"Take A Chance"

Along with many others, I've been making periodic visits to Tower Records on Broadway in Sacramento to peruse the merchandise and partake of the sale as they prepare to close Tower Records for the last time. A week ago they closed their video store, and last night they closed their bookstore, and so all that's open now is the music portion of Tower.

Today, you could tell we were getting down to the last dregs of the CDs and DVDs on hand. Almost all the popular singers were gone, and many obscure singers were gone too, leaving just the eccentric leftovers. Even the titles told the story: Wong's "No Better Than This," or Vanessa Randall's "Take A Chance."

Some bands you could tell never took off: The Bangkok Five, for example. Others spoke of a lack of audience acclaim: Emma's "Crickets Sing For Anamaria," or Kimberley Locke's "Coulda Been." Other titles suggested oblivion: Roadtrip's "Road To Nowhere," or Samantha's "Square One," or Drywall's "Barbeque Babylon." One title suggested tedium: an opera based on Prokofiev's "Betrothal in a Monastery."

Some groups saw bright, gleaming possibilities, presumably now dashed: The Spores "Imagine The Future," or Whitestarr's "Luv Machine." Other singers seemed disillusioned: Joel Elizalde's "Ayudame a Creer" (Help Me To Believe). Other groups seemed to have missed their audience altogether: Cow's "Hear This! 3," Boy Hits Car's "The Passage," Unknown's "Volume II," or Asshole Parade's self-titled album. Other groups seemed to glory in the chaos: The Bleeding Alarm's "Beauty in Destruction."

Before walking in Tower, I had decided to degrade my already-low standards to the vanishing point, but even still, I couldn't stomach the thought of taking some of this music home to collect dust, much less pay for it.

Nevertheless, I decided to pick up two albums by Carquinez Straits. I don't know who they are, but they seemed local and ecological and thus a sure sell by my now infinitesimally-low standards. One song on their album "Humiliation Jacket" was called 'The Time We Left H-Bomb in Woodland,' a song title full of joyful possibilities. I hope it's good!

I also picked up some fairly-obscure stuff, like Moloko's Greatest Hits, and "Work This!", a collection of pump-you-up exercise music hopefully suited for aerobics and driving long distances across the Southwest.

Two genres seemed particularly slow to clear the tables: Dance and Goth. Even Dance fanatic me couldn't seem to get excited about what was left behind - obscure Brazilian DJ's mixing trashy French techno - and you could tell that the dramatically anti-commercial attitude of Goth/Metal groups like Necrodeath and Graveworm had finally come to its logical end point of dust, ruin and 70%+ discounts.

In the checkout line, a woman saw "The Cranberries" DVD I was purchasing. "Cranberries! Score!" she said. I said: "It was the last one on the shelf!" She said: "Well, I guess that means I have to beat you up now!"

Hurry up for the sale! Time is short!