Written on my very own computer! Holy crap!! I'm catching up with the technological times!!! I should take a picture of this right now!!!! Wait, I will get my roommate to do it!!!!!!

OK, we just took the picture, I will post it sometime!!!!!! Wow!!!!!!!

Anyhow, it's seven weeks into the New Year, and as usual, it's a slow time for new music releases. All right, I haven.t been looking very hard, but this is always the slowest time of the year for new releases. I'm merely fulfilling my usual January/February music conditioning requirements. True, I'm technically in the poor house until I pay for this computer, so I shouldn't even be thinking about buying new stuff, but how can I not when the music is so cheap?

But there's more to it than that . I'm not looking for any music, period. Nothing specific, that is. I've been wandering around the city with no shopping list, no target artists, not even an inkling of what I'm aiming to buy. I don't know what I want, but I'm willing to flip through rack after rack of used CD's in order to find it. I must be functioning permanently in West Coast shopping mode. This is the frame of mind to be in for buying old classics such as The Who's "Live at Leeds" and the second Portishead album, both of which I'd never heard before (making them SNH's of sorts). As for today, visited Sonic Boom and stole some CD's from them. No, I didn't shoplift, but I might as well have stolen them for the prices I paid. Ten discs, forty-five dollars. That.s practically an Amoeba-level bargain. Many of those were from the inauspicious cardboard bins they place at the cash and listening stations, and they're mainly filled with promo copies that are selling for outrageously low sums. The bins appear so shoddy, and the discs are wrapped in plastic instead of jewel cases, so most people don't even bother looking there. But today I found several gems, among them Mind the Gap volumes 7 and 9, and two recent promo releases from m-nus records (Niederflur and Theorem). And an old promo copy of the second Datach'i album for the grand total of 55 cents! This was not meant to turn into a bragging session, for my central message is this: visit Sonic Boom. Even the sounds coming from inside produce an immediate sigh of contentment. Clack, clack, clack . That sweet sound of dozens of people flipping mechanically through dozens of cheap CD racks.

Years too late, I've started listening to Galaxie 500. American indie rock has never been a vice of mine. It's not something I.ve consciously avoided (well, maybe just a little) but it's just generally not my cup of tea. Yet one day I wandered into She Said Boom and was immediately taken by the straightforward, lethargic, lo-fi buzz of songs that had me humming along nearly involuntarily. And even though I'd never heard the songs before, they seemed so distinctly familiar. The album was "Today", and a few downloads later in the day was all it took to get me hooked. I've since picked up "On Fire" and "Copenhagen" and discovered that nearly every G500 song sounds exactly the same, but I don.t get tired of hearing their songs nonetheless. Perhaps this is an innate quality of the best American indie-rock. Low, YLT and GBV have all tread consistent ground for their entire careers as well, but when you.re really good, these things don't seem to matter. Even the cover songs sound the same as their own songs. G500 could wave a magic wand over any tune and it was superglued into their patented formula. Their version of New Order's "Ceremony" completely floored me. I'd gush and say that it's even better than the original if the original wasn't one of my favourite songs ever, so I'm smart enough not to be so quick on the draw and give myself a few months to think it over.

It's so strange to get into a band years after their demise. It's a bit pathetic to know that this great music is out there and not get around to sampling it for so many years. However, it's also a bit exhilarating because the band's entire career is laid before you, there's so much to hear, so much to read, so much to learn, and so much to absorb. Everything about them is a fait accompli, their entire career crystallized before you on the web pages and years-old albums. There are no band growing pains, no wondering what the next record will sound like or when they're going to tour this part of the country again. You can only become so attached to something that is already dead, thus, you pursue their music with an emotional detachment that you don't have with living bands. It's a bit ghoulish, isn't it? But the central problem with chasing a departed band is that you will soon run out of things to hear, and once you've reached the point where there is nothing new to hear then you are stuck at that point forever.