dig out your wallet

Full disclosure - I'm not exactly what you'd call a gigantic Oasis fan. "Definitely Maybe" has its moments, and you can make an amazing album by putting together a carefully selected tracklist from "[What's The Story] Morning Glory" and its b-sides...most of which are stronger than the album tracks. I haven't bought an Oasis album since "Standing on the Shoulder of Giants" [which, along with "Be Here Now", I sold back to the record store years ago]...between the two album campaigns, there was a grand total of four songs I thought were great - 'The Fame' from the 'All Around the World' single, and then 'Fuckin' In The Bushes' and 'Go Let It Out' from "Shoulder" proper along with - the best of the four, I think - 'One Way Road' from the 'Who Feels Love?' single. [I only know about the b-sides because my old roommate Steve was a huge Oasis fan and bought all the singles, allowing me to cherry pick the ones I wanted.]

Second point - I've been having a lot of discussion lately with people about how the "digital revolution" has caused quite a bit of damage to the packaging market. Singles aren't released in the elaborate foramts they once were - both good and bad, I suppose - and physical releases are slowly but surely becoming an afterthought. However, on the flip to that, there are those artists that realize that and are making up for it by offering increasingly [and unnecessarilly] elaborate limited editions for both albums and singles, seemingly to attract the crowd - such as myself - that laments the slow death of the physical music formats. That said, most of them are taking it way to far. From Radiohead's "In Rainbows" discbox - I'm all for buying multiple formats of an album but I want a choice, and making purchasing an $80 box set the only way to get a bonus disc of otherwise unavailable material totally turns me off...especially since it's entirely redundant with both CD and LP versions of the same material - to Bjork's ridiculous singles boxes, I'm starting to wonder if they're not having a hand in killing the format. [Whoa run on sentence. Sorry about that.]

The points merge - I'm very interested in the new Oasis album...but not for the album itself as much as the bonus disc material. Two Jagz Kooner remixes! That said, the only way to get it is - you guessed it - a super pricey, overly elaborate deluxe edition. There is a "standard" deluxe edition - if you will - coming out as well, but it only has a DVD with a 20 minute EPK on making the album and the first video. Boring.

So basically, by trying to appeal to a long lost fan and format whore, they've totally turned me off and now I don't care how good the Oasis album is - and supposedly it's quite good - I refuse to buy it because [amazingly, considering how many of them there are] I can't get it in the format I want. So fuck 'em.