Get This Indie Out of Our Charts
How in God’s name are Wilco at number eight this week? Easy: they’ve crossed over to the hippie/frat audience. (This portion may not have much resonance for our British readers, who are apparently untroubled by the unholy triumverate that is The Dead/Phish/Dave Matthews.) But, taking my store as a control, the vast majority of copies of A Ghost Is Born that we’ve sold have been not to bespectacled fellows in ironic workwear, but to good old fashioned hippies and their slightly more well-scrubbed collegiate counterparts. (In fact, many of these were doubled up with copies of the Phish album.) Those who fancy Wilco the second coming of The Band (or whomever) should dwell on this while sitting through the “freeform noise” portion (almost as boring as the one on the equally hippied-out Murray Street) (most common comment whilst playing in store: “is something wrong with their air conditioner?”) (then again these are people for whom the Beastie Boys are as scary as Esham and Emperor put together.)
In related news: sales of the new Corrs album shot up 2000% when a 5X5 sign was placed in the window near the door. What sign did it replace? Why Now 14. As my boss commented: “now I don’t feel like quite such a sell-out.” Indeed.