Late last week news reports began to appear stating that pop diva Mariah Carey had married actor Nick Cannon in a secret, i.e. paparazzi-free, ceremony. My first thought was that her new album, E=MC², must need a sales boost as it enters its second month on the charts. Crass and cynical of me, yes, but I did defend Tom Cruise when he declared his love for Katie Holmes on Oprah back in 2005 by jumping on the talk show host’s couch. (But was it a couch? The picture below makes it look more like Siamese chairs.) I thought it was a genuine, if shame-free, show of affection, not a publicity stunt to promote Cruise and Holmes’s upcoming summer blockbusters (War of the Worlds and Batman Begins, respectively).
Last Friday Cruise was interviewed on Oprah for the first time since ‘05. One news item about his appearance mentioned that PR experts had analyzed the interview and determined that he came across as “serious” and “thoughtful,” i.e. not communicating with a miniature version of L. Ron Hubbard that floats above his left shoulder. Tom, one of my goals since I was a young boy has been to win the respect and complimentary fruit baskets of PR experts all across this great nation of ours. You’ve set a fine example for me, and I’ll do what I can to add to your legacy.
I’m also one of the few people I know who defends Cruise’s heterosexuality. Since 1996 I’ve written hundreds of letters to the toothy megastar requesting a romantic dinner date, and I’ve never gotten a single response. Disappointed, gossip hounds?! Move along … nothin’ to see here. As for Mariah Carey’s potential publicity stunt, she has good reason to marry a guy 11 years her junior just to sell more copies of her new album, because music retail ain’t what it used to be. Do what you have to do, Mariah. No pressure, but the fate of the compact disc is in your hands.
Back in February I asked a record producer in Boston when the local band he was recording planned to put out its next CD. He told me they’d probably bypass the CD format altogether and just press vinyl copies of their album with a digital download code in the sleeve. A few weeks later I read that Elvis Costello’s latest album, Momofuku, was going to be released the same way — vinyl with a download code but no CD (though Lost Highway relented and is now releasing the album in that format as well) . Two weeks ago Miles Raymer reported in the Chicago Reader that local label Flameshovel is releasing Make Believe’s Going to the Bone Church using the vinyl-and-download method, and other local labels like Thrill Jockey and Drag City are considering the same approach for their future releases. Earlier this week I opened the newest issue of Spin and saw its own article on the surprising upswing of vinyl sales: apparently they’ve increased 15 percent since 2006, while CD sales have dropped 35 percent since 2000. Josh Bizar of vinyl retailer Music Direct says that CDs probably won’t even be sold 20 years from now: “I think the CD will go the way of the cassette or the eight-track. But I can absolutely guarantee that LPs will still be made.”
To me this sounds a little like music writers and music snobs taking the opportunity to write about their favorite audio format and using tried-and-true gloom-and-doom journalism tactics to convince whoever they can that the end is near for CDs. (Raymer admits that one reason he’s tired of CDs is that labels and PR companies send him new ones all the time for potential reviews; he’s simply run out of space in his home for all of them. I know for a fact that the Reader’s music critics and music editor receive on average a dozen CDs week in, week out, and they probably only have time to listen to less than half of them.) I remember seven or eight years ago when a few new reality shows were bombing on TV — critics took the opportunity to predict that viewers would soon tune out all reality shows, at which point the world would be safe again for these critics’ reviews of programs with real actors and real writers. Turn to any broadcast or cable network and you’ll see how that turned out.
Reality shows are cheaper to produce than sitcoms and dramas: it makes sense for networks to continue making them if people want to watch them, which they clearly do. Similarly, if people aren’t buying CDs like they used to and the full product — the disc, the booklet, the jewel case — costs more to produce than intangible MP3s that can be made available on iTunes, it makes sense to go that route. But wasn’t vinyl supposed to go away completely after the introduction of the compact disc? Wasn’t that the gloom-and-doom prediction in the late ’80s? I personally missed out on vinyl completely; the first album I ever owned was on cassette, but I don’t miss that format at all except for the blank tapes I own. Whereas the albums on tape that were manufactured by record labels tended to warp and stretch pretty easily, the blank tapes made by Sony and especially Maxell have held up in quality over the years, or at least the ones in my collection have. I love love love my blank tapes, which I bought on a fairly regular basis from 1988 to 2005. The tapes obviously aren’t blank anymore, but that’s what I call them since the ones I made aren’t traditional “mix” tapes, per se. (If they were still blank on both sides and I sat around listening to them in my spare time, then I wouldn’t blame you for thinking I have my own mini Scientology prophet floating above my left shoulder.)
I just don’t buy the notion that vinyl is making a sizable comeback, and I can’t quite believe that CDs will no longer be produced 20 years from now, but I am glad that vinyl never went away for those who grew up buying LPs and 45s, because I don’t think any music format you love should be banished to oblivion completely. Before I received my first CD boombox for Christmas in 1990 I tested out the CD player at my grandparents’ house (my very first compact disc: the Die Hard 2 soundtrack, ’cause that’s just how I rolled when I was 15), and I remember that my grandfather had an eight-track player sitting right next to it. I don’t know if he loved his eight-tracks as much as I love my blank tapes, but I certainly loved that he held onto his eight-track player long after it was replaced by newer technology.
I have no idea what’s next in terms of new technology, though the thought of keeping every song I own on a tiny external hard drive doesn’t seem like the answer I’ve been waiting for. Sure, that hard drive takes up very little space when you think about how much it contains, but do I now need to buy a second hard drive that can be the backup drive in case the first one breaks down? New technology makes me feel old and tense, but I refuse to whine. (Well, I refuse to whine too loudly in any case.) I definitely refuse to whine about the music that’s popular these days, namely hip-hop and not much else. Most of it may not appeal to me, but previous generations of thirtysomething music lovers hated the Top 40 hits of the ’70s and ’80s, which they felt were a major step down from what came before. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
I would like to make a formal apology, though. You see, I helped kill the music retail business. I didn’t mean to, of course. It started innocently enough, as it always does: In the mid- to late ’90s I bought CDs at Best Buy in Athens, Georgia, while I was a college student. I had disposable income, but I didn’t want to dispose of all of it, so instead of spending $14.99 at an independent record store like Big Shot downtown, I’d drive to Best Buy and pay $9.99 instead. But that’s not all …
In 2000, when I first saw what Napster was capable of, I was mesmerized. I used it at a dot-com job I had at the time, and when I was told three months after I took the job that I was being laid off, the first thing that ran through my mind was: I’m going to lose 600 songs. I clearly had my priorities in order. For the next four years my home computer was a green iMac with a modem connection, so there was no point in trying to access Napster or LimeWire. I continued to buy CDs and put the songs on blank tapes that I could listen to in my car, but I bought more and more CDs from Amazon.com instead of from places like Tower Records or Spin Street.
It gets worse: In 2004 I bought a new computer, which I’m using right now, but it’s four years old, so it’s obviously the equivalent of an eight-track player at this point. But back then it was shiny and new and exciting, and I could finally access a dirty, filthy, sexy little file-sharing program like LimeWire. I was still going to buy CDs, of course, but iTunes’ selection wasn’t that great in ‘04, and occasionally I’d buy a song that had five extra seconds of silence up top. You expect me to pay 99 of my hard-earned cents for an unreliable product like that, Apple? Forget it! I’ll start up LimeWire instead and download the silence-free version … for free! Don’t worry, I’ll only take a few songs. It’s a faceless crime, and besides, the record labels have been ripping off loyal customers like me for years with albums that contain three good songs and a bunch of filler, even on “Best of the ’70s”-type compilation discs. No real harm done, right?
Well, four years later a lot of harm has been done. And it’s all my fault. I … I don’t know what to say. According to a New York Times article from April 18, published on the eve of Record Store Day, nearly 3,100 record stores in the U.S. have closed since 2003, half of which were independently owned, and that figure doesn’t include the 89 Tower Records outlets that closed in 2006. (Virgin Megastore still has ten stores in the U.S., but they’ve closed 17 since 1999, including the one in Chicago that was shuttered last July.) Now I feel an obligation to buy CDs from independent stores in Chicago and independent ones that are listed on Amazon.com as part of their “Marketplace” program, even when these stores’ selection isn’t exactly what you were hoping for.
Then again, the selection wasn’t that great when I was in grade school, middle school, and high school and I was shopping for cassettes and CDs at places like Camelot Records or Turtle’s Records and Tapes. It’s easy to forget that even though the Internet has made it possible for me to find almost any song or album I want for over a decade now, it isn’t necessary that I find everything I’m looking for. I’m actually sort of thrilled these days when I go into a drug store or grocery store and I hear a song over the PA system that I can’t identify, even after I go home and plug some of the lyrics into Google. That’s a beautiful thing! It’s good to not know something like that in the age of information. It’s a relief, in fact. (In all seriousness, though, if you can identify a Trammps-like R&B song from the ’70s that contains the lyrics “It’s my piece of the pie / It’s the only thing I’ve got,” I’d appreciate you passing along the artist and title.)
I need to find ways to simplify my music consumption. There’s too much to listen to these days thanks to music blogs like Popdose, the “Free CDs” bin at work, CDs you can check out from the library, and MP3s that friends send me over e-mail. Granted, I lack the willpower to refuse all this music, mainly because I hate passing up the opportunity to possibly hear the next great song that’s going to blow my mind, like when I heard Wheat’s “Closer to Mercury” on Jefitoblog two years ago. And though I don’t want to go back to my sixth-grade routine of listening to Paul Simon’s Greatest Hits, Etc. every afternoon for months on end until I have every lyric memorized, I do want to stop acquiring new stuff and start going back to the stuff I already have. But I need to support local record stores at the same time. Hmm … what to do … hey, maybe I can marry a pop diva who’s got a new album coming out soon, and then I can give away lots of her money to independent record stores across the nation! In fact, Li’l L. Ron Hubbard just whispered in my left ear that he’s heard some encouraging rumors about Jessica Simpson’s current relationship status. Thanks, Li’l L! ‘Preciate it.
