Things have been getting better, folks. Posting that last post on its own helped, but shortly thereafter, I got this really lovely, long email from an anon who lurks somnol.net and the journal encouraging me to keep going and to keep up the stuff I love doing, because people are out there looking. I don't know if they read my reply (I don't even know if my reply made it there, my email client was being a little sketchy), but to say it again: thank you. They also had some requests to see some specific things from me, marfGH screens I've never posted anywhere, a bit of lamenting about Tesserae's closure—just nice. Again, thank you. It's cool that pretty much everything I've made has gone appreciated by somebody.
I said I'd post some journal stuff sooner, but I was trying to use my newfound energy for, like, art and stuff while I still had it. I'm back to backload the journal with a few days worth of cool things! Nothing huge, some drawings, some fun new things in the collection, a hype moment or two. Stuff to get us back on the wagon.
My mom thought to experiment a little over Christmas and try this site that lets you gift gift cards for specific sites that don't have them to people. In reality, it just gives you the money in a Visa card and says it's for that site even though you can use it for anything once you have that money, but still, $50 is $50. This was earmarked for me to get some stuff on Discogs, which is a music collecting database site I love and one I'll actually be celebrating ten years of having my account on next Sunday, the 22nd. I take a lot of pride in cataloguing my collection down to exact pressing; in the event I lose my collection, which will still suck given how I've started accumulating rare and expensive stuff in recent years, I at least know exactly what I had and can rebuild from it.
Even though I'm not looking to expand my collection with unknowns this year (too much to listen to as it is), plenty of albums I know I love, I still don't own. These range from major label childhood favorites that just slipped through the cracks to small run or out of print indie label stuff that's just never popped up at a decent price to stuff I had torrents of as a teenager that I lost in the Fusion Drive crash in 2019 and never replaced. That was the case with the first Cage the Elephant album—big favorite when I was 10, still love it now, no idea what happened to the copy I had back then.
I also really wanted a copy of the b-side "Cover Me Again", which is this gorgeously sad, very personal acoustic ballad Cage used to play for radio station live spots during that album's tour. Japanese imports are good if you're after b-sides because they tend to tack those onto the end of the normal album. I figured it'd be more efficient, and ultimately cheaper on shipping, just to get the Japanese import with the song than a US copy of the album and the Back Against the Wall single from two different sellers and also then have two things knocking around the collection instead of one.
Of course, shipping gets even cheaper if you buy two things from the same seller, and I'd also been after a Japanese Carnavas, the first Silversun Pickups album, with two b-sides of its own. Already got the album on US CD and vinyl, already got copies of the bonus tracks I grabbed from a fan Discord, but I was curious the differences in the packaging and perhaps mastering, and the seller had two copies of it, one with the obi and one without. I got the one without because it was a few bucks cheaper.
They took a few weeks to get here, as imports aside, the seller had a really weird setup (it was like a Swiss business with fulfillment centers in Japan and the US, not just some random person with CDs for sale), but they showed up! I'll bullet point some of the things I've noticed about 'em and find really interesting.
- What packaging is shared between the US and Japanese versions of albums tends to still be in English. The thought is to not pollute the existing artwork with translations and instead package extra stuff in with Japanese translations and information. Logos for Japanese labels and publishers do tend to get added. Carnavas was on Dangerbird internationally, but was released by Pony Canyon in Japan, who are a subsidiary of Fujisankei (as in Fuji TV, weebs), their biggest media conglomerate. I guess it's the equivalent of coming out on Universal or something here.
- The packaging game was crazy on Carnavas especially. The US CD just has a little insert with credits, no lyrics or extras. The Japanese one had that booklet, an English lyrics booklet (bonus track lyrics included), and a unique Japanese lyrics booklet with translated song names.
- Carnavas was marked as not having its obi strip, but it was hiding inside! The obi, if you don't know, is a little slip that goes around the spine of the jewel case and has translated song names and usually a band bio. Obiless imports are usually less expensive than their obiful counterparts for being incomplete, understandably so. Again, though, mine was marked as not having it, but it did! I immediately put installed it where it should be. Nice freebie.
- Both came in plastic bags a la polyvinyl bags for records to keep the obis attached and safe from harm. They do just hang off the jewel case, yeah. I don't normally keep packaging like that, but these serve a good purpose, so I did for them.
- Carnavas' mastering is identical to the US issue. I didn't expect it to be any different, so that's alright.
These are lovely to have. If you can get some Japanese imports of stuff in your collection for a good price, I'd highly recommend it.
Tagged under: music
