Um, CDs?

Weekend Assignment: What are some of the most recent music albums you have bought? Name up to three. Note that I said "bought" -- I want to know what music you've liked so much that you've actually shelled out cash for them.

Extra Credit: Did you buy these albums on CD, or did you get them online through iTunes or another music service?

This will be one of my rare short-answer entries. (Well, that was the plan, anyway.)

The only strictly music "album" I remember buying in the past three years or so is the soundtrack CD of the Buffy music episode, Once More With Feeling. I've also bought it in book form, and on DVD as part of Season Six of BtVS. When I was still at Worldwide Travel, I played the CD so often that a co-worker begged me to stop.

Nowaways I have it on my iPod, excluding the orchestral bits from three other episodes that round out the CD. This was strictly a matter of being out of room on the iPod, not the result of disliking the music from "Restless," "Hush," and "The Gift."


Oh, come to think of it, I bought Judy Collins' In My Life at about the same time. This was one of my favorite LPs in college. (Hi, Howard!) The title track is a Beatles song, of course, but that's not the point. Judy does cool versions of songs by Bob Dylan and L. Cohen, Farina, Brel, Brecht, and all sorts of folks here. I'm especially fond of Pirate Jenny and Liverpool Lullaby. Pirate Jenny is a hoot, as the hotel maid plots the death of all the guests at the hands of her imaginary pirate minions. Katie Specks would not approve, I'm fairly certain, but it's a fun song.


Whoops! One more. Last year I bought Elton John's Madman Across the Water. I've loved it ever since I won the LP from WOLF back in eighth grade. I've often fantasized about making a short film (later, a music video) based on the title track. The hits, such as they were, consisted of Levon and Tiny Dancer, but I really like the whole album. Even Indian Sunset, which is about as culturally inaccurate as the Raiders' Indian Reservation and even more sentimentalized, is a very pretty and powerful piece of music. (Try saying that ten times fast.)



Aside from that, I bought a Stones compilation a few years ago, but let John talk me into returning it, on the grounds that we have most of the material elsewhere. I bought a Pirates of the Caribbean CD at Disneyland in (I think) 2004, but that's partly spoken word. And John gave me the other three CDs in the picture above, plus Brian Wilson's Smile. Sad to say, I found the two Wilson offerings a little disappointing.

Fact is, there's very little music recorded since 1982 that means anything to me. We already have every legitimate Beatles CD except retread compilations, every Clash CD, some Harry Chapin, and lots of other stuff. So I end up buying very little music. I've got the music the matters, thank-you-very-much. I'd like a few more Talking Heads CDs, and Simon & Garfunkel's Bookends, but that's about it.

Yes, I've become a stodgy old music snob. But the more John and I probe the question, "Are we missing something extraordinary?" the more we come up with the answer, "No, not really."

Extra Credit: The above are all CDs, obviously. My one iTunes purchase was a spoken word item, a Robin Williams / Harlan Ellison dramatization of Harlan's "Repent, Harlequin! Said the Ticktockman."

Must sleep now. Good night!


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