The new CDs are here!

Joy of joys — my Amazon order arrived today!

Like anybody else, I love to shop — I love to buy clothes, furniture, gadgets for the kitchen. I like to buy presents. I like to buy souvenirs when we travel.

But there is something special about buying books and music. Let me loose in a book store and it's like hitting a time warp — all bets are off as to when I'll come out. If we take our children into a bookstore, we all scatter. For the girls, and their parents, it's like a little piece of heaven.

So, while shopping online isn't quite the same, sometimes it's worth it. Especially when you're shopping for a CD or book that is sort of obscure, might be out of print, or at the very least, not stocked by your basic mainstream bookstore.

I got a hankering the other day to listen to Lone Justice, an album I loved way back in 1985. It was alternative and edgy, part of the cow-punk sound that was big around that time. I have the LP, and the band's follow up, and they used to be played often.

But at the moment we don't have our turntable hooked up. And I am even in the midst of debating the future of our vinyl collection — all four linear feet of them. I love them, many of them, but we don't play them. Sound quality, perhaps, but mostly convenience. Who wants to put a record on the turntable, turn it over 20 minutes later, put it back in the sleeve, when you can pop in a disc? Or — even better — pop in six and listen for hours?

So I decided to splurge and, for a mere $6.99, replace the aged vinyl with a shiny new CD. No big cover art, but no skips. And I can enjoy Maria McKee's voice once again. She's a bit like Janice Joplin meets Dolly Parton singing Tom Petty; in fact, Tom Petty wrote one of their biggest hits (Ways to be Wicked) and Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench of the Heartbreakers play on a couple of tracks; that distinctive organ sound is a dead give-away.

I also ordered best of the English Beat — this is what happens when one discovers VH-1 classic. And, in the spirit of embracing Texas, I got the best of Buddy Holly. Once again, replacing the vinyl version.

Now we can upload these tracks to the computer and get them into iTunes, onto the iPod. Now I can relive my college music days, when the search for new music was the all-important quest. And now I don't have to buy Gary about getting the turntable hooked up.