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How a Phoenix Record Store Owner Set the Audiophile World on Fire

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by Geoff Edgers Mike Esposito still won’t say who gave him the tip about the records. But on July 14, he went public with an explosive claim. In a sometimes halting video posted to the YouTube channel of his Phoenix record shop, the ‘In’ Groove, Esposito said that “pretty reliable sources” told him that MoFi (Mobile Fidelity), the Sebastopol, Calif., company that has prided itself on using original master tapes for its pricey reissues, had actually been using digital files in its production chain. In the world of audiophiles — where provenance is everything and the quest is to get as close to the sound of an album’s original recording as possible — digital is considered almost unholy. And using digital while claiming not to is the gravest sin a manufacturer can commit. There was immediate pushback to Esposito’s video, including from some of the bigger names in the passionate audio community. Shane Buettner, owner of Intervention Records, another company in the reissue business, defend...

Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man

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Back in 2002 I visited a friend Luis who worked as a tatoo artist on Hollywood Blvd. I snapped some pictures of him at his workstation using a disposable camera, and recently came upon them. It turns out they are great photos! I've also included a picture of his then girlfriend Maritza.

The Difference Between Metal and Heavy Metal

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History of Heavy Metal: The Difference Between Metal and Heavy Metal by Preston Cram Heavy metal may be the most widely misunderstood form of music in Western culture, and its identity has grown increasingly obscure over the past four decades as fans, journalists, and musicians have continued calling new and more divergent stylistic evolutions by the same name. The result is the all-too-familiar experience for fans of metal music to strike up a conversation with each other only to discover that they share no common interests in music. Despite the frequent use of "metal" and "heavy metal" as interchangeable terms, it's relevant and accurate to think of them as their own categories of music. Fortunately, the difference between them is easy to understand by looking back over the history of heavy metal. Dio - "Stand Up and Shout" (1983) Note: The formation and naming of new genres is always a messy process and much easier to parse with hindsight, and so th...