I'm not "connecting". I'm not wishing people an "awesome night" as I sign off my computer today. I'm not re-tweeting (very much). On occasion, I think I'm going to Tweet and instead I twart. I rarely throw out an LOL. Today, however, I uploaded a bunch of pics of me me to Facebook. Perhaps I'm a narcissist. Perhaps I`m a narwhal. Hard to tell. My nose seems to get larger with age.
So, to make it seem as if I am one of the social media cognesenti, I shall re-post my favourite blogs from times gone by. They are fantastic and insightful. I told you I was a narwhal.
NOTE: Wrote this post in July, 2007
Over the past few weeks, there's been a bit of controversy over Avril Lavigne allegedly stealing The Rubinoos I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend and using it as the basis of her hit, I Wanna Be your Girlfriend.
Well, there are certainly similarities , but I gotta wonder where Avril picked up that album, because it's been out of print for years - except it's now on the Best of Rubinoos 3 Disc set. Good for them - make hay while the sun shines.
But this blog isn't about plagiarism. It's about how I came to own The Rubinoos album close to 30 years ago. Every Saturday morning, my friend Ben and I would meet up fairly early and head down the to the Sam the Record Man store on the main drag of our city. Every Saturday Sam's had their major album sales - but not only that - as an incentive to come into the store and browse, they would pepper the racks with free albums. If you found one - it was free. No purchase required. I found The Rubinoos, and I think Ben found Lynx (crappy Can-Con - know for having included within, a full size poster of a hot chick wearing a leopard skin bathing suit).
The store was full every Saturday.
On other Saturdays, a gang of us would drive to Montreal and spend the whole day buying albums - then we'd come home and play them on a massive basement stereo and read the album covers - for hours.
This Saturday morning, I walked by the local HMV. It was empty. One person was browsing video games.
Now, I know the bricks and mortar record stores are tanking, but apart from the issues faced by the record industry, why aren't they even trying to help themselves? When was the last time you heard of an artist doing an in-store (for me - it was Pulp, 1997)? How much money do they expect to make off deletes? Throw 'em in the racks as a bonus for buying something else.
Now, this is predicated on people even caring about buying physical manifestations of music anymore. At the radio station where I work, we just recently took tally of our unclaimed prizes. Fully 65 per cent of the CD's we gave away were unclaimed after three months. For DVD's it was about 35 per cent unclaimed. All of our Tickle Me Elmo's from Christmas were claimed and we get huge redemption for movie premieres.
And to be honest, very few people I know sit in front of their stereos reading the CD cover. Stereos? That's anachronistic now too, isn't it? I think my stereo is in the storage room under the Christmas wrap. And I sure don't sit in there.
ADDENDUM - THIS STORE CLOSED IN MARCH, 2010. I hadn`t been in there since I wrote the blog above.
A BLOG FROM JULY 2007
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