I remember a warm night, the moist air whizzing past my face as my friend Mike and I rode our bikes across the city to Coconuts Music. It wasn't a journey that my dad wanted me to make; it was late on a Saturday, and the path to my first CD nirvana was laden with traffic hazards and other unknown dangers. Yet for reasons I only understand as I look back upon the evening, I needed to be there and do some shopping. My dad being my dad, he let me go. I don't think Mom was home at the time, or else circumstances may have been different.

If I were prone to melodrama, I'd credit my father with launching my love of pop music. That's not exactly the case, because the seeds of that love sit nestled throughout my childhood, and only seemed to reach their first blossom on that bike ride to Coconuts. Many music fans have a figurative cherry-popping moment forever preserved in their memories, that split-second when a song reached out from its passive position on the radio and grabbed their hearts forever. I can report no such specific encounter. My memory tends to spit out in chunks rather than slivers.

At any rate, that night marks the first time I traveled in search of a specific compact disc. The disc in question? Two Rooms, a tribute album to Elton John and Bernie Taupin, who were the first great loves of my listening career. When I was fourteen, I recieved a cassette copy of the To Be Continued... boxed set, four tapes full of Elton John hits and album tracks. As is characteristic of my memory's laziness, I have no idea why that arrived under the tree with my name on it. I vaguely recall expressing an interest in the song "Candle in the Wind" and I know that both of my parents enjoyed Elton in their own youth. Those two factors probably combined to bring me all that music, and I slurped it up eagerly. (Just ask my fellow janitorial staff at St. Jude the Apostle School, all of whom still bear the emotional scars from hearing me belt out "Tiny Dancer" and other Elton classics at the top of my lungs while scrubbing toilets.)

Which brings me to that Saturday night, and buying Two Rooms at Coconuts for an obnoxious price. For the first time, I indulged in my now-traditional album purchasing ritual. I felt the sweaty-palmed pre-purchase tension--what if it's out of stock? What if I don't have enough money? What if it's been delayed? I got the buzz that makes my fingers tingle as I paid for the CD, the whole time wanting to lunge over the counter and just force the disc into the store sound system. And of course, I felt that eager yearning as I fumbled with the goddamn plastic wrapping and stickers and finally freed the disc, tossing it into the player and letting it spin for the first time.

As tribute albums go, it's pretty good. There's some big talent on it doing good covers of some Elton John gems. It probably claims more significance as an integral part of my past than it does as a part of rock history, both because it just isn't that phenomenal, and because it marks the first time in my life that I wanted a specific album.

We're all exposed to music for our entire lives--from our first listenings while still in utero to the wailing strains of the organ as our relatives sing us to our final resting place. What gains significance for us is what we hear by choice. Not the background noise that fills our idle ears as we stand in an elevator--that's not listening. I'm talking about the stuff we seek out on our own, the Pop on which we build our individual identities. We choose our music and we make it our own.

Two Rooms was my first music--music I wanted, music I chose, music I came quickly to love. That's the thrill of pop; it's staking your claim on a slice of the massive history of music. Even when the claim is shared, either by ten other fans or ten million, it still belongs to you. You understand it in ways that others can only imagine. Best of all, you can pop the disc in and reconnect at your leisure. It's art you own, consumed at your command, and in that power is wrapped the secret to the passions we all harbor for the wail of an electric guitar and the pound of a big bass drum.

Of course, there's also the emotional responses to the music. That's not too important at this stage; I haven't responded emotionally to the Two Rooms CD since months after I bought it. I don't even think I have my original copy anymore. (That'll teach me to loan out CDs to my friends.) Two Rooms only remains with me because it represents my first assertive statement of personality, expressed through pop music.