Anyone who’s met me and had a conversation for longer than 10 minutes will know I’m a giant music dork.

My love of song began early with lazy days lying on the living room floor, the sounds of Mom’s Chicago records and Dad’s Johnny Cash, Harry Chapin and Gordon Lightfoot echoing through the house. In 3rd grade I bought Devo’s “Whip It” 45 from Tom Lorello and spent all afternoon making a sleeve for it, sneaking trips to Mrs. Lehman’s desk to sneak a staple or two into the edges and hastily retreating back to my desk to decorate said sleeve with whips and flower pots.

As I got a little older I progressed to Jerry Heywood’s room next door, rocking AC/DC’s “Back In Black” and J. Geils Band “Freeze Frame” with the volume on 10 in a pair of ginormous Koss headphones. The aforementioned Tom Lorello was our playground DJ during recess kickball games, standing next to first base with his cassette player blaring a mix of Black Sabbath, the B-52’s and ZZ Top.

And then it happened…an innocent trip to Blue Skies Records & Tapes downtown Naperthrill resulted in my purchase of Van Halen’s “Diver Down” and it was all over. My room became a shrine to music. How my brother didn’t end up with a rifle at the top of a bell tower after growing up with posters of Motley Crue, W.A.S.P and the rest of the Sunset Strip degenerates staring down at his bed…I’ll never know. Like all good kids of the early 80’s I spent hours on end waiting for my favorite songs to play on WLS and 98 The Loop, my finger deftly poised on the un-pause button so I could record Rush’s “Tom Sawyer” or the new Quiet Riot on cassette. I bought a drum set with dreams of becoming the next Alex Van Halen, despite the fact that his kit was approximately six times the size of mine. I made montly trips to the drug store to buy issues of Circus and Metal Edge magazines. Multiple trips to Blue Skies and Crow’s Nest and Musicland at the mall followed, spending as much times as possible flipping through the records looking for the next great band to listen to.

There is no doubt in my mind that I’d have more money today than Bill Gates if I’d had iTunes technology back then to help me spend my hard earned paper route & Dairy Queen money on bands that didn’t suck balls. I can’t even begin to total up how much I threw away on bands that “looked” cool or had a “kick ass” album cover. Who remembers the 80’s hair metal group Foreplay?

You don’t?

Exactly. Nobody remembers Foreplay. OK – perhaps that’s a bit harsh. Maybe, like, 26 people on the planet actually DO remember them – including me, the four guys actually IN Foreplay, their parents and 13 of their cousins. Why am I included in that embarrassingly exclusive group? Because there was a pretty blonde girl on the cover in a soaking wet t-shirt that had barely enough fabric to cover her giant boobs. Giant boobs that were possibly NOT covered by said t-shirt on the inside sleeve, right? I mean, come on – what 14 year old WOULDN’T BUY THAT RECORD? If I ever come across the A&R guy who green-lighted that album cover I’m going to hit him with a sock full of nickels. Why? Because Foreplay sucked. Horrible. Terrible. An embarrassment to the genre. Possibly the worst music I’d heard up to that point in my life. I would’ve been better off taking my $18.99 and setting it on fire.

Sidebar: No, said giant boobs were nowhere to be found on the inside record sleeve. To this day…I still feel used.

Despite my throwing fistfuls of cash toward multiple tone deaf Ratt wannabes from Omaha or Tacoma or Little Rock, one thing I always anxiously anticipated was when my favorite bands would get to the point in their career where they could put out a “Greatest Hits” album – one place for all their best songs to live in harmony. And more importantly, allow me to listen to them without having to fast forward, rewind, fast forward, change cassettes, rewind again to hear my favorites. I was reminded of my love for Greatest Hits albums when I got an email reminder from one of my favorite bands, Snow Patrol, alerting me of their newest Greatest Hits offering…despite their putting out a similar one only 2 years ago.

And then it hit me. Greatest Hits have become a throwaway album. A way for bands like, let’s say Kiss, to write one new song every 3-4 years and package shit like “KISS: GREATEST HITS VOLUME 43 – INCLUDING NEW MUSIC!”  I wish I was making that up. Seriously, how many Greatest Hits albums has Kiss put out? Two? Four? Nine?

Newsflash: Kiss isn’t that good of a band.

Doublefuckingnewsflash: No band on Earth is good enough to put out TWO Greatest Hits albums, much less the 37 that Kiss has issued. I’m pretty certain the same 14 songs are on every single one of them, along with a poorly polished turd that Gene & Paul sleepwalked through in an effort to make more money.

Then again, the more I think about it, Greatest Hits albums are now obsolete…right? With iTunes, Spotify and the like I can pick & choose which songs I want to make a mix of and buy them as one offs, saving me from buying entire shitty albums and better yet, picking the ACTUAL songs I think are a bands greatest.

R.I.P, Greatest Hits albums. You’ll be misse-wait, no you won’t.