Category: Music

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Grail

I ran across this 2-disc set back in 2002 when I was housesitting for some friends. I asked if I could make a copy and they said go for it. At the time I was a noob at disc ripping and let’s just say the results were…disappointing. These friends moved to Seattle shortly after all this happened so I wasn’t able to borrow the discs again to try for a better copy.

And it’s not like these Euphoria discs were cheap. I would’ve sought out my own copy if it weren’t for the fact they were going for $40 at the time and that simply wasn’t in my budget.

I eventually copied everything to iTunes and stopped obsessing over the fact that I’d cut off the last two tracks on each disc because they wouldn’t fit on the  74-minute blanks I’d used for the original rip.

Fast forward 23 years. I wanted this music on Minidisc because it’s my favorite of all the Euphoria series I’ve heard, but of course the only source I had was my original rip transferred to iTunes. I was able to transfer them, but then realized that there was a small gap between each song on these continual-mix CDs. Aargh!

So I decided it was time to bite the bullet and shell out whatever was needed to get original copies that could be transferred—gapless—to MD. Discogs again came to the rescue and I received this pristine copy from the UK today.

One not-totally-unexpected fallout of having the orange mental patient in the White House is that I’m seeing more and more sellers on Discogs marking their items as “Unavailable in the United States.” There were several offerings of Ibiza Euphoria listed, but this was the only one that shipped to the US—and was reasonably priced.

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Back When She First Appeared On The Scene…

Adamusic – Abracadabra Of The Opera (2025)

…in the early 2000s, viewing her through a boomer lens, I initially dismissed Lady G as a wannabe Madonna/Grace Jones poseur. Over the years, however, I have come to appreciate her more and more and now I view her as her generation’s Madonna/Grace Jones. Not only has her music improved exponentially, but so has her theatricality. There will never be another Madonna or Grace, but she’s definitely leaving her mark for this generation and I have no doubt she will be held in the same reverence as my generation’s icons.

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Released 38 Years Ago Today

Depeche Mode: Music For The Masses (1987)

Many a heated discussion occurred between myself and a colleague in that little architectural office as to whether Depeche Mode or Pet Shop Boys were better…

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Remember When Buying Music Was… Fun?

I was laying wide awake at 4 am this morning, and I was thinking how we consume music has so fundamentally changed over the past 40 years. Then I found myself remembering walking into Tower Records on Market Street in San Francisco as I’d done a countless number of times in the 90s. And once inside, I could easily recall the smell of the store. Next thing I knew I was grinning ear to ear.

Tower was a magic place for music lovers like myself. It had been since I first set foot in the original SF store at Columbus & Bay on a trip to the City before we eventually relocated there. It was a bit of a wonderland for me. I’d ordered Michael Stern’s Chronos soundtrack from them a month earlier, only to discover after it arrived that the disc was defective. I physically brought it with me on that trip so I could exchange it. While there I also found a record I’d been seeking for months: Michael Garrison’s Airborn that I dragged home on the plane with me. (Yeah, I was in the middle of my electronic new age period.)

A few years after we’d relocated to SF and Tower opened another store in the concrete monstrosity that had been constructed on Upper Market, somehow making up for the eyesore it occupied. I remembered many an afternoon pouring through the racks, either searching for something specific or just seeing if something piqued my interest enough to shell out $18 for a disc.

And then there were the times your favorite band/singer/group released something new and you prayed Tower had purchased enough copies that they’d still have one available when you got to the store.

It was also within walking distance of my apartment, so it was doubly dangerous.

Remember getting the disc home and trying to get it out of those horrible plastic blister packs without amputating a finger in the process? And then putting the disc in your CD player, sitting down, and pouring over the liner notes?

Ah, the ritual!

All that was lost with the advent of MP3s and streaming. I think that’s the reason there’s been a resurgence in the sales of physical media. It’s part nostalgia (at least in my case) to be sure, but it’s the physicality of the process. It’s the knowledge that you own the music you just bought; it won’t arbitrarily be pulled from your streaming service because of some corporate fight over licensing. And you can listen to it any time you want. No worries about network connectivity! And if you want to rip those discs to MP3 for your phone, you can!

The purpose of this post? I dunno…those memories that came flooding back (and the unexpected recollection of the smells) just kind of gobsmacked me in the dark silence this morning.