Stand and Deliver!

“A questionable accounting system in the Australian music industry has resulted in performers being awarded gold and platinum albums and singles before they have sold the required number of CDs to the public,” reported the Sunday Telegraph’s entertainment writer, Peter Holmes, on Sunday 14 March. Apparently, record labels tabulate sales by the amount of stock that leaves the warehouse, rather than what is bought over the counter and taken home by punters. This isn't like Beatles singles, at the height of Beatlemania, being awarded gold status prior to release because sufficient punters had ordered copies. Rather, since new releases are often sold into music shops on a sale-or-return basis (ie, they can be sent back if they don’t sell) it could well be the case that artists are awarded gold (for sales of 35,000 copies) or platinum (for sale of 70,000 copies) prior to selling that amount - or without ever having sold that amount.

One of the examples Holmes gives us if of the independent act the John Butler Trio, an act, Holmes tells us, that had just released their third album, Sunrise Over Sea. 50,000 copies were ordered by retailers across the nation. As Sebastian Chase (who works for MGM - the independent distributor handling the album) explains, on the first day of release, only about 25,000 copies would sell. Yet the album is already declared gold before it has actually gone sale. Except, of course, now that the album's been mentioned in a national paper, perhaps it will have earnt its gold status after all.

This reminds me of one of my favourite tales of rock ’n’ roll excess, about the Casablanca label in the 70s, as documented in Frederic Dannen's excellent expose on the dodgy practices of the music industry, Hitmen. Casablanca was an independent label set up by Neil Bogart, and its claim to fame was milking the disco trend and launching the recording career of Kiss. However, despite some hype-driven success which led to the multinational music corporation PolyGram buying into it, and losing out bigtime when Casablanca ran itself into the ground through incredible excess. Casablanca's first release was a compilation of comedy snippets from Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. Despite the presence of Jerry Lewis, Lenny Bruce, the Smothers Brothers and Groucho Marx, the album was quite ordinary. Yet Bogart talked it up so big that distributors shipped massive quantities. And then the album stiffed, and all the copies were sent back. Forever more, Casablanca was known as the label that “shipped gold and returned platinum”.

Part of the reason why labels are keen to attribute sales before they have actually been made is because one way to get sales is to have them. Just as busy-looking shops and restaurants stay busy, albums that look as though they are selling a lot have a much better chance of continuing to sell a lot. Part of the reason is because when a song charts, it receives more airplay – even though more airplay is one of the reasons why a record charts. Thus, make it look like a lot of people are buying it, and, quite often, a lot of people end up buying it.

This doesn’t always work: there is another Casablanca story, about Bogart appearing on a late-night chat show with Cher, who was recording for the label at the time, in order to present her with a gold record for her single ‘Take Me Home’. In the United States, an album has to sell 500,000 copies to attain gold status; a single has to sell a million copies! ‘Take Me Home’ had sold maybe 700,000 copies. The following day, PolyGram received a frantic call from Bogart’s lackeys, insisting that they press and ship another 300,000 copies of the single, so as not to make Bogart a liar. As there had been no new orders for the additional 300,000 copies, PolyGram had to wear a hefty loss.

In the case of Slim Dusty’s postumous Columbia Lane achieving gold status after a week of release, we can breath easy. It debuted at number 5 in the charts at the same time, and as the charts are compiled from actual over-the-counter sales, there probably are 35,000 Aussie households giving Slim a spin!

From an EMI press release:

EMI Music Australia are proud to announce that Slim Dusty’s new album ‘Columbia Lane - The Last Sessions’ has achieved Gold sales [ie, sold 35,000 copies] less than two weeks after its release.

‘Columbia Lane - The Last Sessions’, which debuted at #5 on the National ARIA Album Chart on Monday (the highest album debut for this week), sits comfortably in the Top 5 above albums from the Black Eyed Peas, Jack Johnson, Jet & George. It also debuted at #1 in the ARIA National Country Album Chart.

The 1st single from the album, ‘Answer to Billy’ is also the #1 Country Airplay Single in the country.

“Slim and EMI were a great team, and they still are,” Slim’s wife Joy McKean said. “Slim's last recordings are among his best and a fitting finale to an inspiring and remarkable career that never ceased to amaze me."

Slim as we all know, was no stranger to Pop Chart success throughout his long career, but it is coincidental that Slims last solo studio album release, ‘Looking Forward Looking Back’ also debuted at #5 in the National ARIA Album Chart in July 2000. ‘Looking Forward Looking Back’ then went on to sell over 180K and spending over two months in the Top 10 of the National ARIA Album Chart.

It should also be noted that Slim received his first Gold Award in 1957 for his international hit ‘Pub With No Beer’, and it became the first official Gold award presented in Australia.

Slim Dusty. The Legend Continues…

Well I certainly played my part in perpetuating the legend!

And speaking of legends, I must express gratitude as the recipient of a ticket for an upcoming Waifs gig. Read what I have to say about the Waifs, or what they have to say about themselves.

When Slim Dusty set about recording his last album, he did so knowing the end was near. Despite terminal illness, he managed to lay down seven very fine vocal and guitar tracks before passing away. Slim’s widow Joy McKean saw the seven tracks to completion and release as Columbia Lane, album number 107 at the end of Slim’s sixty-year career.

Although not an ardent lover of country music, I come to it via the musicians I’m into: Elvis Costello and T-Bone Burnett’s country turn as ‘The Coward Brothers’, for the single ‘The People’s Limousine’, and Costello’s countrified King of America album, which Burnett produced; Bob Dylan’s excursion into country and the Rolling Stones’ excursions into dirty blues versions of the same. Nowadays, there is a respect given to country music via its rock ’n’ roll end, nebulously labelled ‘alt.country’. (“We keep hearing the words ‘alt.country’,” the Waifs’ Donna Simpson told me when I interviewed her. She had no idea what to make of the epithet with which her band had been tarred. “What is ‘alt’, ‘dot’, ‘country’? ‘Alternative country’? ‘Not quite country’? ‘Not quite folk’? I don’t know. It’s just acoustic music – a bit of country, a bit of blues, just whatever we’re inspired by.”)

Oh yeah, this went to air on Saturday 6 March 2004.

Music: ‘Nature’s Gentleman’ - Slim Dusty

Demetrius Romeo: Joy, this album ‘Columbia Lane’ consists of some of the songs that Slim Dusty was working on before he passed away. How much work had to go into the seven songs contained herein to prepare them for release?

JOY MCKEAN: Not a lot vocally, but some of the instrumental parts had to be completed because Slim was concentrating on getting down the vocals and his guitar. They were the main things he had to concentrate on getting done.

Demetrius Romeo: How difficult is it working with Slim’s legacy after his passing?

JOY MCKEAN: It is difficult at times and yet, over the years, I’ve always worked with Slim on projects and albums and I am training myself to try and look at this as another one his projects that I have to go ahead and do my normal work on. I think that is the way I’m getting through it because, of course, it’s difficult when I think of him, and of him working on these songs.

Demetrius Romeo: Are there other projects that you would continue with after this? I understand that there was a live album planned at one stage.

JOY MCKEAN: There was a live album planned. There’s not a lot of material. He’s not going to ‘do a Jim Reeves’ with stacks and stacks of things coming out of the woodwork simply because Slim was a very prolific recording man. As you know, this was album 107. As soon as he'd get things ready, they were more-or-less released, you see. So there’s not a big backlog.

Music: ‘Long Distance Driving’ - Slim Dusty

Demetrius Romeo: The title Columbia Lane I understand refers to Slim’s home studio, which itself was named after the studio Slim used to record at when he was first signed to Regal Zonophone. Was there a lot of sentimentality and love for his career throughout?

JOY MCKEAN: Yes, you see, Columbia Lane was the lane everybody had to walk down to get to the recording studios and it meant a lot to Slim because when Slim began recording, Regal Zonophone was the only label at the only recording company in Australia. So to walk down Columbia Lane in the footsteps of people like Peter Dawson, Gladys Moncreif, all the radio big bods was a terrific thrill for Slim.
Are there other songs that just couldn’t be completed for release from this project?

Music: ‘Long Distance Driving’ - Slim Dusty

Demetrius Romeo: Listening to the songs, they’re all trucking songs. What was the project they were originally designed for?

JOY MCKEAN: Actually they were designed for a trucking album but you’ll see that ‘Nature’s Gentleman’ is very different. It was written by his mate James Blundell, and he’d had that one for a while and he wanted to get it on record, he really did. He hadn’t been able to fit it into a project in the previous year, but he was determined he was going to get that on record even though it wasn’t a trucking song. So he did that, and then of course, the Don Walker one which is so very different, but that is slightly trucking. And then of course ‘Blue Hills in the Distance’ is about being on the Gann, that new train. Rather, I should say it was a trip on the old one it was written about actually.

Music: ‘Blue Hills In The Distance’ - Slim Dusty

Demetrius Romeo: Despite being a prolific songwriter himself, I see Slim does sing a lot of other people’s songs. How would he go about chosing what songs he would record for his next album?

JOY MCKEAN: He always looked for something he could relate to, that he felt the people he knows so well could relate to, he looked for something that had a bit of grit to it, something ‘real’ to it. He had a gift being an ordinary Australian bloke. He had that gift of relating to what he could relate to, and because he was like so many other Australians, they could relate to it. That’s what he looked for all the time: really good, strong lyrics. And even if he only got lyrics, he could set them to music that would bring out the story and what the lyrics were trying to say.

Demetrius Romeo: Joy, for a lot of people, the name ‘Slim Dusty’ tends to conjure those more well known songs like ‘Pub With No Beer’ or ‘Duncan’, songs that we all know or know of. But having had such an extensive recording career, there’s such a depth of songs to draw from. Do you think that this is a time that more people will come to get to know Slim’s work, and what will they find if they do?

JOY MCKEAN: Well I think that a lot of people may decide to have a closer look. It’s like I’m hearing from overseas people saying, “I’ve only just found Slim Dusty in the last month or so”. If they do listen, they’ll find a very different horde of work than just ‘Pub With No Beer’ and ‘Duncan’. Slim was recording for a period of sixty years and he was drawing from real-life stories and experiences, so if you listen to a body of his work, Dom, you’ll hear all sorts of changes: changes in people’s outlook, in the Australian culture, the way we look at things and all the different things we’re interested in. If you listen to a selection of Slim’s work over that sixty years, you really will be amazed at the changes his music portrays.

Music: ‘Get Along’ - Slim Dusty

Demetrius Romeo: Joy McKean, thank you very much.

JOY MCKEAN: Thanks so much, Dom, it’s been really nice speaking with you.

Music: ‘Get Along’ - Slim Dusty