Buried Treasures

Four weeks from now I'll be in sunny Southern California, visiting with my sister and, almost as importantly, browsing the endless aisles of the Virgin Megastore, looking for those hard-to-get-elsewhere import CDs that I've got on my wish list. One of my first destinations in the Megastore (and in the late Tower Records stores as well) has become the imports clearance bin: where those pricey overseas CDs, which can go for over $30 at full retail, are marked down usually to half of their original price, and sometimes much less.

Sometimes I'll find buried in the unsorted mess an artist or album that I've actually heard of and had been considering picking up, but most often I'm met with CDs that are completely unfamiliar to me. After all, this is the clearance bin we're talking about, and only the obscure stuff that goes unsold for months ends up getting tossed in there. It can be very much hit-and-miss ... I fully expect to come home with at least a couple of duds that wind up in my trade-in stack in short order ... but sometimes I end up with an excellent recording that takes up permanent (or at least long-term) residence in my collection, and occasionally one that even becomes a favorite.

In anticipation of my upcoming trip, and in celebration of that usually neglected and underestimated corner of the CD store, here's a list of the better finds I've come across in the imports clearance bins of various Tower Records and Virgin Megastores over the years:

Kristian Leontiou: "Some Day Soon" -- If you love Daniel Powter, you'll love Kristian Leontiou. He has a strikingly similar style and sound, but released this major-label CD in the UK nearly two years before Daniel Powter made a splash with his. I'm not saying that one of them was trying to copy the other, or even that either of these artists is better than the other. On the contrary, Kristian Leontiou is the perfect complement to Daniel Powter ... and will do nicely in tiding us all over until Powter puts out his sophomore album.

Relish: "Wildflowers" -- Sometimes I shake my head thinking about how I almost missed out on these guys by not taking a chance and plucking the CD out of clearance-bin purgatory on a whim. Relish are a rock band from Ireland whose lead singer sounds a lot like Lenny Kravitz, and whose sound is permeated by a soulful positivity that seems to come directly from the '70s. Their song "Rainbow Zephyr" might sound familiar when you hear it ... it was adapted and re-recorded (with mediocre results, I'm sorry to say) by Westlife as the single "Hey Whatever".

Heinz Winckler: "One Step Closer" -- Probably the thing that most convinced me to pick up this CD is that it's from South Africa ... the first such CD in my collection. It turns out he was the winner of the South African "Idol" show, which explains the sound: radio-friendly pop that sounds like most other "Idol" products from every other country in the world. It is good enough, though, that I won't be getting rid of it ... at least not anytime soon.

Mark Owen: "In Your Own Time" -- This one I was specifically looking for, as soon as I found out that Espen Lind wrote one of its tracks. The rest of the album from this Take That alum turned out to be pretty darn good, too ... much better than his debut album from several years earlier. If you like Take That's new album, "Beautiful World", and haven't yet tried any of Mark Owen's solo work, I suggest picking up this album first.

Ronan Keating: "Destination" -- I've always been a bit sore at Ronan Keating, just because he's enjoyed far more solo recording success than my favorite Boyzone boy, Stephen Gately. But with this, Ronan's sophomore album, I found it in my heart to forgive him. There are plenty of fine songs in this collection, including two of my Ronan favorites: "I Love It When We Do" and "Blown Away".