Gatchamania.net - Print: Alternative Bookstores

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Posted by GrumpyGhostOwl on 06-01-2017 at 11:12:

Alternative Bookstores

For the last two decades, I've noticed that whenever I walk into an alternative/new age bookstore, the soudn system is invariably playing Medwyn Goodall's album, Medicine Woman.

Now, I hasten to say that there's nothing wrong with the album. It's very nice, very ambient and I own a copy myself. (I never need to actually play it, however, as I have no need to - I can listen to it whenever I go to an alternative bookstore!)

Honestly... you might think that after twenty bloody years, alternative bookstore owners might have managed to CHANGE THE CD AT LEAST ONCE.

Oh, well. I suppose it's an improvement on Tony O'Connor's Rainforest Magic, which was what they all used to play before Medwyn Goodall came along.

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Posted by ElectricWhite on 06-01-2017 at 15:25:

GGO, the first thing I thought was PAYOLA!

{WARNING: American history snippet ahead!}

In the early days of Rock 'N' Roll, when young singers were just starting out, they'd go on the road, performing in small venues. Their managers would go to the most popular local radio stations and offer to pay the DJs for each time the singer's record was played. Soon it wasn't uncommon to turn on your radio, hear the DJ introduce a song from an up-and-coming new singer, and then, as soon as the record had finished, say, "Well, that song was so good, I'll play it again!" And it would continue all the way through the DJ's shift. (Until that practice became illegal.)

{Okay, the snippet's done. Feel free to unclench anything that clenched.}

I couldn't help wondering if someone in a particular recording company was paying some executives in the alternative book stores to act as though there's no other music to be heard. (I know it's not as likely as someone had set it all up just to annoy GrumpyGhostOwl, but that's the way my mind works sometimes.)

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Posted by GrumpyGhostOwl on 06-01-2017 at 17:11:

Well, come to think of it, EW, that might be the only way alternative bookstores make enough money to pay the rent, but that particular record company (and the artist) have a whole catalogue of other stuff that I never hear.

This makes me wonder if maybe there's a special class of APRA (Australasian Performing Rights Association) license for alternative bookstores which licenses them to ONLY play Medwyn Goodall's 'Medicine Woman' album in return for a discounted annual fee. (In Australia you have to have a license to play recorded music in public places, including shops. It's one of the ways the artists get paid.)

Ockham's Razor, however, suggests that the simplest explanation is more likely to be true, so it's probably just a case of the staff at these five completely unrelated bookstores in three different towns being so blissed out on happy cosmic angel crystal harmonics that they've lost the remote for the sound system so the same CD that got stuck in the machine back in the late 1990s is still playing.

Or maybe it's the aliens. (Would it be the same ones who gifted us with the healing crystals, the ones who cling parasitically to our souls, the ones who send us spiritual guidance or the ones who do weird shit with cows?)

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Posted by ElectricWhite on 06-01-2017 at 18:10:

quote:

Ockham's Razor, however, suggests that the simplest explanation is more likely to be true, so it's probably just a case of the staff at these five completely unrelated bookstores in three different towns being so blissed out on happy cosmic angel crystal harmonics that they've lost the remote for the sound system so the same CD that got stuck in the machine back in the late 1990s is still playing.

...Or, maybe there's something in their diets that have kept them from realizing 20 years have passed. (Pseudo-tofu, perhaps? It probably involves those evil-weird gray aliens who abduct people and probe them...)

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тАЬThere are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them." --Ray Bradbury

Posted by GrumpyGhostOwl on 07-01-2017 at 06:21:

The thing that popped into my mind when I read 'pseudo-tofu' was, "Soylent Green is people!"

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