Return To High Fidelity

In case you haven’t seen the movie, here is the imdb link to it. My question today is “Am I Rob (John Cusack) or Dick (Todd Louiso)?” This thought popped into my mind as I stood in Ella Guru, a fine used CD store located in the mammoth Toco Hills Shopping Center, clutching a copy of Charlie Sexton’s “Pictures For Pleasure”.

And Now For A Little History Lesson
In 1985 as my love for music was taking a radical turn toward this thing called “alternative”, a new magazine named Spin hit the newsstands. Spin, along with Interview were the magazines to read if you wanted to one-up your friends about the music scene back in the 1980s. It was through Spin that I found out about a sixteen-year old child-prodigy guitar player from Texas named Charlie Sexton. Master Sexton was due to release a solo record called “Pictures For Pleasure”.

Now what may be the hardest thing to remember is that in 1985 we all didn’t have CD players (nevermind portable ones), instead we had cassette players. So, when I went to my record store of choice (either Peaches, Camelot, Turtles, or Musicland) I purchased the cassette. I have been looking for the CD for nearly fifteen years and thought that I would never find it.

That Was Until Monday
When I mentioned how excited I was to finally find “Pictures For Pleasure” on CD it started a five minute long conversation between myself and the two guys behind the counter. The conversation threads ran from the making of “Pictures For Pleasure”, Charlie Sexton’s other bands, the members of those bands who came from other prominent bands, all the way through and including an article one of the guys had written about the last Bob Dylan concert in Atlanta and the email he received from Charlie Sexton about it. High Fidelity indeed.

List Your “Top 5 Favorite Used CD Stores In Atlanta”
Here are mine.

• Wax N Facts
• Ella Guru
• Decatur CD
• Criminal Records
• Full Moon Records

Believe it or not, but there is more to my High Fidelity lifestyle, but I’ll leave that for another episode.

And now for some ideas stolen from LiveJournal…
Current Mood – Curiously Strong, just like Altoids
Current Music – Sirius Satellite Radio, playing The Postal Service — “We Will Become Silhouttes”
Website Of The Day – Artist Direct, formerly Underground Band List

Cheers!
Paulie [eatl/ga]