LATEST ADDITIONS

The October 2010 issue of <i>Stereophile</i> is now on newsstands. On the cover, you’ll see a pretty much life-sized image of Logitech’s Squeezebox Touch, a real dandy of a hi-fi product that costs just $300 and seems to captivate everyone who comes into contact with it. The normally unflappable Kal Rubinson ends his review (page 118) by advising, “Get a Squeezebox Touch right now. You’ll never look back.” Even our cover photographer, Eric Swanson, fell in love with the little thing. He bought his sample. We chose the Mobile Fidelity version of Beck’s <i>Sea Change</i> for the cover art because it connects with Robert Baird’s feature piece on outstanding reissues (page 111), and because the colors are pretty. The colors featured on the Squeezebox Touch’s display dictated those used by our graphic designer, Natalie Baca, in her cover treatment.

When I initially read about the Triple Decker Record <a href="http://pitchfork.com/news/40051-jack-white-invents-a-new-type-of-vinyl-… Pitchfork.com</a>, I thought to myself, “Maaaaan, that’s stupid.”

<i>Grinderman 2</i>, by <a href="http://www.grinderman.com/">Grinderman</a&gt; (don’t click that link), is October 2010’s “Recording of the Month,” and it’s available today. Go out and buy it, before it buys you. Bwhahahahahahahaha.

The two Big Eye IPAs I had enjoyed with dinner were doing the trick. I was feeling weightless even before stepping onto the ferry. Beautiful people crowded the front, holding onto railings and each other, while some sat inside the old, wooden frame. Lower Manhattan was soft, quiet, and blue, and two towers of light shot high into the night sky. Suddenly, imperceptibly, the unreal city became smaller and more distant: I hadn’t noticed that the ferry had departed. We could just as easily have been riding a magic carpet. Robert Baird and I were on our way to see John Prine at Governors Island, just a short ferry trip away from Ground Zero in Manhattan.

One of my favorite parental duties is dispensing advice that's calculated to make me sound wiser than I am. Among those pearls: Every so often you should change your point of view&#151;your <I>philosophies</I>&#151;just to see if your opinions can stand the strain. In doing so, you may discover a few things that are better than you expected them to be!

The cover is cracked. It is time to rip it off, look directly at the inner workings, and begin to fix things for ourselves.—Matthew B. Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work

<B>Bushman's Revenge: <I>Jitterbug</I></B><BR>
Rune Grammofon RCD 2097/RLP 3097 (LP/CD). 2010. Bushman's Revenge, prods.; Hasse Rosbach, prod., eng.; Morton Stendahl, eng. DDA/DDD. TT: 53:39<BR>
Performance *****<BR>
Sonics ****&#189;