Stephen Mejias

For the past several days, I’ve had Neil Young’s newly remastered solo debut playing on repeat. Roberthttp://blog.stereophile.com/musicroom/robertbaird/">Robert; received a copy of the Neil">http://www.neilyoungarchives.com/">Neil Young Archives Official Release Series HDCD and I swiped it from him. (Actually, I was like, “May I please listen to that awesome stuff, please?”) Young’s first four albums, Neil Young, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, After The Goldrush, and Harvest, make up the first offering from the NYA ORS:

Our copy editor, Richard Lehnert, sent this to me today. I love it.

From left: JA (with unidentified baby), Jon Iverson, and Erick Lichte, riding an elevator at the Venetian, site of the high-performance audio suites, on Day 1 of the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show.

For Christmas, I received the new vinyl reissue of Nirvana’s seminal 1991 album, Nevermind. This beautiful thing, mastered by acclaimed engineer, Bernie">http://www.stereophile.com/news/102207bernie/index.html">Bernie Grundman, and pressed at RTIhttp://www.stereophile.com/features/408rti/index.html">RTI; on extremely quiet 180gm vinyl, is brought to us by Original">http://www.originalrecordingsgroup.com/index.htm">Original Recordings Group. Thank god for them.

Today I received my first package from Scotch">http://www.freewebs.com/scotchtapes/">Scotch Tapes! Inside the cardboard-reinforced padded envelope were five cassettes and three 7-inch EPs:

I’ve received two packages in the mail today. Both were from Portland, Oregon, a hotbed for outstanding independent music, and both contained tapeshttp://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/why_cassettes/">tapes;.

I was introduced to Scotch">http://www.freewebs.com/scotchtapes/">Scotch Tapes, “the worst hi-tech music label ever,” on December 9, by a Twitterhttp://twitter.com/stereophilemag">Twitter; post from Jagjaguwarhttp://www.jagjaguwar.com/">Jagjaguwar;. Oneida would be releasing a limited-edition cassette through Scotch Tapes. This was interesting news to me, first because I">http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/the_way_we_listened_then/">I’ve been fascinated with the idea of a “cassette tape revival,” and second because Oneida is a well-established name in the world of underground rock bands. Why would Oneida release work on a format that had been all but forgotten by the music industry? Why cassettes?