#508: The Weirdest CD that I Own

GETTING MORE TALE #508: The Weirdest CD that I Own

The size of my personal CD collection now has exceeded my ability to store it properly.  I count it not in the hundreds but the thousands, my best guess right now being about 3500 titles on CD.  As one would expect, with that many titles here, you’re going to find some odd ones.  In fact, for the second-last chapter of the original Record Store Tales, Mrs. LeBrain brought out 10 of her favourite weird finds in my collection.  She missed the strangest one of all.

Scan_20160731 (2)Promos Volume 6 – Don Buchwald & Associates Inc.

This CD was given to me by a short-lived employee named Damien.  Damien will forever be scorned in the annals of Record Store History, for he quit (to become a roadie for the summer) with zero days notice, on the day before my vacation.  And boy, did I get in shit for going on vacation anyway.  This was one more incident that caused my direct supervisor, the one I call the “office bully”, to stop speaking to me for three weeks straight.*  The punishment far outweighed (and outlasted) the crime.  Cut that shit out, act like a damned professional.

So I will always have memories surrounding this strange 2 CD set, Promos Volume 6 put out by a New York talent agency in the late 1990’s.  It’s a free promo that has 87 samples of various performers such as Joy Behar and Stockard Channing showing off their voice talents.  “Chevy Chase stars in Modern Problems, tonight on HBO!” says Behar.  “Jack Lemmon starring in five movies, all day on Cinemax.”  She has a bit for Comedy Central, and so on.  Each voice talent name on these discs (the majority of which you’ve never heard of) has roughly a minute of samples to show off their skills.

None, not even Joy Behar, have anything on Dee Snider of Twisted Sister.

“From a frenzy of emotion, to a frenzy of violence.  What happens when fans become fanatics?  It’s an athlete’s worst nightmare:  Being stalked by a fan whose devotion becomes obsession.  [gunshot sounds]  CNN presents:  Fans who turn the field of sports, into a field of screams.”

Wow.  Who writes this stuff?  I can all but guarantee that any one of my readers can come up with a better tagline than that paid CNN employee!  Snider delivers his lines with the sobriety necessary.  But that’s nothing.  Nothing at all, compared to Sexy Snider.

The scene is set with sweltering sax, to go with the velvet voice of Snider’s sultry seduction.

“Lifetime has what you’ve been waiting for.  Spend every night of the week with a different man.  We’re not talking boys here.  We’re talking men, who leave you breathless.  Richard Gere.  Tom Cruise.  Kevin Costner.  Sean Penn.  All this week, only on Lifetime.”

It’s great stuff and I’ve used it for filler at the end of mix CDs before, when I needed something less than a minute long to max it out.  What I really love is how Snider’s New York accent really comes out when he says “Sean Penn”.  Damien may have been a dick, but this one track 51 second in length has given me…many minutes…of enjoyment over the years.

The 2 CD set comes in a “fat style” case, taking up far too much room for its 51 seconds of dubious value.  I wouldn’t trade it away for all the specials on HBO and Lifetime combined…but I also don’t need Volumes 1-5!

What’s the weirdest CD that you own?

* Three weeks was the standard waiting period for her to get around to speaking to me again.  Pretty awkward when you work together every almost single day.  This happened on multiple occasions.  

 

53 comments

        1. Yeah he was a TV preacher that I used to catch on Sunday mornings before cartoons, and he had the most condescending smile…just a patronising smile. Somehow that stuck with me all these years. I hated that guy!

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  2. Man, some people just shouldn’t be in charge of the work of other people. What a jerk.

    But what fun! That’s a truly wacky set. I wonder if Dee even remembers doing that stuff.

    3500 titles, just on CD and not counting other formats? Dude. DUDE. You need a Man Cave! :)

    Weirdest album I own? I dunno, man. I probably own a lot of weird stuff (to other people), but to me they’re here for a reason… I can’t think of one off the top of my head. Maybe I’m the weird one!

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    1. “Man, some people just shouldn’t be in charge of the work of other people.”

      THIS. ALL THIS. This is what I’ve been trying to say for four years now. Turns out I could have said it in one sentence!

      One of the causes of friction between “K” and myself is that he did not have nor see those experiences. So I don’t know if he believed me.

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      1. Well I aim to please! :) Maybe I oughta Twitter instead of blog. Get ‘er all done in one line!

        Yup that’s a syucky thing, they don’t see it so it can’t exist. A lot of people do that. You’re well clear of that whole thing, man.

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        3. Remember Spinal Tap? “Shit Sandwich”.

          Mitch Lafon told me he doesn’t read reviews past 200 words. Yikes. I have a Def Leppard review coming that’s over 2300 words.

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        5. Growing up reading magazines, almost all reviews were a few short paragraphs — often just one. I don’t know how I got so verbose, honestly I don’t. But that’s rock and roll to me — anything worth doing is worth overdoing! Isn’t that what they say? Hopefully nobody will be bored with the DL review I’m working on but it might be best read in a couple sittings. Still, I’m posting it all as one because that’s how I wrote it, and fuck yeah.

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  3. Well, It should come as no surprise that my weirdest CD is a soundtrack. In all my 3600 soundtracks (these do not include my regular collections of non soundtrack related releases) Vinyl, Cassette, CD and computer files there are, of course, going to be some weird ones. I also feel your pain about storage.

    I could mention the soundtrack to Monster by BT the 2003 Charlize Theron film. It is a backwards 1 CD 1 DVD set. By backwards I mean it made more sense putting the title spine in for storage. You could actually see the title of the CD then. This was also from the time when DVD audio was a thing. So the score was on a CD but it was also on a DVD as well. I think it had extras on it as well but I don’t have it in front of me to check for sure.

    Another I could mention is the Jurassic Park – The Lost World CD. The packaging folded out to a dinosaur diorama. I never did set it up, I was more interested in the score anyway. Though to this day I’m still not a fan of the Jurassic Park series but that’s another story for another time.

    No, I think the weirdest had to be the a copy of the score I received for Resident Evil: Afterlife 3D by tomandandy. I also did an interview with Tom as well so he sent me an unusual copy of the score. It came in a clear DVD style case including the inlay tray. The case spine was embossed with the “Resident Evil – Afterlife” title in plain text. The CD was unmarked and just a blank silver CD and the track listing was a transparent almost X-ray with the tracks listed in bold letters. At first glance it doesn’t look like much but it’s pretty cool. The only major problem I have with it is that it gets fingerprints on it so easily.

    Of special mention is a CD I received from the GNP Crescendo label (a huge jazz and soundtrack label until La-La Land records became larger) They sent me the soundtrack to the TV show LEXX (a weird Canadian Sci-Fi series that ran from 1997-2002) I knew what was on the CD as I had interviewed the composer (Marty Simon) a few months earlier. The CD was supposed to have 31 tracks on it. So I was surprised when I put the CD in that it only had 12. I pressed play and instead of hearing the music of Lexx I heard “Ladies and Gentlemen…Miss Petula Clark…” GNP Crescendo had screwed up big time. I think it eventually led to their going into hiding for a few years after that. I’m sure that wasn’t cheap to fix and after losing the Star Trek license too I think they were hurting financially.

    Finally, most recently I received downloads for the “Mr. Robot” soundtrack. (Some pretty cool music for the show BTW.) I guess this falls under the cool rather than weird but the cover looks like the artwork for an Atari 2600 cartridge and the liner notes look like the instruction books that used to come with the games, right down to the art style and 8 bit graphics. It is very cool but unfortunately only on PDF though.

    There are others, I’m sure, but those are the ones I can think of right now.

    Oh there was the soundtrack for “Command and Conquer – Red Alert” that I found a cigarette in the spine too. Yuck. Anyway…enough for now.

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    1. WOW ROB thank you for this essay! Holy crap!

      I just joined a Facebook group of vintage Atari artwork. Missile Command! GREAT art. Absolutely.

      I’m not a fan of Jurassic Park either, though I have seen all 4. I like the fold out idea. Spinal Tap did that with their last CD, though I haven’t folded it. It turns into a stage/stonehenge thing. Kinda cool! And Ace Frehley’s Anomaly unfolds into a pyramid.

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  7. That is the weirdest cd I have seen. Crazy. I don’t know if I have a weird cd, but I do have a 45 of Steve Martin singing “King Tut”. And an album about Snoopy and the Red Baron. Don’t know why I have that one.

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  8. Track 7 of “Women”:
    Meg Griffin??? THE Meg Griffin?

    What an oddity of a compilation, but the Dee Snider segment was absolute gold. Like you, I picked up on his New-York accent, especially when he said “Being STALKED by a fan…”. I wonder if he’s done more voice-over work?

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