LATEST ADDITIONS

Ain't technology grand! That's what I was thinking while driving to work this morning. Sure, the rain was coming down in buckets, but there I was sitting comfortably in a warm car, listening to music while making tracks at 50mph. A long way from horse-and-buggy days.

My love for the Vivian Girls only grows and grows: I love them more today than I did yesterday, but not as much as I’ll love them tomorrow. Their 2009 album, <i>Everything Goes Wrong</i>, continues to sound fresh and exciting with each play on my turntable. And they’ve got a new 7-inch single available from their own <a href="http://www.freewebs.com/viviangirls/wildworld.htm">Wild World Records</a>. Perfect for a sunny Cinco de Mayo like this one, the A-side has Cassie confessing, “I can hardly wait until the summer comes,” while Katy and Ali echo the feeling with handclaps and angelic backing vocals. The B-side is a cover of the Chantels’ “He’s Gone,” which I had the great and unforgettable pleasure of hearing performed live, a cappella, <a href="http://forum.stereophile.com/photopost/showphoto.php/photo/2149/passwor… Bamboo Beach</a> <a href="http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/what_happened_in_puerto_rico/… Puerto Rico</a>.

As another Consumer Electronics Show rolls around, we are seeing some interesting and not-entirely encouraging things taking place in the audio field. The people for whom high fidelity was originally intended&#151;so-called serious music listeners &#151;have abandoned audio almost completely, leaving the pursuit of perfect music reproduction to a group of hobbyists who have more interest in hardware than in music. This, plus the recession, has almost killed middle-fi, which is now flailing out in all directions looking for a new market. Here's how it all came to pass: