Found in the stacks

I had the itch today to buy a record. It's one of those itches that has to be scratched or I feel uneasy. I went to the Dupont Olssons at lunch picked up and put down a number of today's new releases—Bloc Party, the Decemberists, Brendan Benson—and left the store empty-handed and unsatisfied.

Back at work, I not only heard the LCD Soundsystem and made the informed, adult decision to spend my money on it, but I also remembered a jazz CD that I had heard at that very Olssons a week before, and I was overtaken by the urge to own it. I went back to the store after work, armed only with the information: "It has a blue cover." I wanted it enough to put the obnoxious question to the guy at the desk, and lucky for me, he was overtaken by that record store urge—an urge I know well—to take on this Find The Album challenge. And after not much time, he found it: Freddie Hubbard's Ready for Freddie.

The smile on his face when he found the CD and the way he gleefully put his fist in the air in triumph brought back some good memories for me. There were plenty of times in both the mall record stores I worked at in Anchorage and the Record Exchange in Greensboro when we'd be facing this exact challenge, and it was incredibly rewarding to get it right and send some happy record-buyer home with exactly what they were looking for. Whether it was trying to find the latest cheesy pop single or some obscure Britpop record, it never failed to make an often-horrible, low-paying job completely worthwhile.

The only thing better was getting the sincere question, "What are you listening to lately", but we all know the thrill of being asked that. And consider it being asked now. You know where the comments are.