I can't tell you where we're going; I guess there's just no way of knowing.

I was on a mission to do laundry on friday morning. After stopping to get a quick $20 bill at the local gas station (along with a bottle of water and a big jug of wiper fluid), I took off to the laundrymat. I was listening, in the car, to the local random track station, the one with no DJs that basically sounds like somebody's loaded iPod on shuffle. Anyway, I hear this tune. I think to myself, "this is pretty cool." This morphed into, "this is really sweet," into "this is kicking my ass," into "I just had my ass thoroughly wallopped by the power of that sweet riff."

This sometimes happens. I'll be listening to the radio and hear something sweet I've never heard before. But I'll forget about it before the DJ tells me what it was. But this time I was determined. I was going to listen until they told me what it was, at which point I would decided to buy it, or at least steal it. I was thinking maybe Journey. Maybe Yes. Unforunately for me, because this particular radio station has no DJs, they have no one to tell you whether or not any particular song was Journey, or even Yes. I was at a loss.

But my own ingenuity sprung into action. I heard the oft-stated mantra in the back of my head: "the internet will tell us these things..." I thus decided to fix on the most prominent lyric line in the song, and following laundry, to search that sucker on the wild wild web.

Turns out it wasn't Journey.

It wasn't Yes.

It was the one-hit by a one-hit wonder late 70s-early 80s new wave outfit by the name of "Sniff 'n' the Tears."

That's right. Sniff 'n' the Tears.

I looked them up on allmusic. Apparently this particular song was a big smash, but the band suffered from what many bands suffer from, i.e., a lead singer and songwriter who thought he was more powerful than the rest of the band could possibly imagine. This led to several lineup changes, several rapid-fire albums, with little or no commercial success. Formed 1978. Disbanded 1982.

But, as I suggested, that was an ass-kicking riff. Sweet. Even ultra-sweet. I had to hear it again. So I went to iTunes. No dice. Apparently iTunes has never even heard of Sniff 'n' the Tears. I went to Amazon. They had heard of it, but no sound samples. Allmusic let me play about 20 seconds of it. What to do?

I resolved the following. I would go to Tower Records. Apparently the album from which this particular cut was taken was recently reissued. Perhaps there would be a copy there. So off I went. I looked under 'S'. Not only did they not have the record, or anything else by Sniff 'n' the Tears, they also didn't even have the little card with the band name. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch.

However, Tower does have this little listening station that will let you automatically search the inventory and order a record if it's not in stock. I search. No sound samples. No in-store copies. And, in fact, no ability to order the record. I was screwed.

Of course, I could have just gone to Amazon, but this was one of those momentary things. I needed to pop that tune into my car and rock. Waiting several days at least didn't appeal to me, at which time this impulse might have passed. So I decided to be a little bit more investigative. Perhaps this song had made it on to a soundtrack, or a compilation? So I type in the name of the song. Four results pop up.

Compilations. Two of the particular record label on which the tune was issued, two other "hits of th 70s" comps. Now, I hate buying compilation discs. In the words of Bruce McCollough's Doors fan character, they're for "housewives and little girls." But I said, hey, compilations are usually ridiculously cheap. Five bucks sometimes. Perhaps this one was, too. So I walk over to the "various artists" category. I browse. No dice. Until...I happened upon:

"Hard to Find 45s on CD: Volume 8 - Hits of the 70s"

Sweet success! Now, as I turn the record over to discover its price....

$17.99.

Ugh. Crestfallen. No way was I paying 18 bucks for one track. Ass still intact. Unbruised.

Unkicked.