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At the top of what I'd later learn to call "Arthur's Peak," I looked out onto the jagged, gray city and felt immortal.
When we finally reached the top, we found a strange surprise: The rest of our classmates were there.
I often wanted to turn back, in fact, but Pete was so damn far ahead of me that I couldn't even get his attention. I kept following.
We walked and walked and walked—stopping in pubs along the way—and gradually became more and more lost.
We started the day with a bit of Bell's and a couple cups of coffee. Then, we started walking.
The January 2009 issue of Stereophile is now on newsstands. Volume 32 Number 1 is pretty much bursting at the seams with radicalness. I received a voicemail from a long-time subscriber telling me so. It went:
Yeah, hi. I've been a Stereophile reader for, like, PHEW!, a long time—since, like, 1970-something and, um, I just wanted to say your January issue is, like, the best issue you've put out in… in… ages! They're all good, but this particular issue just seems to be, like, extraordinary…
There you have it folks. The dude's right. We are extraordinary:…
It kind of happens intuitively, like breathing or crying or finding your way back home. Every year around this time, I scan my compact disc racks and watch as my hand reaches for The Flaming Lips' 1995 album, Clouds Taste Metallic. I put the disc in the player. I sit back. And I listen, and I remember.
Clouds Taste Metallic is my all-time favorite Christmas album. But you won't hear Wayne Coyne singing "Silent Night" or doing any sort of grandma-got-run-over-by-a-reindeer weirdness. There isn't a single Christmas song on it, though there is a song called "Christmas at the Zoo…
It’s fair to ask how many audiophile pressings of John Coltrane’s Blue Train do we need? Yet Mike Hobson of Classic Records makes a compelling case for this answer: one more. Classic is putting out a whole new type of LP, and though its technical tweak seems preposterous—a parody of vinylphilic obsession—it really does yield a substantial improvement; it makes the head spin.
And there’s a nice story to it, a story involving Hobson and Stereophile’s own Michael Fremer.
On a recent visit to Fremer’s house, Hobson heard a demo of the Furutech DeMag, a device that demagnetizes LPs.…