"The Best" indeed

Ah...B'z.

Well, I now own "B'z The Best: Treasure." It's one of those albums with all those songs that remind you of something and this reminds me of one of the best times of my life, when I was 15. The time between the latter part of middle school and the beginning of high school are so chock full of musical imprints that there are songs to this day that jolt me back to when I'd sit outside with my walkman reading a two-volume Sherlock Holmes anthology or when I'd fall asleep with the radio on to one of my favorite FM shows or on the schoolbus where my friends and I barely convinced the driver to put on one of our tapes or the summer days when I had nothing to do but listen to the radio channel that the US military provided and call up and bug whoever was DJ-ing with requests or to ask who was playing the song. I'd stay up late on Sunday's just to catch Dr. Demento and hope Whimsical Will had something crazy to do that week. Or I'd find myself not being able to fall asleep thanks to the Korean FM show where I first heard about Baudrillard even if they played Ryuichi Sakamoto a little too much, they made up for it by playing enough of Stratovarius' "Forever" or even "Tiger Burning Bright," which are both songs I had a hard time getting the American DJ to play.

MNet, Korean MTV, Channel V were all on rotation. Channel V was more important so I could catch Aska's "Girl" and thanks to Takeshi Kaneshiro's cover, I found out about Fuji Fumiya's "True Love" and I listend to it so many times that the words "Bokura wa itsumo haruka haruka tooi mirai yo" were on my lips all the time. I also became highly addicted to singing out Nuno's "Crave."

Now, please excuse me while I go listen to B'z's "Motel" one more time.