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<I>I am not in the mood for whirling.</I>&#151;the Beatles, "Revolution 9"

It's been over two years since I <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/subwoofers/907jl">reviewed</A&gt; a pair of JL Audio's Fathom f113 subwoofers. <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/musicintheround/1106mitr">Kalman Rubinson</A> and I both gave the f113 top marks for delivering clean, powerful bass in a wide variety of full-range systems. At the end of the review period, JL Audio's Carl Kennedy told me that they wouldn't send me another subwoofer for review until they had developed one that outperformed the Fathom f113 (footnote 1). To this day, the Fathom f113 tops the subwoofer category in <I>Stereophile</I>'s "Recommended Components."

If the cover of the latest issue of <I>Uncut</I> is any indication, “lost” albums never lose their appeal for the musically&#150;inclined or obsessed. Music fans always want what they don’t have or haven’t heard or hear is <I>hard to get</I>. It’s the allure of the forbidden record. And it’s a chief symptom of the record collecting psychoses.

The May 2010 issue of <i>Stereophile</i> 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 href="http://forum.stereophile.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=82398&an=0… post</a> in our forum regarding one reader’s experience with cassettes and cassette decks. Jon responded by directing <i>my</i> attention to that morning's <a href="http://cgi.stereophile.com/cgi-bin/showvote.cgi?663">Vote question</a>, which also dealt with cassettes.

Never did I think the day would come when I’d be standing in a line at 10:30 am on a chilly April Saturday to get into a record store. A record store mind you that is directly across the street from the now spacious, high-ceilinged NYU offices that were once the Tower Records on Broadway in downtown Manhattan.

You know what tomorrow is? <a href="http://www.recordstoreday.com/Home">Record Store Day</a>! It’s not that guys like you and me <i>need</i> 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>I’ll</i> be the one that gets all the cool stuff.

So far, other than Steve Zahn who is really annoying as a devil&#150;may&#150;care DJ with goofy eyeglasses, the new HBO series, <I>Treme</I> is pretty great. Lots of flavor. Some hokiness of course, but still fairly believable most of the time. The best scene so far hands down was when Elvis Costello, playing Elvis Costello, comes out of a bar to crawl into his limo and Kermit Ruffins, playing himself, is standing on the sidewalk really huffing on fatty. When Zahn encourages him, through the cloud of smoke, to talk to Costello and maybe land himself an opening slot on an upcoming Costello tour, Kermit demurs and Zahn comes back with a line, and I’m paraphrasing, “So what do you want to do all your life, play music, get high and BBQ in New Orleans?” Kermit laughes and shakes his head in the affirmative. In some ways that’s the story of a lot of NOLA musicians. They can be provincial. And disdainful of success. It can be a town where a sort of collective inertia keeps people from doing anything but hanging out. I know, I’m painting with broad strokes here, but it’s always been a town, heavy with musical talent, much of it unwilling or unable for whatever reason, to leave. And then those who do leave get tarred as traitors or getting too big for their britches. There truly is nowhere like New Orleans, I adore it, but damn, the place is like a parallel dimension sometimes.