Stephen Mejias

It was a glorious day. The Good Lord smiled upon our little blue world with clear skies, warm sunshine, and limited edition 7" singles. I strolled into Tunes at 11:30am, just a half-hour after the store had opened. A large crowd of happy shoppers was already huddled round the main display shelves. Radiohead singles from every era of the band's brilliant career and so many colorful 7" discs and samplers and posters and platter mats and they have already run out of the Sonic Youth/Beck splits. What? Figures! Oh well. I am not disappointed&#151not too terribly. Instead, I am happy for those who came before me, happy for the bands and happy for the labels and happy for the world.

"Ariel?"

Forumhttp://forum.stereophile.com/forum">Forum; member, dbowker, gave me the heads-up on this special Record Store Day LP. With This LP Crashes Hard Drives, ten of my favorite hard-core crate-digging specialist labels came together to release one hell of a deluxe, limited-edition, gatefold masterpiece&#151just one of the many reasons to raise our voices and rejoice for Record Store Day. The awesome package includes a CD sampler, zines, catalogs, stickers, and posters from all participating labels.

During our">http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/a_visit_to_mikeys_and_the_gla… visit to Michael Fremer's house, alongside all the LPs and cables and enormous amplifiers, I found myself thinking: If only others could experience this, here, like this, they'd understand what all the fuss is about...

At Salon Son & Image, I had my ears opened to the">http://blog.stereophile.com/ssi2009/the_nordost_difference/">the differences cables can make when Nordost's Bruno de Lorimier demonstrated several of the company's interconnects, from the popular Blue Heaven ($230/1m pair) to the hallowed Valhalla ($5000/1m pair). I wrote:

I was very impressed by the hi-fi dealers I encountered while at the 2009">http://blog.stereophile.com/ssi2009/">2009 Salon Son & Image show in Montreal. Representatives from Son-Or-Filtroniquehttp://www.filtronique.com/en/default.asp">Son-Or-Filtronique;, Audio">http://www.audiobasics.com/">Audio Basics, and Coup">http://www.cdfaudio.com/">Coup de Foudre seemed intelligent, enthusiastic, friendly, energetic, and cool: All qualities the high-end audio industry could use more of.

So, just when I start getting used to my">http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/my_new_rega_p3-24/">my white P3-24, Rega goes and introduces three new high-gloss finishes: Orange, Blue, and Pink. Can you believe it? I feel kinda ripped-off. Had I known, I might've gone with Orange. I might've gone with Blue. I might've gone with Orange and blue. (Let's go Mets.) Hell, I'm in touch with my feminine side and secure in my masculinity; I might've gone with pink.