No one else could love you more.

Recently, my dearest friend, Gina, asked me to re-burn her copy of a homemade CD I had given to her back in early 2000. It was the soundtrack to the Kids in the Hall's live show, "Same Guys New Dresses", the songs they played during the shows of that magical 2000 tour.

I remember burning that CD, because it was, for me, the early days of that technology, and I used a beta-version of an MP3 trimmer on some of the tracks, so that before, for example, "Welcome to the Working Week" started, we would have to endure the sound of a bell-tone, and a lovely woman's voice informing us that that "This track was encoded by M2-MP3." I'll actually miss hearing that when I re-burn the new copy; it will lose something, I think, to have that gone.

The tour was the best time I ever had in my life. Friendships that started on the internet and then drifted, somehow, into the realm of nearly-moving-in, to the current state of Roommates and BFF, were cemented during that tour. Any time I hear "Celebrity Skin" or any song from Macy Gray's debut album, I stop, and sigh, and smile. Sometimes I'll shed a tear, particularly when the memories are triggered by an unexpected encounter with The Jayhawk's "Blue" or Billy Bragg and Wilco singing "California Stars"-- the latter more often provoking nostalgiac giggles, for whenever the line, "They hang like grapes", came up, we remembered the timing of that particular line over the pre-performance slideshow, and a closeup of Mark McKinney revealing more than was strictly necessary through his womanly pantyhose. (As my friend Kitana put it,

Are you listening to your KITH tour mix? Another thing I need to do when I
get the time, DAMMIT, is make those cds! I feel the exact SAME way when I
listen to it. Every song reminds me of something. I need to listen to it
right now, now that you mentioned it.

At one point in "California Stars", I always giggle when I listen to it,
despite its lovely, wistful tone because the one line about the stars that
goes, "They hang like grapes..." played over Mark's dingly-dangly new
dresses picture in the slideshow, once. )

It's impossible not to make these connections, you see. We're fans, and we speak our own language, and that's what fans of anything do. You're a fan of something, you know, and you speak that particular language. It's okay to. Fandom is a creative experience, and all artists are fans of something. You are, too.

Anyway, these are the songs from the tour soundtrack. They were chosen by the tour's director, Jim Millan. Yes, some of the tracks were used, er, "comedically", within the context of the show; I'll leave it to you irony-tastic hipsters to guess which ones. I originally culled them during what I call The Golden Age of Napster, but they're easy to find today, of course. Technology has improved and the world has moved on since then.

You've probably heard them, but I'll take a note from D. and suggest you seek them in this particular grouping. It won't mean the same to you, maybe, but it's still a brilliant mix:

*Elvis Costello - Welcome to the Working Week
*Macy Gray - Do Something and Why Didn't you Call Me
*Boss Hog - Beehive
*Propellerheads - Sound of History Repeating featuring Miss Shirley Bassey
*Chris Isaak - Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing
*Hedwig and the Angry Inch - Tear Me Down (from the original stage
recording of Off Broadway show)
*Odds - Truth Untold
*Moby - Porcelain and Body Rock
*Garbage - Push It
*Prodigy - Firestarter
*Billy Bragg and Wilco - California Stars
*The Jayhawks - Blue
*Parliament - Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off the Sucker)
*Labelle - Lady Marmalade
*Commodores - Brick House
*Hole - Celebrity Skin
*Beck - Sexx Laws
*Bobby Darin - More