Fairly recently at Simon was cautiously celebrating the crew he was calling the "second-tier avant-classical/electronic guys", no not some university-based off-shot of the Hardcore 'nuum, but an aggregate of nutty professors and the probing early moog opuses of their fevered brows . Simon insisted that part of the charm in this music was its affordability, I know this was a self-professed "half-baked" assertion, Simon in blogging mode casually tossing off observations, but it really stuck in my throat. I think the remark opened the way for a daft one-upmanship across the blogosphere foundered on who could find the cheapest records.
OK, permit me the slightest self-indulgent paranoia, but er, was this all about me?
I couldn't help but factor in the Blissblogger's later remarks about the preposterousness of my even considering paying $250 for a record. Well I didn't buy the wax in question, but I have paid more than that for a record.
If you skirt round the auctions on eBay, or the racks of GEMM you'll see hundreds of deals going down like this the entire time. Put more strongly, if you're perusing the catalogues of serious international-level record dealers, you'll not find much you can buy under that price.
I know I'm lucky to be able to spend as much money as I do on records; but I work hard, and I choose to put some of that cash into music (thank fuck someone is buying it.
..) not on clubbing, booze or fags, though I ought to get out more often.
But really this isn't what stuck in my throat, what irritated me was the idea that the price tag on a record had anything whatsoever to do with anything. I mean, it's totally fucking immaterial isn't it? Money is nothing more than impediment to laying one's mitts on good music, it pisses one off that sometimes the hurdle is much higher than one would like, but what can you do?
To create a strategy by reverse logic, to deliberately buy records because they're cheap, well it's sheer bloody nonsense isn't it? It's just the same as succumbing to the logic that somehow expensive records are the only ones you want.
I believe that Simon is being much smarter than he gives himself credit for.
Fifteen or twenty years ago the records of what one might (equally casually) call the "first-tier avant-classical/electronic guys" were clogging up the bargain bins themselves. It was only circa 1996, around the ripening of IDM, that my dealer friends started selling the works of Parmegiani, Xenakis and Bayle to the likes of The Aphex Twin, Autechre, The Chemical Brothers and Andy Weatherall. Before then you couldn't give those records away.
What was it Simon paid for his Pierre Henry record on the Prospective 21 siecle label back in the day, 15 pence?
The records he's been picking up, as far as I can fathom, are by in large on the Nonesuch label. I contacted Nonesuch about three months ago to ask them to give me a tiny bit of assistance writing this piece, and they didn't even bother replying.
So if anyone from the label reads this I'd just like to say thanks for nothing you bunch of idiots. You've left me stumbling around in the dark. As per usual.
Anyway I've gleaned enough off the web to be able to fill in the history impasto.
Jac Holzman, the genius behind Electra records, The Doors, The Stooges, Tim Buckley, Nuggets etc became restless in the conventional rock marketplace. He decided it'd be a great idea if there was a label that would, in his own words, cater for "music lovers with more taste than money.
" His idea was to undercut labels like Vanguard and the majors and put out the cream of classical music at $2.50 a disc.
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