there's usually multiple versions/editions of the same album, some have bonus tracks, some have different bonus tracks, some have different cover art, some are made from better quality material etc....
but usually there's a "main" edition, kind of like a standard, at least for any given country that one lives in, in this case the U.S. edition...or the most popular import if it's not avail in the U.S....
this album called "Octopus" by a crazy band called Gentle Giant, as with a lot of 70's prog rock CDs, has different cover art in the U.S. than it does in Europe, and the European version is generally considered better (I being part of that general mentality...or whatever noun u wish to insert there...)
But this one seller, as usual, decided to post a West German (I say "west" German b/c it was printed in 1989 - b4 the Berlin wall fell) import as "collectable" under the standard U.S. Amazon listing (on Amazon there's three gradings you can give for CDs: New, Used, and Collectable; each of those four grades has four sub-grades you can choose from: Acceptable, Good, Very Good or Like New). BTW, 80's West German pressings of compact discs don't have QUITE the audiophile appeal of 80's Japan pressings of compact discs, but they're still rather collectable, since they generally sound better than US pressings, which are made w/ the cheapest materials available in most cases...
So yeah; I found a W.G. import under the standard edition, this is just like an hour ago; LAST NIGHT, I found the VERY SAME CD, under one of the less visited item pages, and that item page was also not for the exact version he/they were/are selling, but the page for the item indicated that the item being sold would/should be from 1994 (don't know anything beyond that, since Amazon's kinda bad about giving item details on their item pages...), whereas, as I stated above, the item that was actually being sold was from 1989...technically, this would be against amazon's guidelines, but as a buyer of this kind of merchandise, I am willing to just accept that it's darn near impossible for amazon's database to recognize EVERY SINGLE SOLITARY pressing of any given album...you can create a new item page at Amazon, if you pay $40 a month for some kind of seller plan, which anyone can buy, but it doesn't make a whole lotta sense for people like myself that don't sell on Amazon for the sake of making ends meet, with the exception of very small ends, if I'm using the word "ends" correctly...anyway...
If I had had money on my debit card last night, I probably woulda scrammed up and bought the version I saw last night. Thank Goodness I didn't, b/c the version available under the standard US edition is half the price almost (about $14 vs. $23 w/ S&H).
and I tell you, I don't even have a high end/audiophile system. all I have is a very basic 3 1/2 star avg rated-on-Amazon receiver, which I FINALLY bought after over a year of thinking about it, and some $50 speakers. and I'm not THAT picky about cover art, although I do think it is worth noting, and I do try to avoid paying just as much or almost for a CD w/ croppy cover art as I would for a CD that has pristine cover art...
The main thing is, a) the USA version DOES have dumb looking cover art, yes indeed. And there's versions available, still in print, that have faithfully reproduced the European cover art. However, A) these CDs, or most of them, come in "mini-LP" format, which is insane, since you have to do the same thing to those as you do with vinyl records. You have to roll them out of the cover, and THEN take them out of their inner sleeve. If that's not enough, you have to put up with the very sad fact that, at least as of a year or two ago, when I first started learning about Gentle Giant (they may have fixed this since then, I really don't know...), the mini-LP versions had/have been defectively manufactured. I'd read multiple complaints regarding that and I absolutely refuse to buy any item that has a UPC associated with a defect.
Although, in all honesty, I really don't know if I would have paid $23 for a CD just b/c it had better cover art. But it looked like it was either that or bend over for the Corporate Dumbheads who make these stupid chocies...thankfully, I know now that that is not the case...$13 vs. $6 (the minimum cost of the standard USA version)? Yeah, sure, it's "double", you make that sound like it's an outrageous comparison, but both dollar amounts have this in common: they're not what I would call a "large" sum of $. Heck, a lot of people wouldn't consider $20 a large sum of $, but those are the same people that say money can't buy happiness like they don't realize how much of it they go through in an hour...I don't go through hardly ANY $ within an hour, except for a select few out of each month, because I don't HAVE hardly any $ to go through...it's called being poor. I try not to complain though, 'cause if I set my mind to it (which is hard for me to do, those of you that don't know me too well will say "well, we're all the same on the inside, so if I can do it, so you can YOU!", but, we're not all the same on the inside; that's why it's called a "mental disorder"...it's an inner difference between a "normal" person's brain and that of someone who has a "mental disorder". Just like some people have two legs, some have 1 and some have none...
It is kind of exhausting, but...that's life...I honestly can't imagine though what fans of The Beatles must feel like, those who lived through the British Invasion and weren't living IN Englad at the time...there's probably 10 versions at least of each The Beatles album, yet only one of them has been made onto CD to the general population...and it goes a lot farther than cover - art...track selection, track sequence, track mixes.........thank Gosh I didn't face being a teenager/20-something back then in the USA...of course, there's multiple other reasons I'm glad I wasn't alive then...for one, if you were against the Vietnam war and didn't try to hide it, the police would kick your A** and the mayor of New York (and other cities, I gather) would say that's what you get when you let your heart win...I was reading somewhere how Ronald Reagen was one of those War-happy politicians who never gave a 2nd thought about the protesters and what they wanted. It makes my blood boil when I think of that combined with his landslide Presidential election less than 10 years later...and I swear it ought to be TREASON to promise something as monumental to the American People as that of ending a devasting war that has UNECESSARILY cost'd lives AND LOTS of tax dollars, and, to a lesser extent, resources and the environment etc.;...I'm talking about Richard Nixon BTW; he promises that and goes on TV a few years later and says "I lied; I actually think you're all fools for wanting such a thing, but that's what I needed to do to win." Yeah, like it's a darn football game. Of course, Jane Fonda and her ilk are no different; so many traitors to this country, none of them ever face charges...yet a soldier disobeys a direct order and they get locked up for 10 years...even if the direct order is to kill an innocent life or some thing that doesn't even make any difference either way...
So yeah; I found a W.G. import under the standard edition, this is just like an hour ago; LAST NIGHT, I found the VERY SAME CD, under one of the less visited item pages, and that item page was also not for the exact version he/they were/are selling, but the page for the item indicated that the item being sold would/should be from 1994 (don't know anything beyond that, since Amazon's kinda bad about giving item details on their item pages...), whereas, as I stated above, the item that was actually being sold was from 1989...technically, this would be against amazon's guidelines, but as a buyer of this kind of merchandise, I am willing to just accept that it's darn near impossible for amazon's database to recognize EVERY SINGLE SOLITARY pressing of any given album...you can create a new item page at Amazon, if you pay $40 a month for some kind of seller plan, which anyone can buy, but it doesn't make a whole lotta sense for people like myself that don't sell on Amazon for the sake of making ends meet, with the exception of very small ends, if I'm using the word "ends" correctly...anyway...
If I had had money on my debit card last night, I probably woulda scrammed up and bought the version I saw last night. Thank Goodness I didn't, b/c the version available under the standard US edition is half the price almost (about $14 vs. $23 w/ S&H).
and I tell you, I don't even have a high end/audiophile system. all I have is a very basic 3 1/2 star avg rated-on-Amazon receiver, which I FINALLY bought after over a year of thinking about it, and some $50 speakers. and I'm not THAT picky about cover art, although I do think it is worth noting, and I do try to avoid paying just as much or almost for a CD w/ croppy cover art as I would for a CD that has pristine cover art...
The main thing is, a) the USA version DOES have dumb looking cover art, yes indeed. And there's versions available, still in print, that have faithfully reproduced the European cover art. However, A) these CDs, or most of them, come in "mini-LP" format, which is insane, since you have to do the same thing to those as you do with vinyl records. You have to roll them out of the cover, and THEN take them out of their inner sleeve. If that's not enough, you have to put up with the very sad fact that, at least as of a year or two ago, when I first started learning about Gentle Giant (they may have fixed this since then, I really don't know...), the mini-LP versions had/have been defectively manufactured. I'd read multiple complaints regarding that and I absolutely refuse to buy any item that has a UPC associated with a defect.
Although, in all honesty, I really don't know if I would have paid $23 for a CD just b/c it had better cover art. But it looked like it was either that or bend over for the Corporate Dumbheads who make these stupid chocies...thankfully, I know now that that is not the case...$13 vs. $6 (the minimum cost of the standard USA version)? Yeah, sure, it's "double", you make that sound like it's an outrageous comparison, but both dollar amounts have this in common: they're not what I would call a "large" sum of $. Heck, a lot of people wouldn't consider $20 a large sum of $, but those are the same people that say money can't buy happiness like they don't realize how much of it they go through in an hour...I don't go through hardly ANY $ within an hour, except for a select few out of each month, because I don't HAVE hardly any $ to go through...it's called being poor. I try not to complain though, 'cause if I set my mind to it (which is hard for me to do, those of you that don't know me too well will say "well, we're all the same on the inside, so if I can do it, so you can YOU!", but, we're not all the same on the inside; that's why it's called a "mental disorder"...it's an inner difference between a "normal" person's brain and that of someone who has a "mental disorder". Just like some people have two legs, some have 1 and some have none...
It is kind of exhausting, but...that's life...I honestly can't imagine though what fans of The Beatles must feel like, those who lived through the British Invasion and weren't living IN Englad at the time...there's probably 10 versions at least of each The Beatles album, yet only one of them has been made onto CD to the general population...and it goes a lot farther than cover - art...track selection, track sequence, track mixes.........thank Gosh I didn't face being a teenager/20-something back then in the USA...of course, there's multiple other reasons I'm glad I wasn't alive then...for one, if you were against the Vietnam war and didn't try to hide it, the police would kick your A** and the mayor of New York (and other cities, I gather) would say that's what you get when you let your heart win...I was reading somewhere how Ronald Reagen was one of those War-happy politicians who never gave a 2nd thought about the protesters and what they wanted. It makes my blood boil when I think of that combined with his landslide Presidential election less than 10 years later...and I swear it ought to be TREASON to promise something as monumental to the American People as that of ending a devasting war that has UNECESSARILY cost'd lives AND LOTS of tax dollars, and, to a lesser extent, resources and the environment etc.;...I'm talking about Richard Nixon BTW; he promises that and goes on TV a few years later and says "I lied; I actually think you're all fools for wanting such a thing, but that's what I needed to do to win." Yeah, like it's a darn football game. Of course, Jane Fonda and her ilk are no different; so many traitors to this country, none of them ever face charges...yet a soldier disobeys a direct order and they get locked up for 10 years...even if the direct order is to kill an innocent life or some thing that doesn't even make any difference either way...
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