i’ve always been thankful for music (a flashback)

Author: sean M Published: November 24, 2010 0 comments edit

now, i know the title seems like i posted this already, then added to it, since i tend to do that sometimes and then add something like “extended mix” at the end of the title to imply it’s longer than the original bit that was up…

…actually, not the case on this one.

nopers, i just got done mopping the floor as part (most) of the housework that’s getting done for the annual badder santa viewing party tonight, which is how shane and i traditionally kick off the holiday season. on top of that, i’m uploading a bunch of single CD’s i just unearthed, as well as some others that were “acquired” during various radio and retail gigs and were found while looking about for a beastie boys licensed to ill VHS tape, which i know i OWNED, but might have been “acquired” by a past room mate i never wanted.

while the tape is MIA i did find several old CDs, cassettes, old carts and reels from my radio days, my original SWT id, napkins from JAB’s wedding (who knew it would be ten years soon?) and a green day promo poster of undetermined age, but perfectly preserved.

one thing i DON’T miss from the early days of CDs – bonus tracks. they still pop up OCCASIONALLY but now they’re typically labeled on the outside of the case as “*Bonus Tracks*” and they’re right there.

it used to not be that way.

importing NIN’s “broken” ep can be a pain in the ass if you have the typical version. see, originally it was put out with a 3″ cd single on the side that had the two bonus tracks on it…but the later versions had them as track ninety-eight and track ninety-nine…so you had to skip forward and LOOK for ’em. when you go to pull the disc in iTunes now what that equates to is leaving checks by the original six tracks, then having to UNcheck ninety-one fucking tracks so they don’t import and fuck up your shuffle mix and fill your library with bullshit, THEN make sure you don’t uncheck the two bonus tracks. same goes for a few other CDs i’ve put in over the years.

pain in the ass.

i guess when the technology was new and fresh this was, to some of the artists out there, a fun unconventional way of doing things that helped alleviate the boredom of doing the masters…but fifteen years and some change later? it’s just annoying – and the same goes for that “masterful” idea of making the last track on your CD thirty minutes long, where it’s really a five minute song, then twenty-three minutes of silence, then some weird three minutes of noise and shit that constitutes the “bonus track”. on the upside, if you’re iTunes saavy, you can record that song to your iTunes twice under two different titles, set the end time of the first one to be the end time of the original track, and then have the second track start where the bonus kicks in TWENTY fucking minutes later and end properly. totally do-able, but a pain in the ass.