Although I
don’t really keep track, I’m pretty sure I don’t buy as many albums as I did 20
or 25 years ago. (While I do buy singles on iTunes, my album purchases are
still on CD.) One of the reasons for this decline is the disappearance of
physical music stores that have enough of a selection to make browsing through
the bins a worthwhile endeavor. One of the best places for browsing, of course,
was Tower Records; before they opened a store just down the road from me at
Congressional Plaza in Rockville, I would make special trips to their more
distant stores, in quest of something that no one else would have to add to my
collection.
Of course,
Tower always had music playing over the store’s sound system. Very little of it
made much of an impression on me, but one day while I was in their Foggy Bottom
store in DC they put on an album that grabbed me immediately. I had never been
a big Patti Austin fan, primarily because the songs of hers I’d heard on the
radio always sounded pretty generic, but these songs were classics (admittedly
some more of my parents’ time than mine) and the arrangements were wonderful. She
even manages to surpass the Platters’ version of “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes”
(which I didn’t think was possible) with a slightly off-the-beat rendition
here.
Favorite
tracks:
Lazy
Afternoon
Smoke Gets
In Your Eyes
How Long Has
This Been Going On?
They Can’t
Take That Away From Me
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