"It's your cousin, Marvin. Marvin BERRY!"
Lost in the shuffle of thousands of songs at my click-wheel is the inertia of choosing a 'till-now-forgotten CD and then allowing it to play through 22 tracks while weaving an audio portrait of now and then.

It's possible that in 10 years I will remember that I downloaded Kelly Clarkson's hit after returning from Wildwood, New Jersey in a car full of a smelly Steve, Karpo, and Cat who discovered that we took great satisfaction in joining Kelly in a rousing top-of-our lungs rendition of the CD-repeated "SINCE YOU BEEN GONE." I might remember that I found Rhett Miller wondering if he was going to be lonely for the rest of his life on pandora.com and then downloaded him when I started to identify. He joined a mix of painful yet hopeful musicians trying to cheer me. I already can't remember why I downloaded Bowling For Soup, but I suspect it had to do with either "1985", "Almost", or I really liked the name of the band. Maybe some things are more memorable than others.

Today, about 15 years from the original purchase, I found Chuck Berry's Greatest Hits. Poor Chuck hadn't seen the inside of a CD player in quite a few years. He came from a time when I could fit all of my CDs in a little grey 12-CD carrying case. He was probably part of my neighbor's BMG purchase, along with Bob Marley, and some early Green Day that I would inherit in those years between popularity stints. I'm sure I ended up with Chuck due to some combination of Oldies 95, the local oldies FM station, Back to The Future (making another appearance this month), and the low low price of $7.95. I was a teenage bargain hunter.

As I listened through the CD, I was struck by how similar the songs sounded to each other. I wondered if maybe that's why it hadn't made the airwaves in a while. There was a song about Delilah, and I wondered what it was about that name that seems to inspire. I searched for "Johnny B. Goode" and found "Maybellene". Why can't she be true? I remembered listening to "Sweet Little Sixteen" and thinking about the girls in my class and listening to "No Particular Place To Go" and wondering how many songs have been recorded about parking. Today, I listened at work and tried to convince myself that all of this wasn't "Too Much Monkey Business"; at least not for this "Brown Eyed Handsome Man".

"...You know that new sound you've been looking for? Well, listen to this..."