When Bonus Tracks Attack!

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So there I am playing my new CD copy of The World Won't Listen by The Smiths, a record which for a long time was my favourite in the world. It reaches its end, with Rubber Ring, one of my favourite tracks by them and a superb, edgy way to end an album. Here is where my faithful, 13-year old tape reaches its end. AND THEN: on comes Golden Lights. GOLDEN LIGHTS!

Damn.

What are you least favourite bonus track experiences, o readers?

― Tom, Thursday, 19 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

A friend of mine once made me a tape of the first two Faust albums, and a few other faust tracks. It's a brilliant tape...

...until after the last track where, in comes stumbling, an Edwyn Collins b-side...

...which lasts for ten minutes.

I'll leave the experience to your imagination.

― Chewshabadoo, Thursday, 19 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

im getting to think that the bonus tracks should be left on singles that nobody buys. remember the hidden Nirvana track? or the Green Day one on dookie? I think Cracker had a cd with 100 tracks and 86 being silence..all bonuses? what i really used to hate is having now FF button on my first cd player..lets wait for 10 minutes to hear shit.

― Kevin Enas, Thursday, 19 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

On certain pressings of the first disc by ASH (1977), there was a hidden track BEFORE the opening track (right before the sound of the streaming Tie fighters from STAR WARS), which involved some tricky use of the << button. Forgot what it's called, though.

― alex in nyc, Thursday, 19 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I could be wrong but I think there was a bonus track on Placebo's debut - I was too mellowed to get uo to switch it off and had to endure bonus shite off that much-hyped album.

― I am the Anti-Molko, Thursday, 19 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I'm really surprised about that Smiths story. It's not as though "Golden Lights" is not available on Louder Than Bombs. (I should know - I have two copies, as reported elsewhere.)

This has made me think: I wish that the CD of The Queen Is Dead had the original 9-minute title track as a bonus track. Instrumental, if necessary. I think that that is the one recording (if it still exists) in the world that I have not heard and would give the most to hear.

― the pinefox, Thursday, 19 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

nine inch nail's broken has like 100 tracks where 90 are blank space and the last one is a song

― ernest, Thursday, 19 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Track 98 is a cover of Adam Ant's Physical. And 99 a version of Pigface's Suck, which would win out as my favorite bonus track.

― bnw, Friday, 20 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

It's not a bonus track per se, but the way that Jay-Z shamefacedly tacks "Anything" onto the end of The Life & Times of S. Carter after the "outro" suggests that even he knew it was awful.

― Tim, Friday, 20 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

that damned bonus song on the roots' 'things fall apart'. it took me forever to understand how to listen to it without hearing the boring-after-the-first-few-times ursula rucker poem. at least on 'do you want more' you just had to wait a while on the last track. but i really like it when a bonus track is just the last track. you know, you don't have to list it on the back of the cd, but at least make it a fucking track. i hate that five minutes of silence after the last song bullshit. what's everyones thoughts on 'classic' albums with b-sides and outtakes and whatever tacked on? more for your money or ruining a perfect tracklist?

― ethan, Friday, 20 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I think the worst is when you forget about the bonus track and are in the middle of something else and then ten minutes later !B!A!M! some half arsed pissed up studio outtake scares the crap out of you. i believe that on the current Robbie Williams album, there is a ten minute gap and then him saying "I'm not doing a bonus track this time" or something, my what a card he is.

― CarsmileSteve, Friday, 20 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

The only good bonus track I've heard is on a Muppets LP, where one of the characters (sorry - it was a long time ago) pops up after a while and says "Turn over the record" and then 20 seconds later says "I told you - turn over the record" and then if you still don't screams "IF YOU DON'T TURN OVER THE RECORD YOU'RE IN BIG TROUBLE!".

I very rarely leave a CD running to the end unless I'm sitting waiting for it to finish, so bonus tracks never 'jump out' and surprise me.

― Nick, Friday, 20 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

The bonus track "Candy Floss" on Wilco's Summerteeth was my first favorite song on that album (as perviously reported).

― Tim Baier, Friday, 20 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Me and my terminology. I was kind of talking about 'extra tracks' I think, i.e. here is an album. Now here is an album plus 18 out-takes at the end of the disc.

'Secret' tracks are the rock equivalent of 'magic eye' paintings and equally rubbish.

― Tom, Friday, 20 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

The presence of bonus tracks on the end of the original album is one of my 'rules' for trading up an album from old vinyl to CD. Obviously "2 albums on 1 CD" is even better (Big Star, Beach Boys etc) Since we now seem to be on the second wave of reissues this can be frustrating : Last year I retired my old Soft Boys "Underwater Moonlight" vinyl and got the Ryko CD reissue with 8 bonus tracks, all good. Now I see there's a 2CD version with extra out-takes and rehearsals available. Despite the fact that these will be as rough as hell, and yes, if they'd have been any good they'd have seen the light of day years ago, I STILL FUCKING WANT THEM!!!

― Dr. C, Friday, 20 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I was somewhat inoculated against this practice by trying to be a jazz fan, many years ago: ie the Charlie Parker Dial Recordings vol.13, "Relaxing At Camarillo" takes 1-38. This is a made-up example (cos I don't have the record any more and can't check), but NOT AN EXAGGERATION. What's that crappy old Lenny Henry joke, abt remixes? "I want the one where they got it RIGHT, please!"

― mark s, Friday, 20 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I have a very stupid rule.

If an album is obviously a 'classic reissue', I like bonus tracks (eg. the Beach Boys and their twofers).

When albums I love get reissued with a 'breakthrough' single tacked on to increase sales, I don't like it.

I hate the fact that the Smiths first album has had 'This Charming Man' dumped into the middle of it, in common with the original overseas release.

I am always searching for a CD copy of 'It's A Shame About Ray' without that stupid version of 'Mrs Robinson' added.

I wish the reissue of Electronic's first album didn't have 'Getting Away With It' bolted on because it just doesn't fit.

I call this a 'stupid rule' because I'm not sure that an element of snobbery doesn't come into it.

Elvis Costello's reissues stuck in a 15 second gap between the original album and the bonus tracks, which seems a good idea.

― Nick, Friday, 20 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Once the silence starts, I always turn off the album, so unless someone's specifically told me that there's a bonus track, or if it says on the album "PLUS BONUS TRACKS", I never know there are any. I mean, I didn't know Know Your Enemy had a bonus track until the other night when it scared the hell out of me after like 10 minutes of silence. I HATE that silence thing, just make it a new track for fuck's sake. You get used to listening to the silence if you aren't paying attention, and then you get annoyed and/or scared when suddenly something comes blaring out again. Plus this particular bonus track was better than several album tracks, which annoys me.

As for classic reissues...well. A lot of them just put complete rubbish on the end, because they have the space but nothing to fill it with. If I wanted to hear bad demo versions, I'd...I don't know what I'd do actually, but the point is that I don't want to hear them. As for just reissues, like was being said about "breakthrough singles" being tacked on, I'm just not a fan because if it's a band I like, I've already bought the original album AND the single, thus spending more than I normally would've had the reissue just been done that way in the first place. It's just a cheap way to get more money.

Though if Pulp would reissue Different Class with Disco 2000 taken out and Ansaphone rightfully put in, I'd snap it up in a heartbeat just to have a copy I don't have to skip when I listen to it ;)

― Ally, Friday, 20 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

My favourite one is from "Destroy All Astro-men" by Man or Astro- man?...coz you wait ages and then it says "there ain't no damn hidden track on this CD so what are you waiting for?"...and then the CD finishes.

― james edmund L, Friday, 20 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Worst bonus track: At the end of the US reissue of The Wondermints' BALI (on Varese Sarabande), you get about 8 or 9 minutes of ocean sounds and then it slams right into... a Miller Lite commerical performed by the band. And it's not even good.

Best bonus tracks: The Negro Problem's POST MINSTREL SYNDROME has about six of them, which start up immediately with no pause after the "final" song, and all of which are just as good as the tunes given proper listings on the sleeve (maybe better). The band did it again for their next album JOYS AND CONCERNS.

― Oliver K., Saturday, 21 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Worst: Any bonus track on a European release. Any track at the end of a bad album that makes it longer.

Best: Eurotrash Girl.

― JM, Saturday, 21 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

"this charming man" wasn't originally on the album?

― sundar subramanian, Saturday, 21 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

On this subject: I think the B-sides etc. separate the two sides of XTC's "Black Sea" and "Mummer" very effectively.

― Robin Carmody, Saturday, 21 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Both best and worst: the track at the end of Flaming Lips' Hit to Death in the Future Head album. Best because it's just a 30 minute slab-o-noise, which is really quite fun. Worst because, well, it comes up on random play when you're trying to do something else, it forces you to get up and find the remote control.

That's really the most annoying thing about bonus tracks on CDs...the interminable silences that make you forget the CD is on, and which also really screw up random play (more of an issue when you're using a CD jukebox for background music in a store, like a friend of mine used to do at his bookstore). I like the X-Files soundtrack method better: put them in the lead-in space before track one starts...that way, if you don't make the effort to go find them, they won't play.

― Sean Carruthers, Sunday, 22 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Don't Mouse on Mars make a habit of this sort of thing? Enormously long final tracks which are mostly silence or shuffling about in the studio.

Another vote for the 'track zero' method - the CD equivalent of software 'easter eggs', like the key-sequence in MS Excel which turns yr spreadsheet into some kind of flight simulator. I make a habit of holding down the <

― Michael Jones, Monday, 23 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link