LATEST ADDITIONS

Okay, read this: <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121023882">The Decade in Music: The Way We Listen Now</a>, from NPR’s “All Things Considered.”

Here’s the video for the Fiery Furnaces’s hit single, “Even in the Rain,” which is possibly my favorite track from the band’s excellently <i>easy</i>-to-listen-to album, <i>I’m Going Away</i>. (It’s not really a “hit.” I just made that up. But it could be, if we lived in a different world.)

I’d say on average that about 85 percent of the people I ask, hate Christmas music with an undying passion. I am one of a crazed minority who actually like the stuff and have long cultivated a collection of the stuff. Although I usually begin the season with the two volumes of <I>Billboard Greatest Christmas Hits</I>, both of which are now out of print (C’mon Rhino!), but are easily found used on Amazon, my general rule with Christmas music is: the weirder the better. And God knows when it comes to weird, Bob Dylan’s new collection of guttural holiday croakings is truly amazing.

On Friday, I promised myself that I would spend no more money on records until after the New Year. On Saturday, I found myself at <a href="http://www.othermusic.com/">Other Music</a> with three LPs in my hands. Gah! I brought them up to the counter, where the cute girl with the black hair was waiting. I felt despicable.

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I’ve published two music articles elsewhere in the past couple weeks.

Saturday, December 5, 11am&#150;5pm: <a href="http://www.talkofthetownvideo.com/welcome.html">Talk of the Town</a> will host an “Audio, Video, & Home Theater Demo Day.” Show highlights will include demonstrations of SIM2’s C3X Lumis Host projector; Marantz’s 9004 Reference Blu-ray player; Totem Acoustics’s <a href="http://blog.stereophile.com/ssi2009/totem_wind_design/">Wind Design</a> loudspeakers; Classe’s SSP-800 preamplifier-processor with Dolby TrueHD and DTS-MA surround decoding; McIntosh’s MA7000 integrated amplifier; and Meridian’s DSP 5200 digital active speakers and Sooloos <a href="http://www.stereophile.com/mediaservers/908sooloos/">Music Server System</a>.