By Denice Jobe
Special to The Washington Post
Monday, November 29, 2004; Page C08

It was the day I found myself at Best Buy digging through the CD bargain bin for bands I listened to when I was in my teens and early twenties that I realized I hadn't bought a CD by a new band in years. Guns N' Roses, Duran Duran, Pet Shop Boys.

"When did I stop needing music?" I asked my husband on the way home.

"When you stopped getting dumped," Steve said.

It was true. I'd gotten lazy about music. I listened mostly to classic rock stations, and the last CDs I had bought were "The Essential Journey" and a compilation of popular '80s songs -- my fifth. How many copies of A-ha's single "Take on Me" does a person need? Music used to be an important part of my life; now it felt like part of my past.

As Steve and I and our year-old twin boys traveled to my mother's for dinner, I jumped back and forth between radio stations, eager to find a new favorite band. But each unfamiliar song I listened to grated. Tired of my complaining ("What's with the shrieking?" "What happened to guitar solos?"), Steve reached to turn off the radio: "Enough."

Finding a new band to listen to was going to be harder than I thought.

When I was a girl, my favorite songs were the ones my parents liked. A few evenings a year, my mother and stepfather would turn off the television and play their records. Her favorites: Harry Chapin and Barry Manilow. His: Pink Floyd and Chicago. Sprawled on the rust-colored shag carpet in our pajamas, my brother and I would flip through my mom's old 45s and search record sleeves for posters or unusual (read: erotic) artwork.

Emerson, Lake & Palmer's "Tarkus" album fascinated me with its bizarre paintings of armadillo-shaped tanks and otherworldly landscapes. The band's eclectic sound gave my mom the jitters. "Turn that off," she'd snap at my stepfather, and slam the kitchen cabinet doors.

Summers were spent with my father traveling the West in a Volkswagen pop-top camper. Dusty eight tracks littered the dash: Steely Dan's "Aja," Fleetwood Mac's "Rumors" and Ian & Sylvia's "Northern Journey." These were background music for our adventures as we explored ghost towns and searched for fool's gold, and journeyed through deserts, past hand-painted billboards advertising dinosaur footprints and fossilized buffalo patties. My dad's were the records I bought first when I started my own music collection.

"The Muppet Movie" soundtrack was the first album I bought that wasn't in my parents' record cabinets. The second was REO Speedwagon's "Hi Infidelity." I was an eighth-grader then, who skipped the movies my mom dropped me off to see and hung out with my friends in Merlin's Music. We'd flip through the new releases and read vulgar greeting cards, while Foreigner's "Hot Blooded" blared over the loudspeaker.

In high school, while classmates swooned over Madonna and Michael Jackson, my best friend, Bai, and I worshiped Adam Ant. We plaited ribbons in our hair like Adam did, covered our acid-washed denim vests with his concert pins and wrote notes to each other using Adam Ant song titles.

Adam's music was our religion; his lyrics, doctrine.

It's weird how music can be strong enough to yank you back to a moment in your life. Sometimes you want to be in that moment again, sometimes you don't.

The compilation tape is my generation's answer to the love letter. Selecting the perfect songs and the order in which they are heard takes time and thought. There's a risk the person you share your music with won't like it. When Steve and I were dating, he made a tape for me of the progressive bands he liked. I heard in the lyrics and harmonies: This is Steve. This is who I am. This is my soundtrack. We danced to one of his songs -- Counting Crows' "Sullivan Street" -- at our wedding.

Earlier this year, I zeroed in on my new band: Linkin Park. Lead vocalist Chester Bennington's Sam Kinison-like screaming was jarring at first, but I liked the forceful mix of hip-hop and hard rock. Still, it took stamina to play the CD repeatedly, until I could listen appreciatively to even the most awkward tracks (there are at least one or two on every album). Months later, "Meteora" is a favorite.

One recent evening, Steve played the Bob Dylan album that reminds him of the time he backpacked across Europe, and I played the tunes I danced to when I was single. Then we listened to our parents' music: the Beatles, Carole King and Santana. The boys were too young to stay up and listen, but the next morning, after "Baby Mozart" and "Hakuna Matata," I played "Meteora," and the boys clapped their hands and danced.

I wonder what songs they will remember growing up. Will it be Linkin Park's "Numb"? Something by Pink Floyd or Harry Chapin? Or will it be the "Fisher Price: Little People Discovery" song? That's the one I hum in the shower.

I suspect much of my life's musical score has already been recorded, but I'd still like to find another new band to share with my kids. It's a way of linking our soundtracks, of keeping music a part of my present. Still, I can't help popping the old favorites in the CD player. They're comfier, worn in. Me.