Stephen Mejias

In an article titled, "This Boot Was Made for Jazzin'," found in our April 2007 issue, Thomas Conrad tells us that today's most important European jazz musicians are coming from Italy. It was in that article that I was introduced to the young wonders, saxophonist Francesco Cafiso (18), and pianists, Giovanni Guidi (22) and Alessandro Lanzoni (15). These young men live within a musical landscape nurtured by guys like Gianni Basso (75) and Renato Sellani (81), who, according to Conrad, are "sounding better than ever." I'm not quite sure why, but it thrills me to know that such language, art, and life are being shared between people separated by so many years. Perhaps I see it as some evidence that time is only time. And what does that mean to me? Again, I don't know.

Nick Cave's vocals — searching, pleading, urgent and, normally, red-hot — sounded just a">http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/041607listening/">a bit soft and cool through the PSB Alpha B1s. Ward wondered:

Christian recommendedhttp://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/041607listening/">recommended…; a great new band to me: The">http://www.thebesnardlakes.com/">The Besnard Lakes. Listening to them reminds me of Brian Wilson and Pink Floyd and My Morning Jacket. There are shiny falsettos, dream sequences, and reverb-drenched solos. It's music that I want to share with my girlfriend. A Google search then led me to the band's record label, Jagjaguwarhttp://www.jagjaguwar.com/">Jagjaguwar;. There, I found a happy surprise: entire albums — freely flowing streams of music — not only from The Besnard Lakes, but also from a couple of other interesting bands, Odawashttp://www.odawastheband.com/Odawas/Main.html">Odawas; and Alex">http://www.alexdeliverymusic.com/">Alex Delivery.

After a week of rain and bad news, here comes the sun. I woke this morning, singing it.

I discovered Erik Satie while in college. The music seemed perfectly fit for such strange and brightly-colored cartoon mornings, rainy afternoons, very sad and lonely drunken nights. Perfectly fit for a dude who felt out of time with himself, a mishmash of incomplete angles and ideas, a dance party, a moonlit walk along a muddy trail, a stranger, a desperate fuck.

Walking to the office on this sloppy Monday morning, through April's cold rain, with a mind full of dreams and promises of warmer, brighter things, I got the feeling that it might as well be last Friday all over again. What the hell?