On the Web, oldies are golden again

Easy access to vintage hits creates new fans for artists from bygone eras.

Sales of albums by contemporary musicians have been falling for years, but what the industry calls deep catalog albums (more than 3 years old) have been making a comeback, with their sales soaring 104.2% from 2005 to 2006. That has been a boon for Avalon and other older artists.

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And playlist-based listening "really benefits those one-hit wonders from bygone days," said Aram Sinnreich, a managing partner at Radar Research in Los Angeles. For example, you probably wouldn't stumble on the Norwegian band a-ha's "Take on Me" in a record store, but there's a chance you would on the Internet.

Businesses are hustling to cash in, buying old songs they hope will come back in vogue. Sacramento-based Digital Music Group Inc., for one, acquired the rights to distribute 335,000 tracks that had been owned by Chancellor Records.

Some of the master recordings are stored in a climate- controlled warehouse in North Hollywood. Some, such as the 1962 recording "Party Lights" by Claudine Clark, hadn't seen the light of day in decades. Digital Music Group converts the fragile reel-to-reel tapes to digital, salvaging disintegrating and corroded master recordings and preserving them, the company likes to say, forever.

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As more music becomes available digitally, semi-obscure artists are finding they have devoted fans. On Rhapsody, for instance, Top 100 artists produce only 25% of the songs played, said Tim Quirk, Rhapsody's vice president for music content and programming.

In contrast, nearly half of retail store sales are generated by that elite group. Less popular artists get playtime too — 90% of the 195,200 artists on Rhapsody are played at least once a month.

The 42-year-old Quirk was in a punk-pop group, Too Much Joy, whose albums went out of print in the late 1990s. These days, he's receiving royalties he never expected and performing in reunion shows. "It's pretty encouraging to get a monthly check," he said.

For Ron Dante, "it's like having a second career." Dante, 60, was in the Archies, which had the No. 1 single of 1969 with "Sugar, Sugar." As big as it was, "you would have two or three years" of success in those days, he said, "and then the big-selling years would be over."

And now? Dante, who was Barry Manilow's producer and backup singer, performs solo around the country, from Wildwood, N.J., to Las Vegas.

Bought. Will report back later.

Be warned - the title song is basically an advertising jingle for a slave trader in Africa trying to round up some recruits with his sunny tales of the south.

Easy access to vintage hits creates new fans for artists from bygone eras.

This goes right back to the Long Tail theory.

Heh. I always like reading the blurbie things for a particular album when purchasing from iTunes, and the blurb mentioned exactly that, so I was already forewarned.

Having just listened to it, I don't know that I would have figured it out, but the lyrics would have piqued my interest enough to make me go look them up/find out what the hell Randy was singing about.

I'm just happy with the name check of Claudine Clark in that article.

I like the revised cover, David.

I do, too.

Back to Randy,

I think he's kind of wasted on soundtracks and people that only know him for his broader satire can miss some of his unbelievably lovely and subtle early songs.

It's funny. I'd heard Burn On before, and I'm pretty sure it was part of a movie soundtrack (though I'll be damned if I can remember which one). I do remember listening to the lyrics during whatever movie it was, and being able to tell it was about a river that caught fire. Not sure it was entirely appropriate to the film, but again I don't remember for sure.

Loved Randy's You Can Leave Your Hat On much better than Joe Cocker's version.

And am just now wrapping up listening to the album with God's Song. Yep, there's few better than Randy for stinging indictments of God/religion.

Yep, there's few better than Randy for stinging indictments of God/religion.

Yep, but also capable of songs of heartbreaking beauty and subtlety like "I Think It's Going To Rain Today."

Something I've always loved about Randy is how he can make a bouncy, cheerful sounding song, like Great Nations, that becomes so heartbreaking when you actually listen to the lyrics. Sail Away and Burn On do a similar thing, but they're slow and beautiful rather than bouncy and cheerful.