No Line on the Horizon

Oh, werd?
Way back when, when I started this blog, there was a new U2 album coming out, and there was no such thing as a tweet. Today, I joined my mom for a music ritual that few people still celebrate: the purchase of a physical album that you've been waiting for for years. I could have downloaded it on iTunes. Heck, I could have stolen it off the internet a week ago. Kevin pointed out though, "I know you can hear it all over the web right now, but it's more fun waiting for the radio to release a track every once in a while and then going to buy it!"
The album has been officially on sale since midnight, so my mom and I were already running behind. There really aren't record/cd stores anymore that I know of, so we settled for a Barnes and Nobles. The guy behind the register looked confused when we plopped three copies of the same record on the counter. Didn't we know that we could burn copies? Over coffee, we slowly peeled open the plastic on the outer cover and wrestled with the security stickers (I have broken more jewel cases because of those...). The packaging included a transparent equal sign that gets thrown away with the outer plastic. Why did U2 put that there? An iTunes customer will never know to wonder. We opened the lyric books and flipped through. My mom commented on some lines that she loved. When we got to the car, we popped the copy in and savored the moment of the first listen. "This reminds me of this song." "Remember when dad played that one song on repeat?" "Oh, that chord was perfect."
I know that the tactile experience of a cd pales in comparison to the tactile feel of vinyl, and for that matter, before recorded music, you had to experience all music live and in person, so really, the end of the album shouldn't really be that sad. But I prefer holding the newspaper and coffee in my backyard to reading the Huffington Post on a laptop, and I actually love having a crate of music to flip through rather than a spin dial on a hand-held device.

Oh, and the record kicks arse.

Thanks mom!