Posts by Simon Grigg
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My guess: Yesterday
Usually named as the 3 most performed songs of all time:
Stardust
Yesterday
SomethingWhen I'm 64 was actually written years before Pepper, pre-fame, but I think it's on the album because his dad turned 64 that year, and it kinda adds to the intentional musical hall-ness of the record.
Now, Pepper is a record that lost something in translation to CD. Within You, Without You should never come after Mr. Kite.
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where's the boom? what changed?
There were albums a plenty before that.
did it reflect in specific album sales ie multimillion sales of individual items - Sgt peppers shit loads but not anything else), or was it a market wide boom, in that all albums went up in sale.cos if its across the market it would seem like a change in attitude to the importance of owning recorded music in which case its a cultural change. no tie in to the advent of home taping though?
Firstly, nobody, as far as I can see, has said anywhere on this thread that there was a tie in to home taping, aside from you Rob.
Secondly..yes there were thousands of albums before Pepper but what changed things...nothing to do with a change in attitude to the importance of owning recorded music..the biggest selling records of all time were released in the 1940s.
Instead there were three things (and I'm talking the US, but where it led others followed)...firstly the arrival of programmed top 40 radio circa 1962, which had spread across the US about the time the second thing happened: the assasination of JFK. Bothl of which tied into the arrival on it's shores of the biggest musical phenomena of all time, The Beatles...a country needing a hit of good times had it delivered by a new radio format. But still, despite The Beatles selling very big, for the time, quantities of the albums you mention, the biggest selling US album of 1964 was the soundtrack to The Sound Of Music...kids still mostly bought singles as heard on Top 40.
The next thing was Sgt Pepper (which came after Pet Sounds and Blonde on Blonde, both of which inspired and are now seen as landmarks but were not massive sellers as Dylan simply didn't have the popular cultural penetration of The Beatles, and The BBs were a pop singles band who were not really taken seriously in the US). This far back it's easy to forget how much of a seismic wave Sgt Pepper caused. It was not just big, but it was the overwhelming cultural event of 1967, and was regarded as a whole unit ...almost as a 40 minute single. The album as the primary delivery mechanism for pop, which had now mutated into rock (although With The Beatles is now usually seen as the first 'rock' album style wise) was here.
Once again, as Danielle says, FM came along, at about the same time and ran with it.
That's your why.
Sinatra found out it ain't about being first but about being the first one that others notice....those albums hit a very small target market compared to The Beatles. You could also argue that James Brown Live At the Apollo was a concept album back in 1962.
Topographic Oceans
I think we can thank Yes for punk more than the rise of the album as a format.
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why was there a shift to having recorded music as a central cultural importance when before it had been less so?
There wasn't. The form they bought it in changed because of the flows of fashion, and the 13 year olds who screamed at the Beatles went to Woodstock
Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, for instance, owns both MySpace and several recording and music publishing interests; Time-Warner-AOL owns, of course, both AOL and the Warner Music Group
I'd be more comfortable with this guy if he knew his stuff...both the above are nonsense: Murdoch sold his record label in 2005 (FMR) and Time-Warner long ago (2004) divested themselves of WMG (owned largely by Edgar Bronfman, Jr)
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honestly, simon if you did say the reason for the boom I can't see it
To put it in it's most simplistic terms, the late 60s, early 70s boom was caused by, as I tried to imply, Sgt Pepper and it's heirs..the arrival of the rock band and the rock album. The mid 1970s to late 1970s, pretty much by disco, which had a big drop off in 1980-81 after when the recording industry entered a boom, firstly with Thriller and Dire Straits..those two acts kept the global industry alive until the much bigger boom and seemingly infinite money-tree of the compact disc from 84 onwards, which was when it all went totally nuts (and the germ of the mess that the industry is in now was planted).
Ironically during the 1981 malaise, whilst Sony and Philips were furiously trying to convince the majors and the big Indies, correctly, that the CD was the saviour of the industry, they were fighting it tooth and nail. There was nary a mention of the passionate sales pitches Sony's guy was doing at US label conventions (and getting soundly abused for by the likes of Jerry Moss, owner of A&M) in Billboard and Cashbox, which instead had endless rants about piracy. They were moving backwards from the future preferring to tout negatives for their woes, which had more to do with the failure of the recording industry to sign develop-able new artists during the disco boom when they were transfixed by the easy money.
And gosh, here we are again, 28 years later....
This kinda pulls all the strands together rather concisely
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Last month in Dubai, the hotel car from the Niwa Heights Hotel took us to a meeting at an industrial park. We'd agreed on a price with the hotel after they had convinced us not to use a meter cab. After leaving the meeting, on our return, the driver tried to triple the price or he'd dump us on the side of a highway in the desert.
I had to call the hotel on my cellphone who seemed little concerned when we finally made it back. It seems extortion was not unacceptable or worth an apology.
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The Quest on The Terrace
The Quest on Ponsonby Rd is one of the most execrable dumps on the planet.
'Why is Our Room not made up?'
'Sorry, she missed it'
"Can you do it now?'
'No, she's gone home'
'When?'
'Tomorrow is her day off too so we are not doing rooms then either...two days.'There is no CCTV in the carpark, and cars regularly get broken into as the gate is left open. You still have to pay the $26 per day carpark fee after this happens.
Bali's up there when it comes to shitholes, most of which I'm happy not to have stayed in but Danielle's plastic mattress covers are not unusual. One we did have the pleasure of was the putrid Aneka in Lovina, which had a green pool with floating plantlife, the breakfast included boiled sausages and burnt eggs from powder, the rooms had somebody else's sheets still on the bed and the toilet hadn't had the pleasure of a clean between guest until we screamed at the manager. We walked our bags through the fence after one night.
We treat ourselves at the Mulia in Jakarta. Designed by Versace and absolutely over the top in every conceivable way (you get 8 pillows in your gold splashed room). The breakfast is a in a room the size of a ballroom with about two dozen chefs serving every cuisine you may require or be tempted by...sushi next to dim sim next to Malay curries next to five different kinds of muesli and so on....all for about $110 a night.
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I thought you were saying the boom was caused by hometaping but its changed so much and so much was left out that I can't actually be sure and as defined by previous arguments I know we're not going to get it in one sentence from you now, are we. that would be too easy. :)
Rob, I'm sorry but this is why I was reluctant to get into this..you either don't read what I post or you misconstrue it. I fairly clearly noted the reason, or at least a major one, for the 70s and 80s booms a page or so back. Why do I need to repeat myself?
And then you continue that process throughout the following paragraphs. I don't need this frustration in my life
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I wonder how the Warner artists feel about that or if they were consulted.
They may be even more concerned that it's owner, widely perceived as having played a huge part in it's loss this year then paid himself a US$3m performance bonus. The recording industries' AIG moment.
(same man owns Flying Nun..see Russell's above comment)
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so what are you attributing that exponential boom to. surely not home taping, please no.
didn't I just explain that? Yes, I think I did.
To be honest I can't remember ever getting a tape with an album so I'm not sure how wide spread the practice was
You were not in the UK or Europe at the time. Not doing it in NZ hardly counts as significant or even noticeable to the global record industry. It was done withy breaking albums by newish acts. One I recall was The Psychedelic Furs' debut. I think that fairly easily counts as a hit album by an artist they were trying to break. The two definitions need not be exclusive.
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oh, so now you're specifically talking about albums as opposed to music sales in general.
Uh...no, same thing. An album sells for about 5 times what a single sells for.
And the population thing, as I pointed out before, is utterly irrelevant. Much of the growth was in first world countries many of which were almost population stagnant. And I'm talking country by country.
you're talking singles from albums in a bundle so lets call em singles packages shall we?
no, I'm talking albums. Nothing to do with singles. I have no idea where you got that from. A couple of labels gave away a blank TDK with albums by new acts to encourage you to tape it and give it to a friend.
And Russell's comment speaks to the recurring arguments many of us (most of us?) have made in this thread.
And yes, you did misread me..several times.