Goldenstash flick by bluesocks78.

According to today's papers, the music industry is moving backwards. First, the good news: This guy in Nashville is on a personal mission to keep vinyl alive, and to be "the last vinyl plant standing, no matter what." Sweet news for someone who recently acquired a record player (read: stole from my parents’ house, along with most of their record collection. Minus the Jesus Christ Superstar soundtrack - eek). Says another Nashville-based, determined vinyl savior: "You hear people use adjectives like 'warmer' and 'more round.' And there are other things beside sound quality. People know what the song titles are. It's not like, 'I like track 5.' You put the needle on and let it play through -- not jump around. You have more of an intimate relationship with the music." Word.

Over in greedy major label-land, the scheming music execs and has-been artists (Wang Chung, I may or may not be talking about you) have joined forces for their latest scam: re-record old songs and resell them! But wait, wasn't Nickelback already doing that? Zing! Says one of the desperate-for-attention artists: "To re-record our back catalog is a way of empowering ourselves." The euphemistic blathering continues - even Prince is joining the club. "Prince, for example, has re-recorded significant portions of his catalog that — thanks partly to technological advances — may rival the original versions, according to one person close to him." (Note: The "person close to him" is definitely Prince himself.-Ed.)

There's no denying the long, genre-spanning list of excellent re-recordings out there – jazz music as a whole depends partially on reworkings of its evergreen standards. But usually the new version is enjoyable because the old one was. “You’re Beautiful,” for example, will never be a good song, no matter how many times James Blunt re-records it Or, hell, even if Thom Yorke, Jeff Tweedy and Ted Leo teamed up to cover it, it still wouldn’t be good. That would be amazing though.

However, re: using pop music in commercials, a new trend in the world of independent music as well – see Of Montreal’s Outback Steakhouse commercial, and was that a New Pornographers song I heard on another commercial recently? – I half-heartedly support it. Sure, it makes me feel slightly sick to hear Led Zeppelin classics accompany ads for environmentally unfriendly car companies, but what about the smaller bands? I recently chatted with some friends in a local band about this, and the general consensus was that they’d happily sell their tunes for commercial purposes – if only to make enough money to quit their day jobs and finally record that second album, not to mention spread their sound across living rooms nationwide.

But I’m still not buying anything marginally related to Wang Chung.

In other, unrelated news, VH1 Classic, aka the best TV station EVER is now replaying Pop-Up Videos, in addition to the enthrallingly awesome Classic Albums series. Let the learning begin - did you know that Jimmy Page played guitar on the original 1964 version of "The Crying Game," or that Tracy Chapman's high school classmates said that she was destined to marry her guitar?

Final note: Apparently David Day caught me at the Klaxons show.

 

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