Tuesday, June 24, 2014

That Old Time Music

Shops selling CDs have all but vanished from Singapore, or so it seems to me. If you know better let me know what I'm missing.

Here in KL things are little better. At one point a small place called Rock Centre - or something like that - stocked some vaguely interesting stuff in KLCC, but had disappeared when I went to check it out on arrival. Fortunately I chanced upon its counterpart when we went out to The Curve and picked up a few things there, though the range was more limited than it had been in the KLCC outlet. And then today we went back to Ampang Park for the first time in years and I came across a place called Love Music which was, again, small, but at least gave me a chance to browse for some twenty minutes whilst the Missus was eyeing all the frocks and buy one or two items (five, in fact.)

To be honest, my purchases are not exactly necessary buys; rather, I reckon the CD is soon going to be done with as a medium for music and so just grab stuff for the sake of having something to take home. Of course, it's a delight to be affluent enough to be able to do so - and a stark contrast to the days of my youth. But I'm a bit rattled by the fact that everything I buy is severely dated. Case in point: today's purchases fall definitively into the category I'm told is referred to as Dad Rock, only the fact that they're all excellent can save my reputation. And in case you're wondering, here they come, in no particular order of merit: Donald Fagen - Sunken Condos; Leonard Cohen - Live In London; Jimi Hendrix - Band Of Gypsies; Bruce Springsteen - High Hopes (which comes with a Born In The USA Live in London DVD!); Bob Dylan - Another Self Portrait, The Bootleg Series Vol. 10.

And in the interests of full disclosure, here's the list from the shop at The Curve: Elvis Costello and The Roots - Wise Up Ghost; Yes - Going For The One; J.S Bach - The Art of the Fugue (as played by the red-hot Pierre-Laurent Aimard; and a 5 CD set of Mozart's The Complete Piano Sonatas (as played by the wonderfully refined Alicia de Larrocha.)

Funnily enough, the Bach sounds the most modern of the lot.

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