RTP-area local music and culture

[Chris Calloway <ifoufo AT yahoo.com>]

--- Todd Morman <tmorman AT nc.rr.com> wrote:
>  > Both CD alley and Schoolkids have regularly given
> me $5 for cds.
> 
> Hats off to them, then. That won't happen at any CD
> store I know of in
> Raleigh.

having been on the giving and receiving end of this
thing, i'll pipe in to say there are more variables at
work here than are being expressed. i'm saying this as
someone who has sold more used cds to stores than most
people i know have ever owned in their whole lives.
i'm saying this as a professional idiot who's
supported himself for collectively maybe a year of his
life from the proceeds of unloading used cds at stores
including very recently.

yes, there are places in the triangle which will give
you up to $5 per cd.

no, there are not places in the triangle which will
give you up to $5 per cd.

it depends on who you are. that is, what cd's you are
trying to sell. and where you are trying to sell them.
and at what time.

some places take the tact that they won't pay but $2
per cd no matter what it is because they'll just end
up with a pile of crap they can't unload. some places
take the tact that they will pay top dollar because
unless they pay top dollar, no one will bring in the
good stuff and without good stock there is no income.
most places vacillate back and forth between these two
policies because neither one is the whole answer. and
unless the store owner has cloned himself or works at
the store every open hour or is just plain stupid, the
store has to have a policy of some kind in effect to
keep from automatically going broke.

if a store says, we only buy cds when the owner is
here, then all the good used cds will go somewhere
else and the store will not stock any used cds worth
buying. and the store with the most desirable used cd
policy will be the one where the store owner *is*
there every open hour.

first, what *you* might think is good stuff when you
are trying to unload used cds will not necessarily be
what the store thinks is good stuff. and at any given
time, what the store thinks is good stuff will be very
dependent on who is working there *at the time*. even
"good" stuff will not move at a store where people who
are not of your opinion as to what constitutes "good"
are likely to frequent *first* (getting customer
dollars being very much at least a factor of being the
first stop on a customer's tour).

but if you aren't getting $5 per cd anywhere in town,
it *could* be a sign you stuff isn't worth too much.
could be. or a sign that the cd stores in your town
suck. many variables. much work.

for the person trying to unload their used cds this
means taking your crappiest crap to the place that
pays $2 and seems not to discriminate by any
discernable criteria and taking your most golden crap
to the hard to please place which pays $5. it's work
to find the right place to sell what. and gas money.
and changes season to season.

ten years ago, a certain locally run store i probably
don't have to name for you to guess would pay almost
$5 per cd and stocked lots of good used stuff. now
they pay $2 per cd and you'd have to be drunk to shop
there. in both instances they seemed to have only the
vaguest "i heard that was cool" awareness of what it
was they were buying, whether it was the college dj
they just hired behind the counter or the owner of the
store coming to pay me a courtesy visit at home
because i was trying to unload more at a time than
would fit on the counter at one time. some of the
stuff they would buy was complete rubbish and then
they would pass over stuff that was probably worth
more money than i paid for it if i were to sell it on
ebay, which is way too much work.

what is interesting is that over those years, the
averge price stores here in general seem to be willing
to pay for used cds has gone down about a buck while
the average price of used cds in the stores seems to
have gone up by about $2. i couldn't believe it the
first time i saw a used cd for $8. "who buys these
things?," i thought. then i noticed many people buying
them. i became still more afraid of my fellow man at
that point. if used cds are a more profitable item for
a cd store, then there seems to be a tendency to keep
it so. i can only attribute that to increased
tightness in the profitability of new product.

if you are selling used cds because you need the
money, you might be better off getting a job. if you
just need the precious space two dozen cds take up,
there's no haggling with goodwill. otherwise, be
prepared to do more work trying to get good money for
your used crap than it is probably worth it to you to
do.

it's like having a yard sale. there's the advance work
of having to make signs and put ads in the paper and
stick price tags on everything and then having to get
up at 5am on saturday morning in order to set up
tables and carry everything out to the front yard in a
hurry before the professional vultures show up at 6am
before the real sale starts at 8am. if you're just
going to carry a few pieces of junk out on the lawn at
noon on wednesday and sit there waiting for someone to
drive by, you aren't going to have a very good day.

likewise, if you don't work at selling used cds, you
aren't going to get much money for them unless you are
just dead lucky enough to wander into the right place
the first time and happen to turn around and sell your
best cds about as soon as you buy them new. that is,
unless you are a lucky idiot. or a professional.
professional idiots can earn up to $1 for every six
hours of emailing back and forth by selling their cds
on ebay, for a total loss of $6 or more per each cd
they never should have purchased in the first place. 

if i were to say $6 could feed a starving child in
africa, i would sound more flippant than usual, as
well as give pause to thoughts about whether those
organizations on the infomercials ever actually get $6
to starving children or blow it all on sending
pictures of and letters from starving children to
people with $6. but then, i am sure we are all selling
our used cds so that we can send money to starving
children because we are the balance of harmony in the
universe. yes we are.


99 percent of the people walking in the door with cds
to sell are bums. if you don't believe me, then just
spend a day in the records store watching all the
people who come in to sell used cds. you will leave
wondering, goddamn, i never knew there were so many
bums in my neighborhood. bums who look, dress, and
talk just like me, as well as listen to the same cds i
do.

these bums have poor taste and don't know it. or they
are just trying to unload the chaff of their
collection and are looking for the most gullible
outlet to take them off their hands. or they are
unemployed and need rent money fast. or maybe their
taste is great but the market during the summer time
for japanoise's greatest hits volume 5 is kinda
limited.

there are very few people who are trying to dispose of
marketable stuff, maybe enough for each store owner to
stock a month's worth of inventory per year, and even
then it takes a lot of work for a store owner to find
them because the owner has to cultivate the contacts
of many record collectors, most of whom are somewhat
difficult to cultivate due to everything from
objectionable personal hygiene to cro-mag political
views to heavy drug use, and go to lots of record
conventions where everyone is already trying to get
top dollar for old blues 78s which only other record
collectors buy. the *best* used cd stock, the stuff
you want to buy when you walk in the door, doesn't
generally walk in the door like any other customer.

which is why you have to wade through so many copies
of moldy pixies and cracker ep's while used cd
shopping. most people wandering into a store trying to
unload used cd's have a bizarre mixed stack of two
dozen cds by pj harvey, orbital, helium, liz phair,
and the foo fighers cd they are embarrassed to own. in
other words, not the stuff most people go used cd
*shopping* for. but just on the edge of what there
*might* be just one customer willing to pay $6 for on
a lark if times are good and the market is, uh,
diverse.

if you can find adult or ghost in used, then you know
the economy is *really* bad, which means getting only
$2 for your used cds. it won't be until next year that
you go to sell your new franz ferdinand, modest mouse,
and coheed and cambria cds, which by then will be the
new moldy pixies and cracker ep's you have to wade
through while shopping. if somebody walks into cd
alley trying to sell their copy of aafm, something's
mighty fucked up somewhere. not saying it doesn't
happen. just saying it's a very unusual occurrence on
which you can't base a business.

however, *if* i were looking for the new polyphonic
spree cd, i might look in used, because it is getting
such univerally bad reviews, i suspect that there may
be more than a few people who just bought it are also
looking to unload it. again, not a frequent enough
occurrence on which to base a business.

anyway, bums. bums make the used cd market go round. i
know. i've been the bum enough times. going around
store to store looking for the most gullible employees
to pay my rent. waiting around while that employee
called my references to make sure my too carefully
chosen collection of indie crap wasn't stolen. (dude,
thieves work through the pawn shops with whom they are
in cahoots and who take care of paying off the cops.)

and i've been that gullible employee, having a bet
with a fellow employee to see if i offer the next bum
through the door only $1 per record, will he be
desperate enough to leave us with a box of 150
pristine golden nuggets. (yes, he was.) i've been that
gullible employee who stands there contemplating
calling the police who protect the pawn shops while
some guy yells at me at the top of his lungs that
unless i give him $10 *right now* for his flawless
double vinyl copy of larry weaver's fan club christmas
album he will trash the store to all his very
influential friends.

(and he will come back next week and apologize because
he was only a test case sent by the store owner to see
how well difficult customers are handled... because
the store owner was concerned about whether the
employees understand enough about balance and harmony
in the universe to know that their paychecks are
somewhat dependent on their kindness to bums... but
the employees already knew that because they saw the
store owner and guy who yells at the same bar drinking
PBRs together the week before.)

that being said, all you bums should shop nowhere else
but cd alley. if you want good money for your used
crap, then eat where you crap. there's no excuse good
enough to shop anywhere else for cds. no one will
treat you as well, give you as much good crap to
choose from at only the slightest markup from
wholesale, and give you as much for your crappy crap.
some places will give you more, but will take very
little of your crap. some places will take more of
your crap, but give you very little for it.

cd alley offers the optimal solution to your
multi-variate problem, even after accounting for the
gas money variable. you will dispose of the most for
the most at cd alley. as a consequence, they will
offer you the most for damn near the least overall
*for what you want the most*. cd alley is thereby your
finest karmic citizen and should be treated
accordingly in order to promote balance and harmony in
the universe. you do want balance and harmony in the
universe, correct?

when you do not promote balance and harmony in the
universe, people will come into your bar and buy only
PBR. we don't know why this is. it just is.
multivariate analysis will allow you to determine how
to promote balance and harmony. but it does not
explain why balance and harmony do not flow back to
you when you have a momentary failure to promote
balance and harmony in the universe yourself. there
are just too many variables in the universe to analyze
the problem of why as well as we have the problem of
what. we can bracket the what. we cannot bracket the
why. we must abandon the rational at that point and
fall to the empirical.

if you promote balance and harmony in the universe, it
is not a given that good things will flow back to you.
balance and harmony in the universe is often served by
the universe, having somewhat of a life of its own,
which i can explain later if you're curious, going out
of its way to see how much crap you can take without
calling the protectors of pawn shops. but it is a
clearly demonstrable that if you do not promote
balance and harmony in the universe, you will be
judged by those with lives of their own.

you may have to spend much time unemployed and
attending religious retreat weekends, or worse, being
employed working 38 hour shifts, in order to
understand this negative dialectic. but it is worth
contemplating as only small infractions of seemingly
innocent neglect can multiply and amplify across the
far corners of the universe and over the years come
back focused like a boomerang to conk you on the head
in a most rude manner that leaves you wondering what
the fuck, where did all these cheap ass beer drinkers
come from and why did they pick your bar to slack off
in, when you *are* such a decidely nice, sweet, and
damn good looking person who does so much for so many.

the proof is empirical. at some point, you bought a cd
at best buy, and now you are reaping the consequences.

the only thing your should ever go to best buy for is
a tv. washing machines you should get from sears. when
indies start *making* televisions and washing
machines, then we won't need to go to best buy or
sears at all. until then, you have permission to go to
best buy when you need a tv, let's say once every
seven years. and until then, there's no cd you need so
badly that you have to go to best buy to get it. best
buy will not even buy back your crappy cds when you
have come to your senses. now what kind of citizenship
in the universe is that? i just want you to give me
money but never ask me for any? huh?

if there's a cd at best buy you think you want when
you know there are other cds you want more but are
having some kind of mental tic about paying another $2
more to get them, then you are a victim of that
classic marketing ploy, the impulse buy, separating
you from your money in exchange for stuff which in a
calmer mind you would realize you really don't want as
much as something else you would really rather have.
if there's a cd at best buy you think you want when
you could get the same cd at cd alley for $2 more,
then if you get that cd at best buy anyway, you are
not a victim, but a perpetrator in a vast network of
liberal economy monopolization which allows dumping.

victim/perpetrator. you decide. because you have
become outwardly indistinguishable as to which when
you walk into best buy. is a big corporate machine
manufacturing your desire? or are you just
inconsiderate enough of the consequences of being a
fool willingly and easily departed of his money? only
you will know. we could argue about it. but the
information has disappeared over the event horizon
until you lose the bet.

i'm not saying totally ignore that very lucky $2 find
of the one good raspberries album in the cutout bin at
best buy, the one you happened to see while there
buying a tv. but if you need franz ferdinand so badly
that you are willing to spend $10 of your hard earned
pushing PBRs across the counter at drunken sailors
money, then please turn on the radio.

heck, turn on the tv you got at best buy. it's on vh1.
on the first two listens, it's kinda lame. it's been
done before much better and long ago. on the third and
fourth listen, you start to succumb to the weakness
which says hey, this is kinda catchy and isn't it
amazing how far they've taken a picabia inspired video
collage. then on the fifth listen and beyond, you wish
you'd never heard this tune, you wish you could get
its inane bleating monotony out of your head, you wish
you'd never bought your tv, and you cancel your cable
because who needs vh1 except those insufferable people
who get off on the "where are they now?" type of
shows.

god help anybody who ever manages to scrape by with
only one hit song. i don't care who you are, there
isn't a grotto in bucharest, a gas station in the
outback of down under, or a county in indiana remote
enough for you to hide where they can't find you if
you were so careless as to have only produced one mere
hit single.

that being said, don't shop anywhere. listen to the
radio. all the latest crap is on the radio. i don't
care what kind of crap you like, if you live in the
triangle, crap you like is somewhere on the dial. why
pay extra with all the work you had to do to play your
part in an international infrastructure that could
afford to broadcast all the latest crap over radio
waves? all the tickets to mergefest are gone anyway.
and who wants to be stuck in the cradle in late july
with 600 other people? that's too much like my idea of
hell, enough of which is staring down the barrel at me
already.

when you need to pay the rent without a job in a
liberalized monopoly economy, you can support yourself
for at least three times as long if you don't first
pump what could have been your savings through cds you
just come to no longer care for after you figure out
whether you are victim or perpetrator. which you'll
have plenty of time to think about in a liberalized
monopoly economy without a job. this is the considered
advice of a professional idiot. only amateurs would
ignore it. i'm telling you, heed my words or you may
soon be making the same thing you made in 1986.

please pardon my rant if you have fallen into my trap
and are clueless enough to have read this far. i don't
know who dennis, isaac, or lauren are. i'm sure they
are nice people as are glenn, todd, and some guy who
yelled at me years ago, and it's a damn shame to have
their names attached to this poor pathetic excuse for
a post. i've never been to nightlight when it was
nightlight, only when it wasn't. from what i've heard,
i'm sure i should have when it was. i've been to 506,
though. and i always purchased the most expensive beer
when there because that's just the kind of guy i am,
always seeking balance and harmony in the universe,
even though i suspect there's more potential profit in
PBRs. i was at work for 38 straight hours until 10pm
last night. i just got up this afternoon. my brain is
kinda scrambled. i have to mow the yard now or it may
have become too late in the day. ten years from now,
if bo williams can forget his future arthritis long
enough, he can point to this thread and talk about how
polemical we were in the good old days.

i could have made this all one paragraph, ya know. 

3



        
                
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