The Very Best of Music

One of the big stories in K-town this week was the closing of an independent music store. While that’s bad news, it’s even worse the store was located right down the street from our house and I barely knew it existed. It’s situated deep in the corner of a strip mall we frequent, but looking at the outside it always looked more like a music instrument store then the top-notch record and CD store people have been making it out to be this week …

Either way you look at it, the store is closing this month after 20 years of business. The owner attributes the demise to dwindling store revenues over the years as more music lovers are going on to the Internet to get their music. The closing leaves us one surviving indie store, one that I actually hold a larger attachment to and stop by frequently. Let’s hope that one has a better fate for those of us who still think of our music as a larger art form and collection -- I’m talking about album covers, pictures, band and liner notes too -- and not just a cheap bunch of songs we rip off the Internet because we somehow feel entitled to them, completely forgetting the fact they’re someone else’s hard work and creativity …

Off my soapbox …

So I stopped by the closing store on my lunch break yesterday. Having a pretty good idea of what I was looking for, I flipped through the CD stacks pretty quickly and ended up walking out with three CDs for about 24 bucks.

Which ones, you ask? … ‘The Very Best of Supertramp,’ ‘The Best of Van Morrison’ and ‘The Corrs: In Blue’ … Yeah. When I returned from lunch and told one my co-workers she replied with a gasp and said, ‘What a range!’ … Yep. That’s me! And darn proud of it : )

While two of the three were kinda-sorta impulse buys, I had long been seeking the Supertramp album and pretty much went into the store knowing: if they had it, I was buying it.

Yes, Supertramp. … I first owe my mother for planting the seeds of my Supertramp enjoyment and making the mix tape that made it all possible. I can’t explain why, but I’ve long had this memory etched in my mind of her and I, about 6 or 7 years old, sitting in our camper during a trip to Terry Andrae, as we played Uno or Yahtzee, I think, and her pressing the boombox record button when certain songs came on the oldies station we were listening to. About five songs into the mix tape came the song ‘Dreamer.’ It was the first time I’d ever heard the song and since that day, the song has been one of my all-time favorites (I loved it so much I tried convincing my piano teacher in fourth grade that I devised and recorded the song -- and I think she believed me!). And even after repeated plays in my walkman and 20 years, the mix tape -- complete with renditions of ‘Hotel California,’ ‘Dust in the Wind,’ ‘Nowhere Man,’ ’Make Me Smile’ and ‘Barbara Ann’ -- still survives and plays regularly in this household…

But it took me about 15 more years to connect the searing harmonies, keyboards and fun of ‘Dreamer’ with everything else Supertramp had to offer. My purchase of the ‘Magnolia’ soundtrack ('Logical Song' and 'Goodbye Stranger') made the picture a little less cloudy for me, but it was really gaining appreciation for ‘Give a Little Bit’ and hearing a few plays of ‘Take the Long Way Home,’ ‘Bloody Well Right’ and ‘Breakfast in America’ on The Drive that etched Supertramp’s place as one of my favorite bands.

Getting back into the car after my purchase, I immediately ripped the packaging off the CD and began playing ‘Dreamer.’ I listened to it again and again on my way back to work, singing my lungs out and loving every second of the harmonies echoing around my car the way they were meant to be played.

Guaranteed, the album will be playing my car wherever I go this weekend …