CT Blue

Yesterday my wife and I went to the Stroll in Mystic, and stopped in to see Dan Curland at the Mystic Disc. Dan told us that he has had to concentrate more on selling vinyl these days. Downloading is part of it, but a large part of the problem stems from monopolistic or semi-monopolistic practices on the part of the corporations that control distribution of compact discs. That’s par for the course but here’s worse. Dan said that he couldn’t sell the latest Eagles CD at all. Cuz why? Starbucks, I guessed. No, worse, he responded. “Wal-mart?”, my wife and I said in stunned unison.

Bingo.

The deal is explained charitably here at an Eagles fansite. Dan Henley is impressed with Wal-Mart’s PR about its environmental sensibilities. So the Eagles haven’t sold out. Not by a long shot. Why Dan even told us that there’s a ten minute song on the CD blasting corporate America, a song you can only hear by buying it at your friendly neighborhood Wal-Mart.

Way to go, Eagles.

Maybe Henley really believes the Wal-Mart environmental bullshit. It’s always possible. Even the most cynical can sometimes be credulous. I remember years ago reading a book by Harlan Ellison called the Glass Teat, a book primarily about television. Elllison is a great science fiction writer who wrote a story with the greatest title I’ve ever seen: I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream. The Glass Teat was actually a collection of columns, in one of which Ellison lauded the Shell oil company because it had added “platformate” to its gasoline, which it touted in a mercilessly long advertising campaign as some sort of wonder additive that increased gas mileage. (I know I’m dating myself here) He took their advertising at actual face value, something totally out of character for him. He got a lot of feedback to that column, and in the next he expressed wonder that his readers could be so cynical as to believe platformate was nothing but hype. So he actually contacted Shell, asked for the data to back up its claims, and discovered, to his surprise, that platformate was just..hype. Methinks if Henley looked closely he would find that Wal-Mart’s environmentalism is 21st century platformate.