IT'S NOT LIKE HE'S SOLD OUT OR ANYTHING...
...Bob Seger climbs in bed with Wal-Mart...

Consumer Warning: This is a long, setentious Post.  You'll need to Bring a sack lunch.

Somehow I expected more from Bob Seger. After all, he came from Detroit, and he's never seemed to have the attitude of "I'm A Star and You're Not". Bob Seger is not really my favorite performer, although legions do fancy him. Rock and Roll!!! From a True Survivor!!!, etc. etc. Sometimes he seems to go into a Bruce Springsteen-type-over-melodramatic style ("We've Got Tonight" comes to mind here), other times he rocks softly (The dinky sound of his LP "Against The Wind" album comes to mind here), and sometimes he is really, really great (His"The Distance" LP comes to mind here). Bob Seger was sorta the voice of Working Class America, a survivor who, after years of neglect, all of a sudden Became Famous in the late '70s thanks to a double-live LP.
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He released a "Greatest Hits" CD a couple of years ago, but then again, so has every other artist. That way, they don't have to keep writing new stuff, and yet, still keep their music in front of people. I'm not saying this is a bad practice, and if I was a star, I'd probably do that too. But I'm not, which is neither here nor there. Okay, let's switch gears really fast here: (screech!) I went to Wal-Mart today. My birds needed food; Wal-Mart has bird stuff; quite a selection, so occasionally I stop in, and when I'm there, I check out the latest CD's, and sometimes there's stuff I want, but more often, there's Not. Recently, though, I bought the newest CD by "Yes" there, which I'd never seen anywhere else and which I hadn't heard about. So yeah, I committed a Federal Atrocity by buying from Wal-Mart. I'm so ashamed...now for another directional shift...
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The Jimi Hendrix estate manages to squeeze out new CD's once a year, and as you know, a Dead Guy isn't gonna come up with any new tunes anytime soon, and still the CD's keep coming out. At Wal-Mart today, I noticed a new Hendrix CD in the racks, some concert appearance somewhere that I'd never seen. So I picked up a copy and looked at the song list, and I have all those songs on CD's and LP's, and I don't really need new versions of "Voodoo Chile", "Foxy Lady" or "Red House" anytime soon, so I passed. There are fans who want every version of every song he did, but as great a musician as Hendrix was, it all begins to sound alike. If I hear a specific "Live" Hendrix track over a loudspeaker system, I couldn't tell you where it was recorded unless I had the Album In Hand. At this date, Hendrix himself hasn't objected to his music being stocked at Wal-Mart or elsewhere (So far I've seen no Wal-Mart exclusivity thing involving the Hendrix Estate), or having endless versions of basically The Same Old Stuff being made available time after time. I don't slight Jimi for that. Being Dead sorta gets in the way, so I understand, and I'll cut him some slack. The "West Coast Seattle Boy" CD that you see in this section features a few previously-unrecorded Hendrix tunes as does "Valleys Of Neptune", another recent release...I recommend these! A nice way to Support the Hendrix Estate. No, you can't write it off.
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But then I came across Bob Seger's New CD, entitled "Ultimate" Greatest hits. Funny thing tho; this new 'Best-Of' has many of the same songs as another 'Best Of' CD...the one where he is standing, guitar 'round his neck, on railroad tracks, and trying to look his bad-ass toughest. What GOT me about his newest "Ultimate" hits CD is that there's an 'Extra' song that's available only if you buy it from Wal-Mart! Forget the fact that you have Everything Else by Seger; you STILL have to buy songs you already have in order to get one song You Don't Have Yet. So really, you're shelling out somewhere in the neighborhood of $10-$15 for One Song. Not good Music Economics. Plus, the logic in the title loses me. Bob Seger had great songs, marketed previously, but one additional song makes the New Greatest Hits "Ultimate"??? I realize I might be one donut short of a dozen, but I'm not STUPID. Somehow I expected better of an artist who is supposedly a"member of the working class" type of rocker. What I'm led to believe, according to the packaging is that you can buy it elsewhere without the Wal-Mart Bonus Song. But while you're at Wal-Mart, you can buy food, drink, clothes, electric erasers and 200 pound bags of dog food...so really, Seger is helping Wal-Mart sell groceries. Speaking of which, stay away from Wal-Mart's "Good Value" brand of Fruit Punch that comes in tanker-truck sized Big Plastic Bottles. I bought a bottle of the "Grape" flavor and it tasted like a hundred Grape Tootsie-Roll pops melted down and squeeeezed together.. Ugh. I dumped it out. It probably corroded my drainage pipes.
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Back to things musical: A couple of years ago, The Eagles did pretty much the same thing as Seger, only they went One Better. Their "Long Road Out Of Eden", a double-CD set, was a Wal-Mart-only item for a while. So I bought it. It was a good value. $11.99 for a double CD album. I stopped back into Wal-Mart a few weeks later, and saw copies of the Same CD I'd bought, only the sleeve was tinted in Red (same sleeve picture), and that issue came out with Two Songs that weren't on the CD I'd bought several weeks before. That really pissed me off. No Way was I gonna buy the new version of the CD for Two New Songs. Perhaps after a time, the original Eagles CD became available elsewhere, so the band shelled out a couple more highly precious New songs, and That Version of the album then became available nowhere-else except for Wal-Mart. I do believe the second "new" cut was their heartfelt rendition of' "Please Come Home For Christmas", which I don't need to hear anytime soon.
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As I was proof-reading this post, something struck me, which was, that Wal-Mart (or any other music outlet) isn't catering to my generation anymore. These older-than-I-am artists market themselves in order to reach those who are half my age. And, a surprising number of younger listeners groove on classic rock which I bought on LPs when I was much younger. So, Older Artists are hoping they can continue to reach generation after generation. At Wal-Mart, you can find CD's by Boston, The Beatles, Creedence, The Moody Blues, Neil Young, Journey, The Who and other big acts from Long Ago, in addition to "Kid Rap" or "The Bumbling Psychotics" or "Empty Mason Jars" or whatever new band of the week is currently for sale. Well, what can I say; Rock and Roll will Never Die...as long as it continues to sell. In fact, the Sears store here actually stocks New Vinyl; those heavy vinyl limited-edition releases that you see selling for twenty-five bucks a pop. I bought a brand-new, still sealed "Abbey Road" album there a couple of years ago. (psst...those three bands I referred to a few lines above don't actually exist. Not yet, anyway.)
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And, there's a dynasty for ya there...Apple, EMI, Ringo, Paul and the estates of John and George. There's all kinds of Beatle Product on the shelves, including a set of four specially-boxed 45's for Record Store Day, (huh?), packaged in picture sleeves that look just like the original '60s issues, retailing at over fifty bucks. Also to be had...wait for it...Official Beatles Tee-Shirts stuffed in with CD's in big packages (!!!) and sold that way. If you enter "Beatles" into the search bar at the top of this blog page, you'll find my rantings detailing how blatant the Beatles' organization has been in terms of keeping itself alive. Hey, I'd hate for Yoko Ono suffer a monetary crisis anytime soon. (My sarcasm meter is in the red). As far as I can tell, Beatles music will be marketed until the day the world ends. And I'm such a collector, and there is so much new Beatles material to buy (same old recordings, different repackaging) that I'm having trouble deciding, "do I want to keep buying their current stuff?" or "stick with the old hard-to-get original records?" From what I've read, Abbey Road studios contains piles and piles of Beatles Tapes, a lot of which have been locked away forever with songs they never issued. Hey, guys, make 'em available and I'll buy em! I'd love to hear the complete, unedited 29-minute performance of Helter Skelter! It does exist, according to Mark Lewisohn's Book, "The Beatles' Complete Recording Sessions". Paul taped himself a copy and took it home with him! How 'bout it, guys? I wanna hear it too!
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There is a small record store in town that's been run by the same solitary guy for ages; he's a Californian-tie-dyed hippie sort who I've never seen not wearing his bandana. He's been in this area for decades. If I special-order anything, I go to him. It might cost a little bit more dealing with him, but I feel good helping him to put beans on the table. So am I a hypocrite buying music (occasionally) from Wal-Mart? I haven't quite decided that one yet.