Stephen Mejias

I thought I'd really begin where I always begin: with my band's first album. As I've said before, I know this thing better than I know most anything else. From the creation of a song like "50 Bullets" — sitting on my bed and turning a simple four-note riff into a complicated and violent four-minute explosion — to the recording process, marred by uncomfortable, late-night drives from Clifton to New Brunswick where Jeff Baker fooled around with tape reels and watched lazily as we somehow came up with fourteen tracks that we could only almost perform — drunk on Budweiser and stuffed on fried chicken and tired, so damn tired — I know this thing. I know this amazing and ambitious and awful album better than I know most anything.

Alright, so I know it. I know what it sounds like, and it's not very good. To be fair, it's not very bad, either. I mean, I love it. As far as first albums go, I'd put it right up there with Taylor Dayne's Tell it to My Heart and Paula Abdul's Forever Your Girl. But, of course, I love it: it's part of me. Still, for the last five years, it's simply been what it's been: our first album, a time filled with wonderful and terrible memories, but also filled with so many limitations and could have been betters.

No hi-fi system can change that. No hi-fi system can make it sound any better.

That's what I thought, at least, until I played it through the Musical Fidelity A3.5s.

***

I honestly don't mean to tease — and don't think I assume that I'm actually teasing you. I mean, we're only talking about an integrated amp and CD player here; it's not like love or anything — but that last sentence feels like a good stopping point for right now. I do have more to express, but I've also got a crapload of "Recommended Components" blurbs to write, and I'd really like to have some free time over the weekend for buying two-cent stamps and doing laundry, so I'm going to move back to blurbing now. I hope you understand.

More tomorrow.