The other day I was feeling pretty nostalgic and I was thinking about the old days of working on the Maroon Tiger at the old alma mater. Man those were some great, great times.

This may be a bit of the old megalomaniacal Cal peaking through, but I find myself occassionally reading my old articles and enjoying them, particularly the more "features" driven ones.

There is one however that is like a horrible blight on my record. It was never meant to see the light of day in the form it was published, but it’s entirely my fault.

It’s the review of Outkast’s "Stankonia". I had requested that I specifically be the one to review it as I was the only Atlanta native on staff at the time and I felt a certain sentimental attachment to it.

So I got my advance copy of the album and sat down at the old apple macintosh on the far wall of the office. Now those familiar with the old layout of the Tiger office remember that that computer ALWAYS had problems, it was old and on it’s last legs. But I felt, hey, I’m going to bang out this review of this album before any of those problems creep up on me.

Well I sat, and I listened to the first couple tracks. Most of them I’d already heard on the radio or just plain wasn’t impressed with. I got all the way to Bombs Over Bahgdad before I was interupted.

As an aside, I guess I should explain how I reviewed albums at the time. I was one of those who liked to do a track for track analysis of an album. I didn’t feel it was fair to leave out a particular highlight or lowlight. It led to wordy pieces, but they were complete.

Anyway, I forget what the interuption was, but I know that I had to save it for the day and come back to it. I felt dread right at that moment that something effed up was going to happen to my article, but hey, I had to do what I had to do right? The saved version was like in the middle of a sentence. I had bucked my usual trend of giving a title to the article until it was done, but inspiration hit me in the cafeteria the day before I started, I heard some random somebody say something to the extent of "What the hell is a Stankonia anyway??"

I thought it was a fair enough question and one I planned to address. So one day turned into about 4 and then I was up against the deadline so I said, "Alright let’s finish this piece!" By that time I had listened to the album both passively and actively quite a few times. The only songs I still didn’t like (and don’t like to this day) were Spaghetti Junction and that song with the dude from Cypress Hill (I don’t even remember the title to show you just how little I cared for it). But I banged out a pretty decent review of the album.

It was a positive review, not quite Aquemini, "Oh my god wow" positive, but I put emphasis on the fact that the last half of the album was incredible. I even changed up some of the early stuff I had worked on to reflect that a few of the earlier songs (Gasoline Dreams in particular) grew on me. I was really proud of it. I saved it (or so I thought) and then bounced.

I get a frantic call the next day from my Editor in Chief Shaun. I wish I could insert a voice file here, with Joe from Dallas doing his voice, but the convo went something like this:

Shaun: Hey guy…where the HELL is that Outkast review you were supposed to do for this issue?
Me: I saved it on the old Mac under the title, "what the hell is a stankonia"
Shaun: Yeah I saw that guy….it wasn’t finished…did you plan on finishing it before we published it??
Me: *long pause*I finished it yesterday! It’s about 800 words, should be a whole page (for layout purposes).
Shaun: Well buddy, it’s not there….what do you want me to do?
Me: Hold on I’m on the way…I’ll find it…

So I run up to the office. I already have a feeling what’s going to happen to it. My copy editor, who was a decent enough guy, but I HATED his "work"…he used to eff my stuff up, was going to get ahold of that shitty predraft that they had access to, and gussy it up and run with it. Sure enough, I couldn’t find the story and that’s what happened.

I didn’t even want my name attached to that craptastic review. If I could go back in time I would probably change THAT before I made any other move like hollaring at some chick or something. Kinda neurotic I know…but I HATE looking back on that article. So if by chance you happen to run upon old Maroon Tiger issues and see a bad review of Outkast’s "Stankonia" with my name on it, now you know the story behind the story. Know that I love that album!