March 2025
A little more than a month ago, SoundStage! publisher Doug Schneider posted a message on Facebook that caught my attention. To be honest, I usually look out for Doug’s posts—they let me know what’s going on at the SoundStage! Network, and in the audio industry in general. This one hit home because it referred to something that has always been at the root of my interest in hi-fi.
February 2025
Polydor / Fiction Records / Capitol Records 00602475036746
Format: CD
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
Songs of a Lost World is the Cure’s first album of new songs in 16 years. The group has released a couple of live albums and a few random singles since the last studio album, 4:13 Dream (2008), and has toured off and on. Robert Smith, the Cure’s leader and the one consistent member over its nearly 50-year history, announced a new album several times in interviews since 2008, but it never materialized.
February 2025
Rick Beato is a musician, producer, recording-studio owner, and guitar instructor. His YouTube channel, which Beato established in 2015, has 4.7 million subscribers. On the channel, Beato has covered a lot of subjects in the last ten years, diving into everything from music theory to the current state of the recording industry. Beato has become so popular and well established that he’s been able to interview famous musicians on his show, including David Gilmour, jazz guitarist Mike Stern, Rick Wakeman, and Tori Amos.
January 2025
Having worked with artists as diverse as Bon Jovi and Wynton Marsalis and helped define the musical signatures of late-career Chick Corea and Wayne Shorter as a member of their bands, bassist John Patitucci has cachet that few other rhythm-section players achieve. His tone, technique, and imagination are all exceptional.
January 2025
Craft Recordings / Milestone Records CR00767
Format: LP
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
I hadn’t heard of the Uruguayan jazz trio Opa until Craft Recordings reissued the group’s US debut, Goldenwings, in its Jazz Dispensary Top Shelf series. The label’s audiophile series has returned a few lesser-known albums by well-regarded jazz musicians, such as Joe Henderson and Woody Shaw, to vinyl. It has also brought back work by artists who deserve wider renown, including pianist Patrice Rushen.
January 2025
In my November Pulse! column, I made a prediction about the Capital Audiofest, which took place over the weekend of November 8–10 in Rockville, MD, a suburb of Washington, DC. “I can tell you what I’ll hear,” I wrote. “Diana Krall, Sting, Texas Flood by Stevie Ray Vaughan (the Acoustic Sounds reissue), Kind of Blue (Acoustic Sounds again), any number of MoFi titles, and so on.”
January 2025
Capitol Records—T 2080 Apple Records / Universal Music Group International 0602468019756
Format: LP
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
The Beatles’ conquest of America in 1964 happened so quickly, it caught the band and its record company, Capitol Records, by surprise. Capitol Records was the US subsidiary of EMI Records, whose Parlophone label had enjoyed unprecedented success with the group in England. Those records, distributed in the US by Vee Jay and Swan, did not do well at first. But “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” which Capitol reluctantly agreed to release after passing up the group’s first three singles, turned out to be a massive hit. And American teens demanded more.
December 2024
Verve Records 602468047353.1
Format: CD
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
Few jazz musicians have been as exhaustively documented on recordings as Charlie Parker, known to his contemporaries as “Bird.” We are some distance from the aura of magic and romanticism that surrounded his very real accomplishments, which makes it hard to grasp how much he influenced other musicians and how revolutionary his music was. Jimi Hendrix’s impact and enduring place in rock music is perhaps a more recent parallel.
December 2024
In 1963, after two years of work at a local television station, Lee Mendelson and Sheldon Fay Jr. embarked on a production venture of their own, Lee Mendelson Film Productions (LMFP), in Burlingame, California, about a 25-minute drive from San Francisco.
December 2024
I spent 1964 obsessed with becoming a drummer. Unfortunately, my inspiration was Dave Clark when it should have been Tony Williams. While Clark was already a veteran at 24 when his quintet caught the big wave the Beatles had started, Williams was a mere 17 when he burst out as the new drummer in Miles Davis’s quintet around the same time.
December 2024
Craft Recordings / Original Jazz Classics / Riverside Records CR00725
Format: LP
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
At first glance, it seems odd to see tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins listed in the credits for Monk’s Music, a 1957 release by the Thelonious Monk Septet on Riverside Records. But while it’s easy to think of Hawkins as a swing-era player—his career began in the early 1920s—he did play with bebop musicians in the ’40s and in 1944 led a session that featured Monk on piano.
November 2024
Pacific Jazz—ST 10, Blue Note Records 602448650498
Format: LP
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
Blue Note’s Tone Poet series is in its fifth year, and producer Joe Harley is reaching deep into the label’s catalog to reissue some wonderful but often undervalued jazz recordings. In addition, the Tone Poet series continues to include jazz titles from other labels that have over the years become part of Blue Note’s holdings, including Pacific Jazz and United Artists.
November 2024
If you spend any time on the internet—and since you’re reading an article on the SoundStage! Network, I’m assuming you do—you start to get ads and links to articles that are targeted to your interests. A banner at the side of my email homepage includes links to Audio Advisor, Music Direct, and other audio dealers. Facebook throws more stuff at me than I can possibly keep up with, and a big portion of it has to do with high-end audio.
November 2024
Peter Guralnick’s essential book on Southern soul, Sweet Soul Music (1986), begins with a long rumination on, among other things, what defines the music. After giving some background on his reasons for writing the book and the research it required, he wrote: “I suppose I should make it clear from the outset that when I speak of soul music, I am not referring to Motown, a phenomenon almost exactly contemporaneous, but appealing far more to a pop, white, and industry-slanted kind of audience.
Page 2 of 33
SoundStage! Xperience is part of
All contents available on this website are copyrighted by SoundStage!® and Schneider Publishing Inc., unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved.
This site was designed by JoomlaShack, Karen Fanas, and The SoundStage! Network.
To contact us, please e-mail info@soundstagenetwork.com
