I have a problem.

I'm a CD addict. I can't help it. I buy every new release - even if I'm only interested in a tertiary sense - the day it comes out. I was going to buy Chris Cornell's new album, even though I had downloaded and listened to it and knew it simply wasn't very good. I still wanted it. Luckily, Best Buy didn't have a copy, so I bought other stuff instead. Other stuff I had listened to and decided that I didn't like (Satellite Party, in fact).

I buy CDs because they're on sale. I buy them because I like their album art. I buy them because I've heard the bands mentioned in reviews of other albums. I buy them because they influenced bands I like. I buy them because they influenced bands I don't like, which I don't really understand. Sometimes I buy CDs because I know I don't like them and I want to challenge myself to like them. I buy CDs because whatever store I'm at doesn't have something by an artist that I acutally want, so I get something else. I buy them because people I know say they like them. Sometimes I buy them because people I don't know say they like them. I buy so much new music that I don't always have time to listen to all of it and it gets pushed off the list for years at a time. I buy music because bands thank other bands in the liner notes of their albums. One time I bought a CD because Dave Grohl was wearing their T-Shirt in a photo in the Foo Fighters album art (Wool's Box Set is a really, really good 90's rock album).

I rarely buy music because I hear songs on the radio. In fact, I don't like hearing songs on the radio.

Sometimes this formula really works well for me. I've purchased a lot of music that I've totally fallen in love with on a whim or a guess and almost no experience with the band: Lusk, Neutral Milk Hotel, Eels, Hum, Brainiac, Sebadoh, The Arcade Fire. Others haven't turned out to be love: stuff as big as Husker Du, Wilco, Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine and as obscure as The New Pornographers, Blinker the Star, Enon, Oceansize have failed to capture my interests.

What does this leave me with? A lot of CDs that I feel ambivalent about, only adding to my overall sense of musical taste ambivalence. Also, a few albums that I have come to totally love.

Maybe I should download. Maybe I should better educate myself first. But then I'd miss out on this whole process of discovery that I'm totally addicted to.

Also, it's making me poor.

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Today's needless purchases:

The Photo Atlas - No, Not Me, Never

Okay, not great. Sort of attempting Indie while aping on it at the same time.

Pig Destroyer - Terrifyer

Incredible. Intense, moody. Sometimes overwhelming.

Pilot Speed - Into the West

Good if not totally original. Spacy and sing-songy. Maybe better than what they're imitating.

Oh We'll Have Our Fun

Parry Farrell's Satellite Party - Ultra Payloaded

Sony/BMG; 2007

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I'm sort of drunk and so maybe that's why I'm sort of enjoying Parry Farrell's Satellite Party Ultra Payloaded. I figured, what the fuck? There are some good musicians featured on here (as per the sticker: "Flea, John Frusciante, Peter Hook, Fergie (?1?!?!1!?!)", & more). Why the fuck not? (I swear a lot to myself when I'm sort of drunk.)

Yeah. Sort of enjoying it. (The part of me that is sort of enjoying Satellite Party is also sort of looking forward to the new Polyphonic Spree album.) Then I realized that I actually have most everything by Farrell as well as other JA people (Polar Bear, Deconstruction, The Panic Channel (ugh).). Sure Satellite Party couldn't be worse than Songs Yet to be Sung or even Good God's Urge, right? It's better.

...Apparently I use a shload of parenthasis when I'm sort of drunk, too.

It's funky. It's fun. It's sort of layered, but not too much. It's nice. It's easy, which isn't great, but pretty good.