A MILLION DIFFERENT VERSIONS OF THE SAME THING

In late February of 1996 after spending 2 and a half years overseas I was heading home to the states when I found myself in a record store in Auckland, New Zealand's international airport. It was there that I first exposed myself to James Blunt when I bought the You're Beuatuiful single and his Back to Bedlam CD. On the flight back and during the next week while vacationing in San Antonio I played those discs countless times. Consequently, listening to Back to Bedlam from then on brought back wonderful memories of returning home and the vacationing in San Antonio. Those memories are a big reason why I am into James Blunt's music. Also because I like that one song where he tells me I'm beautiful over and over like 26 times in the span of three minutes.

Then over the next year or so, Back to Bedlam got rereleased a couple more times. There was the Target exclusive version with an extra disc of demos and then there was an extended edition with a disc of live concert tracks that was previously only available overseas. That kind of pissed me off and while I did buy the Target version for the demos, I was not about to buy the same CD a third time no matter what else was included with it. Then my wife the Queen of Macrocrania went on a business trip and while she was away she bought the regular version of Back to Bedlam again because she doesn't pay attention. I hope James Blunt appreciates how my family is singlehandedly responsible for funding at least a couple pounds of the weed he's smoked since 1995.

Since then it has become the norm for a CD to come out with multiple different bonus materials depending on whaich store you buy it from. I don't care what band it is-there's going to be a Target version, a Wal-Mart version and probably a Best Buy version and they're all going to be different. To my horror last week a new James Blunt CD came out and I decided I'd just stick to buying the Target version no matter what other craptacular bonuses the other retailers packed in with thier 'exclusive' copies. However, I do admit that if Taco Bell sold CDs with bonus burritos I would never buy music anywhere else.

When I got to Target I stood stunned at the extent things had gotten out of hand since the last time I got butt raped by James Blunt's merchendising empire. Target not only had the regular version and their deluxe version, they also had a third super deluxe plus plus version with a DVD in it. Three versions of the exact same record! So I grabbed the super deluxe plus plus version thinking it was on sale for $12 because of the signs and when I got to the register it was the full $18! Target fuckers! I think they're revenging me for taking advantage of the time they had $15 Transformers mispriced at $5 and I bought two of 'em. Well screw you Target because you may have tricked me but I'm still ahead by like 15 robot dollars.