Back for the weekend, gathering up mail and goodies before heading back for the final two month stretch on Hemlock Grove. A pile of goodies awaited, including:
Sugar, da da DAH da da da, ahh honey honey... yes, "Sugar Sugar" by the Archies managed to impress itself on my cerebrum from the moment I cut the single off the back of a Corn Flakes box (!) and slapped it on my semi-toy record player (pennies taped to the needle!) back in the day. And today I'm listening to Mickey Dolenz of The Monkees do a rocked up version on his new CD "Remember." Mr. Dolenz has released several solo records since the demise of the Monkees, and on his latest he covers songs ranging from The Beatles' "Good Morning Good Morning" to Bread's "Diary" (what a weeper!) to, yes, a rocked up version of "Sugar Sugar." He also redoes a few Monkees hits, like "I'm A Believer." What can I say. I loved the Monkees when I was a wee lad and the Mick managed to hit my sweet spot with a bunch of these covers. In other words, I like it...
On the other hand, in head scratching fashion, I was wandering through Amazon the other day looking at varied and sundry, and noticed there are a lot of generic "tribute" albums for sale, usually as Mp3 downloads. These kind of baffle me. For instance, there are at least a half dozen "Tribute to Bruce Springsteen" selections that, when sampled, prove to be mostly bland recreations of the original tracks. Now, going WAY back, there was a market for cheap soundalike recordings of the hits... these recreations would be packaged on (vinyl) albums like "15 Top Hits By Today's Superstars!" and sell for half the price of regular albums at discount stores. But are there really a lot of folks out there who would rather pay $8.99 for a soundalike album as opposed to say $9.99 for the real deal? Or maybe I'm missing something entirely... maybe there are enough uninformed consumers who just click and buy before reading the fine print to make these "tributes" profitable. Or collectors insane enough to want every possible permutation of tune from their fave artist?
It's still a baffler...
1 comment:
Uninformed and unsuspecting people is the explanation. People buying them as 'gifts' who don't know the difference (many of us remember mom or dad giving us a 'Beatles' LP that wasn't really the Beatles) Also, people who are simply 'good natured' enough to not understand that there are a lot of rip-offs out there and don't read the fine print.
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