APPROACHING THE AGE OF FIVE (Part 2)

Regular readers might have noticed that I didn't say too much about Record Store Day 2011 which took place back in April.

I suppose it's cos I'm not that fond of what it has turned into....

Matthew over at Song By Toad, not for the first time, perfectly put into words what I felt in a series of posts prior to RSD 2011 - here, here and here.

If you can't be arsed reading all of his fine words....this is the really relevant part:-

"Record Store Day this year has been absolutely beset with anyone and everyone throwing together all sorts of limited run releases.  The idea, I suppose, is to generate scarcity and drive people down to record shops in their hundreds to snap up these precious things.  Things which, as one Twitter wag said, we usually wouldn’t pay more than a fiver for on the other 364 days of the year.

This kind of artificial scarcity kind of irritates me, frankly.  Song, by Toad Records make short runs of things, not because we are trying to generate false demand, but because we are genuinely nervous of over-stretching ourselves financially, so this sort of contrived stuff kind of gets on my nerves.  Also, ever since the CD bubble burst in the early 2000s, the music industry has been hysterically grasping after one imaginary cash cow after another.  For a while it was live revenues, and now I am sort of worried it might be collectors, vinyl and special editions.

The problem with this is that prices get driven up, everyone gets a bit carried away and then everything calms down shortly afterwards, and we go back to trying to find the next saviour.  The people who suffer are the fans, who get over-charged (hello LiveNation) and the bands, who in this case get bad material released or good material wasted on limited run novelties.

Now, as a music fan, I love collectable editions and will always pay for them but I don’t like this kind of rarity being so contrived.  It just bugs me.  And also, as the Knox Road article also points out it is also, most notably in the bigger markets, in danger of creating a eBay profiteering gold rush.  This benefits no-one except a shower of cynical wankers.

This kind of artificial scarcity does, in my opinion, and to contradict Matt Picasso, punish fans.  It effectively turns us all into scrabbling retards, like those idiots who queue outside Harrods for the Winter sales.  The plodding, workaday determined music fans are the people who have kept bands, shops and labels afloat while everyone else buggered off to illegal download sites and I think they deserved to be treated with a bit more respect, honestly."

Drew's experience of RSD 2011, as detailed here in the always fine blog Across The Kitchen Table, seems to back up many of Matthew's fears (albeit Drew got what he was after!!!)

Me??  I stayed away.  There was an important football game on that day.....and I'd probably have got angry at some of the folk queuing up.

I've since crawled around some of the stores and picked up most of what I probably would have been looking for anyway, paying the same price as what was being asked for on the day.  Yes, I hate the fact that these bits of vinyl cost me waaaaaaayyyyy more than normal, but I'm consoled by the fact that the profits did go into the pockets of the record shop proprietors and not the greedy fuckers on e-bay who, as ever, were buying simply to make a profit from fans.

And again being true to the spirit of TVV, here's something from RSD 2011.  Well, I do have everything they've ever released on vinyl......and it's not from the 80s!!!

mp3 : Grinderman - Evil (album version)
mp3 : Grinderman - Evil ('The Michael Cliffe House' Remix)
mp3 : Grinderman - First Evil
mp3 : Grinderman - Evil  (Silver Alert Remix)

Track 2 is a a remix by Factory Floor, a London-based act that specialises in noise.....read here for more.

Track 3 is a stripped down version featuring just Nick Cave and Warren Ellis.

Track 4 is the one of real interest, featuring a vocal by Matt Berninger of The National.  Sadly, not a duet with Mr Cave.....

There was a video too:-



Not expecting too many of you to like today's offerings.......