My Back Pages: I have too many compact discs. Actually, I don't -- I'm resigned to music as my drug. Now I just need an efficient drug delivery system. I did have one of those CD carousel systems. It held 300 discs. Wow. This meant that most of my discs had to be in storage. I'm back to a single disc system, but I still have most of my music packed away in a cabinet, and I forget what I own and have to hunt through for things I've been itching to hear. Anyway, I'm not sure an efficient, high quality, high capacity, PC-controlled method is available yet (MP3? Puh-leeze!), so I'll just have to continue to bitch.

That's not what I meant to bring up though. What I meant to bring up was that this storage thing makes for a lot of fun surprises. Example: Freedy Johnston's This Perfect World. I pulled this one out recently with a batch of discs to stick in my car. Jesus, he should have called it This Perfect Album, if he could stand the immodesty. There isn't a moment of filler, there isn't a single song that isn't dead-on brilliant. His writing is so solidly singer/songwriter that it takes a couple of listens to realize that the stories are all quite dark and (presumably) fictional, and he uses the "voice" of the singer/songwriter to lull the audience a bit into taking it all at face value. (I could be wrong. Johnston may know all about murder, suicide pacts, domestic abuse, dalliances with Lolitas, and the accidental death of a lover from first-hand experience. If so, my apologies for thinking it fictional.) I remember playing the crap out of the disc years ago, then it went into the cabinet and collected dust, waiting to be rediscovered.