When I was working on my Captain Beefheart essay, I went to my iTunes catalog to examine his albums to glean some info for the essay, and to my shock and awe I found that Trout Mask Replica was greyed out.
That means it’s no longer available on the Apple Music streaming service.
Now I realize that there has always been a few licensing issues with Beefheart over the years, and Trout Mask was unavailable for a while, but it did come on line a couple of years ago. Now, it’s gone again.
I do think I have a lot of cuts of this saved on my laptop’s hard drive (which is in dire need of an intervention or an execution, take your pick) that I could probably leverage in a roundabout way to get it back into my catalog, but it’s incomplete there and it’s a pain in the ass with that laptop.
So if I wanted to hear “Neon Meate Dream of an Octafish”, I’d have to go to You Tube or deal with the rigmarole of uploading it into my iTunes catalog with some janky equipment (my work computer also hates iTunes - it’s a conspiracy). It’s not the same as having it on my phone at my ready. Yeah, I’m already spoiled.
Songs dropping into and out of streaming services is nothing new. In my old review site I had a feature keeping track of bands or albums that were missing from streaming. Most all of them finally acquiesed to streaming, and so the list became more or less esoterica or wishful thinking on my part.
But it seems there are trends of some labels or artists moving in and out of streaming. Invictus / Hot Wax, a soul label put together by Holland / Dozier / Holland in the early 70’s, seems to go in and out of streaming services often. Right now, on Apple, it’s out, leaving artists like Freda Payne, the Charimen of the Board, 100 Proof Aged in Soul, early Parliament, and others without a streaming home. That’s a shame.
Sometimes, artists pull catalogs for leverage or exclusivity. Taylor Swift yanked her stuff from Spotify for a while in a dispute, while Dwight Yoakam started to pull his early stuff after they reached a certain threshold in order to get a better streaming rate. Prince went with Tidal for a while, but his estate gave up that ghost, and Neil Young famously tried to build his own deluxe streaming service for audiophiles, before he realized most music consumers wanted convenience instead of pure sound.
Since I want to try to gather everything worthwhile in my catalog, I have a spreadsheet of albums or tracks that either were streaming and are no longer, or never really was streaming (legally) and I wish they’d come on board the digital train. So here are some highlights of what I’m tracking (as of today, because I’ll write this and it’ll be out of date).
Ass Ponys - Grim, Some Stupid with a Flare Gun - I have SOME tracks but not the whole album of each of these. It just seems odd that there’s a collection with a lot of Grim on it, and they have all of the other independent Ass Ponys albums after they lost their contract, but these aren’t streaming.
Autograph - “Turn Up the Radio” - Here’s another reason why something isn’t streaming. The band has decided to re-record their hit(s) and put them out themselves while suppressing the versions everyone knows. Autograph is the latest to do this, but anytime you see “Re-Recorded Version” 99% of the time is sterile and lame, especially 50’s and 60’s material. Country artists are just as bad as rock in this aspect, too.
Curve - Pubic Fruit, Doppleganger, Cuckoo - One of the first and best shoegaze bands’ early material isn’t streaming. This probably has a lot to do with the rights since they were licensed in the 90’s from Anxious to Charisma and now with both labels under the thumb of a couple of the behemoths the lawyers would need to get involved. At least that’s my guess. I guess they’re on their Bandcamp page, but that’s a different story.
Funkadelic - Electric Spanking of War Babies, Uncle Jam Wants You, One Nation Under a Groove. Parliament - Early Thangs, Osmium - the George Clinton Parliament / Funkadelic conglomeration has an odd track record. The Parliament records just went out of streaming recently, and they’ve been hit or miss (I do have Osmium on my hard drive, I think). The three Funkadelic albums are the Warner Brothers records in the late 70’s and there’s a dispute between Clinton and the record company, at least that’s what the rumor is. Meanwhile, the CDs are $25 on Amazon for a used copy, and I’ve seen them as high as $75.
The Kaiser Chiefs - Employment - Their first and best. It’s funny. I just tried to google the album + streaming and it popped up on the web version of Apple Music, but it’s nowhere to be found on the iTunes catalog on desktop of phone. Anyway, my guess is that there’s a reissue or deluxe album coming. I hope.
Peter Wolf - Lights Out - Never has streamed. And CD copies are expensive. I mean, $140 expensive.
Zebra - Zebra - Another 80’s record not streaming. I mean, it wasn’t like the best thing ever, but “Who’s Behind the Door” and “Tell Me What You Want” were top notch 80’s rock.
The Monks - Black Monk Time - This just recently went gray. The Monks are a wonderful story. Subversive and fun. They have some Beat Club videos that are funny to look at, with German teenagers dancing to their odd garage rock tracks while the band is dressed in their monks’ cloaks and tonsures (they were committed to the bit). Because boys are boys and girls are choice.
That’s just some of the records not streaming. I have 108 instances of them, from Toni Basil (really, Toni, re-recording “Mickey”? Gawd) to the Zabriske Point soundtrack, to Marshall Crenshaw, and others.
I know, I know, this is why I should have physical copies. But I mean, I’d be living in a house that’s all CDs and vinyl if I had physical copies of everything in my catalog and hard drive.
Hmmm…that may not be so bad.