Filling my iPod one song at a time.

I know that some of you more sophisticated technophiles out there can, and probably have, written you doctoral thesis on the evils of Apple's iTunes. The proprietary way Apple makes you purchase and manage your music must be frustrating to those of you who could write your own software in an open source format.

I, on the other hand, cannot write a single line of code and if I didn't have Steve Jobs and his evil Red Bull swilling minions doing their thing, I would be driving my tractor around the ranch listening to my Sony Walkman CD player.

I ran across a song on a Warren Miller film called Cold Fusion last night. The song is 'Free' by the band Train. It is not a popular song, but it really hit me when I heard it and it stuck with me until I purchased it on iTunes today. I also bought 'Copperhead Road' by Steve Earle.

Isn't it funny how so many songs you wore out on the cassette deck and then forget about until you hear them on the radio fifteen years later? I went through my Steve Earle phase when he released 'Shut up and die like an aviator' Steve is a pure musician, full of emotion and addictions. Now it seems he wants to write songs about the American Taliban and hate all that America stands for. Thats ok, without self loathing musicians, who would write the songs we want to listen to when we get our hearts broken?

As I continue to fill the 4 gigs of storage on my nano with songs that seem to be conjured up in the vapors of cyberspace through freakin magic, I think back to the first time I walked into the Tower Records store in Sacramento. I was a kid of 11 or 12 and the store was stocked to rafters with 45s. I think they were 49 cents or 59 cents each and the problem I faced was two fold, first I didn't have more than two bucks in my pockets and my mom wanted to buy one album and leave. I could have stayed in that store for days.

I will keep trolling through my memories and finding gems from my musical past, and I will help Steve Jobs to build his mansion, 99 cents at a time.