Back On The Blog, Y'All

Well, I'm back from one of the best vacations I've had in years! It may or may not have anything to do with the fact that I came home with the biggest bunch of CDs I've bought in years, but it definitely has something to do with this. Several of my purchases you'll be reading about here in the weeks to come, of course. But in the meantime, here's a picture of the pile (click to enlarge):
















I know ... frightening, isn't it? I don't even want to think of what the credit card bill is going to look like next month. But anyway, a handful of the CDs were items that were actually on my "to buy" list, but many of them were pleasant surprise discoveries: artists I didn't know or care about until I heard them playing on the store's sound system ... artists I had thought about checking out when their first albums had come out but didn't realize they'd put out anything since then so I decided it was the perfect time to try them out ... and a few neat-looking compilations (usually at excellent prices -- I guess Virgin Megastore isn't a complete and total waste of space ... yet) I stumbled into along the way.

Since I've been home now for several days, I've begun the slow process of actually listening to all these discs ... and, sad to say I've already found a few clunkers that have been put in the trade-ins stack. But if anyone wants to know about any specific titles they spot in the photo, please let me know and I'll try and make a point of reviewing them (if I haven't already gotten rid of them, that is).

I've been thinking recently about revamping the look of my blog (perhaps a new title and banner, but the content would remain the same), but that probably won't happen anytime soon, if at all. And you might have already noticed that I replaced the plain old blogroll with the new Blogger feature "Blog List", which you can see shows the title of the most recent post and how long since its last update. Neat, eh? (I've decided to sort them by most recently updated.) But anyway, I hope you missed me, and that you're ready for me to dive back into the great musical ocean and swim to the surface twice a week with more goodies for your ears.

Oh, and if any of you ever venture to California, you simply must make a point of visiting one of the Amoeba Music locations -- the vastness of those stores will unquestionably blow your mind, and the time and effort to visit them is absolutely worth it.