Venus and Mars Are All Right Tonight

Every once in awhile I find myself missing my vinyl. My mother had passed down the first albums that I had truly loved when I was still quite young. Highway 61 Revisited had already changed my personality for good by my tenth birthday. But it wasn't until high school that I started collecting albums seriously for myself. At that point I was more of a Paul person than a John person. I loved Wings. It brought back the AM radio days of being a child in the seventies.

I don't actually remember when and where I bought Venus and Mars. I know I bought it used and as it would have been over ten years old so the stickers and poster were long gone. I probably bought it as a cheap single for "Listen to What the Man Said" a song that had spent some time on the radio and still got some soft rock airplay in the eighties. But there were all kinds of gems I had never heard before: "Venus and Mars", "Rock Show", "Magneto and Titanium Man" and my favorite "Spirits of Ancient Egypt".

A couple of months ago I started missing this album. I gave my records to a friend for safekeeping years ago. She is notoriously hard to pin down so I haven't actually seen any of them for over a decade. Now Venus and Mars is just obscure enough to make finding tracks on a P2P difficult which is usually my cue to check on itunes for the odd tracks. Of course I ran into the Internet Beatle Wall as none of their music existed in a purchasable electronic format. I found a couple of the songs on a share site but not all of my favorates let alone the whole album which plays well as a single piece.

Cut to this morning when after prolonged negations the iTunes started selling unprotected, high quality music files including much of the Wings catalog. I shy away from buying music. Until the music industry stops suing their fans for the sake of "starving artists". I want very little to do with them. They could stop peer to peer tomorrow and it still wouldn't make me give them any of my music. I'll listen to what I've got till they change the business model. But when one of them makes a move in the right direction I willing to send a little love their way.

It wasn't easy though. Apple's servers are getting hammered right now. I've never had a more difficult time downloading from Apple. Not even last February when everyone was jockeying to be the billionth iTunes download. If that is any indication it would seem that Apple and EMI have made the right choice to stop making it difficult for people to enjoy the music that they pay for. The wonder of it all, baby.