Stephen Mejias

The May 2010 issue of Stereophile is now on newsstands. Jon Iverson opens this issue by exploring “The Holy Trinity of Audiophiledom.” The idea was born on the morning of February 9. I had sent an e-mail to Jon, directing his attention to a">http://forum.stereophile.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=82398&an=0… post in our forum regarding one reader’s experience with cassettes and cassette decks. Jon responded by directing my attention to that morning's Vote">http://cgi.stereophile.com/cgi-bin/showvote.cgi?663">Vote question, which also dealt with cassettes.

You know what tomorrow is? Record">http://www.recordstoreday.com/Home">Record Store Day! It’s not that guys like you and me need a special reason to go to the record store and buy a bunch of vinyl, but it’s nice to have it anyway. You’ll find me at my local shop, Tunes, in Hoboken, by no later than 10am, waiting for the doors to open. Last year, I showed up just 30 minutes after they had opened, only to find that most of the coolest stuff had already sold out. Not this year. This year, I’ll be the one that gets all the cool stuff.

This week only, we can stream">http://soundcloud.com/subpop/beach-house-the-arrangement">stream new music from Beach House. “The Arrangement” comes from the A side of Beach House’s “Zebra” 12-inch, made special for Record">http://www.recordstoreday.com/Home">Record Store Day (this Saturday, April 17!).

Ah: Best Coast’s Bethany Cosentino has fun when she’s with Ronald McDonald. Hmm. Here’s the video for Best Coast’s “When I’m With You,” directed by Pete">http://www.peteohs.com/">Pete Ohs:

In the">http://forum.stereophile.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=0&Board=rants&Numbe… forum, it’s been determined that Magnum">http://www.stereophile.com/integratedamps/329/index.html">Magnum Dynalab, without a doubt, offers the best tuners on the market; and, while I don’t own a decent tuner and my time spent listening to the radio is dedicated almost entirely to frustrating Mets games and morning weather reports, I am now interested in Radio Happy Hour, with host Sam Osterhout, actors Matt Skibiak and Robin Reed, and music by Stephanie Davila.

I’ve been digging Dexter Gordon’s 1963 album, Our Man In Paris, featuring Bud Powell on piano, Pierre Michelot (a JA fave) on bass, and Kenny Clarke on drums. Look at how deep and cool Dexter Gordon looks on the cover, balancing a smoke between his fingers, lost in thought.

Comparisons to a young Bob Dylan are inevitable. There’s the same sort of defiance, the odd insouciance, the long lines of poetry squeezed out and hacked out and blown out like kisses, too. The guitar work is very good&#151scintillating at times and always passionately wrought&#151but it’s the voice that gets you. The voice&#151childlike but crotchety as hell, delicate but yearning, beautiful but completely wrong. The voice is what gets you. Kristian Matsson is The Tallest Man On Earth; he plays rock and roll, and plans to be forgotten when he’s gone.