I'm looking through the iTunes store, and something catches my eye. It's a featured album, it's only $7.99, and seems to be some sort of benefit for a charity.

The title? "AHK-toong BAY-bi Covered".

The contents? Every song from U2's "Achtung Baby", covered by a different artist. Some of the names I recognized. Others, I have no idea who they are. Most of them -- even the names I recognized -- were performers that, even though I had heard OF them, I had never heard. NIN and Jack White and Gavin Friday being the expections. But they were all much more well known that the bands on that old cover album I bought years ago (no, not the fairly good one with TobyMac and a bunch of other Christian musicians, the pretty awful one of unknown alternative groups). And I like U2. And it was for a good cause.

And hey, I bought and liked Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark.

So I bought "AHK-toong BAY-bi Covered". And you know what? It's not bad. How's that for a blazing review. My entire review might as well be "it could be worse".

Truth is, it COULD be worse. I know, I've bought worse. (See the parenthetical above . . .)


So this gets me poking around a little bit more, and I find iTunes has the Achtung Baby remastered album. Now, I already have the album. I already have most of the b-sides from the singles of this album. But there were a few I didn't recognize. A look back at my library and I find that, indeed, I do not have two of the tracks.

Well, I do now.

Then I looked at the Joshua Tree remastered album, and there are some tracks there that I don't have.

Again, I do now.

Some of these are tracks I have heard of, and others of them I didn't know existed. But here were these songs, songs I will enjoy over and over again, available to me for the first time. Yes, just $1 a piece for a song and a smile and a legal way to listen to what, up until know (to my knowledge) has only been available conveniently and cheaply as illegal downloads. I can't say for certain, because the truth is I haven't looked.

What a world we live in! A world of technology and

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