{"id":2740,"date":"2012-11-24T09:26:29","date_gmt":"2012-11-24T14:26:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.westwoodvalley.com\/?p=2740"},"modified":"2012-11-24T09:26:29","modified_gmt":"2012-11-24T14:26:29","slug":"my-musical-evolution-part-339-the-90s-columbia-house-roulette","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wrharrison.com\/musicalevolution\/2012\/11\/24\/my-musical-evolution-part-339-the-90s-columbia-house-roulette\/","title":{"rendered":"My Musical Evolution – Part 339 The 90’s Columbia House Roulette"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"No<\/a>The\u00a01980’s ended with a series of monumental changes. I changed cars 3 times in a year, I\u00a0moved out of\u00a0The Roach Motel <\/em>and I got married. The 1990’s began with a series of changes the most monumental being having two\u00a0children!<\/p>\n

For most of my life, I’ve always had some like Superman’s Fortress Of Solitude <\/em>or at least like Mike Brady’s Den.<\/em> As\u00a0space that was designated as at least mostly mine where I could retreat\u00a0from the world. In our house on Cortland, it was the second bedroom until it\u00a0had to be turned into the nursery <\/em>followed by the kids’ room. At the time I relocated to the basement. It wasn’t fancy or finished in any way but it didn’t matter.<\/p>\n

Another change was THX surround sound\u00a0happened.\u00a0Although it wasn’t quite the same as how I bought my first Technics system, there were eerie similarities.\u00a0\u00a0The bonus was that my old Technics system got moved into my den to make\u00a0way for the new Technics surround sound system in the living room.<\/p>\n

I picked up a little multi-track mixing board and connection\u00a0two Compact\u00a0Disc\u00a0players, a microphone on a boom\u00a0and cassette deck to the input and output to another cassette deck. This revolutionized my mix tape abilities. In the olden<\/em> days<\/em> It would take nearly 3 hours to make a 90 minute mix tape. Now, I was able to kick out Maxell 110 in real time. Not only that but with the mixing board, cross fading, overdubbing and more effects were possible. WIRD Weird 108<\/em> was back.<\/p>\n

Another change was a game I started playing that I called Columbia House Roulette.<\/em> Let me remind you that at this point in my life, I was not able to absorb much in the way of outside influence. MTV didn’t play music anymore. There still wasn’t any internet, smartphones or Shazam.\u00a0 With two little kids, getting out was rare as well.\u00a0 To satisfy my desire for new music, I turned to the daily mail. I happened to get one of those old Columbia House mailers. Back then the sign up form came with a sheet of stickers. You were supposed to pick the album you wanted and stick the stickers on the form.<\/p>\n

I took all the stickers and separated them. I discarded the albums that I already had. I discarded the gangsta rap and country music. The rest of the stickers were shuffles and my 15 albums were selected completely at random. One of my successful results in this experiment was Tragic Kingdom <\/em>by No Doubt. <\/em>Wow, what a great album.<\/p>\n

I had never heard of No Doubt. Tragic Kingdom <\/em>was not their first album but they were about to ride it to stardom.\u00a0 It is a strange sensation now, to try to imagine what I was thinking or how I felt when I was listening to Tragic Kingdom <\/em>back before anybody knew about Spiderwebs, <\/em>or Don’t Speak. <\/em>I do know that my early favorites were Just A Girl<\/em> and Different People.\u00a0 <\/em>Can you believe it? Tragic Kingdom <\/em>is 17 years old.\u00a0 I think every track on this album is a winner.<\/p>\n

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Spiderwebs<\/em>
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