Being the traditional classic rock fella that I am, along with my tendencies to noodle into obscure bands and albums of original work, "IT" still ended up in my collection. A pop album...but not just ANY pop album... ...a music soundtack! What? Really? A soundtrack of various songs throw together by different artists?
Nooooooooooooo............really?
...but...it wasn't JUST ANY soundtrack either!!!
It was DIRTY DANCING!
!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
That was my EXACT thought when I couldn't recall how it had ended up in my collection in the late 80s...and NOOOOOOO, I refuse to speculate on what that was about...or what inspired me to pick it up.
Needless to say, by the early 90s I was horrified that I owned it and was ready to get rid of it. Friends and roommates who took the time to whittle through my modest CD collection at the time would point and laugh at me...the sort of thing where you emerge from the bathroom, and they're there waiting for you with baited breath as they hold it in their hand---demanding an explanation---and it better be a damn good one!
Yup, I knew I deserved it all...all of the pointing and laughing...but it kept on going and getting more and more amplified.
So I finally tried, in earnest, to dump the thing...I just didn't expect it to be an impossible task.
Living in Tempe, Arizona at the time, there were record stores all around the ASU campus who sold used music. I tried all of them. Whenever I brought it in, it was usually with a couple other CDs I was selling...but it would get rejected EVERY TIME.
It came to the point where I'd try to put it by different staff on various shifts, but I think the word got out...soon enough I found myself running into: "Oh, that again. No man. No can do."
So now I had to think. Ah ha! The next step involved the pawn shops, which were in abundance in the city of Mesa just a few miles east of Tempe. Granted, I'd only get a buck for it, but I was determined to get something for it.
It was becoming a mission.
But, no...the friggin pawn shops wouldn't take it either...not even for $1...NOT EVEN FOR FREE!!! Apparently they not only didn't have any use for it, they didn't even want to handle it. Period.
So conspiracy theories started to pop into my head...perhaps they had Jennifer Grey envy and didn't like Patrick Swayze? Who knows. The whole thing was starting to border on the insane.
I was beyond perplexed.
So...to my ongoing and repeated shock and surprise of several years, getting rid of Dirty Dancing presented a bit of an issue, you might say. It was the thorn in my side...and, as I mentioned before, my buddies thought the dilemma was the most amusing thing they'd ever heard of.
Now my friends were following me around town pointing and laughing...along with a traveling circus of late 80s mulletheads, men dressed in modern dance outfits, and Swayze look-alikes.
Hey, just another normal day in my life.
So I had to think up something new...and I decided to play what I considered to be a little strategy, coupled with "a little karma trick." I decided to go out and purchase the More Dirty Dancing soundtrack which I---ironically---purchased from a discount rack in a used record store in Tempe, Arizona.
I don't believe I actually ever played the damn thing.
Here was my brainiac strategy: I was hoping that if I paired it with the first Dirty Dancing CD, I could sell them back to a used record store or pawn shop as a pair.
Well, as you can guess, it didn't happen...and as a result, I STILL own them to this day. They've became such a fable; such a point of lore and personal history now, that I can't part with them...that's just the way it is. Some things you simply aren't meant to fight.
The weight of my history with this movie soundtrack was brought to bear with the passing of Patrick Swayze this last week. Sadly, he died before the age of 60 from pancreatic cancer. It's interesting how something so annoying and embarrassing can turn into something beautiful and meaningful, even if it took over 20 years to evolve as such.
...but isn't that life, in many ways? R.I.P. Mr. Swayze. You had guts wearing that mullet and those outfits...and you weren't a bad dancer...or singer, as one of the songs on my two Dirty Dancing soundtracks reveals.
So I guess it's time to buy the remastered Dirty Dancing box set now? Where do I place my bid? I'll pay top dollar, baby!
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