Mark Learns About a Label: Rounder Records

I always thought of Rounder Records as a sleepy folk-music label, a place to go for Woody Guthrie re-releases and the like. Then, late last year, I came across the rollicking album Ode to Sunshine on Rounder by roots-rock band Delta Spirit. And then their Alison Krauss collaboration with Robert Plant, Raising Sand, won five Grammys. Clearly, I have not been paying attention to what this Massachusetts-based imprint has been doing.

Rounder has its share of releases that appear to be an attempt to make a quick buck on nostalgia (a new Dennis DeYoung album is one, sad example). With their major artists, however, Rounder has built up a roster of talent that stays true to its identity as a home for Americana while reaching out to listeners who have no particular interest in the genre. Records such as Ode to Sunshine and Raising Sand, both clearly rooted in traditional American music, are good rock records that anyone can love.

Founded in 1970 by Cambridge folkies Ken Irwin and Bill Nowlin, Rounder’s first release in 1971 was a recording by 76-year-old banjo player George Pegram. In the late 1970s, they started putting out albums by George Thorogood, raising their profile and earning them some cash. In addition to Alison Krauss, which began recording for them in 1987, and Delta Spirit, Rounder is home to jazz singer Madeline Peyroux and Bela Fleck, whose Christmas album Jingle All the Way also won a Grammy this year.

Personal injury lawyer and amateur music scholar Michael Scully recently published a book on Rounder and you can check out the Rounder Records website for more information.

Jock Honors Amoeba, Explains Death of Music Industry

One-time journeyman basketballer Paul Shirley recently posted a tribute to Amoeba music on his ESPN.com blog. A nostalgic ode to record-buying by a guy who’s clearly a huge music fan, Shirley’s piece inadvertently addresses two important reasons for the downfall of major labels and the CD format they held onto for so long.

For Shirley, shopping in Amoeba took him back to a time in his life when a record store was about discovery, a visceral experience that brought him closer to the world of music.

I remembered why I like to do my music shopping like a bipedal organism. It’s fun to be at record stores. I like the posters. I like the clacking sound the CDs make as people bang them together. I like watching the nerdy girl’s eyes light up when she finds an old PJ Harvey album. It’s all tangible; it’s real reality, as opposed to the virtual kind offered up by a computer, a mouse and a credit card.

We hear and read a lot about how the music industry alienated hardcore music buyers like Shirley and, in doing so, practically killed themselves. As Steve Knopper points out in his new book, Appetite for Self-Destruction, by letting the musical homes of Shirley and other loyal fans shut down, they turned away the very people who were willing to keep the CD–and its tasty profit margins–alive.

Another one of “big music’s big mistakes,” as Knopper calls them, has been keeping the price of music too high. Shirley’s trip to Ameoba reminded him that, as a youth, he “could rarely justify paying $12 for a new album.” People like Shirley love to explore and to share their discoveries, but with discs priced at $12–typically more–and with their stores shuttered, they’ll save their money and go online, where they’ll quickly find trying out music at home for free isn’t so bad.

Cheesy Classical Music You Should Know: Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto

As a kid, I first came across classical music in a commercial that ran on TV for one of those compilations that promised to send you on a journey to an enchanted land filled with enduring musical wonders. Most of the music came off to me as pretty well all the same, but there was one piece that stuck out from the rest.

The opening of Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto, with the pianist pounding out the beat behind the thick syrup-pour of strings, seemed at once completely out of place with the other “relaxing classics” and their epitome. While other pieces whispered apologetically, Tchaikovsky’s concerto yelled, You are going to listen to some beautiful classical music now! It was unashamedly, flamboyantly, cheesy music.

It’s a staple of the repertoire today–a favorite piece of classical-music cheese–but when Tchaikovsky’s concerto premiered in Boston back in 1875, reviewers were, at their most forgiving, skeptical of its staying power and, at their most aggressive, outright dismissive. A Russian critic panned the piece as “like the first pancake … a flop”; one Beantown writer described it as “difficult” and “strange,” asking “can we ever learn to love such music?”

Since its ignominious premiere, many have acquired a taste for this stinky piece of musical lindberger, and during the Cold War the piece became a source of national pride–ironically, for Americans.

In 1958, a young Texan named Van Cliburn shocked Moscow’s musical cognoscenti–and the Soviet party bigwigs–by winning the first International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition with a program that included Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1.

Coming after the launch of Sputnik and at the dawn of the Space Race, Van Cliburn’s win made him an unlikely hero at home: he was welcomed back with a ticker-tape parade in New York City and was hailed on the cover of Time as “The Texan Who Conquered Russia.” His recording of Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto won a Grammy and went on to become the first platinum-selling classical album.

Almost 40 years later, in 1987, Van Cliburn stepped into the Cold War spotlight again, emerging from retirement to entertain Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan at the White House.

Classical Online CD Retailer Offers Downloads

The popular online classical-music CD retailer Arkivmusic.com announced last week that it is now offering music downloads in MP3 format, beginning with five new releases from the budget-price label Naxos. The company promises to expand its offerings in the future.

Arkivmusic.com, founded in 2002, has built a loyal following of classical-music aficianados who see the site as an independent, well-stocked alternative to Amazon.com and other online retailers. In particular, the site has earned kudos from the hard-core for offering on-demand CD reissues of out-of-print material from major labels, a program that has been active since March 2005.

For years, people within classical music have held that the internet–and music downloading in particular–is an energizing force for their part of the music industry. Alex Ross, in a New Yorker article from October 2007, sees interest in the genre growing as listeners sample new classical music through iTunes and as a classical music culture of bloggers, independent retailers, and music services galvanize the faithful.

Most on the supply side, though, see the internet as a cheap and easy way to get their material out into the market. In October 2005, the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra became the first orchestra to sell their live recordings online, and, at around the same time, Universal Classics began selling download-only albums from the New York Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Klaus Heymann, founder of Naxos, once claimed that he only began seeing a return on his investment in the company when downloading came along, and claims that “we could live comfortable if from tomorrow we never sold another CD.”

How to Sell CDs–or Not

Most people think that the CD is finished (my office mate won’t shut up about it), but there are still some who hold out hope that the format will endure. Instead of blaming the steady drop in sales of hard-copy music on digital downloading, these true believers have set their sights on retailers.

Peter Kafka’s argument is simple and to the point: the big-box stores, which sell the most CDs of any retail category, don’t give recordings enough space. If people can’t find music, Kafka argues, they can’t buy it.

Coolfer blogger Glenn Peoples provides a more nuanced view, writing that retailers aren’t properly using the space they do devote to music. For Peoples, stores need to adapt to the changing behavior of most consumers, who have come to see music as an impulse buy. At the same time, labels need to provide retailers with high-end product to satisfy the small but steady demand of hardcore music fans, and retailers need to put the effort into properly merchandising it.

The success that Wal-Mart had with their exclusive sale of AC/DC’s Black Ice—according to the Wall Street Journal, the CD sold well over a million copies in its first two weeks of release–shows just what a properly set up record can do in big box stores. The failure of Chinese Democracy, on the other hand, will surely make the mass merchants reluctant to dive headlong into exclusivity deals in the future.

Independent stores also may provide a place for the CD. A couple of years ago, after Tower Records fell, shops such as Silver Platters in Seattle and Other Music in New York were poised to take advantage. But today these retailers are realizing that there was a reason Tower went broke, and are diversifying, offering used CDs (as is Silver Platters) and going so far as selling downloads through their websites (as is Other Music).