2016 Prince and the Death of Rock

“2016: The Death Of Rock”

BUZZ Newspaper Article (#62-pR) May- Jun 2016

By: RLSchwinden aka MrZerr0

 

Hey Rik! I hope all’s well with you. I’ve been working on coverage about Prince’s death for the New York Daily News, I was wondering if people are coming in to Mr. Zero’s to get Prince Memorabilia? I thought I’d check in with you and see if you’ve been seeing a noticeable demand there. Thanks for your help, Anna P. Mon 25 Apr 2016: 11:35am

 

Hello Anna,

On the death of any Rock Star, I have been in the “Record Biz” for 31 years now, I started with RecordShop, in 1986 from there Archives, then my own Mail Order Business “Dr. Rox Remember When?” (Pre-internet), Wherehouse, Musicland, BestBuy, Disc Jockey, fye, all of these in 5 different states, & then Discland & finally I opened Mr. Zero’s in Roseville 55113 in 2009. When I 1st started in “The Biz” all those years ago, Ricky Nelson was the 1st to die in ‘85, followed by Benny Goodman in ’86 & in ‘87 Maria Von Trapp,  Liberace,, Andreas Segovia, Buddy Rich & then Peter Tosh kicking off  the Reggae movement in Des Moines.

 

> Feels Like The 1st Time <

It wasn’t until Mar ’88 when Andy Gibb died & his old fans started coming into  RecordShop, where I was working  in W. Des Moines, looking to buy Gibb’s Cassettes, Vinyl & CDs. (this was long before the internet started robbing retail stores of sales & States of Retail Taxes, which began around 2000) so Buying Cassettes, Vinyl & CDs was still a HUGE Deal at the time, but there was a term back then for Catalog Titles “In Print” or “Out Of Print” & Andy Gibb was “Out Of Print” (meaning no real demand for any of his recordings) at the time of his death, so there was nothing to purchase, for some time by then, as his last release was in sometime in ‘81 & his next release was 3 years later, a CD Hits package in ’91. So this was my 1st real exposure to this trend.

 

The next one to go, was Roy Orbison, who died in Dec ’88, this is where we in “The Biz” really took notice of the trend. Roy had a newer “Re-Recorded” Greatest Hits Album, released in Sep ’87, about a year earlier. When that album came out it did not sell very well, Then Roy Died. The Demand for that Record & Cassette was staggering, so from then on we “In The Biz” watched very carefully who was “ill or about to die or had died”, we would then stock up on that Artists Titles: Cassette, CD (Vinyl if it was available as Vinyl was put to death in Dec ’87) so this tread is not a new one for those who have been around in the biz for decades.

 

> Top 5 Prince Memories <

My 1^st Prince memory; was at West High in ‘79 a girl in my English class made a “Photo Image Book” to Prince’s song “I Wanna Be Your Lover” I remember hearing the song on the  radio & I thought it was pretty good.  My 2^nd Prince memory; I was living in Bemidji, MN. in ’83, working on the cleaning crew at the local collage & our crew chief was playing Prince records he had taped from records onto cassettes on his boombox, I really remember liking “Let’s Pretend We’re Married” this made me seek out the LP ‘1999’. My 3^rd Prince memory; was, my girlfriend at the time, Cathy & I going to see “Purple Rain” in the theatre & thinking this is the greatest film I have ever seen, & Apollonia , was  the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.

 

My 4^th memory of Prince, was the song “The Cross” from 1987’s ‘Sign O The Times’ I thought how cool is this, an artist of his caliber wrote such a song about God. My 5th best memory of Prince is the song “Bob George” from 1988’s ‘Black Album’ my then Boss Matt M. gave me a recorded cassette copy of the album, as it was not released to the public until 1994 (on CD & Cassette). If you haven’t heard it give it a listen, I loved that song so much, I often quoted it, some years later my co-worker Damon, turned me in onto “Cloreen Baconskin” from ‘Crystal Ball’ (CD only), from ’83 with Morris Day on Drums.

 

However, my all time best memory  of Prince: Sometime in late ’08, Record Producer Greg H. had told me Prince was interested in playing on a Tommy Bolin Guitar Tribute CD: ‘Whirlwind’ which did not come to fruition, however shortly after this conversation Prince did perform Billy Cobham’s “Spectrum” live in Jul ’09.

 

> Back Where We Started <

Around the early 2000’s when “Hard Product” was being phased out in “New Retail Stores” we saw a “New Trend” in the “Used Stores” the availability of certain Artists product at all, whether Alive OR Dead, some artists were simply, very hard to have in stock, in any form in the “Used Shops”. Here’s a brief list in no Particular Order:

 

Prince

David Bowie

James Brown

Gram Parsons

Replacements

Smiths

Trashmen

Townes Van Zant

Tom Waits

Yardbirds

Frank Zappa

 

SO … it was hard enough to get a hold of these Artists before they DIED, so when they Died…. Forget about it, that Very Limited Supply dries up in a hurry. So when I heard Prince died, that Thurs morning I knew what to expect. Since I have known about this trend for almost 30 years, I was not taken by surprise & on that, I think more Musicians have died in 2016 than any other year, one of my piers stated recently “2016 the year Rock Music Died” HOWEVER with PRINCE:
The Requests we received In Order Were:

1. ‘Purple Rain’: DVD
2. ‘Purple Rain’: Vinyl
3. ‘HITS: 1 & 2’ on Vinyl BUT WAS ONLY MADE ON CD & Cassette: NO VINYL
4. ‘Crystal Ball’: on Vinyl BUT WAS ONLY MADE ON CD! NO Vinyl or even Cassette
5. ‘Black Album’ on Vinyl BUT WAS ONLY MADE ON CD & Cassette … NO VINYL
6. 12″ Mixes on CD… BUT Only Made ON VINYL not Even Cassette
7. Full Size Prince Posters 3 x 2 feet
8. Prince T-Shirts
9. ‘Hit & Run’ 1&2: on Vinyl, BUT Only Made on CD … NO Vinyl
10. A DVD of all of “Prince’s MTV Videos” … which has NOT Been Made Ever (few artists have been)
11. ‘Batman’ on Vinyl very hard to find (but at least made) as it mostly sold on Cassette & CD

 

I find it Strange in the “Information Age”, where people can “Google” anything & do all the time … it seems to elude them they are looking for & asking for things that were simply NOT MADE ….. So being in the Twin Cities we did try to always stock up on Prince, & we did have many Records & CDs, a few Cassettes & some VHS, & yes we did sell many of them. I write a monthly music column for St. Cloud’s “BUZZ Newspaper” (my 5th year) & “Roseville Patch” on-line, in June of last year I wrote an article on Prince (for his Bday), I was a little nervous to publish it, because Prince has his company closely monitor anything pertaining to him, though I never print “Gossipy” material I was still a little nervous to put something out there, the article was never flagged. I did re-run the Article upon Prince’s passing, because up to his death you could not find any on his music on “YouTube” (& why should you, NO Artist receives any money from being pirated on YouTube). Now that he’s gone you can find all sorts of video of Prince on “YouTube”

So there it is, my experience of the death of musicians in Rock N Roll over the last 3 decades. You can catch my Bi-Annual Radio Show “Mr. Zero’s: PsychoGello” Music from 1965 – 1972 on KAFI 90.3FM & 106.7AM at 12:01am till 2am (Mon) Tues 24 May 2016.

Mr. Zero’s *Est. 2009

1744 Lexington Ave. N.

Roseville- St. Paul, MN. 55113

651.489.0207

www.MrZeros.Com