Stephen Mejias

Joanna Newsom’s third full-length LP, Have One On Me, is available today. You can stream">http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123981491&ft=1&f=9… the entire thing from NPR, if you’re interested. Today, after work, I will go out into the light rain and hunt down this album. The arrangements are as intricate as ever, but Newsom’s voice has never been so seductive, alluring, inviting. So far, I especially like the kindness and yearning of “No Provenance,” but the entire thing&#151three LPs, 18 tracks, and two hours long&#151is bewitching and rewarding.

The guitarist John Fahey was born on February 28, 1939, and died just days before what would have been his 62nd birthday, on February 22, 2001. Like so many other beautiful things that continue to have enormous impact on my life, Fahey’s music was introduced to me by Michellehttp://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/clouds_taste_metallic/">Miche…;. The album was 1997’s City of Refuge. We were in our second year at Fairleigh Dickinson University, in the second year of our relationship. Michelle had claimed the album from our campus radio station and brought it back to our dorm room and played it for me.

The March 2010 issue of Stereophile is now on newsstands. Open it up and you’ll see that Steve Guttenberg has rediscovered his faith in vinyl. Hooray! What did it for him? A new turntable: the VPI Classic. “Coming back to vinyl,” Steve writes, “I now see that digital’s primary fault is that it encourages passive listening.”

If you’re a fan of John Fahey&#151a fan of his music, his writing, his thoughts on life, whatever&#151and especially if you’re sort of sad, like I am, about having never met him, then you’ll enjoy this disc. The Three Day Band is Fahey and musician Ayal">http://www.myspace.com/ayalsr">Ayal Senior who, in addition to capturing Fahey on four-track here, also edited much of Fahey’s second collection of stories, Vampire">http://www.dragcity.com/products/vampire-vultures">Vampire Vultures. (Senior’s also got a bunch of good-looking cassettes available.)

There is a proper procedure for taking advantage of any investment.

Music, for example. Buying music is an investment.

To get the maximum you must

I love my job, I love my office, I love a whole lot of other things. But, when the sun is shining through my living room windows the way it was this morning, it is very hard to leave home.

Perhaps impatience is my fatal flaw, the thing that keeps me forever this close to complete and undying happiness, but never quite there. I’m impatient. About certain things. I’m impatient, for instance, about acquiring a cassette deck. My cassette collection is growing large. My colorful">http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/cassettes_and_vinyl/">colorful cassettes sit on my little footstool, waiting to be played, looking at me like what the hell. What the hell?