Le R*ck est m*rt

{pour toujours}

  samedi, avril 01, 2006

Guy Mercier   {18:17} Welcome to the "Last of the Old Time Record Stores" THAT'S ALL FOLKS ! WE ARE QUITTING THE MUSIC BIZ! Weaselworld Saturday, April 1st, 2006 It's over. It is irrevocable. I'm tired. I'm through. We will be closing up shop after nearly 27 years. I wish that I could say that I'm happy about it. I'm not. I just can't see signing up for another couple of years of beating. I know that for some of you it has been comforting to know that we were still here. You could drop in every six months or so and say hello, but $15.99 for a compact disc, well, you could buy three pints of microbrew for that. Yeah, we were good about hanging up your posters and/or even having your band work out their kinks on a Saturday afternoon. I know no one ever showed up, but no one was showing up when we didn't have a band either. I haven't got quite back down to those $20 days that I had back in Iron Mountain, but we are getting close. I always thought that I could get out of any jam by working longer and harder, but I don't think any amount of work will help. I'm trying to ride a dying horse into the sunset and Ol' Paint isn't going to make it much farther. I had hoped to get a kiosk or an arrangement where I could download music for people who are too busy to play with their I-pods. My remaining customers want to spend their leisure time at leisure and not in front of a computer. The record companies won't let us do that. They've been trying to kill off retail for as long as I've been in the business (10 for penny Columbia Record Club?) and now that we are on the ropes they aren't going to relent. Wal-Mart and Virgin and Target might pressure them into allowing them to do it, but never an indie. That was the only hope we held out for. I should've known it was coming when they killed off the vinyl single and tried to get us to stock nonreturnable CD singles for $7.99. If the customer had wanted one song, they could always buy the $2 45 and now they wanted $8 for one song? You might as well buy the whole album for $16 (exactly!) and when they found out the one song was in the middle of some feces sandwich, the customer felt skewered. It was/is no wonder that they feel justified in downloading and copying for free. Payback is payback. Only stores like us are caught in the middle. The customer doesn't see our $12.20 wholesale cost and our nonexistent margins. We are the villains with a face. Are we surprised the people who used to buy a 45 for a buck or two will download the music they want for a buck? Nothing personal here, it is just common sense and the retailer doesn't fit into the equation. Are we surprised that people won't buy a disc after Sony uses their product to screw up home computers because they are so afraid of copying? I still haven't seen the guy again that bought the Dual Disc that wouldn't play the audio side. Do I blame them? On the plus side, I won't have to spend another evening, herded like cattle into a hot club to stand up for three or four hours, drinking overpriced beer and listening to the 'next big thing' try to get through a set without knowing how to tune their instruments (or worse, tuning them incessantly). "Oh yeah, they're good. Is that the hit? We don't need the encore." I won't have to deal with guy who is outraged that I'll only offer a buck for a Beatle album in fair shape or the outraged guy who is disgusted when I mark the same album at $3.99. I won't have to listen to anyone call me 'lazy' because I'm only here sixty hours a week and I'm not open from nine until midnight so they can look at my forty-nine cent records AND not buy any. I wore out a pair of knee caps standing behind this counter and even with surgery, I can't get to bending and crawling like I used to. I won't have to deal with distributors that sell the same product on Amazon or E-bay direct for less than they 'wholesale' it to me for. Of course, when I tried to buy from them on E-bay they screwed up the order and it took the wrong thing three weeks to get here. I won't have to deal with distributors who try to use a natural disaster to make me change my supplier. I won't have to feel slimy after listening to some of these guys. I won't have to answer burglar alarms at four in the morning. And I'll never have to hear another singer sound like Whitney Houston with her hand caught in a toaster (thanks, to Richard Roeper for that line). Well, I gave it 26 mostly good years and the big boys kicked me out of the bed and ran off with the trophy wife. Why give retail part of the buck when they can have it all? They will dwell in the house of the remix, mash-up, hippity-hop, beat box forever. We will never hear surf music or anything remotely creative again. They got the house and I got the 92 Cavalier in the driveway. Bitter, I guess. Nobody is going to want an old hack like me. Best Buy wants the guys with the landscaped hair who are masters of the X-box. Radio Shack is in trouble and closing stores. I had always dreamed about washing dishes and speaking English as a second language, but how many immigrants are standing in line for those jobs? So I'm going to sell strictly on-line and once I get rid of this stuff, I'm going to concentrate on other products. My employees have suggested that I open a plus size clothing store and buffet. That seems to be a sure fire idea. Seriously, I have recently come across the wonderful world of figurines. Do you know that a vintage "Love Is.." piece can sell for almost $200? I've seen them for a buck or two at garage sales. I think that the Cherished Teddies market is just as strong. I'm going to pursue that for a while. I think that I can be a great salesman for the aging baby boomer/old hippie women that are my contemporaries and Precious Moments buyers. When was the last time that anyone was nice to a middle-aged woman that didn't have plastic surgery? It'd be a damned sight easier than feigning interest in some wimpy singer/songwriter who is so damned depressed he elicits the mothering instinct from those whose biological clocks are still ticking. "Yes, I need you to be a better person.." Guys my age have nothing to look forward to except smelling bad and forgetting where they parked the car, but I think I can eek out a living. I didn't save too much from selling all those Men At Work albums, but I'll get by. So drop by and say good-bye. If you're interested, I'll sell you the second Precious Moments figurine at half price when you buy the first one at list. Remember those Two-fer Tuesdays? Mike We've made it 26 YEARS ..until the great white investor hunts us down and kills us dead... (Dave Marsh) 3346 North Paulina, Chicago IL 60657 (GOING OUT OF BUSINESS SINCE 1979) SITE UPDATED 4-1-06

  vendredi, mars 31, 2006

Guy Mercier   {10:31} vient d'arriver and don't let them clean things

  jeudi, mars 30, 2006

Guy Mercier   {23:17} du côté du bouleversement in struggle

Sébastien M.   {13:54} pack yr romantic mind, maybe, mais, vois-tu (lecteur, lectrice, à toi), le bouleversement, avec tous ces connards qui complicent plus ou moins consciemment, qui bafouent leur amour-propre et leur peu de dignité pour sauvegarder leur confortable précarité, le bouleversement : peau de balle au bac à sable, les critiques rock, les journalistes, les blogueurs (enthousiasme zéro vs colère zénith)

Guy Mercier   {13:11} ce que je veux dire c'est bien sûr que la réforme ne nous convient pas car la réforme va dans le sens du pouvoir, pour le conforter or ce que nous attendons plus ou moins activement c'est le bouleversement let's get out of the romance

Sébastien M.   {12:52} enthousiasme zéro et puis je trouve cette critique à gerber (fan ou pas)

  mercredi, mars 29, 2006

Guy Mercier   {00:22} je vous mets une image comme ça la réforme on s'en fout

  mardi, mars 28, 2006

Sébastien M.   {12:56} Je réécoutais récemment les Swell Maps et foutre, oui, ça rend caduque beaucoup de choses, beaucoup, même après tout ce temps passé... (enthousiasme zéro, présentement)

  lundi, mars 27, 2006

Guy Mercier   {23:11} je pense qu'eugene lui est indestructible

Guy Mercier   {22:27} ce qui revient à dire qu'il me reste 2 ans à vivre à ceci près que n'étant malheureusement pas junky il me reste un inquantifiable temps X fois la durée du single des WHO, exactement quoiqu'inquantifiablement car imprévisible combien de fois, combien de temps pour lire la sainte famille ou pour recevoir ma commande et

Guy Mercier   {15:45} en honneur de m*rt

  dimanche, mars 26, 2006

Guy Mercier   {22:28} en honneur de la vraie musique française de bon goût et tout nous écoutâmes Une raya de bambins livre aux flammes leurs landeaux/Une ribambelle de nains fout le feu dans l'métro/Une armée de gamins qui brûle les magasins/Trois millions de lycéens carbonisent leurs bouquins/Une concierge allumée fout le feu au quartier/Le président fêlé enflamme l'Elysée/Trois secrétaires en chaleur calcinent leur directeur/Une tribu de bonnes soeurs incendie l'Sacré Coeur/(Chorus)Laï laï laï laï laï laï laï laï laï laï laï.../Un trio d'grands brûlés fait exploser l'hosto/Et 5000 chimpanzés dynamitent le zoo/Des rastas éclatés c'est chaud dans le ghetto/Les feux dans la cité brûlent pour Géronimo/Des soldats cannibales rôtissent leur général/300 patrons qui craquent font sauter la baraque/Et un vieux bonze chinois se pétrole le minois/Le froid tue la fillette qui n'a plus d'allumettes/(Chorusse)/Les hooligans des stades préparent les jerrycans/Les jeunes chômeurs s'la donnent aux cocktails Molotov/Des iraniens enflamment le corps de l'Oncle Sam/Des squatters s'tapent un b?uf autour d'un grand feu d'keufs/Un gang de pyromanes se croit au paradis/Les pompiers en ont marre c'est la grève aujourd'hui/Il y a le feu partout c'est la fête des fous/Il y a le feu partout viv" le feu viv' les fous/(Choeurs slaves de la Jeunesse)/Un gang de pyromanes se croit au paradis/Les pompiers en en ont marre c'est la grève aujourd'hui/Il y a le feu partout c'est la fête des fous/Il y a le feu partout viv' le feu viv' les fous/(Choeur solo)/(Re-Chorusse)

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