LATEST ADDITIONS

I'm sitting here in front of the trusty Toshiba 286 laptop on December 31, 1992, stuck with apparently incurable writer's block; in a couple of hours, we will be taking off <I>en famille</I> for the latest of Larry Archibald's legendary New Year's Eve parties. I wish I had something to write about for this month's "As We See It" essay; I wish...I wish...you know, there are a number of things I really wish for right now, yet I don't believe there is a component out there that can give me what I want.

I've got to agree with my main man, Michael Lavorgna: Dale's Pale Ale from the Oskar Blues Brewery in Lyons, Colorado, wins the award for best beer of 2008.

Click the external link to hear (and see) JA's current fave demo track.

<B>MIKE GARSON: <I>The Oxnard Sessions, Volume One</I></B><BR>
Mike Garson, piano; Bob Summer, trumpet; Bob Shephard, sax; Rick Zunigar, electric guitar; Brian Bromberg, acoustic bass; Billy Mintz, drums<BR>
Reference Recordings RR-37 (LP), RR-37CD (CD*). Keith O. Johnson, eng.; J. Tamblyn Henderson, Jr., Marcia Martin, prods. AAA/DDD. TTs: 49:53, 75:51*

<B>SHIRLEY HORN: <I>You Won't Forget Me</I></B><BR>
Shirley Horn, voice, piano; Charles Ables, bass; Steve Williams, drums. With: Miles Davis, trumpet; Buck Hill, trumpet; Branford Marsalis, tenor saxophone; Wynton Marsalis, trumpet; Toots Thielemans, harmonica, guitar; Buster Williams, bass; Billy Hart, drums<BR>
Verve Digital 847 482-2 (CD only). Richard Seidel, Joel Siegel, prods.; David Baker, eng. DDD. TT: 71:13

The Gini Systems "LS3/5a" is an unlicensed and inexact replica of the celebrated LS3/5a outside (remote location) broadcast monitoring loudspeaker originally developed by the BBC in the early 1970s. (For a pr&#233;cis of the LS3/5a's history, click <<A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/thefifthelement/690">here</A&gt;.)

I'm old enough to remember when "Made in Japan" was an insult. As a child, I saw that phrase on only the cheapest or craziest toys&#151;some stamped out of tin and cupped together by a tab with a fiendish edge, some molded from a distinctively smooth, brittle plastic. The latter included a wind-up bunny on wheels that my father brought home one day: my favorite toy, ever. (It came with a double-barreled dart gun that I seldom used, partly because I loved the bunny too much to shoot it, and partly because the suction-cup darts didn't stick to that kind of plastic in the first place.)