LATEST ADDITIONS

And here's how <a href="http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/the_weight_of_my_loneliness/"… room</a> looks today. As I said, it looks, feels, and <i>sounds</i> like home.

I was looking out the window. I was waiting for the plane to take off. I was wearing Monster Cable's Beats by Dr. Dre Studio headphones ($349.95). I was listening to Pens' burning, fuzzed-out, 27-minute onslaught, <I>Hey Friend, What You Doing?</I> (320kbps MP3; LP, De Stijl IND071). I was shouting with sudden shock and pain.

“Children by the million sing for Alex Chilton when he comes 'round
They sing "I'm in love. What's that song?
I'm in love with that song."

(from “Alex Chilton” by The Replacements)

My five month old cell phone fried itself dead. Traffic in downtown Austin crawled inch by inch. A friend, who called himself a “capitalist,” called long distance to tell me Obama’s health plan was going to bankrupt the country. But all of that paled in comparison to the strange news that on the first night of South By Southwest 2010, the great Alex Chilton had died just before leaving New Orleans to come to Austin to play a Big Star reunion. Or as the more cynical among us had it, <I>another</I> Big Star reunion.

My friend, <a href="http://eloisemoorehead.tumblr.com/">Eloise Moorhead</a>, helped me place the front-wall bookcase on top of the right-wall bookcase, creating a solid stack of vinyl!

For a time, I had my gear sitting on top of my new <a href="http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/the_weight_of_my_loneliness/"… Expedit bookcase</a>. An identical bookcase sat along the front wall and held a ton of books, but proved visually distracting when listening to music; it also weakened my system's soundstaging abilities.

The April 2010 issue of <i>Stereophile</i> is now on newsstands. For the cover, we selected the <a href="http://blog.stereophile.com/ssi2009/monitor_audio_platinum_200/">Monitor Audio Platinum PL200</a> loudspeaker. Like Bob Deutsch, I was impressed by this speaker when I heard it at the <a href="http://blog.stereophile.com/ssi2009/">2009 Salon Son & Image</a>, so I was especially pleased by John Atkinson’s decision to highlight it. Our cover photographer, Eric Swanson, and designer, Natalie Baca, were also pleased by the speaker’s great looks: The fine-furniture finish of its Santos Rosewood cabinet, the silvery ceramic-coated aluminum magnesium drive units, the handsome Strathspey leather front baffle, and, <i>ooh</i>, that sexy rear port (see the extreme close-up on page 109!) all worked to win over our design team.

John Fahey cites Bill Monroe’s “Blue Yodel #7” as the song that changed/destroyed his life. After hearing that song, he knew he had to play guitar.