Changin’ of the Guard
First it was The Shins’ Wincing the Night Away (Sub Pop) debuting at #2, now Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible (Merge) debuted at the same spot on the sales ranker Billboard Top 200.
What’s going on? These albums aren’t getting Clear Channel payola (or are they?). Aamer Haleem (now Matt Pinfield, what happened to you man?) isn’t talking about ‘em on VH1’s “VSpot” Top 20 countdown. How are these “indies” taking on the majors and winning? Oh yeah… The internet.
That blasted “series of tubes” is a thorn in the RIAA’s side once again. Not only is it allowing pirates to run rampant with bounty’s of copyrighted music but now it’s allowing Arcade fire to sell 92,000 CDs thus bumping American Idol contestants, desperate acoustic metal bands, and one of the greatest boy bands of all time (or at least in the past year).
One fact to note. Both Wincing and Neon leaked months prior to release. Stacking the evidence in favor of P2P being good for artists (profit from piracy). At least, good for independents. Britney Spears, you’re on your own.
There’s only one thing to wait for. Who’s going to be the first independent artist to debut at #1 (in recent time)?
Dharma and I were just discussing how much press the new Arcade Fire album was receiving. There has been news coverage on the band from major media outlets including the New York Times and NPR. I’m sure this too is helping to stoke sales. Rightfully so, for this album rox my sox.
He said “rox my sox.”
Considering, relatively speaking, my friendlessness since we moved from Detroit, I really haven’t had the opportunity to delve into the forefront of indie music (yes, by “using” my friends who have the stockpiles of such music…), so I don’t really know exactly what is fanning these flames. However, it is interesting to note that somehow, someway the internet is having some sort of measured effect for musical acts, which has mostly been a dubitable result of the proliferation of the internet since the mid-90’s. This is a good thing of course for artists, but not necessarily (although, personally, I would think it was good…) for major labels and the fucking shite they spit out.
Neon Bible is a good album, but pales in comparison to Funeral (what doesn’t?). As much as this band deserves all the praise heaped on them, the degree of middle-of-the-road hype they’ve achieved on the strength of just one relatively hard-to-get indie album continues to puzzle me. One would indeed be tempted to suspect some foul play… Doubts aside, I hope the Arcade Fire continue to prosper and deliver musical excellence and do not disintegrate under the pressure of being a multi-storey arena attraction to middle-aged, middle-browed professionals and suburbanites (this demographics made up at least 50% of the crowd during their latest string of totally sold-out shows at London’s Brixton Academy and a couple of intimate venues a few weeks before that).
You can check out my phone-shot vids of “Keep The Car Running” and “Rebellion (Lies)” on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9o8DPJ0jOM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7qVOrRYIlo