Physical media, hmm. It gets lost sometimes. You throw a tape in the back of your 1996 Geo Metro and it never returns. It gets digested. You make the choice to move back to Oregon after a calamitous end to your California Experience and the US Postal Service mislays a chunk of your alphabetized records, your rushed and inadequate packing job resulting in Bugskull records being scattered all over the floor of some whirring monster warehouse somewhere.
I owned the Bruces' Hialeah Pink on vinyl Back In The Day and it was part of the Bs that didn't make it in the 2000 US Postal disaster. Later, I bought it on the much smaller compact disk format. It's still with me and ready to console me in dark times just like it did on those 3:30-6:00 a.m. radio shifts back in eucalyptus-scented California. Nearly thirty years later, the flaws in the lyrics are a little distracting, but the fidelity and feel are completely great. I have an instinctual dislike for albums being priced at the default $7 on Bandqlamp, but in retrospect I would totally pay $3.69 in 1995 dollars for this album and its bonus tracks.
I think I've owned at least three versions of Sauvie Island Moon Rocket Factory's Mudpuddle Park, one self-released, one on short-lived Red76 Records (bought on steep discount at Ozone Records' going-out-of-business sale, sigh!), one on Italian tape label Best Kept Secret, who put out Minmae's dark-night-of-the-soul A Record About Us, and hello to Alessandro and Dave K and Sean if the Internet ever brings any of you to this page, and anyway, these songs will always still be clattering around in my head, long after its creator and its hyper-specific Portland-area geographic references (12th 'n' Sandy 'n' Burnside) have scattered off to wherever it is things go.
