♦ Looking For

Remember when CD’s and mp3’s weren’t around yet and you can either buy a record on a vinyl or casette tape format? I was an avid music collector back then, mostly on casette tapes because they’re cheaper and easier to carry around (and walkmans were the iPod’s before). When the CD’s came, it wasn’t cheap at the beginning, most especially the players. So I have to let it pass and eventually became a late adopter. I had just gained my independence and was working my way through college, plus the fact that pagers and then (later) celphones were gaining more of my attention during those times.

For most DJ’s, casette tapes were only for mixtapes since they’re using turntables and then CD players for mixing. Unfortunately for me during my prepubescent years, I was only practicing mixing through casette players and karaokes (with their pitch control knobs). At some point, I was already being destructive because not only did I broke the needle of my father’s Pioneer turntable (I was curious at scratching too), I also detached the front cover of casette players (those without pitch controls) leaving only the frame to hold the tape and poke pointed objects on the reels to somehow control its speed. Soon I realized that they’re no longer turning and the tape  spews out the thin film from below because the rubber inside the tape deck had worn out and some screws or nuts had gone loose. I also broke the volume knob, followed by the mute button for the speakers because I was constantly rolling the knob back and forth and pressing the button mimicking the effects of the fader.

Anyway, going back to the CD (flashback music fade out). I’d usually go to a record bar first and check what’s new whenever I’m in a mall. In fact, I think there was never an instance that I wouldn’t visit record outlets whenever I leave my house. There was a battle back then between casette tapes and CD’s on record bars. CD’s started gaining ground and dominated the displays where casette tapes ruled before. There were some rare CD’s that I was about to buy but thought twice because during those times, I don’t really know when I could get myself a CD player. Those were one of the biggest regrets of my life. Years later, thanks to some friends plus Captain Jack Sparrow and the internet, I was able to retrieve some records and copies of records that were no longer in production nowadays. But there are still some that I’m still constantly looking for to no avail. Here are some of them:

• Classic Club Cuts (or Hits?), a double CD album (with Classic Club Mix) which features some remixes by DJ Jamtrx (Clair Marlo’s ‘Til They Take My Heart Away among others) but what I’m actually after for are the other hard-to-find tracks in the album like “The Best Things In Life”  by Kim (if I remember it correctly) among others. It has a blue cover with the title on a script font and was released by Galaxy Records under ZYX Music Publishing I think.

• Dance Decade (or something like that), also a double CD with the other being mixed. I think they were released under the same group or company but they feature a bit older dance classics.

• Strike’s “I Saw The Future” album and other AD records & Hooj Choons albums which I have CD’s before but just lost it somewhere.

That’s all I can remember for now (time constraints) but I’ll post another blog for the others if I can remember them. If you have copies of these albums, kindly leave a comment on this post so we can “talk” and “negotiate”. Thanks!