2 May 2005
More on The Who Sell Out
Found a short interview with Petra Haden on NPR. She's so funny and harmless and almost valley girl (nasal) sounding. She talks about both her album with Bill Frisell and also her cover of The Who Sell Out. She seemed almost embarrassed about what she did. I guess it is kinda silly. There's this review from Pitchfork (released on April 1st to probably suspicious readers), this one from Stylus, and finally this extremely angry review from PopMatters (listening to her work her way through this material in such a manner is just nauseating
).
And there are these wonderfully detailed liner notes to the original: Most of the commercials that we recorded ourselves were done at Kingsway Studios in London. Me and Keith thought them up in the pub next door.
Those crazy kids. And it was interesting that [Who manager] Chris Stamp tried to interest advertisers in paying for the adverts inserted by The Who on the record but, with only 50,000 copies of the album expected to be printed, none of the companies would buy.
Take that, Prince. It sounds like the pop music scene in the late 60s was considerably less ... artsy and pristine. I can imagine maybe L Lo succumbing to product placement on an album, but what's the equivalent today of a band like The Who searching out sponsors?
All this revisiting because I just made my first purchase from Rhapsody. Sorry, Petra, I had to go for the original first. Twenty-three songs (13 + 10 bonus) for $9, burned to a CD, and immediately ripped to (apparently non-DRMed) MP3s. I'll probably/maybe still buy the original to serve some obsessive, completist impulses, but it was an otherwise pleasant experience.
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