Evil geniuses they are, music overlords have found a way to migrate BMG's likely significant membership rolls to its successor program, Your Music. How have they done it? For old members, they've eliminated the major difference between the two programs — monthly charges. New members at Your Music have a monthly fee and music queue, at least in the service's announced plans so far. But BMG holdovers receive the standard flat $6.99/disc price. The offer snags me and has gotten the love/attention of the truly hardcore BMG fans ("I've been a member since 1985") at the DVD Talk forums, who earn karmic rewards (but not the now-mourned BMG Music Points) for as much as info as they share on coupons and deals. With the $6.99, no s+h, no queue thing, the question in the forums is the same as ever. Is there a better deal?

(Without, you know, switching to digital downloads.)

BMG Music Club is currently scheduled to die on June 23.

I've still got a long way to go. Different album, we know. But I thank the Blood and Chocolate liner notes for introducing me to the painting, introducing me to the pseudonym, all in extra thanks to a earlier (and final?) intro from BMG Music Club. Still like the movie, but now I know.

The Elvis record comes in maybe my last order from the long-running-but-soon-to-be-dead underrated musical deal spectacular. Others in the possibly closing buy: U2, Zooropa; U2 again, Wide Awake in America; The Smithereens, Meet the Smithereens; John Mellencamp, Words and Music (have come a long way there); and Costello again, Get Happy!!.

News of BMG Music Club's nearing death was sad but not unexpected. Music Points were gone, and the catalog appeared to be decreasing. Your Music was a clear successor, built from BMG's evolved Web-to-mail model but simplified in usage and pricing, likely to their parent's gain.

You figured BMG had two classes of users. The wizards rejected the Featured Selections by e-mail (no return to sender needed), worked the coupons, kept their per-CD price points low, stuck around forever, and bought only when conditions were met. The simples, meanwhile, paid at least $18.98 a month for the Featured Selection, except when they mailed stuff back, before escaping the club and becoming a costly retention problem. Neither group was smooth sailing for the business.

So, Your Music went down the middle, and BMG Music Club had to die. The new model charged $6.99 a month with no S+H — near the price point that made BMG wizards buy — and simply sent you a CD in your queue. If your queue was empty, the monthly charge still happened. Gone were 12-for-1 deals, the coupon battles, the return mess, S+H confusion, high visible prices, and likely some of the retention costs.

After getting the announcement, I've made my final run through the Pop/Rock catalog and plan to watch just New Releases from here on out. My selections are in my cart, awaiting a price point below the current $6.33 because I'm one of those people. In the meantime, I'd like to thank BMG for introducing me to the albums of: most of Bruce, Dylan, U2, Elvis Costello, Sinatra, The Faces, Johnny Cash, old Wilco, the Clash, and John Legend, among others. The service, like both my old computer and sneakers, served me well for nine and a half years.

Via Crumbler, we get a great line from a NPR blogger: "BMG's music service was — for many of us — our first foray into mail fraud, scams and thievery. … First, and easiest, involved a fake name. " I was Patrick L Coopernium. That was as far as my planning got, with no second, third or fourth accounts. But I appreciated the opportunity.

BMG Music Club's monthly possibility arrived in the inbox yesterday. "Your GRAND FUNK RAILROAD Featured Selection is here!" I declined.

A friend brought relevant analysis to mind: "Grand Funk Railroad paved the way for Jefferson Airplane, which cleared the way for Jefferson Starship. The stage was now set for the Alan Parsons Project, which I believe was some sort of hovercraft."

And yet Homer's facts did not change my mind. But the issue of recommendations came up again this morning, as DCist linked to Sarah Grace, who like me has found Amazon's e-mails aren't quite what they used to be. In Grace's case, Uglydolls were involved.

In Saturday's mail, BMG sent me Babalu, the best of Desi Arnaz. Yes, Ricky Ricardo. No, it was not my featured selection. I requested it.

The liner notes by author Will Friedwald have two high points for me. The first is the opening.

"I know exactly the kind of orchestra I want," Desi Arnaz explained to his agent in 1945. "Latin American music in this country (until now) has always had a fault. When a band like Machito in New York plays Latin music, the rhythm is great but the sound is not melodically good enough — it's tinny. On the other hand, when (Andre) Kostelanetz plays 'Amor,' it's lush but it has no balls."

The second is Friedwald's description of Babalu, the song, the I Love Lucy showpiece.

"Babalu" was the band's killer-diller showstopper, their counterpart to Tommy Dorsey's "Well Git It" or Harry James' "Two O'Clock," a no-holds-barred flagwaver with all the stops pulled out. Arnaz later described the Margarita Lecuona piece as a savage prayer to Chango, an African god of war. First recorded in the US by jazz giant Benny Carter, it was initially popularized in a milder version by Cugat and vocalist Miguelito Valdez, while Arnaz first latched on to it at Ciro's in 1946.

"Babalu" begins with almost 30 whole seconds of all three of Arnaz's percussionists individually laying out a Latin polyrhythm unaccompanied — sort of the polyrhythmic equivalent of rubato — building up suspense for the star's entrance. Arnaz and the rest of the ensemble then arrive with a dramatic cadenza. Using all the vocal tricks in his bag, including a sly laugh and those motorboat r's (also heard on "Carnival in Rio"), Arnaz's own chorus erupts in volcanic fury.

After another a cappella percussion passage, Arnaz uses a call and response pattern to lead the band-as-chorus into a conga line far longer and wilder than anything Hollywood could present on the screen. And as you get caught up in the dizzying euphoria of "Babalu," space and time gradually become irrelevant. It's as if the conga line stretches all the way back to the horizon, a line that you wish would go on forever.

The album is only Arnaz solo work — no performances from I Love Lucy — but I think that approach is probably superior. If you're looking for work from the show, Babalu Music is what you want. The producer? Weird Al.

The Doobie Brothers have had two different lead singers, different so much as to create essentially two different eras of the band.

The Tom Johnston era had: Listen to the Music, Jesus Is Just Alright, Rockin' Down the Highway, Long Train Runnin', Black Water, and China Grove,

The Michael McDonald era had: Takin' It to the Streets, It Keeps You Runnin' and (departing from his emerging 'It' theme) What a Fool Believes.

I fall firmly in the former camp. McDonald's MCI ads are the bane of my existence (or at least somewhat baneful). And now the good people at BMG are delivering him to my inbox, "Your Michael McDonald Featured Selection is here!"

User preferences fail once again.

Does a distinction become more and less distinctive simultaneously? I now own the best-selling album of all time, 28 times platinum, the Eagles' Greatest Hits. Vol. 1. I'm not sure what the ownership says about my tastes. Thiller is already sitting on my shelf. Maybe if I ever buy The Wall or Zeppelin IV, I'll take some time to interpret.

At the moment, the only interpretation I can give is to the most suspect line of the Eagles' Already Gone: "And then you'll have to eat your lunch all by yourself." Because the narrator, you know, is already gone. Come on. What kind of put down is that supposed to be? Was eating lunch together that big in the '70s?

The line has its fans, but I don't buy the Eagles playing so small time. Maybe all the platinum is blinding me, but I've always seen them spending their days playing guitars behind an earthenware pottery shop on a California beach. Not clocking into any lunchroom.

If you want to talk blue collar, let's talk Patsy Cline. Her greatest hits also arrived in the mail today, and I'm looking forward to listening. The beauty of Crazy knocks me out.

To the Dylan fans who offered suggestions here about starter albums, your suggestions were in the BMG box as well: The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, Blonde on Blonde and Highway 61 Revisted. You got me diving. Blood on the Tracks has a spot reserved next to them here, whenever BMG picks up the CD/SACD.

Spinning now is the CD player is Appalachia Waltz, with classical instrumentalists including Yo-Yo Ma taking on traditional Texas fiddle music. The playing's a bit restrained, at least probably more than traditional Texas fiddling; but the sound's different enough to be enjoyable on the merits of influence and interpretation.

That BMG Music Club has me by the ears, I know. The key is to make sure one works the system, not the other way around. The club's prices hit the mark every few months, and then there are actual deals to be had. Let me know if I can enjoin you. Until then, tell me which album I should listen to first, Vienna's Best of New Year's Concert or Nirvana's Nevermind?

Leave it to BMG Music Club to depress a man. The club had a sale last week, so I went shopping.

My ears for a while had been calling out for some Johnny Cash, so I picked up "At Folsom Prison." The title tells you all need to know: Cash singing, his band playing and 2,000 inmates hollering, all locked inside a California prison of no good repute.

How bad was Folsom? Cash wrote a song about it, "Folsom Prison Blues." The song went to number one on the charts, and that's a sign. That's how bad Folsom was. When Johnny Cash writes a good song about you, you better hope you're Jesus because otherwise you're nothing but trouble.

So here's Cash with band and inmates, singing away about killing, desperation, love impeded, and trains steaming full speed to points far outside the prison walls. The inmates, they're roused. They're clapping and hooting. Do you know what a hoot sounds like? A hoot is not a shout. A hoot is the shout's dishelved brother, indecorous and happy as sin.

But still, it's Cash's room. Even with just a handful of guards scattered around the edges, his voice and his guitar are the only instruments of control he needs. Two-thousand convicted men, all his.

In a sense, they're all under his boot heel; but in a truer sense they're all riding shotgun. Cash is behind the wheel. In that car, he's easing the steering and the gears, not burdened by the speedometer needle sitting in the devil's corner. The radiator is always about to blow, hissing almost to a spasmic gurgle, and Cash seems to like it that way.

I like it too. I like it too much. Somewhere between the idea of this event occurring and the fact that it actually occurred, I find myself wanting. My job cannot grab and hold the attention of 2,000. It struggles to keep lone visitors beyond five minutes of explanation. I would not describe my job as "picture cropper." But most people would, not knowing my particular ways of euphemism.

I find pictures, and I crop them. I do other things too, but mostly I crop. I zoom in and frame the picture just right. Then — off with the edges — chop. No exclaimation point is necessary ("chop!"). With the exception of "click," Photoshop leaves your work onomatopoeically mute. But no great bother, the picture is cropped. The subjects are bought nearer and in focus. Save, and the task is done.

Over and over again, the task repeats. When the work gets to me the most, Fr. Lelii pops into my head. Fr. Ray Lelii, S.J., my ninth grade biology teacher, took no lines and could interrupt wavering answers with an intensity that explained why he was also moderator of the school's Italian Club. He drilled his central, non-biological lesson into our heads: "Repetitio est mater studiorum!" Repetition is the mother of study, of learning, of knowledge. I find some patience there. My loyalty is strong, but my desires need the tempering.

I know I'm not where I need to be yet. A silly meter has been running through my head all day: "I cropped a pic of Reno, just to see it nigh." A silly parody meter. What Cash actually sings in "Folsom Prison Blues" is, "I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die."

As recorded live and behind bars, the line gets the loudest cheers from the 2,000 authentic Folsom prisoners. I do covet my neighbor's big house.

You know it's a good day when you worked less than you did the day before. Yesterday totalled about 14 hours, 11 of them in the basement of the journalism building. Today has hit the eight mark and will go further, but not by more than a couple hours.

You know it's a good day when you ate better than you did the day before. Yesterday was no lunch. Today was Giordano's baby pizza.

You know it's a good day when your massive final project seems more possible than it did the day before. Yesterday our site didn't work on Netscape. Today it's cross-browser like it was born that way. Yesterday our content didn't make sense to our professor. Today after receiving an explanation, she loved it. Yesterday I spent three hours trying to think of a way to start our final presentation. Today the whole group bought on to a song-and-dance number, Blues-Brothers style. It'll be so, so good.

You know it's a good day when it rained less than it did the day before.

You know it's a good day when your music sounds better than it did the day before. Yesterday I had too much of a headache to turn on the Discman. Today the remasters of CCR's Willy and the Poor Boys and Green River arrived from BMG.

Bring a nickel; tap your feet.

Anyone want to join BMG Music Club? I'm a member in search of more free CDs and, to get them, want to get more people to join.

Their offer is 11 CDs for the price of 1. After shipping and handling, this deal works out to less than $4 a CD. These music clubs have drastically changed since we first tried them in grade school. I've been very satisfied with BMG.

E-mail me if you're interested.