11.13.2010

Skuffled Mammajamma

Went digging through CDs to find something to listen to the other day. Felt in a particular kind of mood, so grabbed some Drum and Bass CDs I hadn't listened to recently, including....
the classic...



Metalheadz two-disc of golden-era Junglist anthems.


(if you are impatient, go to about 1:30 for the big drop...)


This is the kind of CD that nobody sells used. You don't just accidentally end up buying this- so nobody is selling it used, because they happened into it with no idea what it was.



(although the tracklisting for it on amazon.com is incorrect, so maybe 'no idea' is true, in a wholly different sense. The right tracks are listed on Discogs.com.)

You also don't get tired of it, unless you just get tired of whole genres of music. All the reviews of this state accurately: peak tunes; never tire of these; "don't make 'em like this no more"; sick wicked dope; etc. For this genre of music (drum 'n' bass, aka jungle), this would be like a Led Zeppelin greatest-hits package: if you ever like it, you always will, and never any less.
So nobody ever bought this and liked it, and then eventually soured on it, bored of it, overplayed and so played-out it.



But how did I get it used then?
Well, Everyday Music in Portland sells used CDs, and they will sell you scratched CDs.
Sounds bad: is good.
They mark out the scratched ones; they sell them for less; and they even will take them back if they skip. You know how almost all of your CDs are scratched, somewhat at least, and how many of those never ever skip.
SKUFFS, they call them.
Well, this mamajamma was skuffed pretty bad. Two whole tracks just ain't played right, ever. Or at least, ever for me, since I bought it scratched.
One that never got all the way through, was Dillinja's "Angels Fell", above. Obviously, the YouTube version no skuff.

But what you can do, see, is copy a scratched CD. Because while the CD player has to deal with scratches in real time, your computer's CD-ROM does not- it will keep patiently scanning, scanning, re-scanning-- until it can find out just what 0s and 1s made up that track, in its prediluvian state. So usually, the copy will be a like-new, scratchless, unskuffled version. That beats a lossless copy- it actually improves your version.

So now, for the first time ever, I can listen to this track all the way through-
And so can you.

Danzig's Mother is a suggested video,
so is Halo Benders (the laziest band in rock and roll!).
What is funny, is that my dad has something to say about both lazy bands, and drum n bass. He said (says) that Pavement et al. "aren't even trying" when they sing.
It's true!
He also once said a drum and bass song was "Ferris Bueller music", which I took to mean: sounds like that Ferrari music in the movie.
Which is false;
But what he meant was, it sounded like another drum and bass song
Which in fact!
Sampled a line from the movie.

I must have got my "right all the damn time" gene from my pops.