It took us a while to get out for this week's CD shopping. I wasn't terribly inspired by the releases this week and hubby wasn't picking up anything at all. Our planned hiking was cancelled by trees blocking an access road, so we opted to stop at A&B (what were we thinking).
I'll rant about A&B Sound in a later post, but suffice to say we usually don't have a ton of faith when we resort to A&B for our new releases. I'm not sure if their problems are financial (likely), or lack of interest on the part of the buyers (very likely), but we often walk out without most of the week's releases. Sometimes the catalog is good though, and they go through spurts of bringing in tons of stock, so we gave it a shot.
Plus, if nothing else, I wanted to pick up the Seinfeld - Season 9 DVD set that was released this week.
Well to recap, my CDs this week were:
- David Byrne - "The Knee Plays"
- Result: DENIED! In fact, there wasn't a single David Byrne CD in stock.
- Neko Case - ""Furnace Room Lullaby"
- Result: SUPPLIED! But, I don't think this was the reissue. No matter, this was sort of an on the edge CD for me anyway, so I held back.
- Sigur Ros - "Hvarf/Heim"
- Result: I lied. Hubby wasn't even interested, so we didn't check.
Underwhelmed by the rest of the catalog that was there (despite a whack of mid-price MCA titles obviously brought in for a price code promotion), I wandered off to price out the Seinfeld set (not sure when I became such a bargain shopper).
No Seinfeld. Not on the new release section, the best sellers, the TV series section. Nada. As much as I hate to ask, I just had to.
The one (!) guy working there says, no they're not sold out, they haven't even gotten them in yet. I can't help but gasp out "You've got to be kidding." He stops just short of shrugging and goes back to what he was doing.
Isn't the Seinfeld set kind of, uh, major? Especially in a week when precious little else came out in music or DVD? Especially mid-November when all the Christmas decorations are coming out and shoppers are starting to look for the easy gifts?
I have no idea how this company is still in business.