The end of the road?

The retail crisis has come to music. UK high street music/video/games retailer Zavvi, formerly known as Virgin before a management buy-out not long ago, has become the latest high profile casualty of the recession.

It is another sign of the times and I feel for its staff above all other considerations. I can live without Zavvi as a chain and I don't think I've actually bought a single item from it since the name change. If its demise eases the pressure on HMV then so be it. If HMV were to fail too then it would leave the UK with no widespread high street entertainment chain and that would be a shock.

What bothers me more is the effect that the current circumstances will have on the few remaining independent music retailers in the UK, and without doubt it is these that I would miss much more. They are real shops staffed by helpful, knowledgeable and totally dedicated music lovers.
I mention this with some sadness as London's 'Sister Ray Records' called in the administrators on 24th December. I just hope that a way can be found to keep it trading for now, strangely enough more than ever, we need stores such as this. Whether visiting in person or buying from them on-line it is vital that we show our support for them - and the only worthwhile way of doing that is to give them custom.

It is literally a matter of life of death.
If they vanish it is very unlikely that they will ever be replaced and I rather doubt that the situation is any better in other countries either.

When all else fails...

I apologise for attempting to provide a positive note concerning the current economic situation. Banks may fail, and some more probably will, but even if all four remaining 'major recording labels' were also to do so (which I suspect will not happen), while it would have a major effect on the music industry in the short term, it would not be the end of the world.

The world will still need music, just as surely it will still need banking services, but if the current modus operandi is no longer appropriate then that needs to be addressed too. I can think of one thing that has survived, maybe even thrived, in previous times of trouble and that is music.
It matters not whether you want to enjoy it for escapism or wallow in its realism for, either way, there is plenty already available to draw upon and there is no sign of a supply shortage - far from it indeed.
The established music industry has been feeling the pinch for a few years now, and long before the current economic crisis, but I have no reason to believe that is in any way likely to change as the making of music is, as far as can be reliably surmised, a human trait that transcends almost everything else and possibly even language. The recorded music industry however, as we knew it until recently, was barely fifty years old and as such thus one of the youngest dinosaurs.
I never thought I'd write this but I wonder if, as although it belatedly realised the game was up a couple of years ago, in this situation it is actually slightly ahead of the others here!
The grim reality of the rust-belt matters again and so does - whilst maybe updated - the music of uncertainty and dislocation that goes with it.
This image is reminiscent of the track 'Dusty Boxcar Wall', which was written by Eric Anderson for his 1965 album 'Today Is The Highway' and if anyone is going to cover such downbeat Americana in 2008 why shouldn't it be a short, half-forgotten, tale of despondency reinterpreted by a female artist born in Boise, Idaho in 1979?

I for one can't see any problem with that.

This image, and the cover version of the song, come from the 2008 album 'Letters from Sinners and Strangers' by now Boston-based singer-songwriter Eilen Jewell. The rest of the album is a mixture of covers and self penned tracks that, unless you know better, are often indistinguishable - it is a wonderful album.She also plays harmonica, a long neglected instrument, to great effect on several tracks and no major label got a look-in here - it was released by Signature Sounds Recordings and all credit to them for doing that.