3 things:

one, i'd like to see mike's unrequited love post expanded into either a short story or preferably, a short film, scored to neil young's 'rust never sleeps'. the closing scene should feature a 1979 version of a young man staring wistfully after a comely babe sashaying down a winding cobblestone street in brussels while 'ride my llama' blares in the background, taking us to the closing credits. brian, if you still have that videocamera, you need to get on this project stat!

two, though i've wholly embraced mp3/digital musical media, there's something sad about not really having a record collection anymore. yes, i still have maybe 75-100 vinyl records, dating back to around 1989, the year i purchased a cd player and stopped buying vinyl entirely. as a teenager in the mid to late 80s, more than half of my purchased music was in the form of cassettes, which were convenient at the time for walkman use but fairly useless now, given that i no longer own a tape deck and have either given away or thrown out all of my cassettes. this realization, triggered by stuart's question about re-discovering and re-digging old records, has prompted me to redouble my efforts to back up my current collection and locate some of those songs from the 80s in mp3 form...'That Petrol Emotion' and 'The Mighty Lemon Drops' are two likely candidates for imminent re-acquaintance.


three, stuart's mention of maya's newfound interest in u2 has me admiring u2. i haven't purchased an album of theirs since Achtung Baby (for the record, Stu, 'Unforgettable Fire' is my personal fave). and i probably won't purchase their new disc. but at least they're still putting out catchy, mostly interesting (okay, i probably won't be hired as their p.r. rep anytime soon) pop music. i can't think of any band approaches their 30 year anniversary that still engages the pre-teen crowds/the billboard charts in the same way. yes, there will always be classic rock devotees (my sympathies, mike. i'm sure it's just a phase) and a market for boomer retreads whose concert tour announcements appear each spring like dust mite excretion, bilking their only-too-willing-to-be-bilked cohorts into forking over cash for...okay this is just going to turn into another one of my anti-Eagles rants...but my point is...okay, how about in the form of a question, "Can you think of any bands that have been around for 30 years that are still putting out interesting music?"

Btw...though I'm all for engaging different viewpoints, there are wrong answers to this question. Chiming in with, "The Rolling Stones", for example, will result in you being suspended from posting for an unspecified duration. Just a friendly warning. :)