Remember those shiny plastic balls we used to play with when we were little? You know the ones – they’re about the size of a basketball, they cost a few dollars, and the grocery store always seemed to have a big display of them in the summertime. You bounce them and they make that wonderful “poing” sort of sound. There would be all different colors available, but one year I got one that was multi-colored – yellow, blue, green, purple. I’d play with it in the driveway for hours.

Well, recently, I was listening to a CD, and in the midst of one of the songs, I remembered that plastic ball. I know, the two seem completely unrelated. But the music was giving me this wonderful “buzz” that comes from discovering something really great, and it took me back to being a kid in the driveway again. I’d bounce that ball, and, in the moment when it was highest in the sky, the colors would swirl and shift and almost seem to come alive as the sun caught it. This many years later, sitting in my office, I realized why I like what I do so much.

Music, when it clicks for me, brings me the same unfettered joy that the best toys do when you’re little. When music moves me, it shifts and swirls, higher and higher, sparkling in the sky. As music fans first and foremost, we all get that moment of magic when we hear something we really love. Not many things in this world can duplicate that childlike buzz of discovery great new music can bring.