On my way to my evening class, I was programming in some radio stations on my car stereo (since I rarely listen to the radio - way too many CDs for that - I didn't have everything programmed in). Well, while scanning to get to a certain station, I heard a classical piece playing. I stopped, and immediately programmed that station in to the stereo.

When I got to the university's parking lot, the piece was still playing. I had my Discman next to me, which I had planned on listening to in class (I had Slint's Spiderland and Red Stars Theory's Life in a Bubble Can Be Beautiful with me). Well, my Discman has an AM/FM tuner built in (why don't ALL Discmen have this? At least the new generation of CD/MP3 hybrid players are all incorporating it - about time!). So, I tuned into that station. However, unlike my car stereo, my Discman radio was picking up two, perhaps three different stations on that frequency (there was the classical piece, and a rap/rasta piece.... I also heard some jazz flute that wasn't part of the classical piece... I'm not sure if it was part of the rap-ish song or not). Anyway, as I walked to class (and a walk to class at a high-enrollment campus like Fresno State is a walk, indeed), the rap song would phase in and out. I'd get a few seconds of just the classical piece, and then a few with both playing. After a while of trying to tilt the Discman at various angles to pick up only the classical piece (with little success - it would make a difference, but not enough), it hit me to switch it from "DX" to "Local". That got rid of the rap song, but the classical signal was weakened (so instead of phasing in and out of the rap song, it phased in and out of a static haze). Still, it was better than before.

Anyway, I got to class, turned in my assignment, decided that I didn't want to sit in class (it's been a brutal past 10 days, with two hard mid-terms... I'm done for the week!), and so I headed back to my car. I was tired of not being able to hear the radio, so I put the Slint album in to listen to on the way back.

When I got back to the car, the radio station was no longer playing classical music. It was news. Turns out that it wasn't a classical station, but rather it was NPR. Darn. You know what I want? XM radio. For those that don't know, XM is the next "type" of radio, like AM and FM. It uses satellites to broadcast the radio streams. It is near CD quality (better than FM), and the programming contains far less commercials than AM/FM radio. However, it's not free... it's $10 a month, and requires equipment capable of receiving the signal. Apparently there's even a prog-rock station on the XM band, though it apparently focuses on '70s English prog (in the words of someone at RMP: "Yes, Genesis, Tull, blah blah blah..."). If XM gets cheaper, and if your "purchase" allows you to listen to it on all your devices (car, home, portable, etc), then perhaps I'll get it (I primarily want the classical and jazz programming... the prog one won't do much for me).

ARGH! Someone was selling Area's Crac! on rec.music.progressive, but another buyer got to it before I could. (insert vulgar explitives here!!).
I really don't want to pay $18 for a 38 minute album, but I may have to (heck, I should consider myself lucky - a few months ago, it wasn't available at all! I tried to buy it for $18 before but the dealer couldn't fill the order).

Scored some Japanese avant-rock goodness, in the form of Tipographica and Bondage Fruit's self-titled debut albums. $20 a pop. Crikey. I also have Koenjihyakkei's II reserved at Wayside for the same price. Damn those Japanese taxes... I'm tired of paying $20 for a CD, but no domestic label is going to release the material. It's not the vendor's faults, since they have to pay the high price to get the CD, and that has to be passed onto the consumer (especially when you're talking about low-margin specialty retailers like Wayside - God bless you, Steve Feigenbaum).

Anyway, I'm cruising the BMG catalog to load up on some more jazz albums, as well as classical. I'm strongly thinking of declaring January to be "Jazz Month", and listen to almost only jazz albums. At the very least, I will have a "Jazz Week", and perhaps a "Jazz Two Weeks". Thing is, I could spend days just on the Miles Davis Complete Bitches Brew Sessions and the John Coltrane Complete Village Vanguard Recordings boxes themselves.

I was at Borders a couple of days ago, and listened to a performance of Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade on one of the listening stations. In particular, the second movement (I forget the name) was great. I will be getting a CD of that piece from BMG (I've been cross-referencing the performances on the BMG CDs with comments at rec.music.classical.recordings, in order to separate the gems from the crappy ones... up until now, I've tried to get into classical by buying the cheapy CDs, but have failed to enjoy them - they tend to sound like they were recorded in broom closets). Especially when it comes to classical music, quality matters.