Ivybridge Diary 7 – Bonus Tracks: Love ‘Em Or Hate ‘Em?

Good evening. All is well in the Ivybridge camp this week. We’ve hit our stride starting to practice the set for our upcoming shows, tightening up the old tunes and getting the Ivy groove back.

During the week we’ve been blessed with a couple of revelations. The first and most important of which wasn’t even our own – whoever’s idea it was to mix the mints with jellybeans at our practice rooms (the excellent and always accommodating Rooms in Farnborough) has practically hit upon genius! So massive respect to the unknown sweet stocker who keeps our practice sessions so absolutely delicious.

The second revelation was this: Bonus tracks stapled onto the ends of albums are a bad thing. As with any subject, there are certain exceptions to the rule, but in general we’ve come to the conclusion that many albums would’ve been far better without them. Record companies seem to feel that whacking some shite b-side onto the end of a record to beef up running time and make the consumer feel that they’ve got more bang for their buck are sadly ruining the lasting impact that these albums would have without them. We shall highlight some of our worst offenders.

• Deftones – White Pony (Bonus Track: The Boys Republic)
The Boys Republic was a bonus track found only on the limited edition release of White Pony which came packaged in a red or black opaque jewel case depending on your preference. Whilst not necessarily a bad track, The Boys Republic sounds like a cut from the Around The Fur era. It’s certainly not got the layers of depth that blesses the other tracks on White Pony. It’s biggest crime though is that it bludgeons it’s way in straight after the mind-blowing Pink Maggit, which should really have nothing but silence after it’s incredible finish.

• The Mars Volta – De-Loused At The Comatorium (Bonus Track: Ambuletz)
Surely the idea behind a concept album is that all the tracks are written so that they follow a set theme, lyrically or musically. So when you find yourself at the end of the grueling 9 minute prog marathon that is Take The Veil Cerpin Taxt, which to all intents and purposes wraps up the De-Loused concept, to find that an unrelated, and in comparison, boring track has been crowbarred into the end of the record one leaves the stereo why they even bothered in the first place.

• Pearl Jam – Ten (Bonus Tracks: Alive (Live), Wash, Dirty Frank)
Now this is pretty much unforgivable. An absolutely essential, classic album like Ten gets a re-release by the record company, probably looking to make an extra buck off completist Pearl Jam mega-fans. These three extra cuts they’ve added to Ten (which without them is a pretty much perfect album) are just plain bad. OK, so the live version of Alive is pretty good, but is it needed on an album that already has an immaculate studio cut of the track on it? The other two though are just dire. God only knows when they recorded them, because they sound sub-par even by today’s Pearl Jam. Whoever decided it was a great idea to add these after the immense Release needs to be court-marshaled and shot.

Anyway. Our opinions aside… What do you people think? Have you come across any albums that have been ruined by shoddy placing of extra tracks? Or have you got any CDs where the addition of these tracks actually adds to the overall impact of the album? There must be some – They can’t all be bad! Charlie, being the anal type, erases all the bonus tracks off his iTunes. Is this madness, or genius?

We’re going to leave Record of the Week for tomorrow, because the new Portishead album will be out by then, and hopefully we’ll be able to dedicate the honour to them for their latest effort ‘Third’. Matt and Charlie headed to see them at Hammersmith Apollo recently on their Machine Gun tour and were blown away by their new stuff. Although, the highlights of the set had to be the excellent renditions of Wandering Star and Glory Box, which were both absolutely gob-smacking.

So look back later in the week to see what we reckon of ‘Third’. And in the meantime, stay healthy!

Ivybridge x.