These were burned for me by my friend Golden in the time when CD burners were not a common thing- back then they were not built-into your computers and existed as a total external unit. Few deemed it worthy to get one for it's price, and Golden had to pay upwards of 800 dollars for his- that's how new these things were. But it was a small price to pay to be able to share some of his favorite music and make his own CD mixes, and the Rie Miyazawa copies were among the many albums he passed on to us! (He also burned copies of Yutaka Ozaki's "Seventeen's Map" and some Yuji Oda stuff, as well...sharing is caring!)
For the longest time I was pretty satisfied to hold on to those burned copies, but as I played them over the years and got to know the songs better and better, the more I fell in love with them and the desire to own legitimate copies became stronger...
A few months ago I got my hands on Rie's 1993 album "Rosee", a purchase I made because it was the parent album to that aforementioned "Akai Hana" single (and in fact OPENED with that song)...after falling in love with THAT album, knew it was HIGH TIME I made a real effort to get those original CDs, and thanks to a well-timed promotion at Suruguya, I was FINALLY ABLE to get my hands on both MU and CHEPOP at LAST!
JUST arrived today!!!
WELL, this is a DISTINCT improvement on those burned discs, at least VISUALLY!
The copy of MU is a real fan's dream, packed full of pictures, fold-out and a booklet, as I pored through the CD contents I could only marvel at it...just amazing! Sadly, my copy of Chepop seems to be missing its outer slipcase (a clear shell with Rie's image screened onto it) and only came with a plain case and the inside booklet...guess that's what I get for waiting so long! LOL
No matter, this is a wonderful buy and a fantastic addition to my small Rie Miyazawa collection!
Now I'm off to make NEW Mp3 copies of these albums- it'll be a nice upgrade from those burned copies for sure!
PS: Not that I'll be getting RID of those burned discs...I've had them so long they feel like "real' Rie CDs by now and I'm sentimentally attached to them, HAHAHA