Depeche Mode, like so many other ’80s bands, knows how to use their back catalogue to keep licensing deals alive. At least, their label, Sire, does.

Yet another “Best of” was released a couple of weeks ago. I – along with many other post-punk, post-new wave children of that era – picked it up. I’ve got so many CDs now that I don’t really know if I have any Depeche Mode on the shelf. I really need to come up with a cataloguing system.

For $12, I figured Depeche Mode: The Best of, volume 1 was worth purchasing.

But “Personal Jesus” comes from the album Violator, which is why that image is displayed here, and not the image of the disc I purchased last week.

Otherwise, I’d come across as overly nostalgic, don’t you think? Shudder at the thought.

This week’s Trigger Happy is a long list of games that any gamer would be thrilled to find in their stocking.

Me? Just a new television, please.

Please?

What pops out from the dark sky, filled with ice crystals, in Vancouver-that-seems-like-Calgary-what-with-all-the-snow, while travelling from downtown east to Commercial Drive on the skytrain:

1. Vancouver City Hall’s clock
2. the billboard that sits atop the Lee Building (is it the Lee Building?) at the corner of Broadway and Main/Kingsway
3. the neon striping of the Biltmore Hotel

I like waking up to a song I really like, but haven’t heard or listened to in a long time.

This morning it was Mushaboom, from Feist, off her sophomore album, Let It Die.

To me, Feist will always be Leslie, and having watched (and booked, come to think of it, for a filling Station launch) the Calgary band Placebo, for which Leslie was the lead singer, gives me a sense of pride.

It’s the same as with people who claimed to have been at early Elvis concerts, or to have been on-side with what the Clash were doing before they got popular.

We all want to be ahead of the curve, because it shows just how damn clever we are.

Meanwhile, I’ll be listening to (Leslie) Feist on my way into the office today.

David Bowie is one of my personal heroes. He’s a man with unlimited creative potential, unstoppable ambition, and unflappable independence. He’s never been afraid to experiment with his identity or his reality.

And he’s made some of the best music of our time.

This morning we woke to a serious accumulation of snow on the ground and a sub-zero temperature, which made me flash back to days long ago when I was living in Calgary and discovering Bowie.

The next thing I knew, Changes was playing in my head.

“Time may change me, but I can’t trace time.”