Also, I hope no one gets the impression from this that I am a gift-grubbing twat who is retroactively pitting Steve the Idiot because he didn’t get me exactly what I wanted. It’s his dumbness that’s the issue. For instance, we could watch an entire episode of SNL, and he wouldn’t get one joke that wasn’t slapstick. Puns and satire were utterly beyond him. He also believed that Challenger was sabotaged by spies from the former USSR.
Yes, but March comes after February, which is when Beatles for Sale was issued on CD, as I said above. (It was Sgt Pepper that was released in June; I only mentioned it as context for the release timeline of the earlier albums.) For Sale was one of the first batch, the others being Please Please Me, With the Beatles, and A Hard Day’s Night. The next three, Help, Rubber Soul, and Revolver, were released two months later. Then came Sgt Pepper by itself on the 20th anniversary of its original release, accompanied by much media hoopla. (Remember Walter Cronkite signing off with “We read the news today, oh boy”?)
Wow. I can believe one inept boob of a manager made that mistake, but lots of them? Wow. The company must not put much effort into deciding who they make managers. What store was that, if I may ask, so I never shop there?
Huh. Well, no offense, but it’s ethanwinfield’s cite that seems plausible to me. I clearly remember reading the CD reviews in Rolling Stone, and thinking, “See! I was right—it does exist!” If that had happened in February, there wouldn’t have been any confusion.
Or maybe I’m confusing Christmas with my birthday. Maybe I asked for the album in December, not during the run-up to my March birthday. (In which case, I wouldn’t have been suggesting Joshua Tree as an alternative; that would be two separate incidents.)
Or maybe StI is even dumber than I realized. If the CD was released in February, he would have found it. Maybe he only looked at listed records, not CDs. (This is also the guy who thought the actor Andrew McCarthy was Paul McCartney’s son. :smack: “No, man; that’s not even the same name.”)
I bought Beatles for Sale myself on February 28, 1987, along with the rest of the initial release. Don’t argue with me about Beatles lore, Rilchiam dear.
Well, the CD was released just days before your birthday. So if he was looking, say, a week beforehand, he wouldn’t have found it. However–bringing this sort-of back to the original topic–it doesn’t speak well for the awareness level of the clerk at Sam Goody’s. Even if the CD wasn’t actually on the shelves yet, the impending first-ever* release of the Beatles on CD was a big fat hairy deal. It was in the news. Capitol promoted the hell out of it. A person who actually worked in a record store would have to be stone fucking blind not to know that some Beatles albums that were different from the ones already available were coming in, and a quick check would confirm that one of them was indeed called Beatles for Sale.
*Not counting the Japanese edition of Abbey Road that was fleetingly available before being withdrawn, or the wretched Star Club tapes.
Okay then!
It must have been Christmas that I asked for it then. Because I would have known if the CDs were about to be released.
Indeed! As I noted earlier, The Joshua Tree wasn’t available until a week after my birthday either, but no store clerk with an awareness level greater than that of a turnip would have said, “Huh?” when asked about it. I remember feeling somewhat apprehensive about the hype, thinking that it might be that U2 had shot their wad with Unforgettable Fire, and being pleasantly amazed to find that they’d topped themselves (IMO). It wasn’t until Rattle and Hum that I was disappointed. Anyway, you’re right: both these albums (Beatles and U2) were highly anticipated, and they didn’t have to be physically in the store for people to know that they shortly would be.
So I’ll conclude that I must have been asking for the Beatles record in December, before I knew about the CD releases, and at which point the clerk can be given a pass, because people at the brick-and-mortar level might well not have been aware of the impending February release of the CDs.
Which still makes StI the Pit-worthy person here. At that point, it wasn’t about CD vs. vinyl. It was about the fact that I told him the album was an import, and that he would have to go to a resale shop to find it. He just wasn’t a very good listener. I said, “It’ll be hard to find”; he heard “The mall stores might only have one copy.” I said “resale shop”; he heard “Salvation Army.” This is also the guy who took the SATs five times, with no appreciable change in score.