Heaneyland!

Bonus tracks are for dicks

I remember a time when bonus tracks were a wonderful thing, a way of saying, "Hey, you know how you're pissed off about having to buy that album a second time now that you don't play your LPs and cassettes anymore and you're repopulating your collection with CDs? Well, here are some extra tracks for you to make up for it." Then the second wave of Elvis Costello reissues came along, and I started getting irritated. "Hey," I thought, "I already bought these twice. Now you want me to buy them a third time?" But the packaging was better (all the bonus tracks on a second CD), and I did want the even-more-expanded versions, so I ponied up.

Then bands started releasing special editions of CDs mere months after the original release. I am familiar with Whateverth Anniversary Editions, where a classic album gets treated all fancy-like with bonus material and new liner notes and all manner of fanboy fripperies, but does every frickin' band need a 2-CD-plus-DVD expansion of their debut album? I'd like to see a massive wave of people returning CDs to the manufacturer the next time that happens. "Yes, this CD is defective -- for some reason it has HALF AS MANY SONGS ON IT as the CD you're selling now that costs the same amount."

The new Paul McCartney album (which I don't own, but I've heard, and like very much) released its special edition right out of the gate, which is an approach I generally approve of, since it lets you decide which version you want. My frustration with the McCartney CD is that although I want want want the extra tracks, I absolutely hate the packaging of the special edition: a DVD-size box (so it won't fit properly on a CD shelf) with a shmillion enormous fold-out flaps (so you need three hands to hold it or more available flat surface than ever exists in our apartment) and CDs that sit on top of each other (so you can't get the bottom one out without taking the top one out first -- fourth hand needed now), and a "commentary track" that follows the last song on the bonus CD (which ensures that I would never listen to the actual CD itself anyway, so I might as well just buy the regular CD and rip the bonus CD from Lorinne).

So, vexations all. And yet we have perhaps come to the pinnacle of annoying bonus track behavior, and that is: multiple simultaneous versions of a CD with different, but only slightly different track listings. Sort of like when a band releases an album with one bonus track in the UK, and a different one in Japan (or entirely different bonus discs, gaaaaah) -- except how irritated can you get for spending $10 on an album and then finding out you could've had it with an extra track if you'd spent, oh, an extra $20 to buy the import version? Most people would probably just buy the domestic version anyway. But how annoying is it to buy The Crane Wife and then find out the Starbucks version had more songs on it? And then how annoyed would you be if you then bought the Starbucks version and found out there was one more frickin' song on the Tower Record version? It's enough to make people just, oh, I don't know, download the songs from the Internet.

And, as Pitchfork points out vis-a-vis the Smashing Pumpkins doing the same damn thing, these extra tracks are just one more incentive for music buyers to ignore small retailers. Awesome.

Now I am only going to say this once (what a lie): Dear Bands. Stop It.