“Yeah, uhh,” said the kid once again. “I heard that, like, at a Marilyn Manson concert, he sucked himself off. He had his bottom two ribs removed so that he could bend far enough over to do it.”
“Wow,” I uttered, a little stunned. “Where did you hear that?”
“I bet another kid at school $5 that it wasn’t true. He said it was.”
I paused to build anticipation. “He owes you $5 then.”
“YES!” said the kid as he high-fived his friend. “I knew it wasn’t true.”
Blank discs are so cheap, and musical tastes so fleeting today, that I wonder if anybody but me still has the first mix CD they ever burned?
I’m hoping some of you have, and I’m hoping to hear it about from you too. My first disc was made in early 2001 when we got our first burner. It was made for a very specific purpose.
At the store, there was an informal rule that if you were closing one day and opening the next, it was “OK” to borrow a movie overnight, watch and return it. So if that was true for movies, why not a CD? Why not a dozen? A few nights after having the CD burner installed, I borrowed a bag full of discs and burned this compilation on a Maxell CD-R 650. 74 minutes! Up to 16x certified!
I returned the discs the next day, all albums that I wanted one or two songs from, but not the whole album. Many were soundtracks and tribute albums. I ended up buying The Strokes’ album a few weeks later, an ill-advised purchase that yielded only two or three listens. I don’t have that one anymore. But I still have my mix CD with “Last Nite”!
The Robbie Williams + Queen track is taken from the soundtrack to A Knight’s Tale. I shall maintain the anonymity of the store employee who had the crush on Heath Ledger and inundated us with this soundtrack. The same disc also yielded “I Want to Take You Higher” by Sly and the Family Stone.
Track 3 is an industrial-rock hybrid tune called “Violent New Breed”. I later purchased the Violent New Breed album by Shotgun Messiah. Industrial rock fans will know that Messiah’s original bassist/singer was Tim Tim, aka Tim Sköld of KMFDM, Marilyn Manson, and his eponymous band. I liked the title track enough to later buy the album and the prior one too. Both were keepers.
I’ve been a Goo Goo Dolls fan for a while so I thought I would grab their INXS cover “Don’t Change” from an Ace Ventura soundtrack. Their cover of “Bitch” came from the 1993 No Alternative compilation album.
Apparently I was on a Warrior Soul kick at that time as well. Shame that there isn’t a great Warrior Soul compilation album that suits all my needs. I bought and sold their studio albums. As for Michael Jackson, I later decided to add a single disc compilation to my collection, offsetting my burning of “Billie Jean”.
This being a real odds n’ ends disc, it’s not a spellbinding listen today. It’s fun to remind myself of some oddball tracks that I liked enough to burn but not enough to buy. I’m also amused by the title Mix One, the first of many! And I was even doing cover art back then, too. On the cover is myself dressed up as the alien from Part 148: Navigate the Seas of the Sun!
Our original computerized inventory system forced us to manually type in every album title ourselves. Out of sheer boredom, often we’d shake it up a bit. For example, just for laughs, we’d often input Alanis Morissette’s album Jagged Little Pill in the system as Jagged Little Pillow. Or whatever.
When we saw this Celine Dion Christmas album come in, somebody came up with a clever custom title for our system. Remember that Marilyn Manson album, Smells Like Children? Take a look at the Celine Dion album cover. You’ll understand why we used to call this one Smells Like Presents!
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