A week or so ago I was in the car with my fiancee and a song I'd never heard before but that seemed strangely familiar came on the radio. "Sounds like New Order," I said. She said she was thinking the same thing but mentioned someone else it sounded like.

"That's a Peter Hook bassline if I've ever heard one," I said. "Gotta be New Order."

I heard the song again this morning, and this time, the DJ said who it was. "Yes, the '80s band," he added.

It just shows how out of touch I've become. Ten years ago I followed that band's every move, being (at the time) an incurable Joy Division fanatic. Since Joy Division was gone forever, New Order was the closest thing I was going to get. And sometimes I settled for the side projects, although they were almost always disappointing.

It's a good song, I guess (though I still don't know the title). It didn't instantly resonate with me like their 1993 comeback "Regret" did, but it's a whole lot better than anything else that took up space on the same album with "Regret."

But I guess it shows how priorities change when we get older. A search revealed the album was released about a month ago. There was a time when I'd run out on my lunch break and buy it on the basis of the band's name on the cover. I just don't do that anymore. I bought half my collection of CDs on the basis of one song, or on the basis of who recorded it, and I've been bitten way too many times.

A couple of weeks ago I was in the record store and I listened to a whole pile of discs and had a blast. But I walked out empty-handed. It was a great way to spend that evening, but I didn't hear anything that made me want to spend 17 bucks. And it could very well be a year before I go do that again.

Am I getting old, or is there that much less interesting stuff out there now than there was in 1987?