Not All Who Wander Are Lost

A Life In Lost Records

AC/DC, Back In Black. Purchased new-or-practically-so all the way back in the early eighties for "You Shook Me All Night Long" but beloved for "Hells Bells" and title track "Back in Black," this was the fourth album I ever bought (after Thriller, Survivor's Eye Of The Tiger, and a used soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever) and the only one I'd still listen to from my late elementary school years if I still had it. I was too young to understand most of the subject matter or the angst it supposedly spoke to in a slightly older generation, and the early hard rock movement hadn't yet hit the suburbs, but I remember the beat was incredible, the volume exquisite. This one's been lost to the ages; I must have left it behind in one of my early moves, if it lasted that long.

Dream Warriors, And Now, The Legacy Begins. Picked this one up on cassette from my younger brother in my senior year in high school, back when our musical tastes converged just for a moment. Not sure where it went to, but haven't seen it years, which is a cryin' shame; lost a vinyl copy of De La Soul hiphop classic 3 Feet High...And Rising somewhere along the way, too, but managed to pick up a fine rerelease at a mall discount rack a few years ago. Dream Warriors are harder to find, though "Wash Your Face In My Sink" remains one of the funkiest/silliest tracks in early hip-hop, A Tribe Called Quest's "Bonita Applebum" and just about all of 3 Feet... notwithstanding.

Robert Palmer, Don't Explain. This eclectic all-coversong extra-long CD features songs running the gamut from Marvin Gaye to Mel Torme to Little Feat, all in a variety of styles from smooth jazz to latin to typically Palmeresque pop. I'm pretty sure we sold this disk for much-needed cash in the early nineties, back when we were living in squalor in the Allston-Brighton twentysomething slums near Boston University and Boston College; parting with it surely wasn't worth the half an order of pork chops and fries it probably got us from the Greek greasy-spoon on the corner.

U2, Achtung Baby. The first CD I experienced in a cardboard fold-out case instead of a plastic jewel case, I actually got this one in trade from Darcie in the early stages of our Bard College courtship; in return, I presented her with my double-warm, double-thick Calvin Klein terrycloth bathrobe, ownership of which somehow has reverted to me in the intervening years. Quite possibly my favorite U2 album and the only one I ever owned on CD, though I still own a few older and rarely-played disks of theirs (Unforgettable Fire, Joshua Tree) on vinyl. I think we sold this for cash around the same time as Don't Explain. It probably brought in more money.

Hole, Live Through This; Sublime, Sublime; Matchbox 20, Matchbox 20. This trio of harder stuff was stolen from the NMH Media Center near the end of my first year here, back when I was running the entire department myself out of one space while a paraprofessional and a part-timer ran the other, larger space on the other campus. It's too bad, too -- Matchbox 20's subsequent album was better, but there are certainly days when I could really use a dose of Hole's raucous "Doll Parts" or Sublime's funky almost-reggae "Santeria."

Dave Matthews Band, Remember Two Things. Purchased used back when DMB was neither frat rallying call nor post-Dead summer-band-to-follow -- the trouble with selling CDs is that you get so much better value trading 'em in for more, and there you are surrounded by music while making the decision -- Dave's first album, recorded mostly-live, had one of those 3D images on the front where you have to cross your eyes just right to see the image. Not sure where this one went.

Feel free to buy me any or all of these. Also, if anyone has ever heard of a Bugs Bunny record from the mid-seventies about Bugs taking a rocket to the moon, let me know. I fell asleep to that record every night when I was but a wee tyke.