Cheap Thrills
FRANK ZAPPA Cheap Thrills Review by Dave Connolly — Today's lesson is on economics.
But first a little history. Rykodisc purchased the compleat works of FRANK ZAPPA
in the mid '90s, remastering and re-releasing the whole back catalog while adding
to the oeuvre themselves with some new discs. They took their stewardship of the
ZAPPA legacy seriously, which is to say with a sense of humor. Now for the economic
part: ZAPPA's music has never come cheap. Original elpees have escalated in value,
CDs usually start at the high end and rise when they go out of print. So building
a ZAPPA collection is an expensive proposition. Now, here's the interesting part.
Most companies would rub their hands together in glee, give each other conspiratorial
looks, and think "I wonder if people would pay even more for FRANK ZAPPA's music."
There'd probably be some chortling too. You know, that phlegmatic chortling that
comes so easy to bad people on tv. But Rykodisc did something different: they
released a pair of budget-priced samplers at $6.99 (about half the price of a
regular CD) that compiled an album's worth of music from various ZAPPA reissues.
What that meant was that consumers flipping through the CDs at their local record
distributor were lulled from the internal dialogue of "Fifteen bucks, eighteen
bucks, twenty-two bucks, sheesh" with the revelation of ""Seven" BUCKS?!" Then,
in their trembling hands, they'd lift the CD to the light, check it for damage,
and quickly flip through the rest of the ZAPPA section to see if this was a mistake
that might happen again. I've exaggerated some, but that scenario probably isn't
far from the mark. Rykodisc's plan was part of a much-maligned science called
marketing: creating a desire on the part of the consumer for a certain product
by using clever strategies. This is different from "mugging", which works by luring
people into a place where they might otherwise feel safe (say, a record store)
and stealing their money. This is what Vivendi/Universal is still doing to consumers,
despite reducing the prices on some CDs. They're taking a slight hit on profits,
but the real coup is pooching the silent partner (the music retailer) by forcing
them to take an even smaller slice of the pie. And if the CDs are purchased with
a credit card, a chunk of that slice hits the ground before the retailer can get
it into their mouth. It's rapidly becoming the American way: one nation, under
the god of commerce, with the hands of business in everybody's pockets. In the
future, maybe the Chinese will sell us bootlegged CDs at a better price, which
we can tax at 100%, distributing the tax revenue to Americans as income. Anyway,
back to that original moment of pleasant discovery in an idyllic garden of multicolored
plastic sadly being driven to extinction. For "Seven" bucks, you're getting a
solid sampler of mostly live cuts from sundry ZAPPA releases. Lest the proceedings
sound schizophrenic, the field has been narrowed to primarily '80s and '90s releases:
the You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore series and Playground Psychotics in particular.
It's not a greatest hits album by any means, but if you like the "funny" side
of ZAPPA, "Cheap Thrills"'ll do just fine. Incidentally, mundane enhancements
allow you to place this disc in your computer and browse Rykodisc's ZAPPA catalog
off line, if you feel so inclined.
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