Stephen Mejias

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For just a few days now I’ve been receiving mysterious e-mails from “Jazz on the Tube.” At first I wondered if they were spam, and I was afraid to click on the links inside. But they all seemed harmless enough: A few kind and thoughtful words, a passion for jazz, a hand held out in friendship, a smile. So I clicked the link and was taken to a simple page with a narrow, white field against a black border and a YouTube video at the center.

Sort of like a drunk wandering around the East Village in search of companionship or something, I stumbled upon this">http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/97dec/vinyl.htm">this outstanding article by Stereophile’s former senior contributing editor, Jonathan Scull. The piece, “All Sales Are Vinyl,” which appeared in the December 1997 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, takes the reader on a brisk tour of Greenwich Village record shops. Though many of the shops mentioned are long gone, others such as A-1, the Jazz Record Center, Academy Records, and Other Music are still going strong, and Jonathan’s writing is at its best. Not only does he capture the joy of the vinyl hunt, he illuminates this unreal city, and does so with his unique, charming wit&#151his comic timing is brilliant.