Sad State of Cd distribution

Hi Ralph pals -
For a while RalphAmerica will not be carrying the Mute titles (the nice ones in the hardbound book) as the world of CD distribution and one stops (an excuse of a business that collects a bunch of releases from the major distributors, marks up the items, and sells them to smaller accounts), is a seedy, dirty little troll world (I just saw Hellboy 2 last night, it's kinda like that.)

We were dealing with a one stop (I'll leave them nameless right now, but unlike their namesake, they aren't very super), that gave us tons of trouble. We would order thru their ordering system, sometimes we'd get what we ordered, sometimes not. Then we'd order something else, and might get something we'd ordered the previous month with no warning. We never got invoices with our orders, the invoices we did get never made any sense. When we dealt with EMI directly, huge company, they were easier to deal with and a LOT more friendly than this MickeyMouse outfit. (When EMI got bought they changed their policies about selling to small accounts like us, even though we'd sell more Mute Residents titles than anyone in N. America.) Gripe gripe gripe.

When we started getting shipped double the stock we ordered, and then couldn't return it for various Cheney-like reasons, we decided we had better end the relationship. If you are at all like us, you are careful about which businesses you support, and we just didn't feel good about supporting this particular business anymore. The music business is too competitive for this sort of crap, and life is too short to deal with it. So hopefully we'll get something worked out soon, as MuteUK is being helpful in helping us find a solution.

We thought that you, our thoughtful customer, might want to know what was up. In the long run (and as you probably already know), these distributors won't be around much longer anyhow. In fact I find it hard to understand how they're even keeping the lights on these days, but it has something to do with the parasitic relationship they have with major labels and major label distribution. Pretty soon WalMart and Target will stop carrying CDs and DVDs and they'll all come crumbling down. I'll take some solace in that.

Do you have any ideas/predictions about how this industry will change in the next few years?

Coming soon...actually here...

available at ralphamerica.com NOW!

Nibbling our fingers...

to the sticky tape, adhesive enveloped bone...werking on getting out yer Package deals!

A lot of folks just ordered Smell My Picture, and a lot of those are going out today and tomorrow. We only got 57 copies of both Eskimo and Duck Stab shipped to us so far (the joys of buying from a one stop instead of a direct distributor), and the rest of the copies should be here soon. They said they put in a rush order, so we'll let you know in this thread when the rest of them show up. Hopefully this week.

You see, the "one stop" just buys enough copies from the distributor (who has become big enough that small shops like ours can't buy direct from them anymore) that they anticipate will fill their orders. Even when when we give them a sizable order. Which we did, and now they are scrambling to get us enough copies.

The copies of Eskimo look like they got a severe shrink wrap treatment somewhere along the line. So hopefully once you open them up there is no damage, but the shrink wrap sort of pulled the spine around a bit, hard to explain and I don't have the digital camera here. Anyhow, they look like they'll be fine, but what a strange thing to do.

Okay, back to the stacks of orders....all that and I have a terrible cold. But don't worry, if I drip snot on yer package, it'll dry up by the time it reaches you. Taataa.

UPDATE: news today that the remainder of the Eskimo/DuckStab are shipping today (wed 28th) from SoCal, so should be to us by Friday.

UPDATE 2: By about 3:30 today we got the rest of our Eskimo/Duck Stab discs, and started packing like mad. But only a few got out the door with postage in time before the post office closed at 5. So Monday is looking like the day that the rest of the packages will ship out.

UPDATE 3: ALL THE ORDERS ARE OUT THE DOOR!

Did you steal our door sign?

Last week someone stole our "Astropitch" sign from our front door. Who would do such a thing and why? The big ugly unpainted blotch on the door is the spot where our sign once hung. It was a well hung sign. Is that why someone took it? sorry. Did you do it? Did you see who did it? The guy who made the sign is making a new one, for no charge, but really, why would you want our sign? Why didn't they take the West Alameda Business Assoc sign? Their sign was prettier.

BTW, the link for the package deal (including towel) will be coming down today after I count the weekend orders.)

Smell My Package

I'm experimenting to see if a lot of people are reading this before they get the email blast I'll do in the morning tomorrow. So all the orders we get tonight, I'll know were due to this blog post. Just me geekin' out about it. 

Anyhow, SMELL MY PICTURE! The presale hath begunith. And you can buy it in a package deal with the re-issues of ESKIMO and DUCK STAB, and this will be limited to 150 packages that will also get the bonus ESKIMO FISH TOWEL. Really. A towel. About 11"x18", with the retro Eskimo logo on it. Pretty cool, actually. Use it as a bar towel, golf towel, finger towel if you play violin or classical guitar, or maybe yer a surgeon and it'll come in handy. Anyhow, Residents friend, faithful and fickle, head on over to www.ralphamerica.com for the good poop.

Your Milestone Recordings

As we all know, we are awaiting the re-release of the classic Residents' recordings, Duck Stab and Eskimo. As I had mentioned in an earlier post, regarding Duck Stab and Eskimo, I had ranked them very high in my list of "very important recordings." For me, this list is created from those very rare recordings that put fissures in my brain, and caused me to listen to music from new angles altogether. 

My personal list contains items like: Tom Waits "Rain Dogs", Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band "Trout Mask Replica", Devo "Duty Now For the Future", Public Enemy "It Takes a Nation of Millions", The Residents "Duck Stab" and "Fingerprince", Elvis Costello "Imperial Bedroom", and possibly Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds "The Good Son", Meshuggah "Chaosphere", The Beatles "Revolver". 

It's easy for my head to start veering off in directions that take me to an artist who had one song that inspired my curiosity to an entire genre, or other records by these same artists that really stick in my head as important and incredibly enjoyable recordings, but I have to stop myself. I'm really just trying to nail down a few records, that turned my listening world (and composing, music writing world) upside down. Records that are so ingrained in my head, that I remember exactly where I was when I sat down to listen to one of them, or heard a song from one before I went out and found the record (back when you actually had to drive around and find a store that carried records, hopefully they had one you wanted.)

So, my question to you: Give me your list of 5 records that turned your musical world inside out. These aren't necessarily your favorite top 5 records, or the ones you think are the most important in the grand scheme of "rock". Just the recordings that picked you up, flipped you upside down, and shook you around while the change fell out of your pockets. After you listened to them a few times, you viewed everything differently. 

Maybe you only listened to traditional mariachi music, or only baroque music, and one day someone played you "Eruption" by Van Halen, and yer life changed. It could happen. What's yer story....

holy cow! the royal mail royally goofed!

A customer sent me a photo of his order today...here it is:

I think that's the most graphic and violent demise of a package's contents I've ever seen. Sure items get smashed, bent, shattered. But I've never seen one get so completely wet and left alone for so long that it accumulated mold like this and then someone decided, at that point, to go ahead and deliver it. 

This was a package sent to the UK, and the Royal Mail seems responsible, but aren't doing much about it. I just had to laugh when I saw this. Pretty extreme. If I'm the Royal Mail, I don't deliver this package. I just send a note to let them know that it's lost/damaged, something. It's just too embarrassing to show up at someone's door and leave this there, isn't it? Almost as bad as the flaming dog poop in the paperbag. 

We know the mail is getting bad in some countries (Italy, man, get it together with the mail already!), but this is definitely the worse I've seen. By a long shot. By the way, there were some CDs in there too, digipaks, that got pretty soggy.