Among the Trees Deluxe Edition

I love CD stores- at least, the ones that are left. There's just something about going in and having no idea about what you are going to find- especially if they sell used CDs. Granted, a lot of the fun has been taken out of going to CD stores because there really aren't many surprises in these days of the internet- in terms of new releases. It used to be that you'd get caught off guard by some albums if you somehow missed the single or the video. Now, we generally know months and months in advance when something is coming out and when it finally does, we're almost sick of hearing about it and the thrill is gone.

But I digress. Back to the point, you never know when a surprise can be waiting for you. Which brings me to Among the Trees. As mentioned before, it is one of my favorite AD albums and probably second only to the debut. Number one, it hit me at exactly the right time when I was really getting fed up with the rap music that was out there in the current scene and I thought Arrested Development was a group that made two great albums and split up. So anyway, I already had the album and played it to the point where my original copy is SUBARed. Yes, scratched up beyond all recognition. Still not sure what happened there as I'm pretty careful about those sorts of things, but I was in need of a new copy at some point.

Which brings me to Drastic Plastic, a little record store here in Omaha in an area called the Old Market. Kind of a trendy, Bohemian area of town. One of two record stores in that area and by far my least favorite of the two, but we were down there one day so I stopped in and took a look at the very small hip hop section and found this.

A two-disc set of Among the Trees- two remixes (Honeymoon Day, shared already here) not on my copy along with a disc of the instrumentals from the album. Say what? I had never even heard of this. Now for those of you in Germany and maybe elsewhere (the packaging claims it was made in Germany in 2004), you're probably well aware of this, but to me, it was a surprise. The price was kind of high so I did waver a bit, but my wife, correctly, pointed out that I would just come back if I didn't buy it then, so yep, I bought it. Among the Trees really has some great and diverse instrumentals, so it was definitely worth the purchase.

So let's take a look at a few of those instrumentals for those interested. We'll start with the first few and see if anyone wants more:

A Lotta Things To Do
Esmeralda
Luxury
Honeymoon Day