit surround-sound downloads was unclear.

Back when there were bricks-and-mortar retail record stores to speak of in tenses other than past, I used to participate in new-release conferences. Retail-store buyers&#151;the people who decided whether consumers would see your CDs as they browsed in the stores&#151;would gather at a nice destination, such as Lake George, New York. The various labels would then make presentations about their upcoming new releases.