Stephen Mejias

I’ve told you a bit about my favorite cassette label, Al Bjornaa’s <a href="http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/why_cassettes/">Scotch Tapes</a>, out of Batchawana Bay, Ontario, Canada. In <a href="http://www.imposemagazine.com/features/scotch-tapes-label-sampler">this Impose article</a>, Al goes into more detail, explaining how he built the label, and revealing some of his big plans for the remainder of the year, which include 60-70 new tapes, 4-5 vinyl releases, approximately 20 lathe cuts, a dozen zines, a couple of 8-tracks, and a monster summer compilation. (You can also download a Scotch sampler.)

Underwood, the new vinyl-only record label, which takes its name from the typewriter invented by Frank Wagner in 1896, was founded by writer Nathan Dunne. Dunne’s goal is to publish short stories on vinyl records. Underwood urges us to slow down, focus, listen, and enjoy.

Good news for jazz and vinyl lovers: The world’s greatest record store (at least in New Jersey), <a href="http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/708awsi/index.html">the Princeton Record Exchange</a>, just received a collection of over 2000 carefully maintained jazz titles, and they are now on sale, most priced between $1 and $4.99.

At this moment in time, there’s honestly no way I can justify spending more money on sweet, wonderful, soul-stirring vinyl records. I just can’t do it. I have bills to pay. I have records at home that I haven’t listened to yet. I have laundry to do and groceries to buy. But, damn, am I tempted to go to the First Annual Collect-i-Bowl Record Show at <a href="http://www.brooklynbowl.com/">Brooklyn Bowl</a> this Sunday.

I did not find what I was looking for at <a href="http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/jersey_city_record_riot/">the Jersey City Record Riot</a>, but I did find two reasonably priced Tom Waits albums (<i>Blue Valentine</i> and <i>Rain Dogs</i>) and Peter Lang’s debut, <i>The Thing at the Nursery Room Window</i>, on John Fahey’s Takoma label. I had forced myself to be extremely selective, and, though the many kind and interesting vendors were making it difficult for me to hold back from buying more, I did in fact hold back.

We’ve been shipping the August issue to pre-press. There, you can see it on my desk. It involves a lot of paper, coffee, oatmeal, procrastination, juggling, John Prine, Pontiak, Bushman’s Revenge, and ass-kicking. A whole lot of ass-kicking.

Strange thing about cassettes and vinyl records: Every now and then, while listening to them, I find myself wondering what’ll happen to them when I’m dead and gone. These beautiful things will outlive me and someday someone else will “own” them. What will that person think of me? <i>Will</i> that person think of me? What do my records say about me?