i may be a bird in a cage but at least it's your cage

I knew, logically, that in today's music economy, the local independent record store wasn't a sustainable model, but frankly, seeing this sign in the window of Schoolkids Records on Franklin Street this morning made me cry on the street, holding my coffee cup and my mystery novel. (Another thing that made me sad this morning: the admin assistant in my boss's office told me that she thinks the Triangle music scene is boring and unfriendly. "It's all indie emo crap," she said. She, however, is a Widespread Panic fan of the sort who follows the band around, so as much as I'm fond of her as a person, I do view her music scene complaints with a heavy helping of skepticism. Ooooh, look, there's my music snob showing!¹) Schoolkids has been on Franklin Street for as long as I can remember; longer than I've been alive. But they couldn't make enough money to meet their overhead, because nobody buys CDs anymore -- I don't buy CDs anymore, and if I do, I rip them to iTunes and then never listen to the actual disc ever again; I hardly even listen to CDs in the car since I got the new stereo, and that was the last place I actually used CDs -- and even if they did a thriving selling-tickets-to-Cradle-shows business, that isn't enough to keep a place alive. I bought a CD there a couple of weeks ago because I was too lazy to order it from Bloodshot directly. I bought my mom a couple before Christmas. Every other CD I've bought in the last two years has been at a show or directly from a label.

Anyway. It bummed me out. Maybe it's a little partially my fault, because I did stop buying CDs; but more than that, I blame the music industry, the big labels, for creating a business model that didn't match what their consumers wanted. I don't expect to get my music for free, but I still didn't want to pay $17 for a CD, even to support a band or a record store I loved. RIP, Schoolkids. Y'all rocked, and I'm sorry I didn't do more to support you.



Apparently I am doomed to spend the rest of my week hanging out at the coffee shop, because my torrent of the Jason show from Friday is crawling down at an appallingly slow pace. I keep getting tracker errors, so I can connect to peers but none of the seeders. But I will keep trying, because this show included several of my favorite Jason tracks, the song I requested, a Dylan cover, and a Will Johnson cover that was so beautiful it made my stomach hurt.

In other random news, Ask MetaFilter continues to delight me. People ask the internets the weirdest shit, seriously. Also I drank too much coffee this morning and can't stop vibrating at high speed now. Then I forgot to eat because I was so annoyed at the torrent, which lead to me having a panic attack, and also my work motivation went on vacation with insidian's work motivation. THIS WEEK IS A BIG FAILBOAT.

1: i know that i shouldn't judge widespread panic based on a single experience at one of their shows as the DD to a whole bunch of people on acid, all of whom behaved like complete jerks all day and had no idea why hanging out with 8 people who were tripping was absolutely zero fun for me. AND YET, I DO JUDGE. TAKE THAT, WIDESPREAD PANIC. clearly i'm still totally bitter about how much that fourth of july sucked.