Just went to the Tower Records at Lincoln Center and bought the biggest crack pile of CDs to ever exist. This is quite unlike me, as I download most of my music or get it in “zip”-like packets from my roommate over the IM. I used to own lots of CDs, but I dumped them all into my computer and that was that. They’re all stowed away in my childhood room in Illinois, probably under the bed, next to the terrifying Ouija Board I refused to remove when I was 11 because that would mean I’d be acknowledging it, and I couldn’t bring myself to even do that.

Plus, this way, no one has to see Even More Dazed and Confused or every single Jock Jams compilation of the late ’90s on my bookshelves. They’d need to scan through my iPod to find gems like those. And some do.

After thumbing through my friend TG’s even bigger pile of garbage from Tower (which is going out of business in four days) the other night, I suddenly ached for the return of useless but incredibly amusing compilation CDs to my “collection” and made the big trek uptown to the store. Keep in mind there are ZERO good CDs with more than one song by the same artist left at Tower. (Fine, there probably are, but I had like 20 minutes. I made it to the mid-Cs and had to give up.)

But the compilations aisle? Totally different story. If you can manage to ignore the jutting greasy-jacketed elbows of guys who cannot thumb through row upon row of, alternatingly, Punk-Rock of ‘94 and The Emo Diaries: Chapters 4 and 7 fast enough (at one point I feigned interest in Freestyle Hits 1 just to dangle my hair in one guy’s line of sight, thereby completely annihilating his flow), I highly recommend it.

Among the gems I picked out:

SMOKIN BEATS: 40 Phat Joints and Smooth Rolling Beats (pictured, above). Subtitle? “A funky mix of laid-back grooves.” But what are they trying to say? What should I do while I listen to this music?

Spirit of Ecstasy: 20 Pumpin’ Club Hits. What?! Who am I and what have I done with Annie?

Fresh Dance 93: 18 of the most juicy hand picked hits. Another essential collection. Way to copy edit that title, too! Turns out they were indeed referring to the year 1993, which in no way explains the inclusion of “Long Train Runnin’” by the Doobie Brothers.

Fresh Hits Volume 1. That’s it. That’s the whole title. It could honestly be anything. That’s the thing with this aisle — you really need to give everything a flip and check it out. This is a 2-CD (most of them are!) collection of songs in the late ’90s by people like O.D.B., Pink, Christina Aguilera, and S Club 7, i.e. songs I should be cynically aware of now that I work at an entertainment magazine, but was too far submerged in a quicksand-like Electric Light Orchestra obsession to even register. There’s also a Moloko song on there, which is weird, but that’s 50% of why I bought it.

The Sound of Europe. They got it all onto one CD. Amazing!

The 70s: Hits From the Underground. I have no idea why. I’m sorry. It has Jefferson Airplane and something called “Captain Beefheart And His Magic Band.” I had to.

Anyway, seriously, if you have a deep-rooted affinity for compilation CDs that absolutely never needed to be produced but were, check out Tower Records in the next few days. Even if it’s labeled $34.99, it’s probably $3.