The year was 2003. I was 19 years old. What a time to be alive. CDs were still a thing, although we were all “allegedly” already downloading many things illegally by then. Mr Unprepared was driving a green VS Holden Commodore and I was getting around in my first car – my mighty Nissan Pulsar (I called her Buzz).
At some point that year, I decided that I needed some new music to travel with. In some kind of crazy departure from my usual taste in music at the time, I somehow stumbled across the Shake Your Ass compilation CD. It looked like something you’d find on a crappy rack in a servo somewhere. You know the kinds. But I guess I just wanted to shake my ‘ass’ like I was a shawty in da club and it was my birthday or something. Maybe I’d overdosed on punk rock the five years previous.
Upon bringing my new musical (misguided) pride and joy home, I soon realised that not only did this CD have great hits on it like Sisqo’s Thong Song and Shaggy’s Mister Bombastic, but it also had the extra benefit of really bemusing (and at times annoying) Mr Unprepared! YES. We had a winner!
At some point, I stopped being able to tell if I was owning/playing the CD ironically, or if I was a total goober who actually loved it. Oops.
I took that CD everywhere. No matter what Mr Unprepared tried to do to make me forget, I would always find it. It would always end up in the car CD player. It would always come out when friends came over for drinks (the best time to enjoy a good ass shaking – that sounds way worse than I mean it to).
Once (and I’m not proud of this), I was in a pretty bad state after drinking far too much wine, far too quickly, then attempting an hour’s drive to attend another party (WHO CAN GO TO 2 PARTIES IN 1 NIGHT – PEOPLE WITHOUT CHILDREN THAT’S WHO). And no, I wasn’t actually driving – obviously. But I was attempting to survive the drive. Which if you ask me, took just as much skill. Skill I did not possess.
We were pulled over on the side of the freeway for a minute (probably longer – I bet Mr Unprepared knows) while I was sick into an old Hungry Jacks paper bag, and then onto the gravel off the emergency lane. A bunch of CDs fell out of the car. Mr Unprepared’s AFL TEAM SONGS compilation and my Shake Your Ass CD were among the collection. Let’s just say that I felt the same about the AFL album as Mr Unprepared felt about my CD (which included gems like Baha Men’s Who Let the Dogs Out).
I did not have my faculties about me that night, but somehow in my drunken, teenaged stupor, I managed to save my amazing CD (also featuring Missy Elliot’s Gossip Folks) and scratch the AFL one beyond repair.
It’s like the Shake Your Ass CD and I had bonded. I had a protective instinct.
It’s like I was the big guy from the movie Blind Side and the CD was the little brother kid, when they had that car crash and the big guy…oh screw it. If you haven’t seen the movie, this paragraph was a waste of time…
Anyhow, Mr Unprepared still gives me side eye about that incident to this day.
If you think I haven’t googled that compilation (which has probably now made a Cash Converters customer very very happy…that is if they bought it before the warehouse burnt down in a suspicious fire) and haven’t loaded up every single song onto my Spotify account then you are sorely mistaken.
SHAKE YOUR ASS – 21 BUTT SHAKIN’ HITS (2003) WILL NEVER DIE.
