Friday, September 5, 2008

When you're out of touch, everything is underground

A year or so ago, I left a couple of Highways and Hiking Shoes CDs at CD City, a mom-and-pop record store in Highland Park, Illinois, my hometown. Owner Steve Kessler said he'd play our album in the store, see what happened.

Today I stopped in to see if anything had happened with those CDs. Not surprisingly, the answer was no -- brick-and-mortar stores aren't the likeliest places for unknown artists to sell their stuff. Steve wasn't sure where his copies of H&HS had gotten to, so he offered to write me a check for them. I took home a couple of free CDs instead: Tender Moments by McCoy Tyner, and We Were Here by Joshua Radin.

I'd never heard of Radin. Steve played him for me after I asked for recommendations, and what I heard was good enough to take a chance on. I thought maybe he was some obscure underground artist. But no, I looked him up on Wikipedia and found out he's been on a bunch of TV and movie soundtracks.

This is what I get for not watching TV.

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