Stephen Mejias

The drive home from Montreal and the Salon Son & Image show is smooth and uneventful. The snow kindly stops just as John Atkinson and I climb into his Land Cruiser, the woman at Customs lets us into the US with little fanfare, and, there isn't much to set the heart racing. Every fifty or so miles, the highway's long dividing guardrail is punctuated by some enormous brown bird—a once majestic body that owned the sky is now slung awkwardly and pitifully over cold steel. It's sad that something so beautiful and strong can die so quietly. But quiet abounds out here. The sky seems to move nearly as fast as we do, clouds cling to tall mountains, and winds tug at the Cruiser's tires.

At around 1pm on July 10, 1964&#151almost exactly 45 years ago&#151percussionist Sunny Murray, bassist Gary Peacock, and saxophonist Albert Ayler met at the Variety Arts Recording Studio just off of Times Square to record what would become the first jazz release for Benard Stollman's ESP-Disk. The studio was tiny and cramped and its walls were covered with Latin album covers and its doors were open so that the musicians could breathe. Can you imagine how hot it must have been?

The sound of women singing. I love them all, always have:

Digital sales rep, Jon Banner, just shared with me this bit of beautiful brilliance.

I just got off the phone with Nathaniel Friedman, a writer working on a "vinyl revival" piece scheduled to appear in an upcoming issue of <i>Penthouse</i>, that finest of fine men's periodicals. I think it went fairly well. If nothing else, it gives me an excuse to buy the magazine.

Lyle Owerko likes boomboxes.

One of the records we listened to <a href="http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/at_the_monkeyhaus/">at the Monkeyhaus</a> last week was Sonny & Linda Sharrock's <i>Paradise</i>&#151a powerfully uplifting record, in my opinion. Sonny Sharrock, however, did not feel the same. In a 1989 interview with WKCR's Ben Ratliff, Sonny dismissed <i>Paradise</i> as being "not a good album," and attributed the album's failure to his own incompetence as a bandleader.