Wednesday, September 13, 2006

We live in this Chemical City

I picked up Sam Robert's Chemical City yesterday. An excellent CD if you're looking for some good Canadian rock. I've never been a fan of classic rock, as I find the instrumentals and topics of various older artists to be boring and unrelevant in most cases, but Roberts takes classic rock styles, and makes them work in ways that could only be musical prostitution.

I also picked up In A Coma. I got a copy of it to review about a year ago when I was still in college, and I figured I could get by just hearing the music and listening to the commentary on the music videos only once. Nope, I was wrong.

Although, in a typical travesty of music store piracy, the place I bought it at was still selling the special edition In a Coma tracks for well nigh $40. Somehow, between my two purchases, it worked out to $50. Doing all the math, that equates to maybe $5 getting to the actual artists themselves. For the remainder, I hope the record labels choke and die on their own greed.

Also of interest, the music store I was in had Mr. Beast by Mogwai for $20, but if I wanted to get any of their earlier works, I would have to import them for around $50-$60 a CD. I've discussed this numerous times with Fair, but it will forever irk me, the kind of monetary black hole that has become of the music I love. Imports, markups, fucking promotions. And then iTunes zoning. Grr.

And the industry wonders why piracy is increasing.

When the king launches all his ships...

2 comments:

Trevor said...

I didn’t like Chemical City; I’m a huge fan of his first album. Mind you I only listened to it once the day I picked it up and it’s in my car somewhere. I shall give it another listen though.

I remember back in the day I picked up The Offspring’s First album, I paid something like $50 for it but I guess that’s how the industry works. Once you sign onto a major label or become more known, the new stuff is priced all right the old stuff goes through the roof, you would think it would be the other way around.

D. said...

fuck man. tell me about it. HMV has gotten better, but when I first got into Mogwai I paid an arm and a leg for those fucking discs. Same with other bands.

If you can order online, I reccomend getting it right from their site whenever possible.

It's fucking insane sometimes though.