Aretha Franklin will kick off the Super Bowl festivities, accompanied by New Orleans singer Aaron Neville, New Orleans pianist Dr. John, and a 150-person backing choir.
Now, the New Orleans tribute is nice and all, and I’m sure the choir will sound lovely…but does the Queen of Soul really need any backup at all?
Okay, so seven or eight years ago I’m standing in the J. Crew store on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, doing a little Christmas shopping, when I hear a fantastic cover version of “Deck the Halls” over the in-store sound system. I’m a sucker for a great Christmas cover, so naturally I walk up to the front counter to ask the cashier about the song.
“Is this Book of Love?” I ask, thinking it a rhetorical question. What other band has a female lead singer with such a beautifully bored delivery?
The guy behind the counter shrugs. “I have no idea. We use a music service. They just send us the CDs, and we play ‘em.” He looks behind me, at the long line of busy holiday shoppers. He doesn’t offer to go around back and check the CD’s case to confirm the artist for me. I can’t really blame him for that. Much.
So I leave the store, the syncopated fa la la’s echoing in my head, certain that it had to be Book of Love, and that a little searching on the Muze system will help me track it down.
Fast-forward seven or eight years…and I still don’t have the song. Muze had no record of it. iTunes doesn’t either. Neither do any of the dozens of Christmas music compilations I’ve checked. They have versions by SheDaisy, and Whitney Houston, and any number of other artists…none of whom sounds remotely like Book of Love.
My greatest Christmas wish is that someone out there can help me find this song. The song might be by Book of Love…or it might not. The vocal is a dead ringer for BOL’s Susan Ottaviano, but maybe it’s just someone doing a great impression of her. The lyrics are standard “Deck the Halls”, but the arrangement tweaks the melody a bit–particularly on the fa la las. Instead of “fa la la la LAAA, la la la LAAA”, it’s more like “FA la la la, la LALA la la.” Got it?
So, how about it? Have you heard it? Can you find it? Will you help make a young(ish) girl’s long-held Christmas dream come true?
Never mind the rampant, royalty-free downloading going on via myriad unauthorized web sites. Forget about how iPod culture has made buying actual CDs obsolete. Those issues are old news. The fresh new worry wrinkling music executives’ foreheads is the new satellite radio receivers being produced by XM and Sirius, which will allow users to record satellite broadcasts, manage song inventories, and create playlists–much like Apple’s popular iTunes software.
The key difference? Labels get significantly lower compensation for music played on satellite radio than they do for songs sold on iTunes or purchased on a CD. Thus, the black hole draining the music industry of its revenue widens a little further…and sales of Zantac and Excedrin rise a little higher.
Jann Wenner will follow in the footsteps of Donald Trump and (shudder) Martha Stewart with a new series for MTV in which Rolling Stone will give internships to several budding music journalists, who will then compete for a long-term contract with the magazine.
According to Wenner Media CMO Gary Armstrong, producers are seeking college students who are “telegenic, have an interesting personality and are interested in music journalism.”
Wenner insists that he will be taking a back-seat role in the show–unlike Herr Trump and the Domestic Diva–and that there will be no group housing or hot tubs to facilitate carousing among the contestants. No, these good-looking twentysomethings will demonstrate their interesting personalities by…sitting in front of a computer typing all day. A riveting television formula, to be sure.
“[I’m] not interested in hookups,” Mr. Wenner explained. He then had to excuse himself, as he had Mick Jagger waiting in his office.
They did it with DVDs first: releasing an early, “no-frills” version of a given movie, and then following it up with a “special edition”, “director’s cut,” “hardcore geek nirvana” version–complete with deleted scenes, actor and director commentary tracks, alternate endings, and more.
But do we really need this for CDs?
Whether we do or not, record labels are increasingly jumping on the special-edition bandwagon. Mariah Carey’s “The Emancipation of Mimi” — which had already succeeded in selling 4 million copies following its initial release in April — spawned an “Ultra Platinum Edition”, with four new tracks, in mid-November. Usher, The Killers, Fitty, and even Elton John have all put out reissued, repackaged versions of their albums in the past year as well.
From the labels’ standpoint, it makes sense: Why spend the money to produce and promote a new album, when you can milk the old one a little longer by adding a few new tracks?
Here’s why: You’ll alienate your fan base. That is, you’ll alienate those fans who are still buying entire CDs legally, rather than ripping copies from friends or downloading the desired tracks for significantly less than the cost of a complete disc.
The same record labels who complain that downloading has destroyed their old revenue model…are seeking to piss off every one of the customers who still contributes to that model. Bought that Killers CD the day it came out? Sucker! Shoulda waited for the extra tracks. Now you’ve got to buy the whole thing all over again…unless you step over to the dark side, and simply download the bonus tracks instead.
Instead of working as intended, the “special edition” trend may simply backfire. Rather than serving as a de facto means of forcing people to replace their music catalogues (now that the days of cassette-to-CD collection conversion are long over), the new model might instead just train every person who still buys CDs legally to stop doing so. Why buy now, if the “good” version of the CD won’t be along for another few months? Honest, upright, CD-buying citizens will learn that it doesn’t pay to buy their favorite artists’ discs upon release…and so they will stop doing so. To tide themselves over until the “special” release, perhaps they will wander online…and never set foot in a CD store again.
That’s what happens when you bite the hands that feed you.
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