The 12" Extended Remix

One of my overriding memories of my music buying youth was queueing up outside HMV for Guns N Roses 'Use Your Illusions I and II' which was released at midnight in 1991.
I took it home, ripped off the wrapper and kept getting shouted at to 'TURN THAT BLOODY RACKET DOWN, IT'S 2AM' by my dad as i wheeled through the songs.
What Guns N Roses were famous for were their long songs and the Illusion albums had Civil War at 8 minutes, 9 minutes of November Rain and Estranged and a whopping 10 minutes of Coma.
For us children of the 80s the only way you would get a song over 5 minutes was to buy the 12" Extended Remix and i still have a few knocking around although i don't own a record player and they haven't seen a record needle held down by a taped on 2p piece since OJ Simpson was in the news for not killing the wife that he killed.  
Since them days music has gone from vinyl to cassette to CD and now you pay for a download so you don't even get to handle the medium it comes on now but most sadly you don't get the 12" extended version of songs.
I have a box somewhere stock full of 12" remixes of 80s and 90s records and occasionally i drag it out, look at the artwork and wonder whatever happened to the mustachioed dancer from Frankie Goes To Hollywood.
While many of the 12" extended versions were just an instrumental version with the original song tacked on the end there were some classics and almost completely different songs which almost makes me nostalgic enough to go out and buy a record player so just i can hear them again.
I won't though because despite what some people say, songs never sounded better on vinyl, they sounded scratchy and hissy while digital is just so much clearer but in a tremendous own goal for the record industry, easier to copy and pass around but i do miss the artwork and the 12" extended versions.
Oh, and the FGTH guy with a 'tache went off to live in New Zealand and released an album called The Cowboy Years in 2010, so that's nice for him.