One of the many musical sawhorses that I often put the spurs to&#151;being a pain the bass just comes with the territory I’m afraid7#151;is the whole bit about why labels who are all hurtin’ right now don’t spend more time digging in their vaults and hauling out treasure in the form of unreleased studio material and especially live shows. Well, the emerging empire that is Concord Records (proud owners of the catalogs of Telarc, Fantasy and now, Rounder Records), a label whose judgment I have questioned in the recent past (<I>Stax Does the Beatles</I>, WTF?), released a killer record earlier this summer that’s been finding its way back to my Musical Fidelity CD player as of late, Otis Redding, <I>Live on Sunset Strip</I> collects performances that didn’t make it onto the two previous albums, <I>In Person at the Whisky a Go Go</I> and Good To Me: Live at the <I>Whiskey A Go Go Vol. 2</I>, that came from a three night stand at the Whiskey in L.A. over Easter weekend 1966. While the set list of the three full sets on these two CDs contains some repetitions, it’s great to hear

Yesterday morning, John Atkinson and I drove out to Mikey Fremer’s place to perform a set of test measurements on the <a href="http://www.magico.net/magicoq/index.php">Magico Q5</a> (review scheduled for our November issue). While JA set up his gear for the in-room measurements, I got to listen to music. Mikey was my personal DJ. He played some sultry Julie London, some angry Gil Scott-Heron, and some soothing Nat “King” Cole. All three, thanks to the outstanding recordings and thanks to the outstanding system, sounded very much <i>alive</i>.