The Virgin Megastore chain always had a special place in my musical heart. At the branch in London in 1984, I bought the one album I obsessively lusted after for years and could never find in the United States: the extremely rare soundtrack to the movie Chinatown. It has Bunny Berigan's wonderful version of "I Can't Get Started," one of the theme songs of the soundtrack of my life. I paid 17 pounds for the sliver of vinyl and carefully lugged it across the Atlantic back to my studio apartment in Brooklyn. I have it to this day.

Before Virgin opened in New York, Tower Records was my favorite outlet, with its great jazz and blues selection. In 1983 I wrote a "Desert Island Discs" letter that its Pulse Magazine printed. British import HMV came along in the 1990s, but it never dislodged my 20 years of loyalty to Tower.

Then all that Internet stuff came along and made record stores quaint and increasingly pointless to the iPod generation. HMV closed. Then, to my deep dismay, Tower went to the Great Cut-Out Bin in the Sky. Tower! -- where I was shopping in the summer of 1987 at the unit at Broadway and 67th Street in Manhattan when I looked up and saw my writer friend Ruth Shereff walking outside. I dashed out to Broadway to say hello to her. We strolled over to Lincoln Center, and before the conversation ended she decided to set me up with a woman whom she thought I would like. I did like her -- two years later I married that woman.

So that's what I associate with Tower Records.

My musical tastes had expanded beyond jazz and blues toward Latin music by the time Tower closed in late 2006. I made three trips, mostly to Tower in Stamford, Connecticut, to stock up on Brazilian CDs.

With HMV and Tower gone, Virgin was the last big music store standing. Every month, I strolled over at lunch to see what was new in Latin music, especially Cuban, Brazilian, and Tex-Mex. Any time enchanting Brazilian songbird Maria Rita released a new CD, I immediately grabbed it, cost no object (the highest level of retail lust for me, as rare as a lunar eclipse).

But capitalism's gale of creative destruction respects no sentiment. The real estate company that owns Virgin Megastores can make more money with the space in other ways. Yesterday, I made my first doleful pilgrimage to the now-deflowered Virgin ready to buy, buy, buy.

The 25 percent discount didn't quite blow me away, so I trimmed my exuberance to two CDs that I decided I had to have. One was The Idan Raichel Project, by an Israeli performer whom a friend with impeccable musical taste had recommended only days before.

The other was Straight to Hell, by Hank Williams III. This is a noteworthy album for me in several ways. First, I almost never buy CDs in English, preferring works in Spanish, Portuguese, Hebrew and even Russian. Second, I didn't even know Hank Williams III EXISTED until yesterday morning, about two hours before I raced to buy his CD. Something, obviously, grabbed my attention with the force of the kick of a mule.

Here's what happened. I was listening to my new favorite Internet radio station, Radio Free Texas. Every song is a revelation, a testament to the emotional power of music. My ears pricked up when I heard a song titled "Angel of Sin," with the gut-crunching lyrics, "If you're lovin' an angel of sin, she'll never be there for you." Holy cow, I thought, who did that? Turns out it was Hank Williams III, grandson of the original Old Hank and son of that guy who promotes Monday Night Football.

With my Israeli find in hand, I cruised the country section of Virgin for Radio Free Texas performers. The odds, I knew, were low that I would find regional red-dirt rockers like Micky and the Motorcars. So when I spied Hank III's Straight to Hell double-CD set, I knew I had to get my East Coast, white-collar hands on it. With tunes like "My Drinkin Problem," "Thrown Out of the Bar," "Things You Do to Me," and of course "Angel of Sin," I can relive my rowdy days (yeah, right) and do my bit to support Radio Free Texas. I'll write to the site and say, "I heard it, I bought it, I like it." Who knows, maybe Idan and Hank III will get together for a collaboration thanks for some cosmic forces I'm setting into motion.

In the mean time, I'll keep checking Virgin for more markdowns and gotta-have records. So far, so memorable.