And the search continues...

Sigh. I have issues. Many issues.

Today, we focus on two of them, since they're connected at this moment: My love of older music, and my unwillingness to accept digital downloads.

Over the past year or so, I've been searching for a certain album by Ivory Joe Hunter. I do realize right now a number of you are shaking your collective heads and saying "who?", because he hasn't really been active since before most of us were born.

Since I Met You Baby: The Best of Ivory Joe Hunter has some of his best songs. The title track. Empty Arms (I simply love that song). Rockin' Chair Boogie. A Tear Fell. Some of the best songs done by a man with one of the best voices, ever.

Sigh.

And the damn CD is out of print. Only a few places have it, and they want far, far too much for it.

Which leads me to the second part of the problem.

I could download most of the tracks from...shudder...iTunes, which I refuse.

Recently, The New York Times posted an article about the quality of MP3 audio. It's common knowledge that, when you take a song and compress it to MP3, you lose something. For the most part, when you're listening to compressed music through headphones, most people cannot tell the difference.

I can, and it frustrates the crap out of me. I know something's wrong, something's different, and it takes away from the moment, the experience.

That's why I still buy CDs. That's why, although I do have my music ripped to MP3 on an external hard drive at work, they're ripped with the highest bitrate MP3 has. And that's why I won't buy from iTunes.

So the search continues. With each passing year, however, it gets harder and harder to find some of the older music from talents forgotten today. Such wonderful music...lost...

It's enough to break my heart.