New Music

I went around yesterday looking for new CD's to buy. I hadn't bought a new CD in roughly a year, and my music collection was looking about as interesting as the dialogue in any new Star Wars movie. As a programmer, this can be devistating. When your life is organized around 9 hours in front of a monitor writing code, you need something to keep that creative and spontaneous side of yourself unaware of how boring it is. A good CD is like valium for the id.

I'd heard that the new Dream Theater CD was out, so I figured I'd get that and an older No Doubt album I'm embarrassed to love. A quick tangent: I don't know why I like No Doubt so much. I've gotten some flack for it, and I probably deserve that, but their music is fun and interesting and I just like listening to it.

I started off at Target. Target had neither of the CD's I was interested in, but they did have the new Coldplay CD, X&Y, for only $10. I decided not to take a chance, worried that Gwenyth Paltrow might have rubbed off on the band too much by this album, and instead headed to Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart had the NoDoubt album, but no Dream Theater. This put me in a strange and awkward situation some of you can probably relate to. It was late in the day, I was bored in my office, and I wanted something to excite me. Something new, something interesting. I wanted to buy something. I was in the place Advertiser's attend week-long seminars trying to learn how to put me in - a state where I was susceptible to suggestion, and where I'd buy something just because it was flashy and looked cool.

I browsed the CD's for a while, found nothing interesting, and headed to the "New Release" area. The Coldplay CD here was $15, so I wasn't about to pay the extra $5 - especially not to Wal-Mart, who I feel has taken "1 stop shopping" a bit too far (no one needs to be able to buy a ruffle and a gallon of milk at the same checkout stand.) I was about to leave, feeling discouraged and beaten, when my eyes fell on something shiny and cool looking: the sound track to Halo 2.

The packaging was amazing. The cover features the same both-futuristic-and-rustic looking "2" that the video game sported - the sort of logo that says, "I'm cool, high-tech, but also full of depth and epic excitment!" The back had a LONG list of songs promising roughly 70 minutes of the musical equivalent of this guy:

Buy me! I'm awesome!

I walked out of Wal-Mart staring into the shopping bag in disbelief. Did I really just buy this thing? $12 on a sound track to a video game? Yes, yes I did.

I got back to my office and popped it in, and it's surprisingly good. The first track is the title song from the game, which features Steve Vai leading the main theme with a wailing guitar solo. The disc features every song from the game along with "The Odyssey", which is a 4 part music-only piece by Incubus that reminds me a lot of Pink Floyd, and a few other songs by well known bands.

I was pleasantly surprised. What started as a foray into new and uncomfortable levels of nerdome had ended with a good CD that was fun to listen to and, more importantly, would pacify my creative brain enough to keep me productive for over an hour at the keyboard. That's not to say I haven't fallen to new depths of geek-ness, however.

Has anyone checked out the new Coldplay? Did you like it?