The strong coffee addiction persists to this day, even though I've moved on to sunnier locales. French roast brewed strong enough to melt a plastic spoon, a Krupps Mini-Espresso Machine for those all night jitters of creative madness, the *click* of my brain turning on (after only a half a mug) in the wee hours of the morning, and the unparalleled ability of a strong "cuppa joe" to push the haze of too many late-night beers into the distant past.
All hail Caffeine! And to the purveyors of ultra-strong brews I say Thank-ya! Turkish? Oh yeah.
Living in a rural area, the closest Starbucks is now a distant hours drive. It's tucked into the streetside corner of a Barnes & Nobles, and I see it only when looking to expand my library. But the allure is gone. The hapless yearning to meet someone interesting no longer drives my life. The biscotti beckon, but the corporate atmosphere pales when compared to the warmth and comfort of my own private place. Alas, I hear no music as I chase the register down and scoot out of the store with something guaranteed to provide hours of pleasure and escape. CD's? Music? If they're selling, I'm not buying.
Years ago, perhaps. But only if I was still single, still looking for the One. And only if the gal behind the counter looked like a potential snuggle. "Alternative? Sounds great!" But she'd have to smile real purty, and suggest that the purchase would bring us closer to the love, closer to the end of the numbness that comes with living in Seattle.
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From: Duke DeMondo'))
To: The Hot Topic Team
Re: Coffee and CDs
What this whole brouhaha has me remembering is the time I was sat in Starbucks back in the day, sippin some gargantuan mug a foam and reading some toss or other about zombies. What happened was that next thing I knew, holy shit, it’s Cold Roses by Ryan Adams And The Cardinals blaring out the speakers!
(Well, whispering out.)
What in fucks name to do?
It felt odd, and this gets back to Greg’s concern. I don’t mind shite or at least Old Stuff That Everyone Knows fillin the airwaves in these places, but hearin the new Ryan Adams record in such a cripplingly bland, safe, pseudo-BoHo hive, it did the arse of my soul a good deal of frazzlement.
Article comments
1 - anita
Bob Dylan could never in a million years be described as Pasteurized
there is nothing cutting edge or indie or FUCKING GOOD about Babyshambles
therefore you are spouting worthless foam from the mouth, in an uncanny impersonation of a steaming cappuccino machine, perhaps?
2 - Eric Berlin
Anita: agree with you on point #1, disagree on #2 (and please note: you might just make our Duke cry with that), and strongly disagree with #3.
Please note, too, that six hearty lads took part in writing this piece. Maybe "you" applies to all of us? You're entitled to your opinion, of course.
3 - Greg Smyth
I'm as big a fan of Dylan as anyone but you've got to admit that, with the passage of time, all the political bite that was once in his message has slowly leeched out as he became The Great American Songwriter.
Also, whether you like Babyshambles or not has very little to do with the point I was trying to make. Starbucks will always play it close to the middle-American mainstream (although, obviously just enough to the left to acquire some cultural cachet).
4 - anita
Oh, lordy, no - the thought of the Duke crying into his Diet Coke, while Jack White wails in the background, it's too awful, but... it's surely no coincidence that the name of the band so closely resembles that of the original "alcopop", the ultimate "Ladies' drink" in Little Britain, a veritable trademark of ersatz "kulture"?
as per the estimable Philip Norman http://www.waitrose.com/food_drink/wfi/notesandmiscellany/nostalgia/0306090.asp
"Its trademark was a baby deer, with spindly legs, protruding eyes, two underdeveloped horns, and an outsize blue bow around its neck."
Back to coffee, though. The Duke hits the nail on the head - surely a dose of Dylan for the poor sods caught up in the Pasteurized Monoculture can only be A Good Thing?
The canny way to deal with this is to get some minion or other to pick up the disc on your behalf, thus alleviating you of the need to enter the belly of the beast and running no risk of being inadvertently pasteurized. The sound quality of the abbreviated Gaslight will knock your "Guaranteed Fair Trade" cotton socks off and when you're listening to it you won't give a toss where it came from.
5 - Mark Saleski
nice experiment guys (hey, why the hell didn't anybody ask ME about this?!!! ;-)
ahem....
i love to bitch on about monoculture. it's one of the main reasons that we moved from the nashua, new hampshire area further out into what's called the monadnock region. quite a number of years ago now, nashua was voted 'best place to live'. i can't even remember the publication. what i DO remember is that i thought they were nuts. best place to live if your idea of culture is dinner at the mall food court followed by a movie where lots of shit explodes at the local megasuperdupermuliplex movie bunker.
i've been dipping into this book called "That Great Good Place". it's about the history of various gathering places...and gathering places are lacking in the land of coast-to-coast strip malls (well, unless you like hanging out at those things).
so, is starbucks a true gathering place? i suppose it could be. are the people hanging out there all looking to be hip? no. c'mon, get that danged chip offa yer shoulder.
on the other hand, i don't do starbucks very often. near me, there are a few 'real' coffee shop that feel more genuine (whatever the hell that means).
i do get aggravated when i see that the afterage person will gravitate toward 'corporate food/drink', avoiding local shops. i see this all the time. not far from my house there's a beautiful coffee shop set up in an old one-room schoolhouse. right next door, there's a friggin' dunkin' donuts. i've driven by there in the morning and the local place has one car in the lot. the dd has 15 cars in the drivethrough. i just don't get it. is it because the 'product' is safe? they're gonna wait 10 minutes to get a water-down, overpriced version of what they could have next door. oh-my-gawd though, it's not dunkin' donuts!!! can't go there....too scary!!!
anyhoo, buying music at starbucks. since my tastes are too wacky, i probably wouldn't do it very often. but hell, if they offered up, say, some only-here Springsteen, i'd push my way to the front of the line.
6 - Margaret
I'm not a coffee drinker - and even if I did have a caffeine addiction I probably wouldn't go to Starbucks (overpriced, overpackaged etc). I'm satellite radio subscriber though... and Starbucks' HEAR radio station plays an interesting mix of genres, juxtaposing artists I wouldn't normally listen to with my favourites (who don't get regular radio airplay).
I feel like I'm the winner here: I get interesting music, Starbucks doesn't get my coffee $$.
7 - Bennett Dawson
Margaret, actually I should have mentioned that the real genesis for all of this addict-driven madness (for me at any rate) is Pete's in the Oakland/Berkeley area.
Addiction never tasted so good.
Then came Starbucks and the like. Seattle was awesome for coffee. Believe me, after a few months of no sun at all, you'd convert.
Cheers!
8 - Eric Berlin
Wow, Pete's really is out of this world, Bennett. However, I heard it started out in Seattle as well.
Which one do you visit in the Bay Area? I was a fan of the one in Berkeley, on 4th Street, when I lived there. The wife and I would often bike down from Richmond.
There's actually a Pete's right across the street from the closest Starbucks to my house down here in SoCal. It gets real crowded of a weekend morning.
9 - Herbie Hancock
Thanks for the kind words about me and your concern for the exposure of my music. I would like you to know, however, that if it wasn't for Starbucks a lot of people, who might be interested my new record "Possibilities", wouldn't even know that it existed. I made the distribution deal with them because they do service all ages and are a new and innovative avenue for the exposure and sale of music. The coffee is good, too.
Many artist are looking for new ways to let the public know about what they are creating. Starbucks has stepped up to the plate and invested in exposing my record in ways, for me, that have never been attempted by traditional record labels.
10 - Shark
Greg, thanks for providing the format for a writer's circle-jerk.
Next time, call me; I've got a giant ego, lots to say, and a Food Handler's Permit!
xxoo
S
11 - Bennett
EB - The one on Albany Ave between Oakland and Berkeley. I'm pretty sure Pete's is a Bay Area phenom as there were none up in seattle when I moved there from the Bay.
Shark - Jump on in, the water's fine!
12 - Greg Smyth
Fair point, Herbie (and if it really *is* you, then wow!). That's the other side of the argument, which we kinda glossed over a bit I guess, that the infrastructure's there to put CDs in front of people who aren't necessarily the type of people who would hit the jazz section at HMV or whatever. You only have to look at the audience reached by the Ray Charles compilation they sell to see the amazing potential for broadening people's musical scope.
13 - Eric Berlin
It's a similar dynamic to authors who get distributed by Oprah, or Wal Mart even, I think. There's a certain compromise for all artists selling to a mass audience, I suppose.
Have I mentioned that "Rocket" blew my mind as a kid, and I've never been the same since?
14 - uao
I see nothing wrong with it at all.
Music consumption isn't what it once was; no longer are we reliant on a single format or single distribution channel to get music.
I don't think it kills record shop sales if the title is a non-record shop title. Other things are killing record-shop titles.
What Hancock (comment 9) says is pretty much what most artists say who use this means of distribution; it puts them in contact with customers who might not ordinarily browse a CD shop. And his CD will get far more views sitting on that counter than it would in the dusty jazz corner of a megastore.
I see it is giving the public more music, and more music consuming options.
And little impulse buys like that can be fun; why not go in for a cappucino and come out with some Herbie Hancock? It'll expose all sorts of people to his music and his name who may not even have heard of him.
As for Starbucks itself, I've long seen them as evil; they single handedly destroyed the independant coffee shop culture here in Los Angeles and in most every city in the world. I don't care if their packaging is green or not, that was a blow to my environment.
But if people go there (I have to now, all my favorite indie coffee houses closed), exposing them to jazz or Dylan is a good thing.
If they also compensate the musicans more fairly than traditional channels, that's good, too.
It'll help break the Big-4's monolithic thinking about music distribution issues, yet another good thing.
15 - uao
P.S. I should add, that the indie coffee shops I lament in the reply above were my #3 source for new music in the early 90's, after radio and record shops. They didn't sell CD's, but man, it was a rare L.A. coffee shop that didn't always have an interesting, offbeat, new thing on the CD player. Those coffee servers were pretty good deejays.
16 - Mat Brewster
I touched a little on how the megastores can bring a much wider audience to a relatively unknown artist. This is, of course, a good thing. From an artists perspective, I can see why they would make deals with Starbucks and the like.
The question here, is not for the artist, but for the consumer. Should I actually purchase the latest Herbie Hancock cd from Starbucks, or should I go down to my local shop and get it there? For that, we seem to all agree that the local shop is better.
17 - Eric Berlin
Was in a Starbucks over the weekend and saw the highlighted display for Hancock's Possibilities.
That was quite possibly him, I thought...
18 - DJRadiohead
This whole pop culture integrity thing is a bitch kitty to navigate. In some ways, I think bands like The Rolling Stones have it right - fuck integrity, give me the cash.
I shouldn't buy music that I like or coffee that I like at Starbucks because they are trying to make me feel good by selling me coffee that I like and music that I like all the while making money thereby negating the fact that I liked the coffee and the CD?
Oversimplifying and being a contrarian? Guilty as charged.
I know the big box stores are impersonal and a bit shit. But I am listening (at this moment) to a Rilo Kiley CD. I had never heard Rilo Kiley until listening to our beloved Duke's podcast. I bought the CD at a chain store. Guess what? I still fucking love the music. I can't tell you where I bought half the eight billion CDs in my collection. I love the music. Maybe I am not making a fuck of sense right now and you're already scrolling on to the next comment.
Even the virtuous, independent retailer wants to make money and will try different appeals to get you to give them some of yours. Starbucks just happens to be really good at it. And if the Starbucks experience pisses you off, thank whatever entity you wish that you live in a place where you have some choices.
Shutting up now and waiting for the flames to heat my arse...
19 - Greg Smyth
DJR: I know and understand where you're coming from but, were Starbucks to apply their competitive practices to the already hard pressed independent music sector then I'm not too sure we as consumers would ultimately benefit.
At the minute it's a relatively niche area they've entered into, so I guess it's okay and will probably expand sales overall rather than just canibalising the market.
Sure, if your decision boils down to "buy it from Virgin" or "buy it from Starbucks" it's not going to make a wad of difference which one you plump for.