No. 732 – Weapon & The Wound

Performer: Days of the New

Songwriter: Travis Meeks

Original Release: Days of the New (II)

Year: 1999

Definitive Version: None

This song got me into Days of the New enough so I bought their second album. It was on the alternative station and even Q-FM for a bit, and I liked the dirgy symphonic quality of it.

This album was the first album I bought for a band’s first-time purchase in more than a year, probably since OK Computer by Radiohead (who I’m seeing for the first time in a week). And I loved it almost all the way through on the first listen, which is something that doesn’t happen with me much. Some of my favorite albums I’ve had to approach a few times before it clicks. Not this one.

Unfortunately, however, something else was clicking—the CD that I bought at the new Best Buy that was maybe a mile from my house. I don’t remember the song, but it was one I didn’t like, so no biggie. But then it started to skip on other songs, even on my downstairs—main—CD player. I had a few CDs that would skip on the upstairs office CD player and even the bedroom player, because, well, they were older, lower-grade equipment.

But I never had a CD skip on my Sony unless it had a problem. This skip started out of nowhere a couple of months after I bought the CD, and there appeared to be nothing physically wrong with it, so a glitch had developed in the coding. (My player, as mentioned, didn’t skip on anything else, so that wasn’t the problem.)

Back in those pre- and nascent Napster days, you could return an opened CD as long as you had a receipt and made an even-steven trade for the same CD. That’s all I wanted anyway; I didn’t want my money back. So I scrounged up a receipt, which I’m pretty sure was for a different CD I had bought since then—maybe even at a different store—and headed to customer service.

I told the guy the problem and said I just wanted to get another CD. So I went to get it and maybe something else while he took the CD I returned to confirm the problem. When I returned, he assured me that the CD definitely had the skip and he’d be happy to make the trade.

“By the way,” he told me. “That’s a really good album.”

I smiled. That’s why I just want to trade it, not return it.

That was the first time I ever turned a total stranger onto music I liked, so that was cool, and my replacement CD didn’t—and doesn’t—skip.