Happy Valentine’s Day.
In the March 2025 installment of Stereophile’s excellent “Re-Tales” column, author Julie Mullins highlights the hi-fi dealership Big Kids Toys, which now has a location in Fort Wright, Kentucky, to complement its original showroom in Greensboro, North Carolina. Julie speaks with 29-year-old sales manager Luke Sumerford — a big kid, himself — about what it takes to make hi-fi fun again.
“Big Kids Toys customers get a true in-home listening experience in a domestic setting,” she writes. “Such dealerships are almost always appointment-only, which makes it easier to focus completely on one customer at a time and to play whatever music they want to hear.”
Whatever music they want to hear? Scandalous!
Julie continues: “[Sumerford] believes that the industry at large isn’t doing a good job of connecting with people and communicating what’s great about owning a cool stereo system.”
Communicating?
Cool?
Stereo system?
What, pray tell, is happening here?
Julie explains: “It’s the music, music of all types. [Sumerford] views music as a way to meet people where they are. When choosing demo music, he considers what a particular customer might have listened to as they came of age.”
Radical concept.
So, what are we going to listen to today?
Richard Dawson: End of the Middle (Domino Recording Group)
Park Jiha: All Living Things (Glitterbeat Records)
Kelela: In the Blue Light (Warp Records)
Horsegirl: Phonetics On and On (Matador Records)
Bartees Strange: Horror (4AD)
Oracle Sisters: Divinations (Wizard Artists)
John Glacier: Like a Ribbon (Young)
The Altons: Heartache in Room 14 (Penrose Records)
John Patitucci, Chris Potter, & Brian Blade: Spirit Fall (Edition Records)
The Delines: Mr. Luck & Ms. Doom (El Cortez Records)
Westside Gunn: 12 (Griselda Records)
Sullivan Fortner: Southern Nights (Artwork Records)
Marshall Allen: New Dawn (Mexican Summer)
Mereba: The Breeze Grew a Fire (Secretly Canadian)
Candi Staton: Back to My Roots (Beracah Records)