Pedro no compra Joni Mitchell y Kirsty MacColl

Wanna buy a CD of Joni Mitchell? Carly Simon?

No. You don't. Free download maybe. But Joni thinks you're a shit, and won't put out new music. She knows that as evil as the "music industry" is, so are the mephisto devil demonoid mega-crapload skullfuckers and "pirates" who have killed off record stores and made the music die.

Carly had to go try and peddle her stuff at Starbucks hoping Yuppies would have enough left over for a CD after their $20 latte.

Kirsty MacColl? She got killed by a Mexican and no charges were ever brought against him. Hey hey, he was just joy-riding too fast in his boat and what the fuck, he never heard of Kirsty or her music. Even though Kirsty actually put out a whole album of tropical-tinged music. She was a GOOD liberal, our Kirsty, but the Latinos didn't buy her stuff, the white Brits did, and white Brits don't mean shit to Mexican politicians or the legal system there...so no justice for HER. Ever.

And that leads me to THIS:

Si. Pedro is not buying Joni or Carly, he's buying what you see above.

Whites are now a minority in some major cities. White artists are being ripped off by whites who know how to download off the Internet. So record stores try to sell what's left: garishly loud sound-alike salsa-reggae CDs to those "of color."

J&R is located in the Wall Street area. That's right, where the wimps of "occupy Wall Street" slunk away as hedge fund dealers and bankers chuckled. J&R used to have rock star signings. Now that Tower and HMV are gone, they're one of the only big CD-sellers around. But now...they can't stay in business on back catalog Joni. They can't have that huge classical record section staffed with people who could name the melody you were humming or direct you to the best version of a Schubert quintet (of which they'd have a dozen different ones!)

Despite J&R being where affluent whites are...and a tourist destination right near the Statue of Liberty and World Trade Center...they're taking out ads to get Latino doormen and bus drivers and janitors into their shop.

Because the Wall Street bunch know how to download, the tourists from Holland know how to "share" for FREEEEE, and it's too bad that Joni and the others know the truth, which is that Spotify and iTunes and eMusic are worse than the music biz ever was in terms of royalties, and that mp3 sales are nickel and dime rip-offs for the artists, and the only thanks on the Internet is "thanks to the original uploader."

In a few years nobody will know who Nick Lowe is, not even Nick Lowe. Same for Graham Parker. Same for Eric Burdon. Same for Carly Simon and Joni Mitchell.

Was it really so bad when we bought a Joni Mitchell one week, and a Nick Lowe a few weeks later, and had some joy if a bargain bin had a back-catalog item or a used or promo album cheap? Wasn't it fun to discover a wonderful new artist just by looking at the album art, seeing the session players and maybe reading a lyric on the back of the jacket and taking a chance? Isn't it true that the most enduring stuff in your collection was acquired just as I described, and not via torrents of shit you downloaded and never even listened to? How many new artists do you listen to...and how many can get your attention when they're almost all self-producing and tossing it on YouTube and Spotify where it's lost in the maze and mess?

Que lastima.

Don't hold your breath waiting for new albums by Joni or Carly, or a re-issue of rare Kirsty, or the chance to discover fantastic new talent as when you cracked open those albums by Elvis Costello and the other Stiffs, or discovered Split Enz or Squeeze or The Smiths.

Hasta luego.