Saturday, July 26, 2008

FBO: 'Applauds Paul Westerberg/Amazon'

ALORS! FBO FRIENDS FOR FREE, ALBUMS FOR $0.49
The FBO -- stranded from its .Mac email account due to a change by the Mac during the FBO symposial trip to Russia -- has long started to doubt the worth of the iTunes download costs and has supported Amazon's recent emergence as a cheaper alternate. The FBO doesn't support unchecked free downloads, but feel the industry hasn't found the suitable middle ground of pricing now that we, the consumers, are just buying air and not CD cover prints outs and the like.

Presently the FBO partner Silver Jews has released its new single 'Strange Victory, Strange Defeat' for free at Amazon. See here for the FBO/Silver Jews collaboration a few months ago.

That's nothing compared by the latest tactic by Paul Westerberg, a once embittered leader of the Replacements who used his solo career to lash out at critics and record buyers who moved on to the Goo Goo Dolls and Nirvana instead of his catalog.

His latest album is the 43-minute 49:00, available as a single track for $0.49 at Amazon. The album is guilty over being overly cute at times as a proxy of a found cassette tape with songs cutting in/out, but we respect it as a statement towards the destruction of the album, where people pick and choose the songs they want by lumping all the songs on a single track. It's the equivalent of responding to the overblown bass-less rock group scene by adding a second bass player, or sharing the bill with your bass player, as Lou Reed did with his long-time bass player Fernando Saunders during a 2003 tour.



FBO Admin
Mobile/Semi-Permanent HQ -- Brooklyn, NY

2 comments:

EdLavender said...

is that why so many bands are using vintage keyboards,often multiple keyboardists in their bands as a statement of the decline in classical music attendance?

Robert Reid said...

Perhaps not. Paul Westerberg imitates a dated medium that compromises the product, while old keyboards look cool and still sound fresh.