“Yeah, uhh,” said the kid once again. Â “I heard that, like, at a Marilyn Manson concert, he sucked himself off. Â He had his bottom two ribs removed so that he could bend far enough over to do it.”
“Wow,” I uttered, a little stunned. Â “Where did you hear that?”
“I bet another kid at school $5 that it wasn’t true. Â He said it was.”
I paused to build anticipation. Â “He owes you $5 then.”
“YES!” said the kid as he high-fived his friend. Â “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. Â My first disc was made in early 2001 when we got our first burner. Â 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. Â So if that was true for movies, why not a CD? Â Why not a dozen? Â 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. Â 74 minutes! Â 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. Â Many were soundtracks and tribute albums. Â I ended up buying The Strokes’ album a few weeks later, an ill-advised purchase that yielded only two or three listens. Â I don’t have that one anymore. Â 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. Â I shall maintain the anonymity of the store employee who had the crush on Heath Ledger and inundated us with this soundtrack. Â 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. Â Their cover of “Bitch” came from the 1993Â No Alternative compilation album.
Apparently I was on a Warrior Soul kick at that time as well. Â Shame that there isn’t a great Warrior Soul compilation album that suits all my needs. Â I bought and sold their studio albums. Â 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!
RECORD STORE TALES Part 150: Â Smells Like Presents
Our original computerized inventory system forced us to manually type in every album title ourselves. Â Out of sheer boredom, often we’d shake it up a bit. Â For example, just for laughs, we’d often input Alanis Morissette’s album Jagged Little Pill in the system as Jagged Little Pillow. Â Or whatever.
When we saw this Celine Dion Christmas album come in, somebody came up with a clever custom title for our system. Â Remember that Marilyn Manson album, Smells Like Children? Â Take a look at the Celine Dion album cover. Â You’ll understand why we used to call this one Smells Like Presents!
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