Quests . . . sales & returns

Posted about 5 years ago
Sometimes buying music becomes like big game hunting. You know what you want, you know roughly where you'll find it, you just have to track it down and catch it. 2 years I've been chasing this album and yesterday I finally stumbled across it. It all came from being put on hold by a bank a couple of years back, aside from the usual selection of Enya & South American nose flute music they kept playing this song. When I eventually got through to a human being I asked what they had on their hold mix & surprise surprise they didn't actually know. I had listened to the song about 4 times in full whilst I waited and managed to jot down some of the lyrics which were Googled and bought up the title. Since then I have listened to pretty much every version of Tall Trees In Georgia that I have come across & rejected them all only to find that I had been hunting the Buffy Sainte Marie orginal.Yesterday saw me feeling pretty low as I went to collect the left over copies of my good friends album from the 2 independant stores that I had manged to get to stock it up in London. It had sold a grand total of 1 copy. It was just a bit of a letdown that no-one had taken a chance on what was an interesting looking album at a resonable price. If I had come across it in the racks & not had any involvement in project I would of parted with the cash. It's just kind of sad that in my small suburban chain store I've shifted more copies than in the heart of Londons album buying mecca. My last stop before walking back down to the Underground was Berwick Street in Soho and there in the racks next to my friends album was, I'm Gonna Be A Country Girl Again by Buffy Sainte Marie with the song I had been stalking on it.I took it as a kind of an omen, not quite sure what it's pointing to with but there seemed to be some kind of strange symmetry to the fact that the 2 were there together waiting for me. Almost as if them not selling was the way for me to find the song I wanted. I do wish that I had found the album under happier circumstances but to finally own this damn song is a minor miracle.

Comments (2)

  1. Terry Staunton says Good find! I'm not familiar with the specific Buffy track you mention, but I do know the album's title song, which was briefly used in Coke ads in the mid-70s. It can be disheartening when something you're emotionally invested in doesn't sell, even if you think exposure in a cosmopolitan marketplace will be the springboard to greater glories. A friend of mine wrote a cute little book about his love for music, one of many that sprung up in the wave of fan-lit following Nick Hornby's footie eulogy Fever Pitch. My chum lives and works in Shropshire and, through his local profile as a columnist in a local paper, the book did respectable parochial business. However, the big cities didn't go for it, even though he worked hard to get it stocked in places. Yet, curiously, his biggest sales outside of home turf have come from Portugal! No idea why, but he's arguing...
    Permalink posted 11/17/2006
  2. UtahSpike says It is kind of soul destroying, it had a great UK review on the leading genre website, got airplay all over Europe, had some mighty fine cover art . . . Ok so I'm baised on the cover art front as it was my photography, it was a 'proper' limited edition. All the stuff that makes music junkies like me remove cash from wallet and want to shoot up with a new music fix.
    Permalink posted 11/17/2006

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