i heart tower records. gosh, i never thought i'd say that.

so my search for the mraz cd was, until yesterday afternoon, utterly unsuccessful. on a whim, i called the tower records on pennsylvania while here in the office--figured i'd see if they happened to have it in stock. to my shock, they did. so i gleefully asked them to put the cd on hold for me, as i would stop by on my way home from work and pick it up. i figured out what metro stop was nearest and where i needed to go to get from the metro to the store and everything. all set, right?

ha! first of all, i walked out of the metro and walked four or five blocks in the wrong direction. after that, i backtracked and tried to navigate from there. found a street i was looking for, so turned onto that...after walking for about a mile (when the walk was supposed to be just under half a mile), i put aside feeling stupid and walked into a random store (an office max or office depot--something office-y) to ask for directions. there's something about when someone gives you directions and ends with "you can't miss it" that screams, "hi, you're a dumbass." obviously i CAN miss it, as i hadn't found it yet.

nonetheless, these directions did in fact lead me to tower, where my cd was waiting for me (and on sale! ah, nothing like an added bonus to my pilgrimage for music). as i prepared to leave, i was wise and asked for directions to the nearest metro. i was told that the foggybottom stop was about three or four blocks down i street. foggybottom? damn...i'd gotten off at farragut north...obviously the helpful directions by wmata were not so helpful.

three or four blocks down i street, the metro was nowhere to be found. so i kept walking, taking a turn at some point because there had to be metro somewhere. next thing i know, i see a sign for new hampshire and realized that i was, if i was guessing right, en route to the kennedy center (side note: yes, if i saw new hampshire, that meant i was probably a street away from the foggybottom stop, but those streets weren't overly well-lit and i wasn't going to wander off with the hopes of walking down the right street.). so i stopped at a hotel and asked for directions, which the wonderful gentleman working there gave me. turns out, i was walking up the street as he said and saw a building that looked remarkably like front page. yep, i wound up in dupont. so i made this huge circle while trying to get to what should have been a very simple metro stop. if you asked me now where tower records is, i couldn't tell you, other than that it's at 2000 pennsylvania.

that aside, i now have in my possession mraz's "waiting for my rocket to come." and have been listening to it ever since. metro ride home, running last night, metro this morning. i think it's like many major label debuts--it's good, but you know the live performances and albums to come will be much better. i really dig mraz's style, lyrics and musicianship (more on this shortly), but i think it is slightly overproduced and is made more radio-friendly than it necessarily needs to be. but, at the same time, i look at it differently than many, as i like the rawer, less polished style of live recordings. i'm not really into perfection in music--if anything, my favorite moments are the random imperfections that make musicians human. i'm an underground girl and i love that.

this album makes me want to see mraz live. he's got a funky, slightly-twanged (but not too much to foray into any country-like styles, which i personally cannot stand) and saucy attitude and obviously enjoys that. i mean, take a song like "too much food." he starts it out casting himself as a curly fry in a box of straight fries, "messing with the flavor oh the flavor that you savor/ saving me for last but you better not eat me at all." but the song sets up food as a metaphor for the recording industry and is basically a fuck you to the people who try to tell him who to be and how to sound. love it! and i'm sorry, but i have to give credit to any guy who will write in a song, "so step on up to the plate to get a date with mraz/ see you better act fast because supplies they never last/ now you know this is a limited time offer," and offer himself up to ridicule with a big ol' grin on his face. he's not one to take himself too seriously (*cough cough* howie) or wax poetical too much from time to time (*ahem* mayer).

so yeah, i'm now certainly a mraz fan.