Music: Out of Print, but not Out of Luck

One of the things I look forward to every year with Treblezine, the online music magazine that my brother and I host, is our 'best of the decade' feature. In 2004, we began with our survey of the 1960's, looking beyond the easy targets of the Beatles, Beach Boys and Dylan without leaving them behind. In 2005, we ventured into the 1970's, a fairly eclectic decade that saw the rise of metal, disco and punk. 2006 saw the overview of the 'me decade,' the 1980's, replete with more punk, post-punk, goth and new wave. The next year, 2006, we decided on a different plan of action. We would soon run out of decade's to survey (of course, before we start the process all over again, if we so decide. Maybe this time making lists of the best albums that didn't make the cut), and we needed a few stopgaps in order to get to 2010 to cover the 00's. So, in 2007, we did our survey of the best singles of the 1990's. Right now, a score of writers (literally) are furiously sorting out their favorite albums of that decade so that we may bring you that feature this summer. Then, next year, maybe we'll sort out the best singles of the current decade so far before we wrap things up in 2010.

Anyway, one of the best things about doing these features is being introduced to older stuff you may have missed out on while also rediscovering favorites you might have forgotten about. Unfortunately, a lot of times, the albums that fall into either category end up being out of print. Sure, we'll always be able to find Nirvana's Nevermind and Michael Jackson's Thriller, but those albums are ubiquitous enough to skip the 'owning' factor. As an example, one of my favorite albums of the 1980's was The Silencers' A Letter From St. Paul (1987). By the time I had to transfer all of my outdated cassettes to CD, the album had already gone out of print. I spent the resulting 20 odd years scouring used record stores for a secondhand copy to no avail, until finally, last year, I dug one up at Easy Street Records in Seattle. Yay! I was incredibly lucky, as copies are going for about $70 minimum on Amazon right now. Easy Street obviously had no idea what they were holding onto.

However, not every out of print CD is that difficult to find. Case in point, as we are working on the 1990's decade, I remembered two discs that were personal favorites. One was lost a while back, and one is with my ex-wife. Of course, both are now out of print. The former is Echobelly's On (1995). Echobelly is a band from London with a female lead singer, often compared to the Smiths, and quite often lumped in with Elastica and Sleeper, both of whom found a bit more success. The latter is a collaboration between Tim Booth, the lead singer of the band James, and Angelo Badalamenti, the composer with a long-standing working relationship with David Lynch. The album and project was called Booth and the Bad Angel, released in 1996. It's a gorgeous album, and far less creepy than you might imagine. I steeled myself for another long and arduous search, but found both on the previously mentioned Amazon for a song (pun intended). In fact, I was able to acquire a sealed (yes, manufacturer's seal with dogbone) copy of Echobelly's CD for a little over $2. The other wasn't sealed, but was in practically new condition for about $5 (due to its being a little more obscure). I received both copies in the mail from the individual used sellers within less time than the usual Amazon 'new item' turnaround, about 2 days!

So remember, even though an album you want might be out of print, you're not entirely out of luck. Here's hoping that your quest goes more like the one I most recently had, rather than the one that took me 20 years. Of course, one of these years, CD's might become a thing of the past, so you might want to start looking sooner rather than later.