various artists - Cheapo Crypt Sampler

There was a time in my capricious youth where I balked at paying $7 for a sampler of preivously-released songs. And, thankfully, there was someone there to help me pull my head out of my spacious rectum.

You see, this one has gotten a ton of play in the approximately 20-some-odd years since I nabbed my first copy of it. When I first encountered it, I only knew the JSBE and Thee Headcoats, both via some late night MTV encounters and Spin magazine backpages. But the Oblivians and Gories, a pair of Memphis creeps if ever there were such a duo, were what held onto me, with "Nitroglycerine" and "Sunday You Need Love" making their way onto a few turn of the millenium mixtapes.

While my initial copy eventually disappeared in one of the periodic cleansings I conducted back then (I miss my old tape collection), it was one of the first things I downloaded when I got my first iPod and high speed internet connection. Which long-dead blog did I find this on? Who was the keeper of sleazy punk that provided me with a digital copy in gleaming 128kbps? The name and place has been lost to the ages, but whenever I needed a fair swath of 90s underground rock, I'd turn to this, and turn it up loud.

A few months ago, I was trawling eBay for inexpensively priced CDs (as is my habit). A seller in Ohio had a stack of sixteen Crypt CDs for $100 for sale. It was a pretty fair price for a bunch of records I owned digitally, but no longer held physical copies of. I saved it, and a few days later came an offer to pick it up for $80, I couldn't turn it down. Both New Bomb Turks full-lengths, both Gories LPs, the Raunch Hands, Pagans, and a pair of Lazy Cowgirls CDs? How could I pass? I'm not made of stone. And to cap it off, a copy of "Cheapo Crypt Sampler", here to be re-ripped at 320kbps and shared with y'all.

I didn't even have to pay $7 this time around. How's that for a good time?

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