I regularly record Acousticfrom TV5 Monde on my DVR, and I just finished watching this week’s program with Rachid Taha. I’m a big fan of Taha and on the episode he sang some songs from a new album called Bonjour. They weren’t the best songs he ever recorded, but I liked them and I want the CD. I have all Taha’s records, and I want this one, too.
So I set out looking for it. The first place I looked was iTunes. I’m always ambivalent about albums on iTunes, though I buy most of my music there. I like the instant gratification. I can also find stuff that’s hard to find in stores. As record stores disappear, its not easy to find anything but the biggest hits in retailers like BestBuy, Barnes&Noble or Borders. On the other hand, I like having all that information the downloads don’t provide but that usually comes in a CD: names of composers and lyricists, producers and members of the band, information about where and when something was recorded, anecdotes from the sessions, photographs and all that stuff you usually find in the liner notes that accompany a CD. But it wasn’t in iTunes, anyway. Continue reading →