Buried Treasure: When Fantasy Meets Reality
If this was GQ magazine and not The Obelisk (and if the idea had any appeal to me whatsoever), this piece would be about how I finally had a threesome and was pissed when the two chicks spent the whole time making out and I was left in the cold. Since it’s The Obelisk, it’s about record shopping. Hey, you get what you pay for.
This past weekend, I paid for a copy of The Desert Sessions Vol. I/Vol. II on Amazon. It was the cheapest I’d ever seen the CD for sale — and believe me, I checked regularly — and I knew from habitual eBay browsing that I wasn’t going to do any better in terms of price, so I grabbed it for $28. Even with the couple bucks shipping, it was a bargain, and as I’ve been pining away for this lost Man’s Ruin gem for longer than I at this point care to admit, I figured it was high time to bite the proverbial bullet and shell out the cash. So it was done.
Showed up in the mail yesterday and I popped it on this morning for the first time, and well, there are some cool tracks. “Girl Boy Tom’ has a good feel, and “Cowards Way Out” is among the more developed of the ideas present, and the few cuts at the end with vocals — “Johnny the Boy” might be my favorite of the bunch — pretty much rule, but there’s no way these songs could have lived up to my expectation. My life remains as it was yesterday: mostly in need of caffeine.
Still, I don’t have buyer’s remorse in the traditional sense because (1:) I know I got a good deal and (2:) I legitimately wanted to own The Desert Sessions Vol. I/Vol. II enough to justify the price. So what if the music didn’t reshape my perception of the world? Even if I listen to it two or three more times out of obligation and stick it on my shelf forever, at least I’ll be glad to see it every time I look over there. It’s not everything it could be, but it’s everything it is, and that’s enough.
Tags: California, Desert Sessions, Josh Homme, Man's Ruin, Record Shopping
