did you say you were lonely? i was just about to miss you;

lism. / avalanche, brian fallon, bruno mars, do some damage, ebay, family: cha, fopp, friends: (dal)lis, friends: neil milton, harry potter, hitRECord, hmv, independent record shops, joseph gordon-levitt, los campesinos!, lovemusic, monorail, prex, publishing, record store day, shops, sideonedummy, tesco, the gaslight anthem, the horrible crowes, the pop cop, vinyl / 2 Comments

My pal Miss America, who I still struggle to refer to as The Other Lis (because I am a child) is an active user of hitRECord, Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s collaborative art and production project. It’s a fantastic idea: members of the site upload their art and media – whether writing, photography, video or music – for other members to remix or resource to use to create something new. TOLis created the video above from various resources plus a night down the pub with a couple of friends. I’m in it, and so are some of my records. Believe me, you’ll know which bits.

I can never see myself going digital-only in terms of the music I collect and listen to. For one thing, it’s so much fun to leaf through physical artefacts a decade or so later and see how your tastes have changed (something I will be commenting on later in the week); and for another? Vinyl is just so pretty! I was through in Edinburgh at the weekend for more reasons than to just pick up the blood-red indie record store only edition of the Horrible Crowes‘ debut Elsie (this being Brian Fallon’s new project with Gaslight Anthem guitar tech Ian Perkins), but I’m thinking of pairing it with my bottle-green England Keep My Bones and wearing them as a pair of giant novelty Christmas earrings.

Tracking down the Horrible Crowes record had proved to be a bit of an ordeal. Beyond a bit of chat on the website of the label, SideOneDummy, about the existence of a limited pressing of 1,500 copies for independent record stores nobody seemed to know anything about it. Monorail couldn’t even tell you who the band were, perhaps because they don’t wear scarves or eat tofu, and LoveMusic was apologetic if unable to help. Kev at Avalanche though? What a legend. He was on Twitter the next night telling me the record was on its way.

Speaking of Twitter… well, you might have seen Kev get into a wee spat on there recently with Welsh indie pop band Los Campesinos! (if you didn’t, The Pop Cop has helpfully screenshot the whole thing). Basically he was calling out the band for making some preorder deal available to fans ahead of the release date. Personally like most music fans I reckon a band can do what it likes with its own music whenever it likes and if the fans get to benefit, so much the better, but what a few people seem to have missed is that the shop owner’s outburst came in response to a tweet from the band criticising some anonymous venues for charging more to make a show all ages. In context then, what he was saying that within the music industry, everybody’s screwing everybody else over. The difference of course is that in selling somebody else’s product his argument isn’t the same, but that doesn’t make the debate a less interesting one to have.

Don’t we all have that dream though: a long, lazy afternoon spent browsing the racks of an indie record store (it always looks like PREX in my head, because nowhere does vinyl quite like it) picking up something based on the cover art alone… finding something you’ve wanted all your life and something by a favourite artist you had no idea existed… Jack Black snarking at you from behind the counter… okay, maybe not that last bit…

As an ideal? It sound incredible.
As a business model? Kinda sucks.

This is something we talk about a lot at home only in relation to the publishing industry, particularly around 10pm on a Wednesday evening when himself realises that he hasn’t thought of a DSD topic yet. So we wonder whether it’s right to charge less for an ebook than a paperback even though what you should really be valuing is the work you’re selling, or if it’s fair that Tescos can flog the new Harry Potter or whatever the kids are reading these days for five quid along with the pasta and the washing powder. You’re a right thinking, fiercely independent soul of course but there is a bloody recession on and maybe the price cut is seriously the difference between buying it or not buying it. Or it’s not even as bad as that but the two quid you could save if you order it on Amazon instead is a bus to work, or a cup of coffee with a friend you haven’t seen in ages. You tell yourself that if you make this purchase on the cheap you can buy two more next month, once the rent comes out. And maybe you will. Maybe you’ll never get around to it.

Would I have bought that Horrible Crowes record at Avalanche had Kev not gone to all that trouble sourding me the indie record store edition? Almost certainly not, but then remember you have to factor in the £11.40 off-peak train fare. Honestly? If I want something on release day then generally I will preorder from the label or artist, particularly if they throw in a fans-only treat like beer coasters (Xtra Mile) or an immediate download of the first single (Ryan Adams). If I forget, well, Fopp is probably the most logical stop on the way home from my city centre office and it’s not an indie record store anymore. Really it’s like new owner HMV before HMV turned into iPod Accessories Superstore b/w 2 for £10 (they still stock stuff that isn’t “chart”, whatever that means these days, but they hide it in the basement where Neil Milton used to curate the “specialist” music and you feel like a bit of a criminal because nobody ever told you what a Bruno Mars is*).

And yet, I’m the first to whinge when another independent business goes to the wall. Is there an easy answer? Probably not. The Horrible Crowes’ release is actually the first time I’ve heard about a band doing something like this, outside of Record Store Day (an international holiday for eBay touts) anyway, but I guess you can get away with giving a cut of your profits to the indies when your other band (eee!) is selling records in quantities Los Campesinos! can only dream of. Still no reason to call Kev a dick though, yeah? Yeah. Cool.

*To be fair to my sister, if I hadn’t phrased the question in such a deliberately antagonistic way she probably would have done.