From the vaults...

About a week and a half ago, my car battery died. When the battery was replaced, my radio station pre-sets were messed up. Like way messed up. I can't even listen to my favorite stations (105.3, 101.5, 1007. and 98.9). Although I have a bunch of self-burned cd compilations, I thought it would be good to take out my old cd's out of retirement...

Pay no attention to the dirty seat cushions...

Sadly, my CD collection had been languishing in our bedroom media cabinet. It was time to give these a whirl once again and see why I loved these albums in the first place...

One CD is a compilation (the Richard Blade Flashback Favorites) while the other two are among my favorites, "The Singles" by the Pretenders and "Green Thoughts" by THE garage band of the 80's, The Smithereens...

This compilation had everything on it! With the exception of Leisure Process (never heard of them back then and don't care for them now), I like everything on this CD, especially the long version of "Nowhere Girl" and "Our House". The Kings is also hard to find. The last song, which was cut off is the epic, "White Lines (Don't Do It)" by Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel, which was horrifically covered by the anemic Duran Duran. Sorry Simon le Bon, you can't rap!

I long for the days when MTV and VH1 used to play actual music videos. "Nowhere Girl" was one of my favorite songs - I still remember it. Eighth grade. The awkward years.

Lots of bittersweet memories with this song too. Trouble with cliques and fitting in. You know, the typical teenage angst. The one constant thing that made these feelings go away was locking the door and shutting myself in my room and immersing myself with music.

Although I recently bought the Pretender's second album for .50 at Nickelodeon Records, and even though I have the LP version of this same CD, it's not like I break out the record player that often to actually listen to my old records. This CD compilation has the best of the best of one of my favorite groups of all time, The Pretenders.

One of their best and meaningful songs. I fell in love with the lyrics and the shimmery guitars:

This song didn't get a lot of play on the radio, but I liked it nonetheless, Day after Day:

The last CD brings back a lot of great memories of college. The Smithereens were one of my first concerts, in fact I went to their San Diego show to support this album. I watched it in the now defunct San Diego Theatre downtown with one of my guyfriends. They respectablly rocked but also had lots of discernable retro-influences in their music (Beatles, the Byrds, Beach Boys)...

here's an example of a song with  the Beach Boy's/Pet Sounds era sound:

Anyhow, it was like a trip down memory lane for me listening to these songs...

I'll be switching up the cd's once in a while for variety, but for now, I'm still enjoying these!

So what CD is playing in your cars?