Audio Biography, Installment 1
Today is the first installment of my semi-regular feature entitled “Audio Biography” or, my semi-alphabetical telling of my life through CDs. I hope you like. If you don’t, email someone I don’t know. Just don’t email me because, odds are, I won’t respond.

John Adams: John's Book Of Alleged Dances/Gnarly Buttons
I bought this disc in April of 1999. I was in Boston at a convention, far from my soon to be family and totally friendless. It was still half a year until my wedding. I was there for the better part of the week and, sadly, over my birthday, which no one noticed. The day I arrived in Boston, news reports were coming down the wire about a school shooting in Colorado. Little did we know.

The disc was purchased after a brief walk down Newberry Street. I stopped in a small bar on the walk and had a beer with one of my authors. Then I spent an hour or so in a record shop that Ryan had brought me to four years earlier. I was surprised I remembered how to get there. Unfortunately, as cool as the shop was, I didn’t find anything. So, I spent the next two hours at Tower Records on Mass Ave, combing the aisles of the classical section.

John Adams was recommended by none other than Ryan himself. It seemed fitting to buy it while in Boston. My main reason for the purchase was “John’s Book of Alleged Dances” with the Kronos Quartet. It’s a nice piece that uses interesting sounds and a prepared piano (a la John Cage). While “Gnarly Buttons” is enjoyable, I much prefer a string quartet.

The next several hours were spent with my portable CD in my lap, staring out over the skyline of Boston. For the rest of my life whenever I hear “Judah to the Ocean” I’ll think of Boston.

Admiral Twin: Mock Heroic
Admiral Twin is a small band out of Oklahoma. Their greatest claim to fame was that they once opened for Hanson.

I bought this disc with birthday money in 2001. I was still working at StreamSearch, though very few other people were. I’d pop this disc in the tray and listen to it for hours on end. For some reason, this disc struck a chord with me. Maybe it was the isolation of being one of five people left at a dying company, especially after I had so much fun with the people they had laid off. Or maybe it was because my wife was pregnant and we had no idea what we were going to do about a job. (Ended up making a huge, huge, huge mistake on that end.)

It’s a solid album that I honestly don’t listen to much anymore. It reminds me of something . . . else.

Air: Moon Safari
I’m still slightly traumatized by this one. Oh, it’s a stellar album that I listen to frequently. I don’t blame the French pixies that made the disc. No, I blame Todd. He badgered me for the better part of two years about this disc. “How can you not own Moon Safari? You should own Moon Safari. Have you bought Moon Safari yet?”

I hadn’t because, quite honestly, I had a mental block when it came French Pop music. Why? I don’t know.

D-Day finally came this year, when it was my 29th birthday. My wife brilliantly orchestrated a plan where I would be distracted (by Todd, taking me to see the family feel-good comedy “Frailty”) while she assembled a group of our friends at a local pub. The movie was good, and I was surprised to see everyone sitting there. Both Todd and my wife had a goofy look of pleasure of having gotten one over on me.

As fate would have it, I was given two copies of the new Stew CD. So, on the way home, Todd, another friend, and I stopped at Borders to make an exchange. I picked up Moon Safari. Todd looked like the cat that swallowed the canary. Two major coups in one day.