Re: Something to try, if you dare

[Kim Flint <kflint@chromatic.com>]

At 04:06 PM 11/20/96 -0500, jspeer@haverford.edu wrote:
>Take a CD that you don't like at all, and wouldn't mind destroying.  Get a
>thick black permanant marker.  On the PLAYING side of the CD, draw 3 
>lines,
>equally spaced, from the center hole right out to the edge.  Make sure
>they're very heavy lines by going over them 10 times or so.  Now pop it in
>the CD player and hit play!  Endless listening fun.  Literally.  You may
>want to help it along with the ff button if it gets a bit too stuck.  You
>may also want to have a stiff drink while you listen.  I find it sounds
>best if the CD is of really bad heavy metal.

Wow, I used to do this! A friend of mine who did an experimental radio show
on a college station turned me on to the idea. I used white-out. I painted
various stipes on the disc and scratched parts of them off. (if you have 
too
much on there it won't play at all) Scratching the white out in different
places changes the effects. The neat thing is that its always different.
Each time you hit the ff button you end up in some new loop that you never
hit before. 

Another idea my friend suggested was microwaving cd's. Supposedly the
plastic on the disc develops a network of spider-web cracks. I never got
around to trying this, but I'm intrigued by the idea again.

I also used bad heavy metal, mostly because I seemed to have several such
cd's on my shelf. The cd I used was a band called "Meliah Rage" if anyone's
interested. The white out turned lousy Metallica ripoffs into some of the
coolest industrial loops I've ever heard. In fact I was doing this 6-7 
years
ago, predating Rundgren-esque interactive cd's by quite a bit! I heartily
encourage everyone to take a look at your cd collection and "fix" some of
those discs that you never listen to.

>Disclaimer:  I have no idea what this does to your equipment.  But I've
>never had anything go wrong with my stuff doing this.
>

It never hurt my player, but this is definitely in the user-be-ware, void
the warranty category.

kim

_______________________________________________________
Kim Flint                       408-752-9284
OEM Engineering                 kflint@chromatic.com
Chromatic Research