It's September 20, Sunday, Backspacer day. I head to my local Target in the Bay Area. In the music section there's a Backspacer sign over a featured rack that reads COMING SEPTEMBER 20. The Fixer video is playing on the TVs in the music section and over the store speakers.

The CDs aren't on the shelf. I ask an employee. They head to the back and after 10 minutes find the box of CDs.

I read that elsewhere in the States (Virginia & Massachusetts) the CDs haven't been delivered to some stores. I'm glad I got my hands on the disk but that was a sucktastic shopping experience.

the boston office is lucky to have you, memo

Nothing in Greenland, NH

I'll be hitting Newbury Comics in Braintree tomorrow...fuck the free downloads

The Portland, Maine Target didn't have the CDs either. They had the Rock Band version, and I picked up the exclusive t-shirt, but no CDs. I wasn't going to buy one there anyway since I picked up the vinyl at my local indie store, but I was curious why they didn't have them out so I asked the employee and all he said was they "didn't get them yet."

you and me both Sludgefeast...
I probably passed you on the way out the door...

this is just a repost from a message i left in the pit... but i think it is somewhat funny/annoying so i wanted to share here as well =)



wow... what a morning lol.

so i get out of bed at 7am and leave my house in anaheim at about 7:50, pull into the target by disneyland on harbor blvd. right at 8am. excited... i speed walk back to the electronics to find... absolutely nothing backspacer related on the shelves. me and some others who are there for the album ask the guy working there if they received the album, record, or shirt. this guy had no idea who pearl jam is or what a backspacer was lol. he does go snoop around in the back, and finds the cd. he says they don't have records or shirts. i didn't care. i had the cd... i could pop in the album in the car, cruise southward down the 5 freeway to the next target and pick em up there. so as you can see in the pic below, i check out of there at 8:17am.

so southward i go down the 5. i wanted to listen to the whole record without interuption so i drove south for 36 minutes until the record was finished. i was in the aliso viejo area so i pull off the 5 and into the target on aliso viejo parkway. heck these guys didn't even have the cd let alone the record or shirt.

so i head a little more northward towards the spectrum shopping center in irvine. same story... nothing but 7 inch fixer singles.

so northward again to the jamboree exit in irvine. i check the jamboree target... hey a somewhat musically knowledged person is working the counter. i explain to him that i need the shirt and LP. he goes into the stock room and finds me an LP. he tells me that only ONE store in all of orange county, california got the shirts. thankfully, that target is only 4 miles away. so i check out with my LP at 9:45am.

so 4 miles down jamboree towards culver/barranca i go... i pull into the target there. my dad in alabama(where i'm originally from) calls. so apparently only one store in all of alabama got the shirts lol. oh... btw me and my dad are both hardcore pj fans. when my parents got divorced in 1991(i was 10 years old) the TEN album got us through the hard times and have just done the whole pearl jam thing together ever since. he flew out here for outside lands a couple weeks ago and we made the trek northward up to san fran together =) anyway, back to the original story... so my dad lives in birmingham, AL... and the store that got them is in trussville which is just a few miles away. so he goes... and the people working there tell him that they did not receive their shipment and they are not sure if they are coming at all.

so i tell him that as fate would have it that i'm apparently pulling into the only OC target that has the shirts. i tell him i'll pick him up a shirt and mail it to him. he is totally relieved. so i walk in, go to te electronics section, and am extremely relieved to see that at least one target has their act together. displayed nicely in one place... the cd's, LP's, fixer single, shirts, and rock band game. thank God! so i pick up 2 shirts and get the heck out there at 10:08am.

so 2 hour 8 minutes and 5(FIVE!) targets later(6 if you count my dad's in bama) i have all my backspacer goodies.

which brings me to my next point... i reeeeally miss the days of midnight sales, purchasing the albums at an actual record store, talking with the other fans in line who are waiting, just the vibe of the music store itself. it was driving me nuts to talk to employee after employee in these target store this morning who had no idea what they were selling... i mean The Fixer was on every screen in every store. now i don't fault the target employees at all, this is not typically the kind of thing they are going to be specializing in selling. but it's just kind of annoying to go through all this, ya know?

i understand this gives PJ more freedom, and i guess this is just a side effect of not doing things the "normal way". but i fear i'll never have those awesome experiences i used to have... like when binaural came out. the midnight sale in birmingham, Alabama at this little indie store called Slip Disc. me and my dad and a ton of other rabid fans at midnight. way too much fun! hopefully one day we can get back to that =)

so here are a couple pics, the first one is kinda funny... the 2nd one is the goods!





as far as the record goes... YES YES YES!!! Pearl Jam... you guys continue to rock my world all these years later! a fan from the age of 10... i turned 28 years old yesterday, and i'm as in love with the music at 28 as i was while i was still in elementary school =)

all i have to say is... SUPERSONIC GONE AND TOOK MY SOUL YEH!!!

your carbon footprint sucks ass
jesus hates you

snickers & dr pepper?

what you weigh?

lol 137 pounds =P

http://www.myspace.com/adamsmith145

if you don't believe me check the link above!!!

the DP and snickers was cause it was early and i needed some sugar energy to rock out in the car to backspacer!!!

sorry bro
i is a jerkstore

congrats on your purchases

[quote="jerome230"]sorry bro
i is a jerkstore

jerkstore =P

Have you thought about making this a movie script?

you could get that david koresh guy to play you

Fantastic.

lmao... well i am a video game producer. i guess i could make a wii game based on this!

wow i'm half way contemplating this...

any reason you didn't call all those stores first instead of wasting all that time?

because like i said above... i make video games for a living. target carries them.

when we ship them one of our products we have a deal... they have to have them on the shelves at store opening on release date.

i would kind of expect target to at least have the cd on the shelf if it is exclusively sold at their store when it is released.

and besides, it was an adventure.