Additionally, I bought a stereo amplifier for ten bucks from a yard sale over the weekend, which I hooked up to an old turntable my roommate had lying around and some speakers, so I now once again have the ability to listen to vinyl, which I haven't had in a good four or five years.

My vinyl collection consists mostly of classical music I picked up from radio and library going-out-of-business sales and tons of mid-90's Emo (Maximilian Colby, anyone?) Also, of course, my copy of "Pac Man Fever" (alas, if I had only had the record player around as I was finishing my article for Soft Skull's Gamers) which I suppose I will wait until I have some time alone in the apartment to listen to. Most of the music has been on ice for so long, that it feels almost new. Apart from "Christmas in the Stars," the Star Wars Christmas album, which becomes cemented in my head every December and which I would pay money to have surgically removed and all memory of it erased from my brain (22 years of "What Can You Get a Wookie for Christmas when He Already Owns a Comb?" is penance enough for whatever I did wrong in those past lives, right?...)

Listening to old Shotmaker, Maximilian Colby and Halal Shedad records I find myself astonished that rock music exists which doesn't sound like the Jam, Joy Division or the Rolling Stones, which seem to the the 3 primary modes of late. Some of that unintelligible shrieking feels textural in the way that improvised music is, and nice to hear from a time when when fey art school boys were still allowed to play like Celtic Frost...