I turned 38 this past weekend. I am now — and have been really for the past three to five years — the target market for reissues and catalog.
When I was young, I had a chip on my shoulder about people who would buy up reissues and special editions. Pfeh. Living in the past. Why don’t you all man up and listen to something new? That was my foolish, youthful thinking.
Then I reached a point where that old Battlestar Galactica proverb reared its head — all this has happened before, and it will happen again.
I program my TiVo to catch this music video program on LOGO called NewNextNow. It’s not a bad survey of what’s bubbling under the floundering hit-making machinery of the media conglomerates. (Although most of the music featured on the show is made by major labels.)
But I’ll listen to these so-called new bands, and I inevitably rattle off comparisons — ah, that’s Echo and the Bunnymen fronted by Ben Gibbard. Oh, look, a guitarist who idolizes the Edge. And those 8-bit blips and bleeps are so post-Kraftwerk, pre-Nick Rhodes.
The new isn’t really new, now that I’m knocking on the door of 40. But here’s the thing about the past — it can be every bit as unexplored territory as the new. And even the familiar sounds different at 38 than 18, let alone 28.
So bring on the reissues and the catalog. I’m a grown-up now.
In my early days of music collecting, Eurythmics was one band I filed under "must-own" — if the duo released an album, I made sure to get it. My enthusiasm for them, however, petered out before the release of We Too Are One in 1989. (Nor did I manage to get the 1984 soundtrack. In the Garden hadn’t been released in the States at that time.)
In reality, Eurythmics was a far better singles band than an album band. Of the vinyl albums I purchased in my youth, only two made the leap to CD — Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) and more recently, Savage.
Savage holds a strange position in the band’s discographic history. They went back to using synthesizers after having made a big effort to ditch them two albums earlier, nor did they tour in support of the album. The singles don’t have the chart-ready catchiness of their previous hits.
Among the pundits contemplating the fate of the recorded music industry, the idea of the economics of scarcity has come under scrutiny. The Internet provides such fast access to content that providing more material sooner is becoming the conventional wisdom for newer artists.
All this talk of business, however, doesn’t factor in a fairly persnickety detail — the muse.
Just because you ought to hose listeners with content, content, content doesn’t mean you should. Or even can.
Sade is the extreme opposite example of such emerging conventional wisdom. Back in the ’80s, it was easy to feel Sade fatigue because she and her band produced prodigiously from 1985 to 1988. The lag set in with 1992’s Love Deluxe, and after that … nada.
Eight years passed before Sade resurfaced with Lovers Rock and another ten before Soldier of Love.
Waterloo Records usually schedules its springtime storewide sale on the first weekend of April, but this time it was pushed to the second weekend. I wonder if Record Store Day the following weekend has anything to do with it? After having a somewhat disastrous Monday, I can’t wait for Thursday to get here so I may exercise some retail therapy.
Unfortunately, most of the albums I was anticipating for March have been rescheduled after the sale. I have to wait till May for those Duran Duran reissues? Well, I still have a shopping list.
I’ve been lazy with posting the release news — well, posting in general, really — but a few items popped up on Bounce last week that caught my attention.
Kicell is releasing a new album on June 2 titled Kaze. Members of SAKEROCK and tico moon make guest appearances on the album. The duo tours behind the album starting in July. It’s been 2 1/2 years since Kicell released their previous album, magic hour.
Original SUPERCAR member Ishiwatari Junji and Sunahara Yoshinori have teamed up for a single to be released on May 26. The single will be featured as the ending theme for the anime series Yojouhan Shinwa Taikei.
Sarah Baird of new music publisher Boosey & Hawkes mentions on Twitter:
“I want it…I want it…I WANT IT!!!!” John Adams posts Bernstein’s sexiest photo. Thoughts on emotion + music? http://bit.ly/9ntce6
I was too distracted by the photo to read the blog post. That is some hotness right there.
Apropos of nothing, now that Ricky Martin has come out, do I have to pay attention to his music? Gay musicians are part of this site’s coverage, after all.
All the new releases in which I’m interested have all been pushed to April, which makes 2010 Q1 a dud for predicting what may end up on the year-end favorite list. Of course, it’s pretty ridiculous to make such predictions when the year is only three months old. (As if that stopped me before.)
Of the five albums bearing 2010 release dates I’ve so far encountered, only three have managed to wedge their way into regular rotation:
Tokyo Jihen, Sports Is this Bizzaro world we’ve entered? While Sanmon Gossip seems like the Tokyo Jihen record Tokyo Jihen never recorded, Sports is the Shiina Ringo album that never followed up Karuki Zaamen Kuri no Hana. The writing on this album is really, really good, and the performances even tighter. I grew to like Sanmon Gossip with a lot of effort, but Sports grabbed hold immediately.
Res, Black.Girls.Rock! Res made this album available as a free download on her web site in late 2009, but only recently did she make it available on CD — with poster! — so I’m considering this a 2010 release. How I Do was a remarkable debut, and the eight years since have not diminished Res’ muse. In fact, she gives rock a bit more focus on this album.
Sade, Soldier of Love Sade’s previous album, 2000’s Lovers Rock, was the first time Sade made a really cohesive album. Soldier of Love doesn’t feel quite as together, but demand for new Sade material outstrips supply by a long proverbial mile. And given the long wait, Sade and co. made sure it was worth it.
I have a TV blog. It’s dead. The one-two punch of TiVo and the writer’s strike from a few years back killed it.
It didn’t help the shows that came in the wake of the strike’s conclusion sucked — nothing on the level of The West Wing or Gilmore Girls (shut up), Battlestar Galactica and Friday Night Lights not withstanding.
Perhaps the one good thing to come out of the strike was a new album by Wendy & Lisa. The former members of Prince and the Revolution became film and television composers in the late-’90s, and the strike put them out of work when productions shut down.
The duo’s previous album, Girl Bros., was released in 1998, and the decade of work since then greatly expanded the pair’s sonic palette. White Flags of Winter Chimneys bears little resemblance to their post-Prince solo work.
Simply put, it’s the rock album they always had in them.
I’ve been pretty neglectful keeping up with new releases. I let a new album by STRAIGHTENER and a new single by the brilliant green go by without any notice. Well, I did notice them — I was just too lazy to post about them.
I think part of the difficult with compiling these entires is the slow pace of the release schedule. Since the last time I posted a round-up, I would visit my usual sources for news and be totally underwhelmed by the offerings.
I didn’t report anything because there was nothing to report. And I just get this sense that the malaise of the recording industry’s woes is coming through in the release schedule — why bother putting out product few customers are buying?
Onitsuka Chihiro set a pretty high bar with her 2000 debut, Insomnia. Subsequent albums haven’t quite achieved the same level of focus and consistency. (This Armor didn’t even come close.)
So it was easy to assume Insomnia would be the unmovable obstacle, the peak by which everything will be compared and none surpassed.
Well, she just might have done it.
Midway through the decade, Onitsuka sought to free herself from the balladeer confines in which her management — and perhaps her audience (myself included) — wanted to keep her. The first effort of this make-over, 2007’s LAS VEGAS, was more admirable for its effort than for its execution.
DOROTHY, however, finally brings Onitsuka to the point she’s been fighting to reach for the last few years — as an artist of breadth.