How were they, a reader asks? Well, I've been trying to see them live for going on fifteen years now, and it was worth the wait. They were pretty spry for a bunch of guys in their fifties, the music was good, and Shane McGowan was totally incomprehensible, which only made the show better. He did slip up at one point and deliver a perfectly lucid and understandable "How's everyone doing tonight?" back-and-forth with the screaming crowd, but it was a small flaw in an otherwise extraordinary show.
The funny part of the show was the demographics--I was one of the younger whippersnappers in the audience (Dave Weigel, who is in his mid-twenties, may well actually have been the youngest). Nonetheless a mosh pit formed around the stage, complete with fauxhawks and a few guys wearing bandannas on their heads, a look I thought had gone out sometime around 1993.
By the first encore, the front half of the floor at the 9:30 club was a writhing mass of bouncing bodies. Their perturbations were somehow eerily reminiscent of a bunch of guys with thick wool sweaters and pint glasses, swaying in unison as they belt out an old favorite in the pub. I waited with bated breath for the injuries to start, but apparently Boniva really works. Still, no one should slam dance in a polo shirt. And the absolute highlight of the evening was when Shane drunkenly knocked the microphone into the pit--and a guy in a cardigan handed it back.
Did I mention that for the actual last song, at the end of the second encore, Spider Stacy did his signature "bashing a beer tray against my head" percussion act? I mean, it really doesn't get much better than that.
As mentioned in the earlier Radiohead thread, I generally need to listen to an album several times before I decide if I like it. Open thread: how do you listen to new music? How long does it take you to give it a thumbs up or a thumbs down?
The economics bloggers are, understandably, excited about Radiohead's decision to literally charge what the market will bear, allowing its new album to be downloaded for any sum you like, as low as a (British) penny. Tipping is, as Greg Mankiw points out, one of the most mysterious phenomena economists study. No one understands why the social norm is so strongly self-enforcing that Americans give tips to almost anyone who provides a personal service, even though most of those transactions are with people you'll never see again. Free Exchange calls it "a bold and potentially costly move for a band whose previous six LPs have sold millions of copies", but Tyler Cowen thinks that financially, it may be a smart move:
1. Radiohead is an indie cult band with extreme loyalties from its partisans and the possibility of attracting more such partisans by seeming "cool."
2. Radiohead peaks high on the charts (#3 for their last release, if I recall...) but I believe they sell the product pretty quickly and don't have a long run at the top. Again, they'd like to widen their fan base.
3. Radiohead's gambit has reaped enormous publicity, but this won't be the case next time.
4. Many donors will give to a highly visible "cause of the month" (remember the outpouring of support for the tsunami victims?) but they won't necessarily give on a regular basis.
5. Radiohead probably has an especially high ratio of touring to CD and iTunes income; see #1. This scheme is a natural for them but not for Kelly Clarkson.
What we will see is lots of lesser bands (and authors) giving their work away for free, but that trend has been underway for some time.
Obviously, I had to try it. It turns out that the download isn't quite free: there's a $1.00 charge for paying by credit card, and if, like many Americans, you forget to double whatever pittance you decide to tip them, you could end up paying quite a respectable sum.
This brings up one of the more interesting points. While the download is free, the physical discs with all the notes and bonus material are 40 quid . . . or about $80. This is quite a lot to pay for an album, even if you really, really like the band. So in effect, Radiohead may have created a really effective price discrimination system: the free download might not only rope in lukewarm fans like me who would have put off the purchase, possibly to forever, but also create goodwill that encourages more of their fans to buy the super-expensive (in America) discs.
Another way it might work is that the very popularity of the free (or low cost) download might force dedicated fans to spend a lot in order to signal their committment to the band. Music has a substantial status component to its consumption. If everyone and their lame younger brother has downloaded the new album for a pittance, you might have to order the discs just to set yourself apart from the hoi polloi.
There's another economic aspect that a reader pointed out: the exchange rate. Both downloads and discs are currently priced in pounds, and the pound/dollar exchange rate is both bad, and probably going to get worse. With Bernanke cutting rates, and Mervyn King of the Bank of England holding them steady, the pre-orders will likely get more costly by the day. This doesn't benefit Radiohead (rather the reverse), but it means that smart fans will lock in now.
I've now listened to the new Beirut album four times, and it's disappointing. Not bad, exactly, just . . . fine. The sound's evolving, which is always interesting, but the direction in which it's evolving isn't, very. I'm all for more listenable style--I have too many albums right now that I can't really listen to at work, because it's too distracting--but somehow, it doesn't quite make it. If after four plays nothing's leaped out at me, it seems rather likely that nothing will.
On an unrelated note, I listened to Hem's Rabbit Songs for the first time in months, which was a great album. (Sadly, never matched by their later efforts). And as I was listening to "Half Acre", it suddenly occurred to me that I've listened to a lot of hard-core copyright advocates complaining that "fair use" might let someone ruin a song by, for example, turning the Ride of the Valkyries into a laxative commercial. How come none of these sensitive-eared music lovers get upset when bands ruin their own songs by, say, licensing them to egregiously overplayed insurance commercials? Obviously, I'm a libertarian; I think the latter should be legal. But can't we at least make fun of them, hard?
The truly shocking news is that Wikipedia claims the insurance commercial gave Hem a boost. It couldn't have happened to a nicer band, of course, but do people really buy music off commercials?
I wonder how many massive press conferences are held to announce the arrest/conviction/sentencing in the average murder case in Anacostia. I wonder under what rationale it is more appropriate to dedicate wall to wall coverage of a prostitution ring (where at worst, the only "victims" are just a couple of very offended wives) than it is to dedicate any coverage whatsoever to a drive-by shooting that leaves someone dead.
Is it worth spending over $500 on a Tivo? I'm sorry to report that it is. The Series Three has all the functionality that made its older products the best DVRs around: an intuitive user interface, transparent menus, simple and fast recording. Now it's added HD capability and two cable cards so you can record and watch at the same time (or record two shows). With the cable cards, the most annoying feature about older Tivos--the latency switching channels--has disappeared. They've also added new features that prove surprisingly useful, such as the ability to download movies on a whim from Amazon's Unbox service. I'd give up my dishwasher before I'd part with this.
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