Warner Music Group announced the formation of an online-only label which will release “clusters” of three or more tracks at a time, EPs rather than LPs. Artists signed to this Warner e-label retain ownership of their masters and copyrights, which is a surprise. Prince must be chuckling.

I started reading Andrew Sandoval’s book on The Monkees this evening; expect some reaction at some point soon.

My mother liked telling me that as a very young child I would always play a country single entitled “The Baby On The Doorstep” repeatedly. I have very little recollection of this one, it’s more the memory of Mom retelling the story… I hadn’t thought about the recording in years, but the title came to me a few days ago, so I googled it to refresh my memory. Only a morbid set of lyrics has come up thus far.

My first memories of record shopping take place in department stores, back when all department stores had record departments with large displays of singles. Now there are no record departments, and very few record stores left in the USA.

American studios and production companies have really warmed to the idea of releasing entire television series in DVD sets in the last 18 months or so, which is kind of amusing, since they’re so late to the party: British audiences were enjoying complete series/season sets on VHS long before DVDs were in the shops. My Caroline made a friend from Boston envious when she mentioned she owned sets of the first two series of Friends, unaware that, at the time, television series were not made commercially available in the USA (with rare exceptions like Star Trek and Highlander).

The problem now is that a lot of bad television that never should have seen the light of day in the first place is being made available in archive sets. I shudder to think who is buying these sets of 70s and 80s sitcoms that Must Not Be Named. Fortunately, their presence has not slowed down the availability of cult classics, which still tend to dominate, so much so that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to come up with titles I’d want that are thus far unavaiable: George of the Jungle, Jay Ward’s beloved 1967 series, or The Green Hornet, or a remastered The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

Every weekend, when we do our grocery shopping, we see a preponderance of elders. We are both otherwise engaged during the week, but the elderly have their weekdays, when grocery stores are bound to be less crowded, free. So why do they shop on the weekends? I can only speculate this is because of the relative novelty of anything being open on Sunday—a bustling market seems exciting.

It just bustles less when they’re there.