Elle wrote: "what are they doing differently?" Well, here's something, and I know this is old news but I have to say I'm so sad about the way that if you want the full version of 'JIADS' you've to buy the 12" of 'Legal Man', and if you want 'Winter Wooskie, you've to buy the CD. Putting slightly different versions of records such that if you want to maintain your complete collection of a band's output is just a nasty record business trick designed to screw money out of the most committed fans and maybe artificially inflate chart placings. It's a crap thing to do. Now, I *know* that nobody's forced to buy anything they don't want to buy, but to use that as an excuse is to completely misunderstand how a whole lot of people collect records and follow bands. B&S / Jeepster know only too well that B&S fans are very, very committed to the band and that they *are* going to want to own all the stuff. So they stick out two singles with very, very slightly different content, safe in the knowledge that they'll sell lots of multiple copies. Maybe they couldn't fit the enormously extended 'Judy' onto the 70 odd minuted offered by the CD. Or maybe those twelve inches of vinyl couldn't accommodate all three of those super-long songs, which between them would, after all, have required a 4-LP boxed set. Seriously, I suppose there is the possibility that soem weird technical reason means that they couldn't fit the same songs on both formats, but I can't see what that might be. if they couldn't have fitted them all onto the vinyl, they could have at least put the whole lot on the CD. Maybe missing a track off the CD makes the vinyl better value. Or something. I mean, if a band feels it *has* to try to cajole its followers into buying two copies of something, at least they could make the two singles different enough from each other that they're worth buying in their own right. They shouldn't just try to cash in in on their loyalty by selling them the same thing twice. I've long wanted B&S to get into the charts *on their own terms*. Not by pulling ugly, rip-off tricks. Maybe these are their terms now, I dunno. But I have a feeling that this is the kind of thing they wouldn't have done a while ago. I know that I'm a sad relic of the days in the 1980s when some of us used to fulminate about what a rip-off 3-track 12" singles were. Maybe I should grow up and live in the real world. Not so sure I want to though. Sorry to re-emerge with a moan. Cheerio tim __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Send instant messages & get email alerts with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com/ +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the undead Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "tech-heads and students" +-+ +-+ "the cardie wearing biscuit nibbling belle & sebastian list" +-+ +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +----------------------------------------------------------------------+