BMG – Choose 7 CD’s With HUM
In my 1993 pea brain, nothing said “You’ve made it!” more than having an album you produced with the BMG “Choose X Number of CD’s for FREE!” offers that flooded mailboxes in the early 1990’s. I couldn’t believe that the album I had just finished producing (“You’d Prefer an Astronaut” by HUM) was being offered next to the Pretenders and Stone Temple Pilots (who I loved, despite Wayne Coyne telling me that they were the downfall of Western music at the time).
My dream, after seeing that magically appear, was to have the Flaming Lips’ “Transmissions from the Satellite Heart” appear in the same snail mail offering that the HUM record appeared, but alas, that’s a dream that has been left unfulfilled.
I signed up for the offer, just so I could have the HUM CD show up at my house. I, of course, used a borrowed flyer and sticker set since you had to lick and paste the 7 CD’s you wanted on the application form. Just to be sure, I also ordered the cassette version of “You’d Prefer an Astronaut”, even though I no longer listened to inferior cassette tapes now that the infinitely superior CD had recently appeared on the scene. Little did I know how deeply digital music would negatively affect my career until a decade later. But for now, I was reveling in what may have well been a roomful of gold coins, as I hung onto that advertisement as dearly as if it were my birth certificate.