Lately, I can’t open a magazine, hit a website, or overhear hoboes talking without hearing about "disposable formats". Everyone’s up in arms about what is the disposable format – “make music online only; save the industry”, “crack down on illegal downloading; save the industry”, “think green, no jewel case; use an eco-pak”, “those blintzes were terrible”.

I don’t think CDs are disposable, but CD singles are done. They’re dead as…dead, and there’s no excuse for the screw job anybody growing up in the 90’s had to endure. I remember paying up to $16.99 for an Ash single, just to own three songs that were b-sides. Songs that, right out of the gate, can be deemed inferior to the rest of a bands oeuvre. People mention Oasis and the quality of their B-sides, but Noel Gallagher has admitted that he did that on purpose (saving some single-worthy tracks for b-sides), just so we suckers would believe that he was a genius. That’s also why, incidentally, The Masterplan is Oasis’ best album.

Anyway, I’m digressing in my first paragraph but, believe it or not, I'm going somewhere with this. The first time I heard Sloan’s “I Am the Cancer”; I heard the rarer acoustic version of the song from Sloan’s Live at a Sloan Party, a CD that was included as a U.S. incentive to buy their One Chord To Another album. I remember thinking “Wow, this doesn’t sound like Sloan”. I, at that time, had perceived Sloan to be…well…a bunch of dorks. When I bought Smeared and heard this version, I liked it more. It sounded “cool”.

Sloan - I Am The Cancer

It’s still my favorite song of theirs, so when I found a copy of the I Am The Cancer single, I bought it. “Why do you want that Sloan single?” the entire staff of Zero (a.k.a. Kam) asked. Two reasons:

1. One weird trend I have in “collecting” is that if there’s a possible way to own a single for my favourite song by a band, I usually go to great lengths to do so. I have no idea why. Perhaps I’m trying to prove to the song that I like it best. I want it to know, so I single it out, spend money on it, and…kiss it. Or something. There’s one example of this that cost me a little too much money, and anyone who knows me can probably guess what band it was and what song it was for.

2. Sloan singles are pretty hard to come by, and I dig the fact that they used to do stuff like this; the b-side of the single I bought:

Sloan - Rag Doll

They were flat out trying to sound like My Bloody Valentine. They were trying to be cool. That’s really endearing. Most people don’t know this side of Sloan, and that’s cool. The problem is that it seems like every time a band is trying to find their footing, or trying to sound cool, it’s archived on the goddamn “Waybackmachine”. I guess I’m just saying that no format is disposable, as MP3s are superb for their utter randomness, CD singles for their forgotten 4th tracks and CDs for their…omnipresence?

Except for 3” CD singles; that’s just fucking garbage.

Spend money on Smeared by a bunch of dorks.

-Kevin