twist of fait accomplis

September 7: On a whim, I purchase a sampler of Central and Eastern European music from the Tamizdat label for $2.50 from the "cheapie bin" at Tunes.

September 10: At work, I give the CD a spin. Most of the music is pretty cool, but one track really stands out: "Sonda - Jungle" by Robotobibok, a Polish jazz-rock-funk-jungle fusion group. I search online and find a few scattered Polish pages about them, but barely anything of any substance about the group, other than that they have an album called Jogging. I do a quick check for MP3s and find one from the album, but the site has a terrible lag and I'm unable to download it. Figuring that the one song I heard was good enough to warrant buying the full CD, I head to the Tamizdat site and decide to order a copy for $12. It's more than I usually spend on a CD, but this isn't a disc I'd be able to find on Half.com. While I'm at it, I spy two four-disc sets, Golden Years of the Soviet New Jazz, each printed in a limited edition of only 750 copies. I take a quick listen to the music and it's to my liking. I add both sets to my cart. I go into the site expecting to make a single $12 purchase and end up leaving with $75 worth of music on nine CDs.

September 16: I receive a confirmation that my order has shipped from the Czech Republic.

September 23: My order arrives. The Robotobibok album is better than I could have hoped and I'm immediately sorry I didn't know about these guys sooner so I could have caught them on tour in the US this past April. Right now, I'm currently enjoying the first of nine discs of Soviet New Jazz.

There's a whole world of music out there. And through a random purchase from a used CD store and a little research on the Net, I now have a nice chunk of it to occupy my time. Simple pleasures.