Flashes of Panic

On the way home from dinner, I stopped in to one of our excellent local record stores. It’s been a while since I bought new music (mid-April, when I bought Sarah Harmer’s disc at that show,) so I was looking to spend a little on new stuff.

I wound up with five discs for the price of three—Josh Ritter’s Golden Age of Radio included an unexpected bonus disc, and sitting by the register was a small stack of promo discs labeled “Free” and including Rich Price’s EP I’m On My Way. (Price opened for Harmer; this store sells Iron Horse tickets, and the gentleman behind the counter allowed as how that might be why they had the EP.) Two of those songs were also on his first disc, Night Opens, but for free I’m willing to take a few duplicates. (There’s a big grin there.)

I’m now very much in favor of a new way of checking out music. See, I get curious about an artist/band somehow. Maybe a friend mentions it. Maybe I see them at the Horse, or maybe they play with someone I like somewhere else. The curious bit doesn’t matter. Then I start exploring online. Lately, nearly everyone on the scale I seem to like has one or two songs for free download on their website. Or, just as good, Amazon has one of their songs for free download. I pull that down and put it in the rotation. (I got nearly an entire album’s worth of Kris Delmhorst that way.)

Ritter has been getting raves in a lot of places. I looked at his site and was able to download “Kathleen” from Hello Starling and “Harrisburg” from Golden Age of Radio from Amazon. Then I found chord changes for “Harrisburg” online, and couldn’t get it out of my head—It’s a long way to heaven/it’s closer to Harrisburg—faintly amusing given how close I used to live to Harrisburg, but anyway.

And guess what: they let me download music online for free, and I bought the CD! Imagine! I will refrain from making helpful suggestions on RIAA policy, for fear of getting obnoxiously strident…

Also on the list: The Strokes’ Is This It (recommended by Nicole, but also an Amazon download) and Nerissa and Katryna Nields’ This Town Is Wrong. They played “The Night I Let Glory Steer” at a New Year’s Eve concert at the Calvin at the beginning of 2003, but otherwise I’ve heard nothing from this disc…

Now playing: Harrisburg from Golden Age of Radio by Josh Ritter