by Rodney Eric Griffith | Armour of Rod | |
The Highbury Fields EP by Dido. Arista ASCD-3634. Released prior to US edition of No Angel, contains otherwise unavailable track (“Worthless”), cool 2" clear rim single look. Commercially unavailable. They could have sold a lot of these. It has a nice sleeve, too. They’ve just inconviently “forgotten” how to market singles and EPs.
Here are the results of the Volvo/Lego collaboration I’d heard nothing about. If only they’d recreated Simon Templar’s Volvo P1800 instead.
Rodney | 10:02:00 PM [permalink]There’s an interesting piece in the current New York Observer on the US version of The Office. Wisely, it seems the persons behind the NBC version have remade the lead character as well (into “Michael Scot”), so that Steve Carell won’t have the impossible job of filling David Brent’s shoes, although it would have been wiser still just to run the original 12 episodes and the Christmas special unmolested.
When dealing with British television, the big three networks operate either out of arrogance or fear: arrogance, because they think these already-proven properties can’t work without their touch (cf. Alan Livingston, the 1960s Capitol Records president who eviscerated the early Beatles releases in North America), or fear that another network will get the rights, succeed and have a hit show to use against them. I think NBC probably smothered its remake of Coupling simply to have prevented ABC or CBS from running a version of the show at 8PM EST on Thursdays in September 2004.
With a few exceptions (Who Wants to be a Millionaire? and The Weakest Link, and the plethora of home and gardening shows that were remade for TLC and Discovery, sometimes even keeping the right names), arrogance wins out: it wasn’t necessary to remake Doctor Who, Men Behaving Badly or Queer As Folk. Remaking Absolutely Fabulous and Cracker without substance abuse and language was like doing an American version of All Creatures Great and Small without animals. They should leave well enough alone, but they never do.
I’ve been skimming the book From Tin Foil To Stereo: Evolution of the Phonograph by Oliver Read and Walter L. Welch by courtesy of a friend whose knowledge of the origins of the record industry far exceeds mine. I’m gobsmacked that the disparity in quality between England and the US goes back to the beginning of the history of recording, and that the situation of out of print items in the US available as European pressings is not even remotely new. Even bickering over fidelity and format, which I had long assumed to be peculiar to members of the Steve Hoffman compound, dates decades before my birth.
Two suggestive passages:
p. 337:
“Of course it is not hard to impress an industry which is not troubled much by competition. I mean by that, according to my estimate, over 90% of all record sales accrue to the benefit of the same world-wide corporate family.”—A.J. Franck, Phonograph Monthly Review, July 1931
p. 338:
“A portion of all record and equipment sales eventually went to the same top echelon coporations; therefore, it was expedient to deny Americans superior equipment at lower prices because they were willing to pay more for less efficient equipment.”
I haven’t played GTA, but the Grand Theft Auto: Lego City trailer is tremendous. (The QuickTime movie is mirrored here).
Rodney | 6:01:00 PM [permalink]Caroline reminded me of two Dido promo singles that utilise the clear-rim look. Images to follow.
Rodney | 8:01:00 AM [permalink]
