A few pieces in my junk collection went to junk but got modified so they wouldn't be junk. Here is evidence to the modification. Way back when, CD players still cost a ton of money for your stereo. By this time I had a 100mhz computer with a CD Rom player. It played okay. I had a full stereo system, but the CD player had gone south. I had a "gifted" CD boom box that was temperamental and had pretty much given up it's ability to play CDs. So, I went to the well and asked for a cheap CD boom box for Christmas. I got this, The cheap Lenoxx box that Wally sold a ton of, and even in multiple colors. For what it is, it was pretty good. CD Player just had the track number it was playing. Had tape. Got pretty loud without distortion.

I did this. Saved the crazy wrapper on the top of CDs. I managed to pull them off in tact. I'd give you my secret but who gives a rats ass. CD's? Who buys those anymore? GWAR: War Party was the follow up to "Violence Has Arrived" which brought me back into the Gwar camp. It was hard, it was ugly, and it rocked. "War Party" was just as heavy but a little less listened too by me. I like them both.

Cake: Pressure Chief was another great CAKE album, but I'm a huge fan of CAKE. I'm glad they still are together but it's been a little while since their last album became the lowest selling #1 record in history. Hell I bought it from Best Buy just before Best Buy gave up on the media.

Then, the final album from Q And Not U. More of a dance beat album than their previous two albums. I bought this one from a local record store and it became the most listened too effort of the three. Driving home from a convention, on the good ol' FRS walkie talkie deal, a friend driving in front of Boomer and myself told us to turn on the radio, and it was Q And Not U. Boom looked them up when we got to his house and we were instant fans. I even saw them twice in concert. They broke up within the year of this release. I still listen to the album.

Yeah, the CD player did have some "programming" effects, but who uses any of those anyway, save for repeating the album...

"FEED MEEEEEE!"

Ahhhh, the discs this played. For all it's years old, it still plays CDs well. Okay, it does have a little trouble with CDRs, but aged CD players just weren't designed for home made CDS. Damn. All the Devo and Ministry and Failure and Cars and the list goes on and on. When I got a 3 disc DVD player the next Christmas, this saw less use until I moved  and it became more of a radio in my new place than a CD player. Ahh yes, it was another independent band called "Dysrhythmia" that also secured the change needed to keep this box alive.

I was living in Louisville and my good friend Bob told me about a hard rock instrumental band that was appearing in a small theater. I said okay and were set to see it but the theater closed. So, the local performance group donated their store front space for the band to jam. There was about 15 people on folding chairs and we watched Dysrhythmia blow our minds with fast metal, hard rock and jazz. Well, since It didn't cost much to get in and we'd just seen some great stuff I bought both of their CDs. I listened to them at home and really jammed to one of them. I'd pump the volume up on the Lenoxx and head bang until...wait...that speaker on one side... yep. Blew the speaker. It might have been because of the distortion on the music...so maybe... Ahh... System Of A Down was coming out and further twisted my view of metal and I never looked back.

Now, before you say anything, yeah, I realized it was just me listening to music really loud, not the way the music was recorded...awww forget it. So before all this Louisville nonsense, my good friend Smash Greywolf got a job offer in California.  I'd met him in Toledo and we became fast fiends. He knew computers and ran a Linux desktop before Linux became Windows-Like. With the gig, he needed to shed anything including mountains of computer debris, so I was "gifted" a Samsung boom box. I'd "sold" the very same model only a few years before as a loss leader boombox. I just wasn't a fan of cheeseburger Samsung stuff, but for FREE? Indeed the CD was fiddly, but worked until I moved to Louisville. It went into a storage box thereafter.

Until Lenoxx sprung a leak on challenging metal music. I kept the speakers when I moved from Louisville to Cleveland and needed a radio near my computer that wasn't a full stereo. Apartments. Paper thin walls. "Turn down that DEVO dammit!" So, a little creative wiring and I had a new "Modified Lenoxx" that sounded pretty good but didn't have a subwoofer to disturb the 'burrs. I listened to WTAM and then my Sirius Radio  as well as CDs through this for a few years. When I moved again, this became basement bait and has little use since. So, Junk Blog.  Never get rid of it, but little use. Junk Blog.  I said JUNK BLOG.

-Ric