Ride
Nowhere

 (CD Longbox only)
The background on this box is purple... the scan lightened it so you can see the details.

There is no CD included in this sale... you are purchasing the long box artwork only.  It was cut at the ends, the cd removed and stored flat since the early 1990's.

Most original cd longboxes were discarded upon purchase, and they have since become desirable amongst music collectors. I knew a lot of hardcore record collectors who would keep their vinyl along with the album jackets in perfect condition, but would rip open and throw out the long boxes. Personally, I couldn't imagine just throwing out the printed packaging on anything from an artist I collected. But, around 1990, it was estimated that the amount of long boxes discarded made up almost 20 million pounds that year alone going into the garbage dumps of America.

In my store, we would display only the empty cd case, taken out of the long box to prevent theft (we were in NYC after all). My employees would complain and make fun of me for having them carefully extract the cds from the boxes, fold the boxes flat and store them.  Anyone who bought a new cd who wanted the box could have it, but almost no one asked.  Nobody cared.  And that's why they are so rare today, and becoming more sought after and valuable all the time.

When compact discs first began to appear in the retail stores, the longbox packaging served a transitional purpose, allowing shops to file new compact discs in the same bins originally used for vinyl records. Longboxes were 12" tall, and capable of containing two separate discs when necessary. Most longboxes were full color, with details about the compact disc on the back, and artwork that was frequently taken from the original square album cover art, reworked for the new shape and size. There were generic white longboxes with windows that would display the compact disc cover, as well as clear plastic versions that were an inexpensive substitute for a printed longbox.

Environmental concerns of unnecessary cardboard waste from artists and consumers alike created controversy over continued use of longboxes. Musicians like David Byrne would include a sticker over the packaging of his albums reading "THIS IS GARBAGE" , referring to the excessive material use of the longbox form. The satirical band Spinal Tap's 1992 studio album Break Like the Wind was sold in an "extra-long box" (an 18-inch longbox) — a deliberate parody of the prevailing longbox packaging controversy, as well as a deliberate phallic metaphor.

The longboxes were expensive to produce, and after just a few years from the introduction of compact discs, the controversy over the environmental issues gave the record companies a great excuse to stop producing them, reducing their production and shipping costs by a big percentage. At the same time, major retail stores were no longer selling vinyl records and had converted their displays to accommodate shrink-wrapped jewel cases, meeting the rising consumer demand for CDs while eliminating the need for longboxes.