TGItuesday

Lately, I've been spending a lot more time downloading .torrents than spending downtime downtown, browsing record shops. My personal theory firmly states that more of my dirty, sexy money goes direct to the artist when I pay for their concert ticket than when I give way to their greedy record label by buying their overpriced merch. I'd drop twenty bones to see a show in a heartbeat, but fifteen for a c.d. means I'm more likely to open my web browser than my wallet. It's about as illegal as finding those under-the-table tax breaks you know your parents willingly take. And if my mom says it's ok, than it is. I harbour no modern guilt for my mass downloading.
Well, Tuesday, I was feeling lucky. I'd spent the last few days saying 'hell yes' all over again to Guero, and was reminded by a friend that Beck's new album hit stores that very day. It could have been the B.C. booze, it could have been one fall too many off the boat, but personally, I think the Modern Guilt got me inside HMV. On my way out I noticed the wonderfully psychedelic cover of Ratatat's new rousing record. Impulse struck, and I took both up to the counter. The cashier was your typical mall-music-store geek (fortunately not of the overbred emo family), drooling over b-sides and the latest LPs, and man, did he drip when he saw my selections. An initial burst of pleasure with the first CD, and when he flipped over to see the second I swear, he could barely keep it in his pants. He wished happy listening as I walked away, reasserted and highly confident in the brilliant, undeniable taste in tunes I already knew I possessed.
Me and my dad walked away, me feeling satisfied, and maybe a little proud. I mean, not that I had bought (er, Daddy had helped) a brand-new CD, but I'd make the day of an overly-enthused, small-town music geek. And once we put the futuristic sea chanties of LP3 on the stereo out on the water, my day was made, just as well.