I’m not normally much of a ‘multi-formatter’ – I don’t tend to buy the same release on every format that a record company feels the need to issue. I’ve never reached the level of fanboy obession that’s driven many to covet the same songs on 7″, 12″, CD1, CD2, tape, eight track, flexi, wax cylinder etc etc. Even the ‘bonus’/’extra’/’previously unreleased’ filler material that normally backs up the main songs tends to be slightly outside the reach of interest for all but the most special of bands.
Weirdly though, I’ve got ‘Streets Of Your Town’ on both 7″ and 12″. Not by design or by obsession, but by virtue of having an awful memory and hence having bought each format completely separately, years apart from each other, in different places, with no clue that (in the latter case) I already owned this record.
BUT… for some reason the 7″ is BEG 232 and the 12″ is BEG 218T, suggesting that they’re not actually multiple formats of the same release at all. Checking the Beggars discography online confirms this: the song was released twice within as many years, with different B-sides taking up the slack on each version. No idea of the story behind this, but Beggar (ho ho) me if I in fact don’t own the same release in two formats – I own two releases from Beggars’ and The Go-Betweens’ discographies respectively, and I am hence a better collector than I realised.
To finish, Grant McLennan R.I.P.