Two essays that are better than mine that spurred the below outpouring:
- "Poptimist #38: The Milton Point," by Tom Ewing [Pitchfork]
- "Lester Bangs' Basement," by Bill Wyman [Slate]
We are all prisoners of time and victims of entropy: We live, we die, we have finite resources. So why the hell shouldn't I, sitting comfortably at my desk in 2011, be able to listen to the Raunch Hands' 1986 album Learn to Whap-a-Dang With The Raunch Hands -- an album released 25 years ago to little fanfare, and only on vinyl -- with the click of a button? The folks in '86 who purchased Learn to Whap-a-Dang weren't any better or worse than me (though their haircuts were probably the latter); they were simply active members of the record-buying public. It's not
my fault that I was only six years old when it came out and didn’t have the foresight to realize that 30-year-old me might want a copy to spin on his turntable. It's not the fault the Raunch Hands' record label at the time, Relativity, for only being able to press a small number of copies of the record, and that those copies found good homes with discerning listeners unwilling to part with the record a quarter-century later. It's not the Raunch Hands' fault for not releasing an album as popular as 1986's best-selling album, the 25-million-selling Whitney Houston; the band was just a bunch of dudes who made a fun, funny garage/rockabilly/punk album, an album they didn't expect to go platinum or top the charts, but one they presumably wanted people to hear beyond the confines of 1986 and its life as a discrete vinyl document.So yes, "x" number of copies of Learn to Whap-a-Dang were created, but the music etched on the vinyl transcends its format. Why should I, as a listener, be prevented by forces as overwhelming as "time" and "the market" from hearing an album that exists, even if it’s at the absolute ass-end of the Long Tail? We have the technology to clear those hurdles! Sony, Relativity's parent company, sure as hell isn't going to reissue the album or make it available on iTunes. I -- an archivist by training and an avid music collector -- am always on the hunt to rediscover lost music, especially from the '80s college rock-era, so I did my due diligence, flipped through my used, dog-eared copy of the third edition of the Trouser Press Record Guide -- purchased expressly to aid in my record hunt -- and was intrigued by Scott Isler's write-up of the band on page 460 and successfully located the album on a file-sharing site. And you know what? It's a damn fun album. At the risk of petulance, what am I supposed to do? NOT seek out an album that I know I will enjoy because of antiquated notions of scarcity and access? What's the point of making an album if there's a limited time window during which it can be enjoyed, with said window maybe extended through the magnanimity of a record label that deigns to reissue said album? Outside of crate-diggers like Numero Group or Yep Roc (think their Nick Lowe and Soft Boys reissues), reissued albums tend to be classics that are readily available anyways. As the joke goes, How many times do I have to buy The White Album?
No comments:
Post a Comment