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It's a paper turntable. I'm sure that Mikey Fremer will be contacting the artist for one to go next to his Nixie clock.

What a score! Here's a promotional short for Irving Mills' Master and Variety labels that shows us Ellington in the studio. Amazingly, the process of record manufacture hasn't changed substantially since 1937.

Speakers of English and Chinese apparently process numbers differently. I'm fascinated for three, no, four, . . . uh, many reasons.

Last night, in Manila&#150like heat, I trekked southward on Manhattan Island to meet with Jim Davis, owner of Music Direct and one of his right hand men, Colie Brice. One of the best online sources for audiophile wares, both soft and hard, (now, now, let's keep those high fidelity minds up out of the gutter!), Music Direct, as many of you know, also owns the revived Mobile Fidelity label. MoFi was and maybe again THE proudest audiophile label of them all. The extra dynamics they squeezed out of Nirvana's <I>Nevermind</I> will forever amaze me.

Several folks make the case&mdash;Agnes Selby, author of <I>Constanze, Mozart's Beloved</I> does so most emphatically. <I>Sound And Fury</I> has it all covered.

Maybe so. I think I prefer Michael Dibdin's solution in <I>The Last Sherlock Holmes Story</I>, but fiction is frequently more fun than fact.

Over at <I>The Independent</I>, Jessica Duchen lists her favorite works of literature that prominently feature music. Mirroring Heine, she starts out, "Music begins where words end," which is more or less true&mdash;after all most writing about music sucks the juice right out of it.