This unlucky find sat perched, with no regard to alphabetical order, atop a stack of shitty Henry Rollins sermon CDs. I just barely caught it with the corner of my eye-- goddamn my peripheral vision. I'd been sifting through the tiny spoken word section having no luck finding a Howard Zinn disc, and right as I was fixing to leave, my brain finally registered the phrase "Courtney Love in conversation." I kind of rubbernecked toward the spot on the shelf, took a few steps back incredulously, and snatched it up.

As the trailer-trash, ersatz Yoko of lowly Generation Bizkit, Courtney Love is about as close as we're getting to compelling or polarizing pop figures these days. If that fact alone doesn't sell you on the concept of culture decay, you're a hopeless optimist. Considering the field, Love is a fairly compelling figure-- savvy media maelstrom, smacked-out mommy, crass opportunist, and Resilience incarnate are just some of the costumes Courtney's donned for her adoring, overwhelmingly adolescent public over the last five years. And if you've seen Nick Broomfield's Kurt and Courtney, depending on your weakness for a good conspiracy, you might also tack murderer to the tail end of that list.

This 1999 radio interview finds Love settling into her new skin as Versace'd, Literate, Hollywood Courtney. In a mere 22-minute span, Courtney manages to say absolutely nothing, albeit in surprisingly well-spoken little outbursts of banal self-appraisal. A pair of fawning interviewers play the part of awe-struck sounding walls.

The conversation is, ostensibly, a press junket for 200 Cigarettes. (That was a movie, by the way.) Presaging the film's failure, both Love and the journalists steer conversation toward Courtney, the Artistic Phenomenon. You'd think they could have also foreseen that the catered and idiotic questions they were submissively feeding to Love like grapes would ensure the interview DOA status. Relative highlights:

On the utility of journalists: "Now I'm starting to learn how to manipulate you a little more.... see, I'm too honest."

On her fan-base: "A sea of disaffected teenage girls with tiaras and fairy wings and pink hair."

On her role in 200 Cigarettes: "I'm not the comedic lynchpin of it." No shit?

On her rearing, and its advantages: "I was raised on the west coast in subcultures and teepees by feminists, by squatters, by punkers," and, "This is the good thing about not [having been raised] mainstream; I've never been oppressed by Christianity."

Childhood regrets: "I just needed to be an only child with a stage mother and I would've been absolutely set. But that's not the way it worked out..."

On print versus on-air journalism: "This is what I like about radio, you can't write it down and twist it."

Yeah, it's sad. Those are the highlights. Nevertheless, they reveal the tip of the iceberg that is the calculating, hyper self-awareness and self-revisionism that makes Courtney Love an interesting, if reprehensible figure. But the tip of that iceberg isn't actually worth a damn, much less $14-- that's roughly 60¢/minute, and this will neither get you off, nor tell your fortune. Also, the misleading "Picture Compact Disc" label refers to the photo of Love on the actual face of the disc, and not to any picture files contained therein. But what priceless audio! I'd sooner listen to Yoko's bobcat-in-a-meatgrinder screeching than put this one on for pleasure. Say what you will, but if their roles were reversed, Yoko would never have shacked up with Trent Reznor. Then again, Courtney Love might very well have driven John Lennon to suicide.

-Camilo Arturo Leslie