The other day, after meeting my delicious wife for a delicious BLT at
Beyond Bread, I stopped by CD City and spent an inordinate amount of time scanning through the bins in the back of the store that offer thousands of CDs at either two for $5 or two for $10. I didn't have the energy for the BTF CD grab box randomness of the former category, but spent a long time poring over the latter.
Apparently, distributors are now unloading so much of their back catalog that even future Hall of Fame bands like REM are popping up as cut-outs. I mean,
Reveal makes sense. But
Monster?
I resisted the urge to buy a second copy of favorite albums like Bettie Serveert's
Palomine and Teenage Fanclub's
Bandwagonesque. I noted that my dearly beloved Pavement has still managed to avoid the ignominy of the clearance item. And I laboriously narrowed down my many desired purchases to a finely honed couplet.
The first CD is a 1982 Tuxedo Moon compilation featuring
Suite En Sous-Sol,
Time To Lose, and
Short Stories, purchased in honor of the delicious one telling me about the band in the first months of our relationship.
The second CD, currently playing in the other room, is the album
Silur by the German -- and formerly
East German -- band Tarwater. Several Tarwater songs are available on
Epitonic.com and have become staples of my mix CDs.
Silur's "Watersample" --
you can download the MP3 legally here -- is a particular favorite. I never saw Tarwater in Tucson stores, however. So imagine my delight to get one of their records for $5!
Taken as a whole, the record is even better than the tracks I'd heard had led me to imagine. It's dreamy and edgy at the same time, with a "roll" that escapes most electronically inflected acts.
I couldn't be happier with my bargain birthday present to myself.
Anyway, you Tucson locals might want to overcaffeinate and head over to CD City -- Campbell, just north of Glenn -- to see what they have in stock. This
Tucson Citizen story gives you the goods on CD City and other places to get bargains on clearance and/or closet-cleaning culture.