hey, nice banjo. celebrate. i bought some new cds this weekend. with the downloading phenomenon in full effect the last cd i bought is beyond my memory. i think maybe the new gangstarr album awhile back. but this weekend i splurged and went to an actual music store and purchased actual cds. incredible. usually i can't justify spending ten to twelve dollars on "a hobby." it's either food or gas. and music is food for the soul but surprisingly it won't keep you alive. and the next time music makes my car go will be the first time. but on the other hand, you need music to live, you need it to stay alive. and so with that justification and more money in my pocket than usual i got four albums: the roots come alive, erykah badu's world wide underground, res and floetry live.



that last one i was sucked into. it was hanging out near the front and although i've never heard floetics, i heard it was either really good or just a knock off neo-soul thing. but i figured if it was live it must be decent. and the first track i listened to had mos on it so i was sold. the problem of going into the used/new record store is that i want to buy all this stuff that i used to have but lost. tribe, mos, talib, jill scott, janet, lucy pearl, lyricists lounge, digable...someone is stealing this stuff. stuff that i really really want back but can't imagine buying again. but then some albums are just so worth the eight dollars for the real copy.



i was also torn between what to limit my purchases to. my original intent was to get three used cds at the price of twenty five dollars but somehow i ended up with four at fifty. my math is fuzzy. i think i overspent my budget. it also kills me that maybe i should of had these albums before. but i'm so out of the music loop that the only way i can be back in is to buy my way back in. my life goals are everest-like, i know.



on the flip side of wanting to buy old albums lost, i wanted to get new albums i'd never heard before. but when i actually buy a cd i want to know that it is classic, that it is something great i can enjoy over and over. therein lies the problem of trying to reach out to find some cd that i want to try but nobody can tell me if it's good or not. alternately, it would help if all my friends had my musical tastes so i could just copy their cds but sadly, most of my friends (in san diego) have totally different musical tastes. actually, it's a bit incredible that you could get all of us together and we barely have any musical tastes that cross over. anyway.



so the experience of having four cds i'd never heard was kinda great. yes, it's the simple pleasures but really, listening to a cd for the first time, without any knowledge of the contents is kinda great. so far the roots come alive is ridiculous as i knew it would be. erykah is nice as i was sure she would be (although i kinda wanted her live album). res seems to be something that will conquer me with time. and floetry i'm sold on in the early tracks but i need to listen to it more to see if it's an album that will really stand out.



i'm on a female neo-soul r n b kick. there's just not enough good hip hop flying about that i have to get (outside of old albums i've never owned). so i'm turning to alternative options. actually the real moral of the story is that i need more money to buy cds. then again, i could use all that money on clothes, which is almost as important as music. then again i could eat, gas up, pay debts and conserve money for tomorrow's tomorrow. hum, what a idea.