Tried To Buy... Success!

I'm not sure why we keep going back to A&B Sound. It must be purely morbid fascination.

Hubby and I finally made it out for this week's new release shopping. We each had a pretty decent list, especially once we included all the titles we haven't been able to find yet. This week I wanted the pick up the new Jack Johnson and Sheryl Crow and I just could not imagine any store would not have those.

I was right. A&B Sound had both the Crow and Johnson on the release wall -- and little else. We were still still without the Bob Mould, the Nada Surf, the Joe Jackson from a few weeks back, and that elusive Magnetic Fields. We did find the last copy of the Vampire Weekend hidden on a listening station shelf.

Having the time, we drove across town to Play, an independent store located in Market Mall. They have a handful of locations in Western Canada, and the store is run by two guys who have been involved in Calgary music retail for decades (full disclaimer: While I have never worked for Play, I previously worked for the brothers who own Play).

We now have the Magnetic Fields. The Bob Mould, the Nada Surf, the Joe Jackson. We also have MGMT, MIA, the new Matt Costa and the Neil Young Live at Massey Hall release -- all titles we were interested in, but not sold on. It's amazing, once you start seeing all the good CDs you wanted to buy, all the ones you weren't sure about suddenly become so much more attractive.

I don't know what we would do without Play in this city.

And I have no idea why we keep going back to A&B Sound, and Best Buy and HMV, when I'd rather give my money to an independent store that actually brings in numerous copies of the stuff I want, at reasonable prices.

Tried to Buy.....HMV Edition

Made a quick stop at tiny HMV today. This week was so easy I thought I'd give it a go:

• Alicia Keys - "As I Am"
  
• Result: SUPPLIED! No problems. Racked out front, but not on the New Release wall, which was a little strange.
  
• Trisha Yearwood - "Heaven, Heartache and the Power of Love"
• Result: SUPPLIED! Not racked out front, but I didn't really expect it to be. Found on the New Release wall.
  

Hubby will likely be after:

• The Hives - "The Black and White Album"
• Result: Ooops. In my hurry I forgot to check for this title.
  
• LCD Soundsystem - "45:33"
• Result: I lied. Hubby is passing this one over.
  
• Paul McCartney - "The McCartney Years" (DVD)
• Result: Has been delayed until next week in Canada. Bummer.

While I was there, I also managed to pick up the Seinfeld Season 9 DVD that A&B Sound couldn't be bothered to bring in, and the Beatles' Help! DVD.

I left HMV with no opinion one way or the other, but generally that's a good sign, since I'm usually depressed or pissed off at HMV when I leave. Maybe their new standing as the only Canada-wide true music retailer left is causing me to be a little kinder?

Nah.

Tried to Buy.....

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.

A word about the Cockburn Tracker

In a way, seeing Bruce Cockburn live was the breaking point that lead me to Tried To Buy.

My husband and I were lucky enough to see Bruce Cockburn live in Banff, Alberta on August 9. I won't turn this into a concert review, but the show was friggin' amazing beyond anything I could have imagined. I'd seen Cockburn live before, and I was a casual fan, but this night something really clicked.

Being a casual fan going in, we owned some CDs, but now I wanted more. When it comes to bands I am a completest at heart, so hubby and I decided to pick up as much Cockburn as we could on our next CD shopping round. The guy has almost 30 recordings and we owned about half of those, so we figured we'd drop a couple hundred and pick up the remainder.

What fools we were.

Despite the fact we're in Canada, and Cockburn had just played in the area, not a single store had much beyond the most recent album and a 5 year old hits collection. Eventually, after hitting about 5 stores over the course of a few days we managed to get a remastered version of Humans (we already owned the original), a 1990 Live album, and a remastered copy of Stealing Fire. Instead of spending a couple hundred dollars, we dropped maybe $42.

I'm realistic. I don't expect to find the entire Cockburn catalog in stock at once. But for a Canadian artist with such a varied catalog, is it too much to expect more than a couple of CDs? Heck, even the amazing Waiting For A Miracle 2 CD set was completely MIA (I finally saw it for the first time last weekend in an HMV).

Over time we managed to find Dancing in The Dragon's Jaws, In The Falling Dark and more. My most recent purchase was Big Circumstance earlier this month. Looking at the tracker now, I think it's fair that most stores would not stock the remainder of the CDs I need to complete the catalog.

So for kicks, I'm going to try special ordering them and see how long it takes them to come in. Or see if I even can special order them, since I've failed so miserably in being able to special order CDs in the past few years (that could be another rant).

I thought Bruce Cockburn wasn't a bad example to use -- extensive catalog, loyal following, Canadian artist who still gets a tons of exposure with each new release. He's not a steady seller, but he's certainly an act that warrants some attention to the catalog. He sort of represents the type of artist that is short changed by the lack of available catalog in stores these days, and why people would turn to obtaining material online.

What's also amazing is that for the Cockburn CDs we did see, the prices were extremely reasonable. Rarely more than $16.99 for a catalog CD.

Keep an eye on the tracker for updates once I begin the special order experiment.