One box short of the full set

Oct 7, 2008

This morning I took receipt of an already prized item: The Madvillainy 2 boxset. It comes in a beautiful, typically comic book themed box. It really is stunning. But upon looking at it for about the thirtieth time, two thoughts rose above all...how much did you f*cking pay for it? Just how much of a retard are you? See, the box boils down to the following items:

1) CD of Madvillainy 2 - Madlib's reinterpretation of the classic Madvillainy (available as MP3 for about eight quid - review to follow)

2) 45 of 'One Beer (Drunk Version)' - Nice thing to own, bit scared to play it (worth maybe six quid?)

3) Cassette - The only release of the infamous demo version of Madvillainy, mentioned by Doom in the finished version of 'Rhinestone Cowboy' (I DON'T HAVE A TAPE PLAYER)

4) T-shirt - 'Nominee Best Rolled L's' - taken from a lyric on 'America's Most Blunted' (very nice, probably not nice enough that I'd have bought it on its own - worth maybe £18)

So, excluding the pretty box, there's roughly £35 worth of stuff in there. That's a seriously expensive box. Why did I, and loads of others, buy this? Was it a subconscious desire to prove what a hardcore head I am? Well, not many of my mates are into hip hop, and even fewer would be impressed with this, so it was a pointless exercise if so. The truth is I am a sucker for repackaged, 'special editions'. I bought the deluxe edition of the utterly wonderful Third by Portishead. I confess that I downloaded the torrent when it leaked, and through a mixture of guilt at downloading and pride in what an amazing comeback it was, I decided that Portishead deserved £40 rather than a tenner. For that, I got another pretty box, an art print, a P shaped USB stick and not a single new song. I decided also that I was going to get the Dig Out Your Soul boxset if the album was good enough. It wasn't, and yet even that tempts me now.

It seems that established acts are using these box sets as a way of clawing back lost income from downloads, with Radiohead's In Rainbows being a prime case in point - not only was the average price paid for the download £4, which, while reported as far lower than the cost of a conventional CD, would actually have earned the band more through lack of production and distribution costs, but huge swathes of their notoriously loyal fanbase bought the deluxe edition. Perhaps most disturbing was the potential cynicism of it all. The In Rainbows deluxe set included 'Bangers and Mash', one of the highlights of their pre-album tour- at the very least, this was a canny draw to get people to buy the expensive version. At worst, they could even be accused of changing the album tracklist to the benefit of the limited edition. The truth, I suspect, is somewhere in between...these hidden gems have taken over from the by now virtually defunct b-side, and any song of decent quality that doesn't fit an album will be held back to trap people into buying a deluxe set. It works particularly well if fans have either heard the song, or have worked themselves into a fanboy forum frenzy over the idea of the song for years...

And so we return to Oasis - 'The Boy With The Blues' has been one of Oasis's most hyped unreleased tracks on fan forums for years. Though you can say that maybe it wouldn't have fit the new album, it is good enough that it should have had an official release. Now that they've released it in its current form, it seems unlikely that it will ever be re-recorded. So, for the sake of getting people to spend £40, they've essentially ditched potentially Liam's best song yet. In fairness to Noel Gallagher, his recent declaration that he was against giving music away for free has been a consistent view. If Creation had adopted as aggressive a marketing campaign as Food, there is no doubt that 'Roll With It' would have beaten 'Country House' to the top spot. While Blur's single was reduced to 99p and sold in two CD formats, Oasis singles were always £3.99, and almost always had three superb b-sides. In fact, what Oasis did with the vinyl edition of Definitely Maybe was the earliest time I've fallen for the 'deluxe' thing - 1 week after the CD comes out, it gets a release on vinyl, with the sublime 'Sad Song' as a bonus track. And we already knew it was sublime, as Noel had played it acoustically on Radio 1 in the week between the CD and vinyl versions' releases. Cue me buying a second copy. I even did it with Morning Glory, for 'Bonehead's Bank Holiday'. And I'd heard 'Bonehead's Bank Holiday'. So I've been an idiot for years.

But that was an extra tenner. With the rash of new box sets, we're talking about thirty or forty pounds more than the album should cost. Next time a band/label whinges about an album leaking, consider how much money they are fleecing from idiots such as myself who can't resist a pretty box. Now where did I put my credit card; that Cud anthology won't buy itself..

Oliver W J Rock

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