Now We Pause For An Apology. And A Rant. (And Another Rant.)

The reason I haven't added any posts in a while: A business trip to Los Angeles stalled my on-line actions for a few days (that was the apology). Not that it matters: judging by the amount of responses each posting gets (read: zero), my guess is that nobody is reading this at all and I'm simply blowing smoke rings up my own ass. ASS! Now that I have your attention, please be sure to check back sometime in the next 24 hours as I add heaping spoonfuls of music to this site, all of it purchased at my favorite (physical) record store in the world, Amoeba Records on Sunset Blvd. in LA. I say physical because their website offers no on-line sales and bites ass--ASS!--but entering the store itself is like you've died and gone to music collector heaven. My one complaint of Amoeba Records (the physical store) is that you can't have the staff open used cds for in-store play. I'm not sure why they've never offered this service--don't tell me it's a security issue because I've been to plenty of stores around the world that have set up used cd listening stations with affordable security measures in place. The closest Amoeba Records comes to allowing cds to be opened and played is a listening station with a 10,000 cd database, the type where you can scan the barcode to hear the album tracks. Sadly, most of the cds entered into the database are well-known artists such as Beck, The Decemberists or Iron & Wine--artists whose albums are easy to hear everywhere else (for instance, as streaming audio on their websites). Considering the millions of cds Amoeba has for sale, plugging them into the database would take years of non-stop effort, but shouldn't that be more of a reason to allow the customer to open and play used cds in-store? Why, oh why won't Amoeba Records listen to my precious feelings? Why won't they take my rants into consideration? Sigh...anyway, please check back in a few hours for the latest downloads I'll be offering.