Rent, Buy or Steal?

What Would Bob Do? - Colin Hay (mp3)

Blockbuster closed again. This is the third store in our area to shut down in the last year or so, and this one was close to our house.

When the previous one closed down, I asked the manager at this one how long she thought they’d survive, and she said, “Oh, there’s no plans to downsize us. We’re doing fairly well all things considered. We’ll be here a while.”

Apparently “a while” equals about half a year.

The two streams of commerce and popular culture continue to collide in strange and unprecedented ways as we try and figure out this concept called CONTENT.

When I buy the latest Matt Nathanson album on mp3, what do I own? What did I pay for?
When I buy a Kindle book, what do I own?
When I buy Season 1 of Archer on Amazon, what did I pay for?

Why do we, collectively, seem more comfortable owning books, renting movies, and stealing music?

When they have increasingly all just become slightly different versions of pop culture content? Rent, Buy or Steal?

These aren't new questions, but it fascinates me that I still don't quite know how to answer them, and I consider myself well past the midway point on the TechnoBell Curve.

Almost everyone I know who likes but doesn't love music spends 80% of their music time on Pandora. They don't have to buy anything, and they get to listen to something akin to the radio, and they don't have to make but a few decisions to do it.

People of all religions and income levels, with all levels of music love, steal music. They even call it "stealing music" and seem minimally bothered by it, apparently because it's not as blatantly wrong as walking into John Cusack's music store and physically having to enact the Five-Finger Discount. "Data Transfer" just doesn't sound as criminal.

This happens with movies, too, of course, but the film industry seems to have done a better job of getting ahead of the curve by giving consumers who prefer being honorable (and I think most consumers are like this) options to watch movies via the Internet without excessive cost.

At least three of every four friends of mine is on Netflix... for now. The ability to watch digital streams of unlimited movies and TV shows through the computer totally tipped the scales. Music has these options: Rhapsody, Napster, and the new kid to the US party, Spotify. But people don't seem quite as willing to pay rent for music rights.

Maybe it's about digestion. The longer it takes you to get through the content experience, the more obligated we feel, culturally, to own it. Books take the longest, so we still feel like it's only right to buy them. Songs mostly run five minutes or less, the equivalent of a few pages in a novel, so we don't feel so badly about just stealing them or trading them with friends like baseball cards. Movies, falling somewhere in the middle and not frequently re-experienced by the average fan, get rented.

I only know I feel like I'm somehow falling behind. One of my favorite pasttimes was to walk into Blockbuster, rifle through their Previously Viewed aisles looking for their best "2 for $20" or "4 for $20" offerings, and biting off a few fingernails while wondering if the DVDs I had picked out were really worth my 20 bucks. Two-thirds of the time, I'd walk back out with nothing and feel like I'd earned some small, meaningless moral victory of fiscal responsibility.

But those times when I do buy, the movies go home with me, and they get added to my ebbing and flowing bookshelf row of Movies To Watch, and I lovingly stack them and plan for my next late night viewing experience.

I was so distraught over Blockbuster's closure that I drove straight to Best Buy and bought the first two seasons of The West Wing, a show I've never seen, for $14.99 each. That's, like, $0.75 an episode, and I'd totally pay $1 to cut the 20 minutes of advertising out of any TV show I watched and to be able to watch it whenever I felt like it. This is a universally true statement.

I took home 45 episodes. They're mine. I own them. I'm an owner. I like owning things despite the flaws in the approach. My collection of some 200 DVD movies and some 20 boxes of TV shows loses value every day even as I cherish my ability to obsess over something as meager and laughable as DVDs, something that will one day be mentioned in the same breath as VHS.

But I've never been comfortable with renting. No matter how practical, it just doesn't feel right to me. Something about knowing it's mine, and that I acquired it legally and properly, and that it will always be there until I choose to get rid of it, that all just feels better to me.

Shopping with Bob, once again

"People pay for music these days?" --a friend


Here's how music can work: you go to hear a band you haven't heard, you like the band, you go and buy some of their music.

Here's how music can work: you hear a lot of buzz about an upcoming release, you check out a few songs, you are intrigued, you buy some songs.

Here's how music can work: you have a song from 40 years ago come into your head, you realize that you miss the song, so you track it down and get it.

Here's how music can work: an artist whom you haven't seen in a long time, whom you haven't had a chance to see, begins releasing a variety of live shows, and you reacquaint yourself with what he has been up to.

Here's how music can work: when they were young, you exposed your children to a lot of different kinds of music; now that they are grown, they return the favor and you hear some music that you'd never had discovered on your own that you really like.

All of which is a long-winded way of saying that my love affair with eMusic continues. Six bucks ($5.99 actually) gets me 12 songs a month, plus I bought one of their value packs that got me another 40 songs for about 40 cents a song, and I've been using it to add to the ever-growing Ipod summer mix. Here are some of the highlights:

Tab Benoit--"Lost In Your Lovin'(live)" (mp3)

After seeing a scorching live show from Mr. Benoit at Riverbend, I owned 24 of his songs the next day. I have a friend who continues on a mission to find the next Stevie Ray Vaughn and is continually disappointed by the next generation of white blues shredders, and I admit to sharing a somewhat less-consuming desire to find a great blues guitarist whom I haven't heard. But now I know that man is Benoit. Playing in a style that blends blues, r + b, and Cajun influences, he makes the blues fun again. Right now, I can't think of a better live show I've seen on a hot, hot summer night. The song I've chosen kicks of with these memorable lyrics:

She's got a bad way of doin' me good,

I can't help myself.

The National--"Conversation 16" (mp3)

Some critics and listeners are apparently befuddled by the popularity of The National. I'm not. They sing damn good songs with memorable melodies and mysterious lyrics. When has that not been a recipe for success (think R.E.M.). "Conversation 16" starts with two very pretty stanzas that open with

I think the kids are in trouble

I don't know what all the troubles are for

before morphing into different melodies for the second half of the song, which dwells on the memorable, repeated line, "I was afraid I'd eat your brains."

Hot Tuna--"New Song (For The Morning) (live 2003)" (mp3)

Jorma Kaukonen has always been one of my guitar heroes, especially on the acoustic. Splitting from the Jefferson Airplane was the best decision he and bassist Jack Casady ever made, since it freed them to pursue a sound that blended traditional blues and roots music with some of the wildest electric music ever played. The band seems to play mostly acoustic now, and it has been good to check back in with them. "New Song (For The Morning)" was one of my favorites from their very first album, and it is good to hear them revisit it as part of this very good live show from 2003. I'm not sure it's a CD, per say, may only be available from sites like eMusic.

Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young--"Almost Cut My Hair" (mp3)

One of the top contenders for the most outrageously-glorious hippie songs ever written, "Almost Cut My Hair" deserves a spot in the post for both the blistering guitar interplay between Stills and Young and for Crosby's impassioned lyrics:

Almost cut my hair

It happened just the other day

It was gettin' kinda long

I coulda said it was in my way

But I didn't and I wonder why

I guess I feel like letting my freak flag fly

God, I love those lyrics. A fresh listen will remind you that Crosby is absolutely singing this from the heart with pure conviction. If you've never felt like letting your freak flag fly, maybe there's still time.

Colin Meloy--"We Both Go Down Together (live)" (mp3)

I've enjoyed the occasional Decemberists' song here or there over the past few years, especially "The Crane Wife" and "16 Military Wives," but I was intrigued when I stumbled across the singer's solo show on eMusic. The typical Decemberist song seems to be so weighty and even melodramatic, so there was something refreshing about hearing some of them stripped down and presented like this. I like Meloy's stage presence, too. It sounds like he doesn't take himself to seriously.

I've bought some good stuff this year so far; I hope you enjoy hearing this little sampling and that it sends you off on your own searches.

A Lowdown, No Good Peace Offering

Jakob Dylan--"Everybody's Hurting" (mp3)
The Hold Steady--"Constructive Summer" (mp3)
Trashcan Sinatras--"Oranges and Apples" (mp3)

I have believed and acted upon all of the following beliefs, at times, somewhat chronologically and, at times, somewhat simultaneously:

1. Music should be bought and paid for.

2. Burning a CD of music that I got from somewhere else is no different than recording a cassette tape of music I got from somewhere else is no different from loading my Ipod with music I got from somewhere else. No one was ever prosecuted for his or her personal collection of self-recorded cassette tapes.

3. If I once owned a song or a bunch of songs in 45, 33, cassette, or CD form, it is fair for me to take free copies of that song or those songs that become available.

4. Music can be freely downloaded, if I only dowload music that was not available for sale (ex. live music, demos, outtakes, etc.).

5. It is okay to download music for free, if I do not intend to distribute it.

6. It is not okay for me to use the "lack of money" argument as a justification to steal music.

7. It is okay for me to buy some music and take other music for free. Corollary: if a musician performs at my school or at my house, I always buy the CDs rather than burn them from someone else.

8. It is okay to take music from other blogs to use on my blog.

9. It is okay to take music from other blogs to use in my mixes and to put on my Ipod.

10. I will buy an entire CD, but it may be okay to take the random song that comes my way (I say take, rather than steal, because so often now, the first song or two from a new CD is put out on a website as a free offering). I know, full well, however, that in a piecemeal fashion, I may acquire the entire CD over time for free.

11. It is the obligation of the music industry to protect music that it wants to protect from free sharing.

12. It is the obligation of the music listener to protect music by "doing the right thing."

There has been some discord on this blog recently, albeit anonymous, concerning how we or others do business, involving the procuring of and sharing of music. The comments "Nice to post any stolen song you feel like" and "Must be nice to just steal your music from other people" seemed to get other commentators (including me) cranked up.

Probably underlying the communal discomfort about Mr. or Ms. Anonymous' pithy remarks are their black and white implications. We infer from those comments the following perspective: #1 and #12 on the list above are the only acceptable statements. Statements #2 through #11 are either admissions of outright theft or equivocations justifying outright theft.

For most of us, equivocators or not, the issue of how we get our music is much more complicated than that. I'll wager that most of you carry around several simultaneous, irreconcilable perspectives, just like I do.

And, I imagine ethicists would or do have a field day with this issue.

Because, sure, it would be easiest if we just followed #1. But that would be in a world where we could put all of our Halloween candy in a bowl on our front porches with notes that read "One per person, please," while we head out to take in a movie and spare ourselves the annoyance of continual knocking on our doors. The fact is, we not only stay home to protect our candy, we also stay home to protect our homes.

While certainly I am not condoning basic thievery, I am also not naive enough to deny its very existence. When the cat is away, the mice will play. If you are not going to lock your door, Mr. Homeowner or Mrs. Music Company, eventually, perhaps sooner rather than later, someone is going to check to see if the door is locked. If I should not go onto hypem.com, find a song that fits my blog post, go to the blog that has posted it, download it, and then use it on this blog, it is up to the gigantic, multinational music corporations to prevent me. I hope they don't, though, because I'm certainly not trying to hurt them, and may be helping them. It's unclear. I'm just taking advantage of the technology that allows a person to listen to the song(s) I've posted while he or she reads my post.

If you disagree, that's fine; I don't think my position is particularly supportable, schizophrenic as it is.

Anyway, by way of a compromise, here's a bit of a peace offering. If you have never ventured onto the incredible site called Daytrotter, you have missed an opportunity to hear, live in the studio or live on location, some of the finest bands going these days, often of an alternative nature, the kinds of bands that bloggers like, but also some pretty established artists, one that I happen to like like Aimee Mann. And the good news is, you can also download the songs for free and completely legally.

You can get 4-5 songs from someone, usually songs that you like as well as songs that are new, in crisp, performance versions that dovetail nicely from the studio versions that the artists have just recorded. I've offered a few examples in the songs above.

At the risk of speaking for Billy, the music industry really needs to figure out how to best serve people like us. Not only are we significant consumers of their musical products (I, for example, purchase regularly from Itunes, eMusic, and Amazon), but we spend a fair amount of time promoting and highlighting those products from the past, present, and future. For free.

All of the songs above come from the artists' Daytrotter.com sessions.

He's a Hoarder

It's My Own Cheating Heart That Makes Me Cry - Glasvegas (mp3)

My name is Billy, and I'm a music hoarder. ("Hi Billy.") I've been a music hoarder for going on two years now.

If you haven't, in a fit of late-night tossing and turning, found yourself watching a little of A&E's show Hoarders, then bully for you. But if you have, then you've seen some screwed-up tales of incredibly screwed-up people whose houses have become overrun with, to bastardize U2, all that they can't leave behind.

Houses where every square inch is covered with trash, or boxes, or belongings in various states of decay. Floors piled sometimes four and six inches high with it, so thick and long-trampled that it's like an extra few layers of cushion. A mess so horrendous that mice, rats, sometimes bigger pests have passed entire generations through the experience. Some people can't even bear to throw away their own fecal matter.

Anyone who has visited my home on a normal chaotic day will know that I ain't makin' fun of these folks. We are very much a "there but for the grace of God..." kind of family on this one. Our house is rarely immaculate. Our house is usually quite disheveled. And by "disheveled," I mean fucking messy. But I see these people on Hoarders and I think, Hmmm... we ain't so bad after all...

No, I watch this show for some of the same reasons I watch Supernanny: to witness a cautionary tale of what we cannot allow to happen to us.

I learned growing up with two massively screwed-up step-brothers that sometimes we learn the right path by witnessing first-hand where the wrong paths lead. Sometimes we learn what best to do by learning what not to do and how not to do it.

Hoarders -- and according to the show there's an estimated 3 million of them in the US -- have a mental illness. I would have laughed at that suggestion a decade ago, but now I firmly believe it to be true. Still, that illness places them only a hair's breadth from the sane and normal world in which most of us live.

But back to my original point.

Since I started blogging with Bob, I have become a music hoarder.

This is due to a perfect storm of events: (1) the rise of the almighty iPod as the centerpiece of a music lover's life; (2) the starting up of a music-themed blog where we aim to post songs with every musing we make; (3) the increasingly narrow window of time in my life where I can sit down, uninterrupted (by my own urges or those of my friends and family), and simply listen to and savor music.

In my younger days of albums and cassette tapes, I would buy something and listen to it several dozen times in the first week. I can remember having the entire words to Rush's Hold Your Fire memorized before the first weekend of ownership had concluded. This memorization was done with the same kind of pride and conviction that some people ascribe to memorizing lines of Shakespeare or entire Robert Frost poems.

As my obsession with females became less of a theoretical notion worried over in the isolation of my bedroom, and as I passed through high school and then college and then into the precious career world, I simply couldn't sit with my back against a wall, album liner notes and lyric sheet in my hands, studying every line break and chorus. Then, suddenly I not only had a job, but I had kids and obligations that went beyond the work day and the family life, and what time I stubbornly fought to keep for myself was devoted to going out and getting beer with friends or watching a movie or playing some mindless video game. Memorizing the lyrics to a Rush album suddenly became the punchline to some twisted joke about having way too much fucking free time on your hands.

With my first iPod and initial trip into iTunes, I was only downloading 1-5 songs from most of my CDs. The idea of wasting precious hard drive real estate on the detritus of albums, even "pretty good" albums, felt foolish. Who listens to "Rats" off Pearl Jam's second album all that much anyway, right?*

On my first iPod, I knew every song I'd placed on it. Not just the name of the song and the artist, knew it. On my latest iPod, I'm fast approaching the 8,000-song mark, and probably 10-15% of the songs I couldn't tell you the artist and song title. Sometimes I don't know either, mostly thanks to all the free stuff given to me through BOTG.

"In the old days," even if I didn't like a CD I'd purchased, I could trade it in at McKay's, get some trade value out of it, and let myself believe that CD would find a happy home, like a pound puppy. Buying them digitally, however, changes the game. My only choices are to keep it or delete it forever, to wipe it out of existence, to declare it to have zero worth.

That's tough for me to do. I just can't declare a song I purchased worthless, even if it actually is worthless, gathering cobwebs in the dark recesses of my iPod. I am incapable of declaring something that I've paid for to be utterly worthless.

* -- This is a rhetorical question and does not need to be answered by nutty Pearl Jam-ites who happen to think "Rats" is the most brilliant work of musical art since Mozart wrote kick-ass requiems.

Worst. Music Purchase. Ever.

Pop Lie - Okkervil River (mp3)
Awful - Hole (mp3)

Ballpark figure, I've added more than 700 songs to my music collection in just the past year. By contrast, in the early part of this decade, I was generally buying an album a month, sometimes less. Maybe 100-150 songs a year. So I've easily quintupled the amount of music I'm buying/acquiring since Bob and I started this blog.

Anytime you acquire that much music over such a small period of time, it's unreasonable to expect to be completely happy with every purchase. Sometimes, what will one day become a favorite album is originally acquired at a time when it doesn't touch the right nerve for you, and it lingers unappreciated on your digital shelf. But other times, you buy something with enthusiasm or interest, give the thing a half-dozen spins into your eardrums, and watch as it quickly fades into the ether. It probably doesn't suck; it's just not all that great, or it's not what you had hoped it would be. That is to say, it just disappoints.

Here are just four of my disappointing purchases from the past year:

• Cheap Trick's latest album, The Latest (Amazon - $8.99) -- This isn't a bad album. Some songs are darn catchy. But I guess there's nothing in there that I haven't heard before, and it's mostly variations on a beloved theme, but one I've practically memorized. It's like someone riffing on a new version of "Chopsticks."
• Colin Hay's Are You Lookin' At Me? -- Hay's Going Somewhere is precisely one of those records that sat gathering dust on my shelf for several years before a chance encounter inspired me to give it another spin, and that second go-round found Colin speaking to me very directly in some ways. I found out about this album a year late, but whatever connection I felt with his previous album is almost completely absent this time around. It's busier, trying harder to be clever, and less intense.
  
• White Rabbits' It's Frightening -- This is a decent album. Nothing bad about it, really. Some good songs. But I listen to it and think... SPOON. I might not be right about that, and it might not be fair, but that's the beauty of owning our own opinions.
• U2's No Line on the Horizon -- If you need an explanation, you didn't listen to the album.

Don't misunderstand. I don't name these albums and harbor ill will or deep regret. They might have missed the mark with me, or they might have failed to reach my level of expectations, but rarely if ever do I feel ripped off for buying music. In fact, I can only think of one time in the last five or six years when I bought something and found myself frothing with anger and frustration that I had wasted my money on it: Franz Ferdinand's self-titled debut album, Franz Ferdinand.

Five years after buying it, hearing their name still makes me bristle. I can't even listen to the couple of songs off the album that I thought were OK, because hearing them just reminds me that I wasted $10 to buy the whole damn miserable thing.

That my anger about this has flown way beyond rational proportions is without question. There's absolutely no reason to get all that upset. I've had dozens of meals that cost me more than $10 and sucked a lot worse than Franz Ferdinand. Hell, I've bought other albums that were worse than Franz Ferdinand.

Yet this album sticks out so far beyond the pale of badness in my mind.

Why?? Truth is, I'm not sure. Maybe it's because all these people kept telling me how awesome it was. Maybe it's because it was so critically acclaimed. Maybe it's because their first single seemed so catchy and clever. All I know is that, after five or six listens, I was fighting my dislike of their music much like I imagine a gay teenager fights admitting that he or she is gay. I knew deep down in my heart that I disliked the album, but I just couldn't bring myself to admit it. So I kept listening, kept trying to find ways to like it. In the end, all this did was make me hate Franz Ferdinand even more.

When their sophomore album tanked, I took unusual and cruel joy in their tanking.

Maybe some of y'all are, but I'm not a guy who roots against artists very often. Music is like the PGA. Musicians aren't competing against one another. Golfers compete against the course, and musicians compete against the culture and the creative curve and their own inner demons. It's difficult for me to root against anyone in that line of work.*

So why such vitriol against Franz Ferdinand?

Honestly, I don't really know. I only know their music annoys me and that everytime I recall paying actual spendable cash for the ability to own their music, I throw up in my mouth a little.

Anyone else have this experience, perhaps not with Franz, but with another artist or band? I'd love to know.

* -- Britney Spears and other "artists" whose sole job is to be an almost mindless and thoughtless thoroughfare for other people's writing and musical vision and production values are not Musicians. They are very crafty and successful prostitutes, or mannequins with voices. This isn't me being snotty. It's me acknowledging the difference between someone who creates and someone through whom others create. This is precisely why so many successful actors dream of being musicians, because they sense the freedom to express themselves as opposed to playing a role handed to them by others. (And, likewise, famous "musicians" often become actors because they find it easier to play a role than to maintain a unique voice.)

Just Good Songs

I was having a casual conversation with a friend at the football game on Friday night, and he made the passing comment that he figured that I knew about "about a million places to get free music," but wanted to tell me about another one.

"Actually," I said, I hope not moralistically, "I buy most of my music. Itunes and eMusic and occasionally Amazon."

He looked amazed, even incredulous. I couldn't tell if he didn't believe me or if he thought I was an idiot. Or both. So I tried to adjust: "You know, I do borrow songs from Hypem from time to time to post when I need a song on a particular topic and do a search there."

But this is not a post about the ethics of buying vs. stealing music. I'd venture that everyone is compromised on that one to one degree or another, including the creators and promoters of the music themselves.

Back in the summer in Chicago, when wandering around the Pitchfork Music Festival sipping on a microbrew and waiting for Yo La Tengo to come on stage (Note to self: attending music festivals alone is not fun), one of the many people there handing out stuff gave me an eMusic card, promising me 25 free downloads from that site. I was mildly interested, put it in my pocket, then forgot about it until I was preparing to do my laundry later that week. Within a few minutes of finding it, I was logged on and shopping for music. I quickly learned that eMusic, though the prices are 50% cheaper, is no Itunes.

eMusic is just like Big Lots. While it has some artists and CD that you recognize, most of the site seems to consist of the "off brands" and "remainders" that entice buys to go into that discount store. You type "NeilYoung" into the search engine, you ain't finding him. You type in someone like Ryan Adams, you may only find the occasional song of his from a little-known compilation.

eMusic is just like Sam's Club. When you find a product that you want, you may have to buy in much larger bulk that what you really want. It's the classic bargain that ends up costing you more money. Now, Itunes also will keep you from being able to buy certain songs individually, but usually just because the songs are too long timewise for Apple to justify a $.99 download. Itunes figures you're getting a steal if you can get Yes' 20-minute opus "Close To The Edge" for such a cheap prices. On eMusic, you're more likely to be forced to purchase an entire CD to get one song if that song is in some way "highly desireable." Case in point: the second disc of The Essential Bruce Springsteen has a number of songs that you can't find anywhere else, things like his cover of Elvis' "Viva Las Vegas." So that's a song you can't buy.

You probably think I'm being critical; I'm not. What I've come to really like about eMusic is how its restrictions and omissions push me into directions I would not have gone. While I assured myself back in July that I was going to get the 25 free downloads and leave eMusic forever, the convoluted disengagement process they make you go through kept me on the line just enough that I went for their cheapest monthly package--12 songs for $6. And, as I found out the hard way, if you don't download the 12 songs during that month, you lose them.

So, on or around the 3rd of every month, I go on an eMusic hunt. It's a weird sort of set of conditions--I don't have much time, I'm not going to find what I'm looking for, so I need to look for something else that I'll like just as much, and if I don't do it soon, I'll lose everything.

Here's just a sampling of where I ended up last month:

David Bazan--"Hard To Be" (mp3) If most Contemporary Christian music were anything like this guy, I'd be one of its biggest supporters. But Bazan, unlike most of the current shlockmeisters, is a searcher. Most of his stuff has come out using the moniker Pedro the Lion, but as he has become more questioning, more willing to express his doubts and to challenge himself and us, he has shifted to his own name. This song has quite an interesting melody that sticks with you, but at the same time, he makes quite a journey across his own spiritual landscape.

"You’ve heard the story you know how it goes
Once upon a garden we were lovers with no clothes
Fresh from the soil we were beautiful and true
In control of our emotions to till we ate the poison fruit"

Bobby Bare, Jr.--"I'll Be Around" (mp3) I didn't know and don't know much of anything about this guy. His name made me think of someone from the 60's or 70's, maybe that was his dad (?) and so I didn't pay any attention to him at all. But, again, the eMusic links suggested him as a fine songwriter in the tradition of someone else I was looking for. I can't even remember who it was. And then I started reading on the site and listening, and before I knew it, I had a couple of his songs, including a Smiths cover. "I'll Be Around" should be repetitious and tiresome, given its length and structure, but, instead, it's infectious and rewarding.

"When you can't recognize
your face in the morning light
I'll be around
on your way down"

Robert Forster--"Alone" (mp3) As part of my ever-expanding appreciation for someone's ability to cover a song and make it their own, I came across this guy while searching for a Grant Hart song that had been done by Marshall Crenshaw, but, of course, eMusic didn't have those better-known versions. But their links and suggestions took me to this guy, who used to write songs with Grant McLennan (before McLennan died) in the Go-Betweens and after. Here, he takes one of those Heart ballads from the 80's and gives it his own take.

"How do I get you alone?"

Sometimes, in the high-fashion and high-glamour world of blogging, among all of the accolades and hero-worship I get, I lose focus about what it is we're trying to accomplish here. Somehow, getting onto the eMusic site with six bucks or twelve songs to spend and not wanting to make one bad choice gets me back on track, and then I remember what we're doing. Just trying to write some good writing. Just trying to find and play some good songs.