Stephen Mejias

I was sort of surprised when I saw that Urban Outfitters, the hipster home and apparel shop, had started selling LPs. I was more surprised to learn that they had a headphone listening station&#151you can actually walk into the store with your iPod and audition a bunch of headphones. But now Urban Outfitters is carrying Music Hall turntables and Audioengine powered loudspeakers. I really like this.

I just saw a rainbow fall into the floor

Shattered into pieces, your eyes ask “What for?”

These days I’m all alone out in the middle of the world

These days I’m trying to tell myself you’re just some other girl

&#150"Off the Wall," Lee Ranaldo

It was around noon on Sunday, October 16th, 2011, and I was in the lobby of the Denver Marriott Tech Center. Jennifer Atocha broke the news. Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore had separated after 27 years of marriage and 16 awesome full-length albums with their band, Sonic Youth:

the

band

that

had

changed

my

life.

Gah! I’m beginning to dread receiving these awesome updates from the mighty Princeton Record Exchange, simply because I can’t get down there fast enough! And, if I did get down to the store, the amount of money I’d wind up spending would make me sad.

But the records would make me so happy.

Jeff Joseph of Joseph Audio introduced me to this beautiful cassette deck; I spotted the pic at BeoPhile.com.

I’ve mentioned my old band, The Multi-Purpose Solution: We play a type of hard, fast, guitar-driven rock and roll, inspired by all kinds of things, including: New Jersey, Sonic Youth, the Rolling Stones, the Ramones, pizza, beer, brotherhood, women, Tom Waits, Kurt Vonnegut, Jim Thompson, anger, desperation, the Cure, and Metallica.

But I also make music with my dear friend, Todd.

From the Mouth of the Sun's "Sitting In a Roofless Room," from the new album Woven Tide, released by Experimedia.

I’ve discussed my (apparently controversial) attraction to cassettes. Besides being affordable, fun, pretty, and filled with interesting sounds and art, cassettes provide a direct and meaningful connection between artist and audience: The person releasing cassettes in 2012 is likely doing so out of passion, with a spirit for adventure, perhaps even a with a distaste for modern technologies and conveniences; the person purchasing cassettes in 2012 probably has similar motivations and interests.

I like cassettes.