I owned my first CD player in the late 80s. It was a large black boom box with a cassette deck on the front and the CD unit on top. Something like this, but not quite as slick.
The first three CDs I bought were albums I had owned on vinyl but wanted to experience in this new, sonically superior format (I guess vinyl enthusiasts would quibble with the “sonically superior” part). One was U2’s The Joshua Tree, another was Paul Simon’s Graceland and the third was Peter Gabriel’s So.
The Random iTunes Fairy has a knack for serving up songs I’ve never heard. That’s a neat trick given that the source of these songs is my own music collection, and you’d assume I’ve heard most of that.
But over the years I have, through one way or another, come into possession of a number of albums or singles that I’ve never played. And if Random Weekends are the way to remedy that, so be it.
Yesterday we got our second random Barenaked Ladies song in a week and today we get our second R.E.M. song in two weeks.
In the previous post, I described the band’s New Adventures in Hi-Fi — the last album to feature drummer Bill Berry — as their swan song. Indeed, they were never the same and never as good after that record.
Last Saturday the Random iTunes Fairy served up a Barenaked Ladies song and exactly a week later she’s at it again. The previous track was from the band’s debut album, Gordon, while this one is from their antepenultimate record, Everything to Everyone.
I’m just happy I get to use the word antepenultimate, which means third from last.
Today’s Random iTunes Selection is a track from Leonard Cohen’s 1967 debut album, The Songs of Leonard Cohen. The album, and this song, showcases Cohen’s literary bent — he was an author and poet before he started recording music — and many keyboards have been worn out dissecting the meaning of these lyrics.
Meet Me In Montauk 
