C/D: Spreading different B-sides over multiple formats

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

Back in the halcyon days of the early '90s, when the record industry's favorite game was playing cat-and-mouse with collectible tracks by favored artists, I was used to having to buy three CD singles from different countries, a few 7"es, the occasional 10", and a Japanese CD pressing in order to get all the relevant tracks from an artist's current oeuvre. They invariably came in gatefold covers, colored vinyl, holographic or heat-sensitive plaster-on elements, fold-out poster sleeves, crappy Singaporean tapes you could see through in a dull light, and vinyl so thick it could decapitate someone with a well-angled throw.

In other words, I grew up accustomed to spending a fuckload of money just to get an extra two or three minutes of only intermittently rewarding bliss from these people.

At some point, the format-craziness died off, and we returned to generally more sensible practices, like including bonus tracks on 12" vinyl editions of albums or the occasional discrepancy between single formats. (Nutters like Robyn Hitchcock, meanwhile, continued to produce entire alternate versions of my favorite albums on limited-edition vinyl. The bastard.)

Anyway, while I hold a certain nostalgia for those days spent blowing off high-school science with a fucking magnifying glass, straining through the tiny listings at the back of Record Collector or Goldmine for a version of the Cure's Just Like Heaven that included "Snow in Summertime," I certainly never expected to see them revived in 2006.

To wit, I just blew $30 on eBay to get an extra three Laura Veirs songs from her latest opus, Year of Meteors. One is on a bright-blue-vinyl British 7" packaged in those cheap see-through plastic sleeves; another is buried on a promo-only, two-track CD single that may or may not also be available in a three-track version; the last is a bog-standard, commercially released black vinyl single - again, surprise surprise, a British pressing.

Fellow ILMers, do we or do we not enjoy discovering, and forking over insane amounts of money for, such things? C/D, if you please, for the return of the B-side easter-egg hunt.

― Myke. (Myke Weiskopf), Monday, 20 March 2006 08:25 (twenty years ago)

Dud. Bjork was AWFUL for this through the 1990s. Saint Etienne have been bad too, but they have the nice habit of collecting all the miscellany for fans on a single disc within several years.

having all the nifty packaging can be nice, but it's not just impossible to collect, it's impossible to listen to. also, to what extent has the advent of iTunes et al led to the decline of this practice? only the crazy collectors are into it, because the average fan can track down the mp3.

― derrick (derrick), Monday, 20 March 2006 10:53 (twenty years ago)

Bjork was quite nice mostly:

Each single part would be £2 or thereabouts, and you'd end up with a three part set in a slipcase with many many remixes/new tracks, for £6 or thereabouts.

Alternative would be: Each part issued as a 12" promo which you could only get from the 'special' record shop for £6 each.

(Mind you, she did that as well...)

― mark grout (mark grout), Monday, 20 March 2006 11:00 (twenty years ago)

Saint Etienne were a collector's nightmare because of their copious fan-club-only discs, which is admittedly a slightly different story. (R.E.M. had quite a lot of these as well.)

I remember that flood of Bjork mega-EP sets. Always cool to look at, but I never wanted to spend the cash for what was mostly a bunch of third-party remixes.

iTunes has picked up *some* of the slack on this trend, but even then, what to do if you want the stuff in better-than-128k quality?

― Myke. (Myke Weiskopf), Monday, 20 March 2006 11:28 (twenty years ago)

I'm finding it a big fat dud. I'd rather get an EP with 3 b sides rather than having to buy 2*7"s and a CD to get them all, then have to put up with a crappy vinyl rip of 2 of the b-sides.

When the UK chart rules were changed to reduce the no of different tracks allowed on a single from 4 to 3 they made the wrong move - multiple formats with different tracklistings should have been banned, though it wasn't so bad when you could get 6 new b-sides spread over 2 cds.

― Michael Lambert (Michael Lambert), Monday, 20 March 2006 21:48 (twenty years ago)

Dud, especially considering that it's due to chart-making possibilities. It's started to get a little better with the possibility of an online-only release of all the b-sides in one place.

― mike h. (mike h.), Monday, 20 March 2006 21:51 (twenty years ago)

Wait, you spent $30 on Laura Veirs? Dud

― Captain Smarty Pants, Monday, 20 March 2006 22:11 (twenty years ago)

From a treasure-hunt aspect, this is kind of fun. Mostly, however, I rate it DUD. Just gimme a 12" and/or CD single with the same 3 or 4 B-sides on each. I should search and see if there's a "B-side only S/D" thread.

Past offenders:

Beck (I fell for this in the late 90's)
Shriekback ( I STILL don't have a couple of those damn remix EPs)

Current offenders:

Fiery Furnaces (different tracks on vinyl & CD singles)
Devendra Banhart (ditto)

― sleeve (sleeve), Monday, 20 March 2006 22:30 (twenty years ago)

CLASSIC

― Dan (Yay Cure) Perry (Dan Perry), Monday, 20 March 2006 22:33 (twenty years ago)

Dud Dudovich Dudoff

― joseph cotten (joseph cotten), Monday, 20 March 2006 23:03 (twenty years ago)

Wait, you spent $30 on Laura Veirs? Dud

Obvious, obvious, obvious. Can't you people do better?

― Myke. (Myke Weiskopf), Tuesday, 21 March 2006 00:30 (twenty years ago)

Obvious, but still necessary to point out. You spent $30 on Laura Veirs. Ha ha ha ha.

― Captain Smarty Pants (Col Tom Blue), Tuesday, 21 March 2006 03:21 (twenty years ago)

From a North American perspective, I guess it's a dud because import CD singles were so damn expensive. It's one thing if you lived in the UK and were paying two or three quid for each single, but shelling out eleven bucks in the US or Canada for one or two extra songs was a high price to pay. This is why I rarely bought (buy) singles.

Classic in the sense that more music from your favourite bands = CLASSIC BY DEFINITION (or, what Dan said).

― NoTimeBeforeTime (Barry Bruner), Tuesday, 21 March 2006 03:29 (twenty years ago)

yeah, 99p in first week of release = classic. paying A$18 per CD and $12 for the single new track on 7" = dud.

― kit brash (kit brash), Tuesday, 21 March 2006 06:11 (twenty years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.