LATEST ADDITIONS

The largest advertising and promotional campaign for an audio product in Sony Electronics' (and possibly anyone's) history debuted during NBC's Thursday-night prime-time television lineup last week. The campaign, titled "Make it with MD," featured various celebrities as they moved through a Hollywood party sporting a small MiniDisc personal stereo unit playing their own personalized music mixes. Sony also plans major cable, billboard, print ad, and promotional tie-ins.

The 2nd Annual Southern California Hi-Fi Swap takes place on Sunday, February 22, 9am-1pm, at the Sequoia Athletic Club and Conference Center, 7530 Orangethorpe Avenue in Buena Park, one block north of Knotts Berry Farm and the 91 freeway on the corner of Beach and Orangethorpe.

As part of the reorganization process at Counterpoint, repair and updating of all Counterpoint products will be handled under designer Michael Elliott's direct supervision at a new facility separate from the manufacturing plant.

Death. It's something we all wonder about. Ever try to imagine your own? There you are, flinging yourself out of the trenches and over the top, clutching your blunderbuss and your copy of Alice Cooper's <I>Killer</I>. Or perhaps you wake up, the room's in flames, and you scurry about, choking, one arm around your cat, the other around your Leopold Stokowski boxed set. Or maybe you envision a mythic/gothic/celtic/druidic Bergmanesque kind of death&mdash;you, the leaden sky, your copy of <I>Saxophone Colossus</I>, and black-draped Death, all pasty and balding, leaning on its scythe with the same easy grace shown by members of the New Mexico Highway Department when they slump over their shovels.

<I>"Nothing is real, and nothing to get hung about."</I>---John Lennon

Several years back, sales of multidisc CD changers overtook single-disc players in the lower end of the consumer market. New multidisc machines from California Audio Labs and others have pushed this trend toward the high end, but will they overtake tweak single-disc player sales?

<B>VARIOUS ARTISTS: <I>Sacred Steel</I></B><BR> Arhoolie CD450 (CD). 1997. Robert Stone, prod.; Chris Strachwitz, exec. prod. AAD? TT: 74:29<BR> Performance <B>*****</B><BR> Sonics <B>****</B>