I'm a jazz lover. To be specific: I'm a lover of jazz on vinyl. I'm referring not to my sexual proclivities but to 33¹/₃rpm LPs from such venerable labels as Blue Note, BYG Actuel, Contemporary, ECM, ESP-Disk, Impulse!, Prestige, and Riverside. Nothing hits the sweet soul spot of this former jazz drummer and devout jazz head harder than Tony Williams's riotous ride-cymbal beat, Hank Mobley's carefree tenor-saxophone shouts, Charles Mingus's gutbucket double-bass maneuvers, or Bill Evans's haunting piano explorations. Jazz and vinyl both may constitute narrow slivers of music sales, but millions of us around the globe are on a constant hunt for exceedingly rare, grail-like jazz LPs, which we spin on our turntables with an equally holy reverence for the musicians' achievements.

For a growing number of people, music is free, or virtually so. If you don't want to deal with ads, $9.99 a month buys you unlimited, ad-free access to millions of tracks. At least at present, streaming from services like Spotify, YouTube, and Pandora is where music consumption is headed—and it's really all that most people want.

Thursday, March 3, 6:30pm–8:30pm, Adirondack Audio & Video (340 East 57th Street, Suite 1D, New York City) and Saturday, March 5, 2pm–5pm, Value Electronics (35 Popham Road, Scarsdale) will be hosting the first public demonstrations of Technics' highly-anticipated SL-1200GAE turntable.

Hey, why have a blog if you can't plug your own wares now and then? Today, March 1, is pub date for my new book, Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War (Simon & Schuster). John le Carré calls it "a book that grips, informs, and alarms, finely researched and lucidly related." The New York Times hails it as "an eye-opening history . . . a page-turner . . . consistently surprising." Kirkus Reviews describes it as "important, gripping, disturbing."

Blackstar has been called David Bowie's "death album" (several of its songs allude to death, he died of cancer two days after its release), but that makes it seem like a grisly novelty number when, in fact, it's a masterpiece—and, for purposes of this blog, a work of jazz-rock fusion that, unlike many stabs at the genre, truly fuses the two idioms, staying true to both, creating something new in the process, rather than watering them down in a muddy swamp.

This Thursday evening, March 3, Definitive Audio (6206 Roosevelt Way NE, Seattle) celebrates its 40th anniversary with a four-hour Music Matters extravaganza filled with top-level product debuts and celebrity designers. The 5pm–9pm event, complete with rotating 20-minute presentations and lots of food and refreshments, promises the world debuts of the Bowers & Wilkins 800 D3 loudspeaker, the Wilson Audio Alexx loudspeaker, and the Dan D'Agostino Progression Series electronics.

Ever since I encountered Wilson Audio Specialties' Peter McGrath (above) playing his own digital recordings at audio shows, hanging out in the Wilson Audio room has proven the consistent highlight of my show coverage experience. Nor is it simply the quality of the musicianship that continues to draw me to McGrath's rooms. As anyone who has heard his work can attest, the man's ability to capture the unique characteristics of a performance venue, as well as the natural sound of voice and instruments, is second to none.