How The Industry Tricked Me Into Buying "Love" Again!

Love - The Cult


I dunno about you, but I just realized that there are a few albums that I end up buying again and again it, seems. I mean, you'd think once would be enough, right?

Case in point, The Cult's incredible album, "Love".

First I owned the vinyl, then bypassed the purchase of the album on cassette by doing a bit of home taping so I could play it in the car. Then, wouldn't ya know it, CD's came along and made us all go out and re-buy most of our collections all over again.

So, there I was just a few days ago...a proud owner of "Love" on vinyl, CD and home-ripped mp3 for the iPod. If you'd have told me that I would be buying "Love" again, I'd have called you crazy.

But there I was scanning the bins at Rolling Stones Records out in Norridge, IL when I happened upon the Expanded Edition of "Love", which featured a second disc of non-lp tracks, remixes, etc.

I bought it without even having to think about it.

The major labels, in their infinite sinister wisdom, have discovered that they don't actually need to sign new artists that we of the 25-45 age demographic might care about when they can just tack on a few non-lp tracks and re-release all those albums we bought as kids.

Deluxe Editions...Expanded Editions...whatever they wanna call them, I call them a backhanded gift from the music gods. On one hand, you get remastered versions of beloved albums, a ton of non-lp stuff, and expanded packaging. On the other, you're just giving more money to those lazy label bastards, thereby confirming in their mind that they don't actually need to give consumers anything new.

When they ushered in CD's some twenty years ago, it literally saved their asses. The industry had gone through some lean years in the early 1980's and still hadn't learned their lesson or realized that if they merely signed artists that deserved it, promoted the cool artists they ignored, and stopped giving us disposable crap like "Tarzan Boy" and Milli Vanilla.

Nah, they just made a mental note that when times get tough, just invent a new format.

Of course, the digital age and the interweb kinda wrestled control from the suits and gave it to the people. In between power lunches and accusing their own consumers of stealing, the labels have realized that they force a new format upon us this time...but they can certainly kick the same generation that re-bought our collections on CD the first time making us buy many of our CD's all over again in expanded format.

Bravo, you bastards. Having said that, I absolutely adore the expanded edition of "Love" and urge you all to buy it.

The Cult-(Here Comes The) Rain