Brain Rushes To Add Prince To His Collection

I sat in front of my TV for several hours yesterday afternoon watching the tributes begin to another musical icon gone too soon. The death of Prince marked the exit of another musical legend I grew up with in the 1980's. Gone are Michael, Whitney, and now Prince. They produced the soundtrack to my formative years. Even though I know and love many of Prince's songs, I can honestly tell you that I've never owned one of his albums. That was something I knew had to change.

I've been trying to grow my collection of vinyl records over the past few months, and yesterday I knew that I had to add a Prince album to my collection. Finding vinyl in Cedar Rapids isn't always easy. There are only a couple of stores that sell new copies. I called both yesterday afternoon. The first one was sad they didn't have any Prince on vinyl. The second store I called had better news. They had ONE copy left of the Prince album '1999'. I told them to hold it for me. I rushed to the store and paid more for one album than I ever have before. But as the sounds of songs like '1999' and 'Little Red Corvette' rang through our house last night, it was worth the price.

It's sad when the world loses a talent like Prince. In the coming days and weeks, we'll be bombarded with stories of what really happened and what went wrong. It'll be sad for sure. But we'll always have the music. That is constant. It was constant when they were alive, and constant now that they are gone. It's what makes music a living and breathing thing. It's what will carry us through.