Cosmic Thing was the first cassette tape I bought for myself. I remember it the event with relative clarity for the time. It was around October of 1989 and sometime in the evening. My mom drove my brother and I to the Tower Records on Watt Avenue in Sacramento. I had saved up my allowance to buy the tape after becoming obsessed with the video for "Love Shack". (My parents let us watch way too much MTV at that age.)

Listening to the tape on the way home, I remember being amazed that The B-52's had more songs than just "Love Shack". I couldn't get enough of them. I quickly started buying their entire catalog on tape, becoming obsessed with all of their songs. This then lead me to another Athens, GA based band- R.E.M.. I also spent most of my childhood buying and obsessing over their music.

Because of Cosmic Thing I started buying music and collecting. I've since progressed to CDs and regressed to vinyl, but I still can't stop buying music. I also have a compulsion to get the complete catalogs of bands I really like- even if I know I'll never listen to some of the junkier records- because I need to have the complete collection.