There is an element of competition in all collections. I had a close friend whose voracious musical appetite rivaled my own. We bought CDs with any money we could find, we wrote for and started 'zines to get our hands on discs and 7" records. When we were invited to someones apartment we would scour their music collection to report back to each other; "dude, she had like 3 Tori Amos CDs, i knew she was messed up!" We took constant inventory of our new acquisitions and incessantly made each other mix tapes for two reasons: 1) to turn each other on to new music we had found 2) to rub each other's nose in new music we had found before the other had. It was a gentleman's conflict. It was unspoken but it was clear. We drove each other to be very experimental and open minded in music. CDs didnt count if you didn't listen to them. In a pretty short amount of time i became very versed in all kinds of music. I find it hard to believe i made time to listen to all of that stuff. I cannot keep up with my musical interests anymore. I suppose being young and broke didn't hurt. No money meant i had a lot of down time with my stereo. Anywhere i wanted to go i was walking or skateboarding, so i had time to absorb all those mix tapes on my walkman. On one of those tapes was "wonder beer" by #nakedraygun . It's snarling and anthemic punk. I loved it and conceded victory to my friend. Soon i bought my own copy of this disc when i had the cash. The chicago band was always seemed a "mature" punk outfit to me. Sort of like a less heady Bad Religion. They weren't popular with the Warped Tour crowd and that sort of exclusionary status appealed (and still does) to me. The weird record covers never hurt either.
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