The Wombat File Is Yours to Keep

So, thanks to La La, I've been busily engaged in some web-enabled CD trading. I've shipped off records by bands that just never did it for me, or some second-best efforts that I don't find myself returning to.

What have I gotten in return? Mostly nostalgia, and/or a second chance to pick up some records I'm sort of amazed I never bought in the first place. It's also been a return to some of the music that I learned to scorn (or hide my love in) during college, when these bands were too popular -- or too redolent of seventies establishment rock -- to be openly enthusiastic about amongst my radio station colleagues.

I had The Unforgettable Fire on vinyl, many years ago, but it went the way of all that stuff I sort of meant to hold on to, but, through move upon move, couldn't (I think there's actually a U2 song title embedded somewhere in that sentence). Now I pop it in and the exuberant drums of "A Sort of Homecoming" -- balanced nicely by the Eno-flavored washes of guitar -- remind me of why the record seemed to me so compelling back in the day -- its similarly grandiose, but less subtle follower The Joshua Tree never spoke with such hushed urgency . I also re-acquainted myself with October -- sparer, less sophisticated, but still marked by that wonderful clear, sharp-cold sound of the early U2 records; the way the guitar and vocals play off one another in songs like "Rejoice" is still kind of thrilling.

Going back further into the dark backward of time, I also received a copy of Jethro Tull's Minstrel in the Gallery. I'm not even sure I know why I put this on my "want" list -- not because I wasn't interested in re-visiting my high school/early college fondness for Tull, but because, frankly, this was never an album that meant a lot to me (as opposed to, say Stand Up or the live tracks on Living in the Past). I think it was that I had "One White Duck/010 = Nothing At All" in my head at the time. It's not well known, but it's a beautiful song, with the sort of lovely-sad melody Ian Anderson could write and write and write (I'm thinking also, and which would for the most part remain ignored in favor of the bombastic hits like "Locomotive Breath." And this speaks to one of the reasons I've hesitated to go back and acquire old Jethro Tull albums; I like a song or two on nearly every one of them, but almost none of them all the way through, and some have an unfortunate way of combining one or two tracks that are absolutely haunting with a nearly full disc of bad stuff (Aqualung, for example -- I'd pull "Mother Goose" out and chuck the rest). But the singles aren't the good stuff, either, so any good greatest-hits collection would have to be home-grown, and would span two or three discs. It's a task I'm just not up to.

In any event, Minstrel still proved to be a remarkably good choice; it's got some of the slighty wince-inducing rock stylin', a little Spinal Tap-ish, that I can't really say I like any longer (though I did at sixteen -- right alongside The Dead Kennedys and Duran Duran. Go figure). But it's well salted with much more worthy moments -- sprightly, winningly melodic, and nothing if not ambitious in its arrangements and attempts to evoke a symphonic range of musical modes. While I wish now I'd been handed a copy of a proper Fairport Convention album during my Tull phase, I'm happy to be reminded of what was great about the band.

Finally, some records I'm just unambiguously happy to have; R.E.M.'s Murmur, The Cocteau Twins' Heaven or Las Vegas, Talking Heads' Remain in Light, and an XTC album I never gave a chance to-- Nonsuch -- after feeling disappointed by Oranges and Lemons. I've made my peace with the post-Skylarking era in Andy Partridge's songwriting, and now I'm grown up enough to enjoy "Omnibus", "Crocodile," and "Rook" for what they are -- manifestly great, idiosyncratic pop from an always-engaging source. Not everything has to be "Towers of London" or "Harvest Festival." (Oh, and Suede's Sci-Fi Lullabies is on the way.)