Back in El Paso, many years ago, I began hearing on KXCR, a station with an electic music mix, songs by a group called Perri from an album called The Flight. Eventually I discovered they were backup singers for Anita Baker. At the time all I knew was it was some of the most marvelous music I had ever heard.So I started looking for their CD and discovered something else: The Flight was terminally out-of-print. No one had it for sale. It didn't show up at any used record stores. No one had it for sale on eBay. No one even posted songs from it on the Internet.
(This is, by the way, the best argument for music-sharing services. Perri will never see another dime in royalties from this album, as long as their label refuses to re-issue it. Why shouldn't I be able to download it from the Internet? Especially if the artist makes it available, as Janis Ian does at her website. If the artists could collect a royalty from the download, even better, and more power to them. [In the meantime I get more music than I could ever finish listening to legally for $9.95 a month from eMusic.com, but I digress.])
Then, this week, a miracle: Someone in the United Kingdom offered a copy of The Flight on eBay. Yet I hesitated. First, it's on vinyl. I still don't have a stereo that will accept input from my old turntable, and would have to press a friend into service to transfer another LP to CD for me. Second, it has to be shipped from the U.K. But then I asked myself, what are the odds that another copy of The Flight in any format is going to turn up in my lifetime? So I went ahead and bid the minimum asking price.
The next day, some guy in San Diego offered the CD for sale.
Meanwhile, my car got buried beneath several inches of snow sometime during the night, just when someone has to look at it for an estimate. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention: Some teenager pulled out right in front of me in her daddy's Jeep Cherokee as I was approaching an intersection. Good news, in a way, as I really needed that fender replaced anyway and now someone else's insurance company can pay for it. This happened Friday night at the beginning of a three-day holiday weekend, so it was today before I could take it in for the estimate. On the way I discovered that my windshield wiper fluid dispenser was no longer dispensing, which was enough to classify my car as no longer safe to drive, so I was furnished a rental car immediately.
Now, I was really looking forward to having a cool car to drive for however long it takes to repair my Neon, so what do they give me? Another Neon. It's that damn Perri album all over again.