Getting Very Happy

I am a very lucky man tonight. I will do anything to get the music I want, but tonight I didn't have to do as much as I thought.

Get Happy!! by Elvis Costello and the Attractions has been the number one disc on my want list lately. I put it on my Christmas list, and got it from my grandparents, but it's the wrong version. You see, Rhino Records did a very good re-release of Costello's catalog earlier this decade, packaging the albums with great bonus discs and excellent liner notes written by Elvis himself. After Rhino finished that job, Universal bought Elvis' catalog rights and are now re-re-re-releasing his albums as single discs without bonus material. Rhino's versions are going out of print and will be extremely hard to find now. Well, I wanted Get Happy's bonus disc with an additional thirty songs!

I figured my family would have a hard time finding the Rhino version, so I wasn't surprised to get the new, single-disc version when it arrived today. How to find a copy of the version I wanted? It seemed to be tougher than I thought. The price of it is rising on Amazon.com, reaching nearly $60 right now for used copies. My usual store, CD World, basically told me they wouldn't be able to find it, although they had a good used copy of an older version of the album. Ebay would be an option, but I'm not registered there and likely wouldn't trust their sellers.

Finally, I made a call to another place in town, House of Records. I've heard they can find some really obscure things, so I decided to try them. It turned out they had an actual new copy of the album, the exact version I wanted! It was the usual price for a new disc - much, much cheaper than what is available on Amazon. They held it for me, and I picked it up tonight.

I now have the disc I've been wanting for so long! I should have bought it when it was actually available!