Despite all the hype, "Aerial" only sold 22,593 copies in its first week of release, and 10,492 its second.\u00c2\u00a0 It debuted at #48 and fell to #129 in its second week.\u00c2\u00a0 Kate was even beaten on the chart by that great musical talent Regis Philbin.\u00c2\u00a0 Then again, Regis is on TV every weekday.\u00c2\u00a0 And Kate Bush can be heard almost nowhere.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s the crisis in today’s music business.\u00c2\u00a0 Not burning, not P2P, but EXPOSURE!\u00c2\u00a0 Or, lack thereof.<\/p>\n
Got to tell you, I didn’t give "Aerial" a good chance.\u00c2\u00a0 It didn’t immediately grab me when I inserted it into my CD player (which I can do on a Mac, unlike a PC…and, did the recall hurt second week sales…quite possibly, but that’s a shitty debut number nonetheless).\u00c2\u00a0 Not that I could really blame the record.\u00c2\u00a0 I just wasn’t in the MOOD for Kate Bush, I was a bit too amped up, one has to be relaxed to enjoy the music of the high-pitched chanteuse.<\/p>\n
But driving back from the Valley last week, I heard her on XM’s Cafe, on a show entitled "The Nude Music Review".\u00c2\u00a0 They were playing a song "Joanni", the second to last cut on the first CD, which I never got to.\u00c2\u00a0 After all, these albums don’t come with instruction booklets, which track to play first, to get hooked.\u00c2\u00a0 After all, these albums are supposedly works of art.\u00c2\u00a0 To be digested in their entirety over time.\u00c2\u00a0 But in a world where the history of recorded music is available at one’s fingertips for free, one needs an introduction, one needs to be shown the way, it’s not like the old days, where you spent fifteen bucks and PLAYED the damn album, since you had so much invested.<\/p>\n
Then again, that’s what Sony wants you to do.\u00c2\u00a0 And I’d defend their position if 100,000 people had popped for "Aerial" the week it came out.\u00c2\u00a0 But, looking at this piss-poor sales number, it’s clear that something’s wrong with the paradigm.<\/p>\n
Do you know "Don’t Give Up" from "So"?\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, that’s a Peter Gabriel cut, but its magic can be attributed to Kate Bush’s vocal.\u00c2\u00a0 "Joanni"’s got that same feel.\u00c2\u00a0 When you’re home alone.\u00c2\u00a0 With more lights off than on.\u00c2\u00a0 When you’re resting on the couch with the newspaper.\u00c2\u00a0 When you’re all by yourself after ending a relationship and needing something to comfort you.<\/p>\n
I immediately retrieved "Aerial" when I got home and played "Joanni".\u00c2\u00a0 It worked.<\/p>\n
Starting the album at the top, I still wasn’t hooked.\u00c2\u00a0 But then, "How To Be Invisible", the track BEFORE "Joanni", mesmerized me.\u00c2\u00a0 And I liked "Coral Room", the song after.<\/p>\n
I figured if I played "Aerial" enough, maybe I’d like the first four cuts.\u00c2\u00a0 But, before I spun those again, I decided to play CD 2.\u00c2\u00a0 Which turned out to be FAR SUPERIOR!\u00c2\u00a0 Good throughout.<\/p>\n
I feel like a member of a secret cult.\u00c2\u00a0 Who’ve had "Aerial" unfold before them.<\/p>\n
Obviously, print media didn’t penetrate the public.\u00c2\u00a0 There was a story in every publication known to man.\u00c2\u00a0 Turns out the old record label saw is true…nothing promotes music like radio, like the ability to HEAR it.<\/p>\n
We trusted the deejay.\u00c2\u00a0 We counted on the deejay.\u00c2\u00a0 It was his job to pick out the good tracks.\u00c2\u00a0 And, if we liked them, we bought the album.<\/p>\n
This game died in the nineties.\u00c2\u00a0 When we purchased albums based on one track and found out they were complete trash.\u00c2\u00a0 A whole bunch of people resigned from the record-buying marketplace.\u00c2\u00a0 And then, trying to reach who was left, the major labels forced OBVIOUS stuff down our throats at Top Forty.\u00c2\u00a0 And the margins…they disappeared on radio.\u00c2\u00a0 The whole scene inverted upon itself and sucked itself down the hole in the center.\u00c2\u00a0 We need someone to reach down into that hole, at the center of a long playing record, at the center of a CD, and pull the music back out.<\/p>\n