Stephen Mejias

While John Atkinson, Art Dudley, Bob Deutsch, and I were having a great time roaming the halls of the 2010 Salon Son et Image at the Hilton Bonaventure in beautiful Montreal, Francois Caron of The">http://thecanadianpublic.com/">The Canadian Public was lugging a Canon Vixia HF200 camcorder and Rode Stereo Videomic from exhibitor room to exhibitor room, capturing the action.

Take a look into the heart and soul of my favorite radio station, Jersey City’s own WFMUhttp://www.wfmu.org/">WFMU;, 91.1FM.

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The Super Deluxe Mega Awesome Edition of the Rolling Stones’ classic Exile On Main Street, considered by some to be the greatest rock and roll album of all time&#151complete with two CDs, including ten previously unreleased tracks, two LPs, a DVD, and a 50-page book&#151is now available. Damn.

I’ve been reading Matthew Crawford’s Shop Class As Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work, which argues that an intimacy with manual trades may revitalize a connection to the material world lost to those who spend their lives in offices or cubicles, staring at computer screens for eight to twelve hours a day, unable to quantify exactly what it is that they do. I’m digging it. It aligns, in many ways, with a philosophy John Atkinson has shared with me: Do doingfully.

I’ve been infatuated with Damien Jurado’s new album, Saint Bartlett, due to be released on May 25th from Secretly">http://www.secretlycanadian.com/onesheet.php?cat=SC192">Secretly Canadian. Its twelve songs take us on an emotionally powerful trip, from the drunken sway of “Arkansas” to the jaunty swagger of “Wallingford” to the heavyhearted confessions of “Kansas City.” Altogether, Saint Bartlett is deep and beautiful and addictive.

It was late last year, when the leaves and the temperatures started to fall, that I first became interested in Effi Briest, the hypnotic and alluring all-female band performing out of Brooklyn, NY. Their video for “Mirror Eye” was a">http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/effi_briests_mirror_rim/">a dizzying, hallucinogenic trip that matched their sound and their sense of style.