Thursday night Genia and I stopped by a local used cd store hoping to find a couple good cds for a cheap price. Generally, whenever I walk into the used cd store, it's as if there is a force field on the door, and as soon as I pass through, my mind goes completely blank as to what cds I might be interested in purchasing. I end up walking up and down the aisles alphabetically, trying to remember what I wanted to buy. Fortunately, Thursday night, they had some cds on display at the counter and that jogged my memory. Even more fortunately, they had the cds in stock that I wanted to buy... and more. I could've easily spent $50 in there. I ended up walking out a happy man, though, spending only $13 on two incredible cds:

Oasis (What's the Story) Morning Glory?
I originally bought this cd in high school, I'm guessing either late 1995 or early 1996 (since Amazon says it was released in October 1995) based on the single "Wonderwall" which I've always thought was a great pop-rock song. I remembered liking the album quite a bit back then, as I was just really starting to get into music during my years at ASMS. I got rid of the cd in late 1998 along with all the rest of my "worldly" music. I'll save the long version of that story for another day, but suffice to say that I have reached a place in my life where I look differently at art than I did in the more reactionary days of my Christian faith. I recently put "Wonderwall" on a mixed cd that I made of mid-tempo type songs, and I started missing this album. I popped it in Foxxy's cd player as we left the cd store and it hit me all over again how great this cd is. I'm sure!
there's a bit of nostalgia coming into play, but these songs can't be denied. Oasis has a great gift for melody and a big sound. I love the emotional choruses of "Don't Look Back in Anger", "Wonderwall", and "Cast No Shadow". I feel like -- yet amazingly enough, do not sound like -- a rock star singing along with "Hello" and "Morning Glory". I love the fun rock-n-roll of "She's Electric" and "Roll With It." Now that this is veering off into sounding like an album review, I guess I'll just embrace the tangent and end this by saying: 4 stars

U2 Achtung Baby
You might be thinking to yourself, "Why did John, huge U2 nut that he is, not already own this cd?", to which I would reply, "It's the economy, stupid." Seriously, though, I've wanted to buy this album for quite some time, but either didn't have the money or there was some new cd that I thought I'd rather have. What was I thinking?!? In short, this cd is amazing. Sometimes I wish I would have been into music, rock music specifically, at an earlier age. I would love to have been a U2 fan around the time of The Joshua Tree and Rattle and Hum. Those were really the first glory days of U2, and it would have been incredible to see R&H; in the movie theatre, or to go to one of the concerts on those tours. It would have also given me a chance to see Achtung Baby in its historical context -- I would be even more blown away by it! To be hooked on the rootsy sounds of Rattle & Hum and then hear the very alternative-rock and cutting edge guitar sounds!
of lead single "The Fly" on the radio a few years later in 1991, after U2 had gone away "to dream it all up again" -- wow. Even without that context, Achtung Baby stands as a great album in U2's history and in the history of rock music. The album is dark and moody, with more of that desperation that pushes Bono to his greatest moments as a lyricist and as a singer. The classic U2 themes of hope, faith, and love -- and the effects of this life on the aforementioned -- are all there. I knew several of the songs before buying the album: "Mysterious Ways" -- the song of the Spirit, "Until the End of the World" -- a song from the perspective of Judas Iscariot, groundbreaking single "The Fly", "Even Better Than the Real Thing", and the classic "One". I was happy to find that the songs I didn't know are just as good. "Ultraviolet (Light My Way)" is probably my favorite of those tracks, with "Acrobat" a close second. This is such an amazing album, and my fanship of U2 is !
bigger than ever! 5 stars