Rob, while I truly and fully appreciate how you feel about how the glorious past of "Sisters culture" - I have similar memories and like to revel in them sometimes - I'm also a little overwhelmed by your outright conservatism. One of the main attractions of the Sisters for me was that they were a
modern band.
They didn't play by the same rules as other bands, they followed their own game plan, they set their own standards, they were secretive, unpredictable and seemed like a band from the future, in a sense.
I don't see any reasons at all why they shouldn't take advantage of the current situation, which in most respects free artists from the destructive dependency and dictates of a clueless record "industry". For me, the Sisters should be the last band on earth to be backward-looking and living off past merits. It seems horribly... wrong. And unnecessarily so.
RobF wrote:
It's not just the state of the industry which repels him, but the culture of 21st century music consumption.
The band can set their own rules here, with a little creativity.
RobF wrote: Sisters product comes on shiny black plastic, in a big cover. From a shop. Preferably a shop run by a surly man in a Sonic Youth shirt.
Or on flexis. Or on cassettes from grubby market stalls in Hyper-Hyper (remember?). Or on CD:s. Or on files. Or in 12" box sets. Or on colored vinyl. Anything goes, as long as it is cool and it has the Sisters written all over it. Even if I agree that black vinyl is hard to beat.
RobF wrote: Whatever we do nowt's going to live up to the excitement of even the early 90s releases. Whatever you think of Under The Gun, that morning in 93 was the last time we got to hang about outside a record shop before it opened before buying alll the formats in one go and gripping them with excitement on the bus home.
While I think you're being overly negative and conservative, I also have intense memories of that period of time -but perhaps that's also to do with the fact that that time was the formative period of my life. If you stick to that line of thinking, you end up like to those sad old gits who reminisce about the Sixties and the Beatles, and how nothing beats black and white TV.
RobF wrote: We don't queue outside gigs from three in the afternoon drinking cheap vodka and sitting on kit-bags anymore,
Well, that's a f***ing relief, isn't it?
RobF wrote: we don't pay £10 for cassette bootlegs at record-fairs anymore.
No, but we can download cool torrent files and get nice DVD:s in the mail. Beats hissy cassettes any time, in my book (and I used to be one of the guys who were both buying and making the bootleg cassettes, so I should know).
RobF wrote: The Sisters don't release albums anymore.
Well, I think they should. I'd pick them up straight away, and so would you I guess. Especially if you could choose between having the album on CD with nice packaging, as a lossless file, or as an extra-heavy (glossy black!) vinyl album with a gatefold sleeve, and pay for it directly to band via their web site. And why not buy the new single as well, with neither the A or the B side on the album. And while you're at it, buy the new DVD, too. And the lyrics book. And some tickets for the next show.
I know I'd be really looking forward to riding the bus home after picking that package up at the post office, wouldn't you?
And we'd still be in 2009. And the band would be making money. And the record companies could still go f**k themselves. And if the music press chose no to write about the band, then, well tough. Who'd care.
RobF wrote: The whole culture of The Sisters is dead, and I think Eldritch quite likes it that way.
Things don't have to stay exactly the same forever to be any good. Things (and cultures) can take new turns and be exciting, creative and stimulating in new, sometimes unforseen ways.
RobF wrote: He can survive on gigging (The only bit of the industry making any money at the moment anyway).
For most artists for the past two decades, that has been the case anyway (just like it used to be the case before the record companies had their short lived monopoly on music distribution and could push record prices up to artificially high levels. Things are now back to normal, if you take a longer perspective.
RobF wrote: It's not like we're missing out as we get to hear all the songs of friggin' youtube within two hours anyway,
Well, compare getting low quality snippets on YouTube, with very little of the Sisters magick involved, to the scenario I portrayed above, and I think you'll see what I'm after.
I just think that the band should take more advantage of a situation where the can have more creative (and possibly financial) freedom than ever before.
RobF wrote: and any new product now would be a horrible dissapointment.
Come now. Do you seriously mean that you would rate your old copy of "Under The Gun" higher than the vinyl edition of the new Sisters album/single, with songs the calibre of "Crash And Burn", "Summer" et al?
Now you're just crying in your beer. Watch those waist- and hairlines, buddy.
![Wink :wink:](./images/smilies/icon_wink.gif)
[/u]