my retirement looms
Just to boost the coffers a bit, I packed up about fifty or sixty cds and made the record store rounds with them yesterday. The first place I went is the first place I always go, but I think I'm going to break that habit from now on. It's a very good place to shop for records but I find selling them there just a pain in the ass. The guy who owns it is really, really knowledgeable, and is probably one of maybe four or five guys in the entire city who get a chance to hear pretty much every notable release that comes out.
Just so you understand, I'm not talking about the new Coldplay album. Think Kammerflimmer Kollekteif.
So I'm there in this mecca of hipness, which I remind myself that the only reason it exists is cause the fella's got rich parents who gave him seed money. Plus the guy's got hours and hours of time to listen to these albums almost completely undistracted by customers, so of course he's absolutely soaking in the underground to an extent that very few people can afford to do.
Musical snobbery is a class game. You bet your sweet petunia it is. Technology may have opened up access to all the music there is, but the navigational tools remain expensive. I don't just mean computers. One issue of Wire magazine costs about twelve dollars. That spreads a large enough blanket over the avant garde, but there's still a pretty large semi-commercial nexus you have to keep a thumb in and there's no one magazine that's really doing a good job of it anymore so you have to juggle. Magnet, Alternative Press, CMJ: they cover some of it some of the time, but are burdened with humorless and myopic writers that make investigating music an absolute chore. But you gotta slog through that stuff, too. In fact for the really ear-to-the-ground stuff, you have to read (ecchh) lifestyle magazines like Tokion or what have you.
Which reminds me: I gotta go pick up a copy of Arthur.
And that's just the print culture. You do, eventually, have to go and buy the albums. Yes you do. Yes, yes you do. You're not really an audiophile if you think that downloaded music is good enough.
And what's your system? Mark Levinson? B&W? Krell? Do you have a good room? Do you have a needle?
I am just not capable of being in this race. Also, I have embarassing albums I want to get rid of that noone will ever take from me: The Flaming Lips' The Soft Bulletin, for instance, or the John Lennon anthology Wonsuponatime. I'm stuck with these things.
Still, I head down to the place with a boxful of the things, and it's embarassing, because out of the sixty or so that I took he bought about eight of them. What's more, he said that they were the only ones he could maybe move.
The next place I always go is basically just across the street, and they're a lot less discerning. And there's no embarassment. Their customer base is a bit larger than the fifty coolest kids in town, so they can have a bit of non-hip, ages-old dross in their inventory because some real music lover (note italics, please) might actually buy it. R.E.M.'s Fables of the Reconstruction, embarassing as it may be to own, is in fact a good album and would sell in a non-hipster environment.
End result: made about eighty bucks. It helps. Next week I'll ply a bit at the pawn shops.
Just so you understand, I'm not talking about the new Coldplay album. Think Kammerflimmer Kollekteif.
So I'm there in this mecca of hipness, which I remind myself that the only reason it exists is cause the fella's got rich parents who gave him seed money. Plus the guy's got hours and hours of time to listen to these albums almost completely undistracted by customers, so of course he's absolutely soaking in the underground to an extent that very few people can afford to do.
Musical snobbery is a class game. You bet your sweet petunia it is. Technology may have opened up access to all the music there is, but the navigational tools remain expensive. I don't just mean computers. One issue of Wire magazine costs about twelve dollars. That spreads a large enough blanket over the avant garde, but there's still a pretty large semi-commercial nexus you have to keep a thumb in and there's no one magazine that's really doing a good job of it anymore so you have to juggle. Magnet, Alternative Press, CMJ: they cover some of it some of the time, but are burdened with humorless and myopic writers that make investigating music an absolute chore. But you gotta slog through that stuff, too. In fact for the really ear-to-the-ground stuff, you have to read (ecchh) lifestyle magazines like Tokion or what have you.
Which reminds me: I gotta go pick up a copy of Arthur.
And that's just the print culture. You do, eventually, have to go and buy the albums. Yes you do. Yes, yes you do. You're not really an audiophile if you think that downloaded music is good enough.
And what's your system? Mark Levinson? B&W? Krell? Do you have a good room? Do you have a needle?
I am just not capable of being in this race. Also, I have embarassing albums I want to get rid of that noone will ever take from me: The Flaming Lips' The Soft Bulletin, for instance, or the John Lennon anthology Wonsuponatime. I'm stuck with these things.
Still, I head down to the place with a boxful of the things, and it's embarassing, because out of the sixty or so that I took he bought about eight of them. What's more, he said that they were the only ones he could maybe move.
The next place I always go is basically just across the street, and they're a lot less discerning. And there's no embarassment. Their customer base is a bit larger than the fifty coolest kids in town, so they can have a bit of non-hip, ages-old dross in their inventory because some real music lover (note italics, please) might actually buy it. R.E.M.'s Fables of the Reconstruction, embarassing as it may be to own, is in fact a good album and would sell in a non-hipster environment.
End result: made about eighty bucks. It helps. Next week I'll ply a bit at the pawn shops.
posted by gibletquesterrs at 9:49 AM
<< Home