Monday, April 12, 2010

End Of Intermission



In the immortal words of Sly Stone: heard you missed me, well I’m back.

I used to do all my blog entries from work, but everything’s been locked down since January, including all blog sites. I can’t stream music – no WWOZ Nawlins. no WFMU Jersey. no XFM London. I can’t listen to Rodney Bingenheimer live from LA on Sunday nites. I can’t stream from Sirius. Facebook and Ebay have been blocked. But I can create a Word doc, email it to my Hotmail account, pick it up at home & Bob’s Yer Uncle, an updated blog.

Who really cares what’s been happening with me since last summer? Let’s get on with the here & now.

IMPORTANT: Record Store Day is fast approaching. FYI it’s this Saturday, April 17, 2010. PARTICIPATE! This is the day for all the existing record stores to strut their stuff & hopefully make some money. I fully support the in-person record buying experience, even though I hate most of the people shopping along side of me (hey, you're too close, step back!). Boy, if I had a record store it’d be like Studio 54 - not everyone’s getting in. Sure, I wouldn’t make money, but I ain’t doing it for the money. Art does not equal commerce for me.

This year I’m excited about the special Record Store Day releases. A bargeload of artists are releasing very limited runs of 7” singles to be sold on RSD only. The chance of getting what you want is probably a hell of a lot better if you’re in, say, London, NY, Chicago or Portland (the latest city of choice for cultural lemmings – sorry, Williamsburg). The Fall have one. Daptone has one from soul queen Sharon Jones. The Stones have an “Exile On Main St” era unreleased track on offer. Even the bloody Beatles are re-releasing Paperback Writer/Rain, and Elvis has some crap out, too. Some of these quantities number in the hundreds, some more, some less. And who knows what the distribution setup is? You pays yer money, you takes yer choice.

Please go out & buy some CDs or records on that day. It may not matter to some, but the record store is a dying business, and to see it disappear as a haven for music lovers is a shame. Hey, I buy from Amazon & Ebay too, but absolutely nothing compares to rifling through racks of music and actually holding them in your grubby mitts, or getting a headache from rolling your eyes repeatedly from overheard nerd conversations about Wolfmother and Beach House. Give me a frikkin’ break.

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