Dr. John brought down the house Saturday night at HE 2006, where the crowd brought him back for an encore.

. . . Go To Jail. An appropriate license plate parked out front of the Sheraton at HE2006.

So there I was, part of a motley crew of HE 2006 attendees and fellow travelers, groovin' with deejays Ming and FS and their four turntable assault at the Friday night rave that ended day one of HE 2006. Unfortunately, no one else was there.

Elina Lamm spinning discs in the very smooth <a href="http://www.lammindustries.com/">Lamm Industries</a> suite. It gets my vote for Most Comforting Music at the Show.

I could barely make my way into the Totem room. The crowd stretched out into the hall. When I finally found some space, I made sure to have some fun.

Bluebird Music's Jay Rein, with the very cute Neat Motive loudspeaker ($1995/pair) in the foreground.

"At first, we didn't want to sell these speakers," admitted Jay Rein of the adorable Neat Motives. "I mean, who needs another nineteen hundred dollar speaker?"

Jenna Russo, Lucette Nicoll, and Erika Pearson (L to R) keep the press room stocked with coffee and cookies so that we can keep working hard.

Direct-marketer Aperion Audio was demonstrating its new $750/pair 533-T tower loudspeaker, built around two 5.25" mid/bass drivers and a 1" silk-dome tweeter. Aperion's cabinets employ 1" MDF and internal bracing, so they're extremely rigid. Aperion not only offers 30-day in-home auditions, but they pay return shipping if you choose not to buy&mdash;and they even offer a one year trade-up policy that refunds 100% of the cost of a speaker if you buy a better speaker from them.