Stephen Mejias

And speaking of birthdays, today is Thurston Moore’s. To celebrate, let’s groove and flail to Chelsea Light Moving’s latest track, “Groovy & Linda.” The song, like most from Thurston, is a twisted love story.

Tuesday&#150Thursday, August 21–23, 7:30pm: In celebration of John Cage’s 100th birthday, The [kāg] ensemble will perform Kevin James’s 100 Waltzes for John Cage at the DiMenna Center, Mary Flagler Cary Hall (450 West 37th Street, New York).

Inspired by Cage’s 49 Waltzes for the Five Boroughs, for which a score was created by randomly selecting 147 locations on a New York City map, James’s work is said to answer the question, “What would Cage have done with the advanced technologies that have shaped our ever-expanding information age?”

I'd like to think he'd have thrown them out the window and made a score from their shattered bits and pieces. Kevin James, it seems, feels similarly:

I approached The xx’s self-titled debut with caution. The hype surrounding it was enough to turn me away. I remember talking about the record with Karen at Other Music. “It’s definitely one of those albums that polarizes people,” she said.

Soon, though, it became unavoidable. I might be able to hide from it at home, but I couldn’t escape it at work. By the middle of 2010, a hi-fi show wasn’t complete without The xx.

Reader Robert Stewart shares “A King’s Ransom from Queens,” a truly remarkable, eclectic record collection soon to be available from Amoeba Records.

In May, I exchanged a few e-mails with Wojciech Pacula, editor of the Polish online magazine, High Fidelity.

We discussed publishing, music, hi-fi, and life. (I can’t believe I didn’t mention Natalie, Nicole, the Mets, or beer.) You can read the interview here. There are also lots of pictures of my listening room and gear, which you might find interesting.

Pacula did a great job with the images and the translation. I don’t look or sound too painfully ridiculous. Whew!

From time to time, I’ve written about my interest in cassettes. While I still haven’t purchased a Nakamichi cassette deck&#151the decks are out there, I’m just waiting for the right time and the right deck&#151I’ve nevertheless kept an eye on cassette trends. For a long while, I saw very specific, very underground labels releasing tapes; and, though new cassette-only labels seemed to pop up regularly, those, too, were extremely underground and extremely independent.

Fab.com is an e-commerce company devoted to all kinds of design-related items, from visual art to furniture to clothing. The company specializes in flash sales on trending themes, keeping its eager followers coming back daily. Ms. Little lets us know that Fab.com is now selling LPs and turntables&#151further evidence, as if we needed it, that vinyl’s increasing popularity has hit the mainstream.