Stephen Mejias

Music has never made me cry. I have cried while listening to music, with something else on my mind. But music, by itself, while powerfully moving, has never brought me to tears. When others mention that a certain piece of music, or a specific musical performance, touches them so deeply that the tears flow from their eyes, I wonder what it is, exactly, that is happening. What are these people feeling? And why haven't I felt it?

As I searched through the new arrivals at the Princeton Record Exchange, I kept coming back to this album. I knew nothing about Oscar Brown Jr.&#151had never even heard of the guy&#151but the pain communicated in the album title and cover art intrigued me. Even if it turned out that I didn't like the music, I'd at least get an interesting piece of art. And for just four bucks!

If you were to judge this album just by its cover, you might imagine the music inside to be weird and awesome. At least that's what I imagined. If you're like me, you'd be absolutely desitively right. Dr. John's Babylon is something else.

We recently posted all of our coverage of two classic turntables: The Rega">http://www.stereophile.com/turntables/184rega/">Rega P3 and the Sota">http://www.stereophile.com/turntables/284sotastar/">Sota Sapphire. And when I say "classic," I don't mean old. I mean timeless, unforgettable, enduring. Take a look at our Hot">http://www.stereophile.com/historical/709/index.html">Hot 100 list of all-time most important products, and you'll see that the British Rega ranks at number 30, while the all-American Sota stands proud at number 54. Our reviews of these turntables date back to 1984, and provide information that is still very much useful and interesting today.

Set times for tomorrow's East">http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/the_east_village_radio_music_… Village Radio Music Festival have been announced. Looks like this:

It's a good, good thing you">http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/the_rega_p3-24_iin_colouri/">… voted for green because that's the color I was going to pick anyway. It was a landslide. Foreshadowing of something greater, perhaps. (Yeah, you know what I'm talking about.)

And there's more. You remove the inner sleeves from the outer jacket to find not only are they sturdy and colorful, but they are accompanied by a large, full-color poster!