National Rip-Off Store Day

Saturday's National Record Store Day proved two things. The first was that there is a great demand for vinyl and collectors items, and this isn't just confined to old gits like me who remember when vinyl was all you could buy. The second was that record companies, if not record stores, will use any opportunity they can get to rip people off and screw them out of as much money as possible.

For this reason, my first national record store day is also likely to be my last.

Until now, I have felt a mix of guilt and anxiety at missing the yearly event on a consistent basis. Guilt because I wasn't supporting local record stores, and anxiety because I knew I might be missing out on limited edition vinyl-only tracks by people I like. Thinking that I would never get the chance to hear, let alone own, these tracks made me determined to make the effort this year.

I left the house relatively early on Saturday to go to Banquet records in Kingston. I foolishly thought it would be a case of turn up, pop in, and check out. Instead I found that my 'relatively early' was other people's 'very, very late' as the queue outside the store not only reached the end of the road, it went round the corner, up another road and past a car park. Some of the people at the front of the queue, and the ones who'd already been in the store and gone by the time I arrived, had been there since the previous evening, queuing as if it was The Sale at Debenhams, or the opening of a new IKEA store.

The fact that they would queue this long was what confirmed the demand for vinyl, and provided irrefutable proof that whilst some people will only download tracks and have no interest in a physical product, for other people the physical product is still the all-important thing to have. 

Record companies seem to willfully fail to realise this. Happy with the vast amount of download single sales, they ignore the fact that a lot of previously massive artists  no longer crack the top 40 with anything other than the first single from an album, if that. It's as if, for 364 days of the year, they don't get the obvious reason why this happens - which is that once you already have the whole CD, why would you want to download the single? There are no new tracks, no exclusive remixes, and crucially, no physical product, so there is nothing that a fan has to have in order to complete their collection. Hence, where once they would have bought a CD, 7 inch vinyl release, and/or 12 inch extended version irrespective of whether they had anything they didn't already own, or was any good, now they give it a miss, and even Robbie Williams can't get near the top 100 with his latest single.

But on the 365th day of the year, they sort of get it, but like being heroes, it's just for one day, and its a day when they show their utter contempt for people who want to buy records. Instead of noting the queues and thinking, 'maybe we could release vinyl versions of every single to meet this obvious demand', they think 'here's a lot of people that have waited a long time. If they want something that much, that means we can charge a lot of money for it' and act in what seems to be the British way by charging ridiculous prices and alienating the very people whose support they need.

Sample prices this year included £9 for a David Bowie 7 inch, £12 for a Kate Bush 12 inch, £11 for a Suede 7 inch, and £7 for a single by Frank Turner. Even a rabbit shaped vinyl version of Chas'n'Dave's Rabbit was going for about £8. It's as if the record companies are cutting out the middle man and immediately selling things for the sort of price they would previously have eventually traded hands at a few years later.  

Worse still, of the over 450 limited edition singles and albums that were released, the vast majority of them were simply vinyl editions of tracks already available in many formats. The Suede single was one track off their new album and one off their first. The Bowie singles included two tracks from The Next Day on one record. In short, no track you wouldn't already have if you were a real fan, but a collectors item you would have no choice but to pay over the odds for if you had loyally followed the artist and bought everything they ever did. What a nice way to say thank you to your fans. 

The record industry suffers from many self-inflicted wounds, including ignoring Napster till it was too late to stop the illegal download market getting as big as it is, but when they have the chance to do something really good to restore their reputation their default mode is to go for quick profit and exploitation of loyal fans. The long game is passed over for the quick win. Reasonably priced records 365 days a year, or one day of big money? They probably don't think twice about it. The record companies at least don't deserve your support or sympathy. Contempt is a better emotion, as that's the one they have for you. 

Jumping the Shark of Revenge

For anyone who doesn’t know, ‘Jumping the Shark’ is the phrase used to describe the moment when a TV show ceases to be any good, or more precisely when it loses all credibility via one ludicrous storyline. The term derives from an episode of Happy Days where, having already jumped over buses and performed other Evil Kenevel type stunts on his motorbike, Fonzie decided he would jump over sharks.

Last night, Revenge, the American series starring Emily VanCamp, an actress whose surname is far too close to Camper Van for comfort, reached this point, having been building up to it for some time.

The moment came when Emily Thorne/Amanda Clark’s (played by VanCamp) boyfriend Aiden, and a woman in charge of a shadowy group called The Initiative, were trapped in a lift that was filled with gas, before being abducted, taken to the basement of a smart building, tied up, having bags placed over their heads, and then tortured by two other people who also had bags over their heads.

Against seemingly impossible odds, Aiden managed to escape and kill one of the abductees and flee the building with Helen, the woman from The Initiative, only for it, of course, to be revealed that it was all a set-up, and the abductees were none other than Emily and her geeky best friend and protector Nolan Ross. Not only was this implausible it was also blindingly obvious. From when the gas first started filling the lift, there was never a moment when you didn’t know that it was going to be a set-up and that Emily was the person behind it.

And with that, Revenge lost any last claim it had to being intelligent television, and joined the ever growing ranks of lowest common denominator shows where shady organisations exist as an excuse for the writers to pass off ever more improbable storylines, and where there is no limit to the range of superpower style skills ordinary people can have, particularly if it creates an action packed scene that requires, if not demands, no thought process on the part of its viewers.  

Why do I care about this? Possibly because series 1 of Revenge was not only good, it was intelligent TV, well plotted with the right amount of twists and turns to keep you interested, without thinking the producers were adding stuff simply to stretch the programme to 24 episodes and a cliff hanger for a second series.

It centred around Emily’s desire to get revenge on the Graysons, the people responsible for the death of her father, David Carter, and all of the people who conspired to help them. Most of the episodes consisted of a single sting against one such person, whilst slowly building a bigger back story, and drawing other characters and sub-plots into the overarching story. At the end the mystery seemed to have been solved and all the baddies had either got their comeuppance or were about to.

They could have stopped there, and followed in the footsteps of Harpers Island, the one US show in recent years to go off the air after one series for reasons other than low ratings. The makers of that show made clear from the outset that it would be self contained, with nothing left to spill over into a second series that rehashed the first, and it was all the better for it.

Unfortunately the makers of Revenge did not follow suit, the key words in ‘all the baddies had either got their comeuppance or were about to’ were ‘about to’, and into that briefest slither of possibility came a second series.

Initially, following one dropped clue at the end of season 1, it appeared that season 2 would centre on Emily’s previously considered deceased mother. This wouldn’t have been all that original, but would at least have built on the strengths of the first season, albeit probably obeying the laws of diminished returns at the same time. However, this was jettisoned after a few episodes that first of all confirmed she was alive, then said that actually she wasn’t the good person wrongly placed in an asylum that we’d been told she was, but was actually a bad person who had tried to kill her daughter, before ending with her getting a nice rehabilitation as someone who was troubled, but recognised her problems and needed to leave for her own safety, at the same time killing off any sub plots that had any connection to her.

It was almost as if the producers weren’t satisfied with this line of development. They wanted to ratchet up the conspiracy levels to 10 in order to capture an even bigger audience, presumably thinking the existing one would stay with it following principles of brand loyalty.

As a result, all eyes moved on to The Initiative, the shady group of business people who it now turns out were behind the plot that lead to David Carter’s death (the Graysons merely being people forced to work for them for reasons as yet unknown), and an equally mysterious Japanese organisation that trained Emily in the art of revenge, and are trying to stop the Intervention, also for reasons the producers either haven’t thought of, or haven’t revealed, so far.  

Things that made series one entertaining, such as the subtle surveillance methods Emily and Nolan used to keep tabs on the Grayson house and plot their next move, have became tired and idle plot devices, there merely to cover over the cracks by providing an explanation of why Emily and others have the vast amounts of information they need to make the storylines work. Other sub plots have been added, all on the theme of revenge, but with only a vague, if any connection, to the main plot, other than using peripheral characters. The end result is a programme that has veered off in more directions than you can count, and has lost all sense of focus and plausibility in the process.

In doing so it confirms a truism that American programme makers in particular, seem to continually forget, which is that if you have a drama that centres around one conspiracy or one strong incident, you cannot continue to stretch it out. Revenge now seems destined to join the ranks of Lost, Heroes and Prison Break as a show that lives on past the point when anyone even remembers the original storyline let alone cares how the loose ends tie up and the mystery is explained.

I would say it’s a mystery why this happens time and again, but it really isn’t. At five series in, syndication rights normally revert to the programme makers rather than the TV companies that broadcast them, and so series 5 becomes the holy grail all programme makers aim for. While this is fine if you have a setting and characters that drive the programme, as the best soaps or comedies have, it isn’t so good if you don’t. It would be good if both TV producers and film makers could recognise this and learn that everything has a natural length and not try and produce franchises that outstay their welcome. Sadly I can’t see this happening any time soon.

Revenge is now the latest in a long line of shark jumpers, it won’t be the last, and if you put all the shows that have, or will, jump the shark together in one line, you would end up with something so big that even Fonzie would find it impossible to jump over. 

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There's no Nashville in Nashville

If a TV programme is named after a place, you expect to find the essence of that place running through the programme at every level. Boardwalk Empire is a classic example of this. It is intrinsically Atlantic City during prohibition, every element of the programme evoking the setting to create the atmosphere that makes the characters and storylines believable and compelling. The first episode of new crime series Vegas, is also an example of drama that uses its setting. It captured the mix of old style Golden Nugget gambling and dust-bowl desert, and the storyline belonged in that place and that time. Going back further, the mixture of cattle country and oil barons in the original Dallas may not have been a realistic portrayal of the city, but at least felt authentic until Bobby headed into the shower, and the show headed down the plughole.

With this in mind, a programme called Nashville should surely feel like it’s set in the home of Country and Western music, bringing to life the vast array of music bars and struggling musicians that define the downtown area of the city, and showing how for every Willie Nelson or Dolly Parton, there are several hundred Willie Parton’s and Dolly Nelson’s more likely to end up drunk or waiting tables than they are to give Taylor Swift or Garth Brooks a run for their money in the US charts.

It should do this, but it doesn’t.  If you watch the programme you get the impression that Nashville has only two singers and two music venues, The Bluebird Cafe, and an aircraft hanger style club somewhere on the outskirts of the city with a very large car park (good to see ABC studio’s parking lots being used in such an active way).

The Bluebird Cafe is a real bar, although both the interior and exterior in the programme are Hollywood reconstructions. For the interior they’ve decided it’s a very respectable establishment where a young and attractive crowd sit at tables just the right distance from each other for it to be vibrant but not cramped, and where no-one ever tries to leave just as a tip jar is passed round. Hell, in Nashville the TV programme they don’t even have tip jars, the bar owners presumably paying more than their real life counterparts, and not leaving musicians reliant on extra public donations to supplement the income they get from any day job, and give them an amount they can afford to live on.

Meanwhile, the exterior of the reconstructed Bluebird Cafe consists of windows and doors only, the producers feeling no need to show any other buildings in this street, let alone the rest of the city, in case it suggested something that could impact on its main characters, or that would require Nashville, and the rest of the world, to have more than two country and western singers.

And what of these singers? Well there must have been a long time when no-one new started singing, as one of them (Juliette Barnes, played by Hayden Panettiere, who will now be known for something other than being in Heroes and having a surname that sounds like a small French loaf), is young, and the other (Rayna James, played by Connie Britton) is old. That’s about all you can really say about them. Both are sanitised versions of real singers, stripped of any back story that could suggest their fame came at any cost or effort on their part.

The eldest of the two is admittedly struggling a bit now, with her new album not selling well and a tour playing to half empty venues, but it’s a relative failure. The venues are spread around the whole country, and even half full probably seat more than most Nashville musicians play to in a year. The younger one just seems to have had fame thrust upon her and unlike any currently popular singer, is on an upwards curve unlikely to be disrupted by a chance meeting with a member of One Direction.

The lack of any back story, takes away any depth the characters or storyline could have had, and turns it all into a battle between old and new, a forty-something stalwart and a twenty-something upstart. It maybe that this is why the programme is so light on location detail. The music and city are also irrelevant to the plot. The only reason for it being country and western is it’s the only type of music where people over 40 would even have a chance of competing against a younger rival. If you don’t believe me, consider the sales of Madonna’s last album in comparison to those of Lady GaGa or Nicky Minaj.

In short, it seems like the programme isn’t about Nashville at all, and the producers couldn’t be bothered to make the effort to pretend that it is, they thought that once they’d given it its name, that was it, job done, no need to capture the atmosphere of the real place, particularly when doing so would expose the storyline to scrutiny on the grounds of plausibility.

Having said all this, it’s winning awards and racking up nominations in the States, so maybe I’m in a minority of one, but for me it’s still a weak programme and a wasted opportunity.