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COLUMBIA HOUSE RECORD CLUB.
[AVAILABLE SINCE: 25 MARCH, 1999]
I joined the Columbia House CD Club recently. I think I was feeling
depressed (i must have been feeling depressed -- volunteering
for a product/marketing relationship of this nature can only mean
my life was missing something very important that i typically
convinced myself i could plug up with some overstock cds.) and
I think I also fancied the idea of receiving 14 albums that I
probably used to own in my pre-CD music collecting youth and never
liked enough to purchase on crossover media, but thought would
nonetheless round out my collection nicely. If you listen to a
lot of music -- I think I do -- then you can assure yourself that
ordering CDs through a clearinghouse like Columbia House is the
only way to justify nostalgia purchases that you will certainly
never listen to. (chances are your relationship with these albums
is pretty much over but sometimes, when you're feeling like you've
gone horribly long somewhere, you might write them a letter or
call their mom for their latest phone number in an effort to retrace
the fouled-up steps of your life to a better time.)
Honestly, the process of ordering these CDs was much more gratifying
than actually owning them again. So many sense-memory triggers
were fired as I clicked through their vast library of unwanted
titles. ("oh, should i grab COMBAT ROCK? it's only 1/14th
of a penny.")
So now I'm sitting around with a landfill-worthy pile of dated
eighties rock albums. (or worse -- i actually ordered the X 2-CD
greatest hits collection because my love for them is too limited
to fret over the classic credibility dilema of purchasing a collection
over individual albums. again, if you listen to a lot of music
you will understand the snobbery of buying 5 albums by some band
over buying the greatest hits album with the only 5 songs you
like by that band. and if you don't understand this level of myopic
consumption, bless you and your Rolling Stones Hot Rocks
collection. truthfully, when you are used to listening to one
kinda music for a really long time and you can suspend personal
issues surrounding sullying your record collection with a bunch
of unfeeling greatest hits compilations, places like Columbia
House will help you with a selection of greatest hits by bands
you know you SHOULD like but don't yet know if you DO like. Willie
Nelson? Booker T and the MGs? The Dramatics? The
Kelly Family?)
Which reminds me: there are some bands that I think ONLY have
greatest hits collections. If not, I definitely don't know anyone
with a single studio album by these artists. The king of all greatest
hits bands is, I think, The Steve Miller Band. Does anyone own
a Steve Miller studio album? No. But for some reason there are
about 30 million people who rock barbecue-hard to that greatest
hits album. Did you know that Steve Miller has over 15 studio
albums? Damn, Maurice, that's a lot of PRICE BREAK stickers to
distribute internationally.
There's a great, friendly record store in Manhattan called OTHER
MUSIC (I'm a record store name-dropping fool!!). While I have
no documented proof to support my theory (and have recently been
given information to suggest my theory is pure pap), I have always
assumed they gave themselves that name based on the Columbia House
form that asks you which genre of music you listen to most frequently.
Everyone who fancies himself just a little too cool for direct
marketing has the opportunity to check a box labeled "other".
OTHER MUSIC opened right around the corner from TOWER RECORDS
which some may have regarded as economic suicide but which I've
always thought was the coolest meek-shall-inherit move they could
have ever made. I love OTHER but it makes me feel like a bit of
a square because I often find myself with a pile of jingly, maudlin
american indie pop while all the serious music nerds (the ones
who wear earplugs no matter what band they are watching perform)
politely rummage through antiseptic-sounding electronic and ambient
artist selections such as ANDROID GHOSTE or SUBDIVIDED RADIOISOTOPE
BOMBARDMENTS.
(i'm double-square for mocking electronic music but i guess i'd
take a sad Smog song with words like "i was raised in a pit
of snakes/blink your eyes i was raised on cake" over amon
tobin's explorations in meter any old stinking day.)
(now i'm triple-square for defending my double-squareness. that's
the curse of my generation: can't do anything, can't say anything
without an accompanying analysis. makes listening to my brand
new copy of The Replacements' Tim a whole lot less fun.)
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