Stephen Mejias

The July 2010 issue of Stereophile is now on newsstands. It had been far too long since we received a letter complaining about our love of reviewing insanely expensive products, so we decided to make this our “Special Aspirations Issue,” featuring, almost exclusively, products you’d have to be CEO of BP to afford.

I’m on the N train heading to Manhattan from Bay Ridge and there’s a fat Mexican baby in a dull red stroller. She is screaming her heart out. I’m trying to read an article in New York magazine recommended to me by a co-worker, but I don’t think I’ll make it to the end. I’ve read enough about addiction to know how ugly it can be; I don’t want to live through it again.

I’ve told you a bit about my favorite cassette label, Al Bjornaa’s Scotch">http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/why_cassettes/">Scotch Tapes, out of Batchawana Bay, Ontario, Canada. In this">http://www.imposemagazine.com/features/scotch-tapes-label-sampler">this Impose article, Al goes into more detail, explaining how he built the label, and revealing some of his big plans for the remainder of the year, which include 60-70 new tapes, 4-5 vinyl releases, approximately 20 lathe cuts, a dozen zines, a couple of 8-tracks, and a monster summer compilation. (You can also download a Scotch sampler.)

Good news for jazz and vinyl lovers: The world’s greatest record store (at least in New Jersey), the">http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/708awsi/index.html">the Princeton Record Exchange, just received a collection of over 2000 carefully maintained jazz titles, and they are now on sale, most priced between $1 and $4.99.

Back in October 1989, former publisher Larry Archibald told us to just have fun and buy cheap speakers.

I did not find what I was looking for at the">http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/jersey_city_record_riot/">the Jersey City Record Riot, but I did find two reasonably priced Tom Waits albums (Blue Valentine and Rain Dogs) and Peter Lang’s debut, The Thing at the Nursery Room Window, on John Fahey’s Takoma label. I had forced myself to be extremely selective, and, though the many kind and interesting vendors were making it difficult for me to hold back from buying more, I did in fact hold back.

“What does it mean to love your father?” the therapist asked.