Music: March 2006 Archives

Singer/songwriter Ed Hamell routinely spins funny, outrageous and outraged yarns, and in his latest recording, "Songs for Parents Who Enjoy Drugs," he uses the occasion of his recent fatherhood to explore the disconnect between family values and the current troubled political climate. In “Values,�? he finds his kid unwilling to engage in any good behavior that politicians likewise eschew; in “Inquiring Minds,�? Hamell finds the best way to answer his son’s pointed questions about his own, uh, colorful past is to, simply, lie. Some of it’s too cute, and some of it’s a bit obvious (particularly a song about Ann Counter, the title of which cannot be reproduced here), but it’s a lively, engaging outing. Hamell on Trial, whose live shows are energetic bursts of pure adrenaline, performs tonight at On the Rox, 9009 W. Sunset.

Ed Hamell’s website

I really don't like "American Idol." Not because of the music - that part is so lightweight it doesn't even merit notice. What bugs me about this glorified high school talent show ...

Buck Owens was a decent guitarist, creating the "Bakersfield sound." He had 20 No. 1 country singles. He was such a good songwriter that the Beatles covered one of his songs ("Act Naturally").

So how much must it suck that that lame "Hee-Haw" show (the worst stuff of which he had nothing to do with) comes at the top of his media obits? Toby Keith and Keith Urban -- and any other Keiths, and any other country singers, and any Simpsons into dopey behavior with a penchant toward considering how history will judge you: You've been warned; stick to your strengths.

Open rebellion erupted last month when Ricky Gervais’s podcast began charging $1.95 on iTunes for a service that had been, for the first dozen episodes, free (the series initially originated from England's newspaper The Guardian, which has no ties to the for-pay podcasts). Hundreds of “reviews�? vehemently excoriated Gervais for charging the same price for a 30-minute audio file that could be spend to download an episode of their favorite TV shows. A few timorous souls pointed out that there’s no outrage at spending 99 cents to download a three- or four-minute pop song, but the overriding conventional wisdom seemed to be that Gervais had crossed some line between good will and greed.

(An aside about Gervais’s show: I have a number of recordings of his London radio show that presaged the podcasts, in which he was quickly divining the comic gold that could be mined from his sidekick Karl Pilkington – who, essentially, is his Larry “Bud�? Melman, a clueless, lumpen clod whose peculiar worldview endlessly amuses Gervais and bemuses Stephen Merchant, Gervais’s writing/directing partner on “The Office�? and “Extras.�? Initially, Pilkington – the show’s producer, there mainly to push buttons to lead into songs and commercial breaks – was quiet, reticent, vocally resisting being dragged into Gervais's anarchic lunacy. But as the radio show continued, they couldn’t get Karl to shut up – he’d actually interrupt Gervais and Merchant to inject some of his own vacuity, and they were perfectly happy with this. Some of his stories were epic jaw-droppers, such as an anecdote about a blind date with a woman who had a bone marrow disease that he dumped, because he didn’t want to spend good money on her just to have her die on him.)

Anyway, iTunes seems to have backed off from the controversy a bit – it offers a free, two-and-a-half-minute video podcast offering an exchange between Gervais and Pilkington, but I couldn’t find the pay-for podcasts there; for those, you’ll have to go to audible.com, which is offering six episodes for $6.95, which seems reasonable.

But there still seems to be discrepancies in the prices for video downloads. The most egregious example is “High School Musical,�? a dopey if cute Disney Channel movie that still scores high ratings whenever the cable network runs it, two months after its premiere (the highlight, a musical number boasting clever choreography from the high school in question’s basketball team, comes early in the film, it’s all predictably downhill from there). That’s going for a whopping $9.99 on iTunes, for a low-budget 90-minute movie; you could download five high-end episodes of “Lost�? or “Desperate Housewives�? for that. (On the other hand, you would pay about $8 for four sitcom episodes that would roughly comprise "High School Musical's" running time.) That same $9.99 will get you a full month of original episodes of “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.�?

But “High School Musical�? is aimed at tweens, those most likely adept at iPod technology, and when it comes to entrenched kids who won’t take no for an answer and parents who don’t want yet another argument with their kids, you know who’s going to win that battle: Disney. Same tweens probably already have the soundtrack, and they’ll want the DVD with the “extras�? Disney’ll scratch together to make it a desirable addition to the collection. So parents may end up spending $45 for a movie that the Disney Channel has aired 20 or more times at this point.

What do you think? Is there an unfair, exploitative disparity in pricing schedules at iTunes, or will the market justify everything, and when costs get unreasonable customers will simply tune out?