The Afterword

Musings on the byways of popular culture

Menu

Navigation

You are here: Home / Forum / I Already Have That Album- so I think I will buy another

I Already Have That Album- so I think I will buy another

by 50 Comments

Like most people her (I’m sure) I have multiple copies of many albums, usually as a result of upgrading vinyl to CD (and in some cases back to vinyl again).
On the recent Record Store Day thread, after seeing the Carter USM 30 Something picture disc, I mused to myself whether 4 copies of the album was enough (Vinyl, Picture Disc, Cassette, and CD).
I convinced myself not to buy the RSD issue, but have now gone out and just bought the new Box Set (including a 2023 remaster of the album, a second disc of B-Sides and Live tracks, a BBC In Concert recording from Kilburn in 1991, and the In Bed With Carter DVD).
It’s a nice thing to have, but do I need it?
Yes!
But Carter USM are not the only multiple-multiple ownership – I have 13 copies of Never Mind The Bollocks.
And when the next round of RSD issues and/or the next anniversary comes about, that number will doubtless rise to 14.
No-one needs duplicate copies of the same album, but I’m sure I’m not the only one hoarding this stuff … or am I?

0

Comments

  1. My name is Jaygee and I too am a multiplecopyaholic.

    My habit is so bad that, having vowed I wouldn’t, i bought the 2-CD
    Copy of the latest Dylan Bootleg series – E30 from Golden Discs Athlone

    When i heard you get the 5-D bells and whistles version of the set
    For US$27 on AmUS, i bought that, too.

    As a result, I am now the proud owner of 5 copies – 3 x CD and 2 x LP – of TOOM

  2. I have three versions of Rumours, all on CD. the original CD. 2xCD and 3xCD versions all with extra tracks/live stuff..

    I also have two versions of the first 4 Marillion albums and two others – the 2cd remasters and the 4 disc deluxe editions for the first 4 albums.

    Beyond that nothing.

    • I share your Marillion multiples (nearly)
      First 4 albums on LP and CD (plus an additional 2 CD version of Misplaced Childhood)
      Plus, Box Set versions of Misplaced Childhood and Clutching At Straws
      (never did get round to buying the Script or Fugazi sets )

      • This has prompted me to add up my own Marillion collection. Among various multiple copies of several albums, I realise that I have bought Fugazi five times: cassette, LP, CD, 2cd remaster, deluxe box set.

        Only DSOTM comes close to this for me: LP, CD (in the Shine On box), SACD, Immersion box set.

  3. I have quite a few copies of LoVe’s ‘Forever Changes just checked, I have 12 across LPs/CDs/Box Sets, 9 ‘Pet Sounds’ and probably a few Neil Young, Dylan, Beatles albums in more than one edition.

    Do I need them? Of course I do, some of you may agree a very many more of you will say WTF or words to th…….

    @Rigid-Digit is there a decent comp of Carter worth getting?

    • Straw Donkey covers just the singles, You Fat Bastard digs in a bit more.
      There’s a couple of B Sides collections (but they weirdly exclude most of the cover versions Carter bunged out as B Sides)
      But … the first 3 albums (particularly 30 Something) should give you most of what you need.

  4. I have a few multiples of Yes albums, usually following a pattern: so, Close to the Edge, TFTO, Relayer – I have my original 70s vinyl, regular CD and BluRay/CD reissues.

    Like Wheaty above, I have three (or four) copies of Rumours – original 70s vinyl, regular CD and a 5-disc box set issue with vinyl, CD and extras.

    VdGG – I have nearly all the albums on 70s vinyl, all the CD reissues with the extra tracks – and now the box sets (to get the live material). Oh – and I also have another vinyl copy of Still Life, previously owned by Peter Hammill himself – so that’s four of Still Life.

    You can see the pattern developing…

  5. Many multiples went in a recent purge, mostly the ones by major artists, and, in some cases (mainly the Beatles), I have added sleeve notes and the like into the “kept” versions, if suitably dandy, before giving the offshoots to the charriddee. Kinda doing what Apple should have done in the first place.

    Stayers are the multiple releases of one-offs (Rainbow Ffolly; Sam Gopal; VDGG’s debut; Giles, Giles & Fripp; Dr. Strangely Strange etc.) and the Sunday Times’ version of Strange Days which, for no other reason than they look really nice altogether, I will always buy for 50p. I have six, you may have more.
    The (Saturday) Times’ version of Forever Changes seems to be rarer.

  6. I discovered* just the other day that I have three copies of Elvis Costello’s King of America on CD. One is the just the regular album tracks, the second is the regular album tracks, plus extra tracks and the third is the regular album tracks, plus extra tracks and a separate bonus Live on Broadway CD.

    I did think about taking the first two down to the charity shop, but then decided not to act in haste (that is, I reverted to type and failed to make a decision) and I bunged all three back into a storage box.

    * I knew that I had two, but had forgotten about the third.

  7. Pet Sounds

    1990 CD (stereo)
    Vinyl that came with Carl and the Passions …
    Double coloured vinyl (stereo and mono)
    4 CD box set
    Pet Sounds Live CD (Brian Wilson)
    Pet Sounds Live in London DVD (Brian Wilson)
    Audio Fidelity CD
    5.1 Blu-ray or could be a music DVD

    Think that’s it, but not at home to confirm

    Think I have about 6 Goat’s Head Soup albums, and I don’t even like it that much!

  9. Katie Price & Peter Andre – A Whole New World CD.

    Eleven copies. One of them signed by both.

    And why not. Don’t even ask how many copies of the Sing Lofty LPs I have.

  10. Other than replacing knackered vinyl with CD, upgrading similar (12 track Sly & The Family Stone Greatest Hits record with 30+ track “Essential” double CD) and believing that 3 Feet High And Rising had to sound better on CD (it did, but not by much), my only real moment of temptation was standing over a bargain bin filled with copies of the Don’t Stand Me Down LP, all 99p each, and idly calculating how many – assuming I played it obsessively – would constitute a lifetime’s supply, before saying “sod it” and just buying one. (I now have it on CD – it was a present on the occasion of the “director’s cut” release).
    I fear I’m edging towards a dishonourable discharge back into civilian life..

    • @Pajp I also have 3 copies of King of America and also every other Costello reissue but baulked at the cost of the Painted from memory super deluxe set and opted instead just for the 2cd set – very good by the way.

      Of more concern to me is the inadvertent duplications. The number of times I buy a cd because I have failed to remember I already own it is increasing with age. Book me a place in the care home 😀😀

  11. Guilty as charged. I’m a sucker for new reissues of albums that I already have.

    Amongst the usual suspects I have 4 copies of Hounds of Love (the original CD, the EMI 100 reissue, the one in This Woman’s Work boxset and the recent 2018 reissue), 4 copies of Love Over Gold (the original CD, the MFSL CD, the Japanese SHM-SACD and the recent MFSL SACD)…. and the list goes on.

    What’s probably made it worse is the move to using a digital platform to play all my music (Roon) and hence is very very easy to purchase a new release download of an album I already have on CD – no space considerations etc etc – especially if its a high resolution version.

    What is even worse is that I have been know to buy a compilation where I actually already have all tracks that are on it (and with my music all being on a hard drive I should have no excuse no to be able to “generate” that compilation). Ho Hum.

  12. I’m one for seeing a neglected classic in a charity shop and buying it, in the off chance that someone I don’t know has it. Such classics include:
    Both Jellyfish albums (I own Bellybutton on Tape and Cd)
    Grand Prix or Songs from Northern Britain by Teenage Fanclub
    I’m With Stupid by Aimee Mann
    Can You Still Feel by Jason Falkner
    Anything by Pugwash

    Sometimes this is received gladly, sometimes it comes back with ‘this is fucking terrible’. I also own far too many XTC albums (3x Skylarking, 2x Nonsuch, 3x English Settlement, 3x Fossil Fuel etc) in different formats, as I discovered them on tape and the Remasters are genuinely a big improvement.

    • Those Jellyfish CDs are worth proper money (well, more than a fiver) on CD, as I discovered when I tried to buy them. My CDs were in storage for years following a house move and I thought I had them but, referring to my spreadsheet, apparently not. Odd that, as Jellyfish remind me of Ben Folds Five, and I have almost everything BFF released.

      A pal in MeatWorld did me a rip of his.

  13. I just don’t get why people want to collect multiple copies of an album.
    If a new remastered version of a favourite album is released, and I consider the new version to be superior, I might well buy it if I have the funds. But then I’ll get rid of the old version as surplus to my needs.
    If the new version is better and the reason you have the album is to listen to it, why would you keep an old version that you won’t play?

  14. I used to own three copies of Hot Rats gifted to me by three different girlfriends. Now I have no girlfriends and not a single copy of Hot Rats.
    I do own over sixteen rigger brushes though so all is not lost.

  15. I don’t even own single “physical” copies of albums, even my favourites. They’re all there on CD quality FLAC files so why bother? We have kept the vinlys: Mrs MC won’t let me throw them out for sentimental reasons. As Anthony Powell observed (sort of) they do look nice on the shelf.

    I know, there is something wrong with me.

  16. I think the most multiples I have is 6 versions of Alice Cooper’s Billion Dollar Babies. The original bought at the time, but being young and less precious I popped out the trading cards from the inner sleeve and stuck them on the bedroom wall. Some 40 odd years later I ‘had to buy’ a fully intact version to sit alongside the original. There’s also the quadrophonic version bought for a Lister back in the early days of Record Collector.

    CD’s arrived and when B$B was reissued on the shiny new format it had to be added, sometime later a Deluxe CD version surfaced, this time with a second disc of live tracks and ‘rarities. The next was a 3 CD version, possibly of dodgy Russian origin, which was the Deluxe version plus a DVD of then unavailable Good T o See You Alice Cooper film and bizarrely a compilation of late 90s Alice solo singles.

    The last (for now) version I bought was while holidaying in the USA, it’s just a bog standard version, but it was American and not a British version, so it had to be done. The Cooper’s aren’t very good at exploiting their back catalogue so it means that re-releases with extra tracks, whistles and bells or RSD picture discs are not there to tempt. Although there is one more that sort of belongs to this group, the 2019 RSD release of Billion Dollar Babies – Live , the first and so far only outing for the show that was included on the Deluxe CD version.

  17. Most of my CDs were in storage for years following a house move, and new purchases went into a carboard box (soon to become five or six cardboard boxes) once ripped.

    I now have access to them all and, sorting them out, find (a) many I had forgotten I had (b) even more I already had in storage but bought again from Chazzas.

    I can see three copies of Joan Armatrading’s self-titled in the pile to donate to the chazza, which must mean I already have a fourth copy in the drawer.

    • I’m in much the same situation re: house move, storage and buying duplicates from charity shops. I kid myself that I am buying it “for the car” (I have an old car) or that I really want to listen to whatever it is and my other copy is in a box somewhere. A lot of my CDs are still in storage, but I have been going there regularly to try to reduce what I have there by getting rid of duplicates and things that I really don’t want. This process didn’t work recently with King of America, though (see above).

  18. As some here have said, I have multiple copies of XTC albums, particularly Skylarking. What happens when I come back from the pub, slightly refreshed, and have a burning desire to listen to The Meeting Place?
    I go to YouTube and watch a murky video of XTC performing it at Portmerion on that The Tube special, The Laughing Prisoner.
    It’s like when you start watching Back To The Future on telly around Christmas even though it’s an hour into the movie, it’s the cut version and there are advert breaks every ten minutes. And yet, you have the High Definition ‘Back To The Future’ Blu-Ray boxset in a drawer a few feet from your reach.

  20. Sgt Pepper, these I have bought

    Stereo cassette
    Stereo vinyl
    Stereo CD
    Original mono on vinyl
    US mono vinyl
    Stereo CD remaster
    Mono CD (in box set)
    Mono remaster (in box set)
    Super deluxe edition (CD set)

    Still want the stereo double vinyl one that came out in 2017 ….

    • Why? It’s clearly not about the music at this stage – is it the completist gene?

      Out of interest, is there another album which you would collect/curate in this way? (Edit: just spotted Pet Sounds comment above…)

      • Not exactly. I initially could only play cassettes so bought it on cassette, when I got a turntable (or my dad did), I sold the cassette to buy the album. Then of course CDs took over (for a while), didn’t have the mono version for many years, had to get that in CD box set, later superceded by vinyl. The US version cost about $3 so had to pick that up etc. Don’t own all of them any more, it’s nowhere near my favourite Beatles album

  21. Get Happy – Elvis Costello.

    2 x copies of the 1st pressing, one bought to replace the worn out original but obviously the old one will never be thrown away, 1 copy of the MFSL double album, original CD, remastered CD with bonus tracks, cassette that was on constant rotation in the car and as a result is now unplayable but obviously can’t be thrown away.

    Similar story with King of America.

  22. Pink Floyd – The Division Bell
    Original UK CD (with special jewel case)
    Original US CD
    Cassette
    MiniDisc
    Original German LP
    Japan (LP replica sleeve) CD
    UK Blue vinyl LP
    ||||||||||| all of the above (each one of ’em) with different version of the cover picture.

    Plus:
    That weird box set with the same old music, no extras – but even more variations of the packaging.

  23. As with many here, I suspect Pepper and Pet Sounds must be top of the list, although I have got umpteen versions of Tommy, as well as duplicates,

    Pepper
    Original 1967 Mono LP (with inserts, natch) bought at the time.
    70s issue Stereo LP
    1987 CD
    2009 Stereo CD
    2009 Mono CD
    2017 Super De Luxe Anniversary remix CD
    2017 2CD Remix

Leave a Reply