Sales
----------------
By Beppe Colli
June 13, 2010
It
happens, once in a while, that I feel a pinch of curiosity about the actual
sales of album x or song y, be they new or old; unfortunately, most of
the times there's no way I can fulfill my curiosity, and not for any lack
of trying on my part: with the obvious exception of most hits, and many
famous groups, information is scarce, and what's available often proves
to be pretty unreliable; sure, when it comes to recent stuff there's always
Soundscan, but the cost of the service - which is quite reasonable for
a "professional" kind of magazine - is well beyond the finances
of a mere "listener with pen" (and would I really consult those
charts that often, anyway?). So, in the end, every time fresh, reliable
information comes my way I feel very glad indeed.
Last month, I got some figures about the
chart performance of a few names which were totally unknown to me, the
main exception to this being album Nobody's Daughter, by US group Hole:
chart position, #138; sales this week, 3,823 copies; percentage change,
-44; weeks on the charts, 3; cumulative sales, 32,560 copies. It's quite
obvious that in this case sales had been weak: lotsa publicity, Courtney
Love appearing practically everywhere, her being a famous name and so on,
it goes without saying that sales expectations could not have been this
low.
Also by chance, not too long ago, I happened
to learn about US sales of Randy Newman's first album (of same name) at
the time of its first US release (1968). In his review of Newman's second
album, 12 Songs (which appeared in the issue of US magazine Rolling Stone
dated April 16, 1970), Bruce Grimes wrote: "Eventually Reprise redesigned
the cover and gave the album away to those willing to write for it; sales
have still not passed 4,500 copies". A weak performance, to say the
least. But what about its (quantitative) framework?
The
recent re-release of the world-famous Rolling Stones album Exile On Main
Street in a multitude of formats is without a doubt one of the top stories
of recent months (I'm pretty sure readers will agree). One thing has to
be noticed: being hyper-conscious of the financial power of their legend
(which is reason #1 for all those expensive concert seats), The Rolling
Stones had avoided paying literal homage to their vinyl past, obviously
fearing that - alas! - time was not on their side anymore; and so, many
were surprised to see the group organize a huge campaign in order to promote,
first, the Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out (the much-lauded live album with the donkey
on the cover from 1969) box; then, the huge monolith bearing the name Exile
On Main Street, with engines already running hot about a new Some Girls
re-release in the not-too-distant future.
I have to confess I was quite skeptical about
sales: is there anybody on earth who does not own (at least) a copy of
Exile On Main Street? Or many copies, in different formats/editions? As
facts have showed, I was totally wrong. "Rolling Stones' Exile on
Main Street tops UK chart", wrote (on 23 May 2010) the BBC website
(it was observed that this was the first time since Marc Bolan's death
that an album of previously released material got to #1 - the first week
of its being released!). Meanwhile, on May 26, US sources wrote that "Exile
on Main Street will debut tomorrow at No. 2 on the US Billboard charts";
those were the figures for the albums occupying the three top spots: Glee
Soundtrack, 136,000 copies; Exile..., 76,000; The Black Keys, 73,000, with
the album Exile Rarities (debuting at no. 27) selling 15,000 copies.
While I was pondering the meaning of this, new, incredible, figures
came my way. These news having appeared in a number of publications, my
source being the article by Paul Resnikoff for Digitalmusicnews.com, dated
Monday, May 17, 2010, bearing the title: "2% Of Music Purchases Make
91% Of Sales In 2009". Of course, everybody paid attention to these
astounding figures:
"just 2.1 percent of all albums sold managed to cross the 5,000-mark,
a group that made up 91 percent of total sales". But what was really
astonishing was the total number of albums released in the course of 2009
(also, the dangerous implications of this): 98.000! Hence, the question asked
by the writer: "How does anyone launch a career in such a super-saturated
market?". It's quite apparent, in fact, that those 5,000 copies sold
by Newman's first album mean different things, when compared to the same
5,000 copies as sold by an album released today.
But how many albums were released annually,
ten, or twenty, years ago? Well, while I'm sure this kind of information
is available, somewhere, I found this quote from a Robert Christgau book
posted by a writer in a Web Forum to be quite stunning: "Between 1988
and 1998 the number of recordings released annually increased tenfold,
to something like 35,000".
There are many (disturbing) implications
to be derived by this. I'll choose a few.
A few months ago I sent an e-mail message featuring this question: "As
a listener, these days I often feel like I'm in a rut. Would you please
tell me a few names of albums you've really, really enjoyed lately?".
This message was sent to half a dozen US musicians that I know for a fact
to be active, intelligent, omnivorous listeners. It was after I sent the
message that it dawned on me that I had forgotten to mention that it was
only new releases I was talking about, but I decided not to worry, the
context of my question being clear enough, or so I thought, to qualify
my meaning. I have no problem admitting I was quite surprised by what I
got: nobody had mentioned any new releases, with the obvious exception
of re-releases; there was a huge chapter about live concerts (with mucho
space being given to contemporary classical); as a kind of coda, somebody
wrote "If it's new stuff you wanted to know about, I'm afraid I have
to say that (...)".
(Those willing to differ for mercenary reasons,
please consider this: one cannot possibly argue that those 2,000 albums
reviewed annually, which by the way are a highly self-selected sample sent
by record companies and distributors, are - purely by chance - "the
best" from a universe of 98,000 albums, 96,000 of which one has never
listened to. I really hope that nobody, post-modernists especially, will
propose any arguments of an inductive nature.)
It's
been such a long time since I've seen Mick Jagger - also, Keith Richards
- travel the world promoting a piece of merchandise bearing the Rolling
Stones brand. Interested readers wil easily find lotsa videos and words
all over the Web.
It was about a month ago that I happened
to read, on a US Forum, a thread where many comments appeared about an
interview with Mick Jagger that was linked there. Unfortunately, the link
worked up to a certain date, the date being now well in the past. But I
understood that the very same text appeared in the most recent issue of
the Italian edition of Rolling Stone magazine. I was quite surprised by
Jagger's patient attitude when confronted with an interviewer who didn't
sound as he was well-versed in any matters concerning re-mixing and re-mastering
(I have to admit I was quite pleased that in this day and age, stuff appears
about these matters). I especially liked Jagger saying (here I'm quoting
from memory)
"but today a new re-master makes it possible for one to modify an album
in ways that are quite similar to a re-mix", hence: "I could re-mix
an album, and not tell anybody".
The most interesting interview I read was
the one with Jagger and Richards by Alex Pappademas
which appeared in GQ magazine, April 16,
2010, with the title "Mick Jagger and Keith Richards on Exile on Main
St.".
So: which is the best source of information
at one's disposal to read about Exile On Main Street in its present state,
when compared to the previous editions? This is easy: I had the chance
to read a thread on the Web, which in its third part amounted to about
1,000 posts (it was a very long conversation). Those who are in a hurry
will be obviously better served by a svelte newspaper article, the best
one I happened to read being the one by Neil McCormick which appeared on
May 24th, 2010 in the blog of UK newspaper The Telegraph under the title
"The Rolling Stones make the charts sound human again". Why do
I say
"best"? Because, after stating the facts for those of us not "in
the know", McCormick clearly explains the difference between the sound
of the original, though now re-mastered, album, and those "ten unfinished
tracks which we've finally completed", starting with the volume of the
vocals; and it's a convincing line of thought that readers are invited to
explore in full.
As
we all know by now, the number of things competing for our attention in
the modern world is potentially infinite. Hence, a "pointillistic" type
of attention that greatly benefits from being confronted with "simple" objects
which appear to us in an "easy to digest" form. But objects from
the past are rarely "simple" (the same being true of those from
today, with the obvious exception of those which are designed to be this
way). So, an object gets "translated" into an elementary formula
which will make it easy for the consumer to "get" it: a few inches
of ink on a page, a few minutes to read about it.
Exile On Main Street has become an innocent
victim of this kind of hyper-simplification process: "the album that
was recorded in a hot, humid basement in the South of France, while the
group enjoyed every kind of excess known to man"; a label that's the
perfect mythological definition, on a par with David Bowie's
"Berlin trilogy" and Neil Young's "triptych trilogy".
To me, Jagger sometimes appeared as he was
very surprised by the strong belief on the part of quite a few interviewers
to consider Exile On Main Street in this mythological guise, though Jagger
- calendar in his hands - was ready to offer sound evidence to the contrary
(this is not the first time, by the way, that Jagger has argued in favour
of the "correct version", as per available evidence). And I really
suspect it must have not been easy for him to see that it was not the music
that was the main point of interest here, but a legendary album "that
was recorded in a hot, humid basement in the South of France, while the
group enjoyed every kind of excess known to man".
But what can a poor boy do, in order to know
more about the actual recording process of Exile On Main Street? And what
could those people who wrote about the album without first doing their
homework possibly do in order to learn more about it all? Well, it's easy.
Step one: Pay a visit to a site featuring
a Rolling Stones chronology, for in., timeisonourside.com.
Step two: Look for Exile On Main Street.
EXILE ON MAIN STREET
Recorded:
June 16-July 27, 1970: Olympic Sound Studios,
London, England
October 21-Mid-November 1970: Rolling Stones
Mobile Unit, Mick Jagger's home Stargroves, Newbury, England
June 7-October 1971: Rolling Stones Mobile
Unit, Keith Richards' home Nellcôte, Villefranche-sur-mer, France
December 1971: Sunset Sound Studios, Los
Angeles, USA
Overdubbed
& mixed:
December 1971-February 1972: Sunset Sound
Studios, Los Angeles, USA
March 24-25, 1972: Wally Heider Studios,
Los Angeles, USA
© Beppe Colli 2010
CloudsandClocks.net | June 13, 2010
