Uk band Radiohead has told fans they can pay what they want to download their latest album, In Rainbows.
Inspired by the gesture, we’re asking Crikey readers to tell us five of their favourite albums — and what they’d pay for them now. Crikey’s Top 5 entrants will win $25 iTunes vouchers.
The winners will be announced in tomorrow’s edition so to get in before the deadline, email your entries to boss@crikey.com.au. In the meantime, here are a couple of Crikey reader entries.
Russell Dovey, alternative music snob:
- Steal This Album, System Of A Down: You’re trying to tell anarchist wannabes what to do? $50! Ha!
- Black Holes And Revelations, Muse: $100 for Knights of Cydonia, the best soundtrack to a trailer of a film about a kung-fu cowboy in a future Old West riding a motorbike to the rescue of his girl, laser-six-shooters blazin’ ever.
- OK Computer, Radiohead: $4: One dollar for every year of high school I got through by listening to Paranoid Android and realising that I wasn’t nearly as depressed as these guys.
- Too Close For Comfort, Martin Pearson: $40, because this man is Australia’s most under-rated satirist, and needs the money.
- He Died With A Felafel In His Hand, eponymous soundtrack: $5, since that’s the same price I paid for the book (at a garage sale in Melbourne) that changed my life forever, condemning me to romanticise a life of share-housing long beyond the point at which it had stopped being funny to see how thick a layer of mold the sink’s contents had grown this week.
Peter Saunders:
- The Song Remains the Same, Led Zeppelin: To hell with Rolf Harris, the live version of ‘Stairway to Heaven’ is worth $200 of anyone’s hard-earned cash.
- Leonard Bernstein in Berlin (Beethoven Symphony No.9). Another live album, this one from December 1989 when ‘Ode to Joy’ became ‘Ode to Freedom.’ Sends a tingle down your spine – what price freedom?
- Bringing it all back home, Bob Dylan: The troubadour at his most sublime. Money doesn’t talk, it swears: five f—-ing hundred.
- Riding with the King, BB King and Eric Clapton: Two blues eminences together on one album? Gotta be worth a good bottle of bourbon.
- The Shadows’ Greatest Hits. First album I ever bought, given away to an aunt when I went to university and realised how uncool it was. Would swap for a pair of shades just to get Apache.
And a couple more from Crikey team.
Neil Walker, Crikey’s Media Monitors guru and proud Glaswegian:
- The Stone Roses, The Stone Roses: $1000. Would have been a few grand more but were solely responsible for a generation wearing flared baggy jeans…..in the early 1990s.
- Definitely Maybe, Oasis: $2000. Debut album from Manchester’s finest hoons. [What’s The Story] Morning Glory? sold more – this is better. Still ‘mad fer it’ as Liam Gallagher says, after all these years. Probably would pay $10,000 if paying $1 per listen.
- Sam’s Town, The Killers: $0, nothing, zip, nada. The quintessential example of The Sophomore Slump. Very disappointing follow-up to the fantastic debut Hot Fuss. The reason iTunes and illegal downloads are now so popular. Two good songs [the singles surprisingly enough] and nowt much else of note. Interestingly, managed to make $5 on the deal by onselling on eBay. Singer Brandon Flowers said he wanted to challenge U2 as world’s biggest band. This ain’t even as good as UB40.
- Hail To The Thief, Radiohead: $10. Not a great album but how can anyone accuse Radiohead of having no sense of humour when this album contains a song titled ‘A Punch Up At A Wedding’ [No No No No No No No No]’? See also, Morrissey’s ‘You’re The One For Me, Fatty’.
- Now That’s What I Call Quite Good, The Housemartins: $5. Any band that disbands and then labels their Greatest Hits compilation as ‘quite good’ deserves at least a fiver of anyone’s hard earned for cheek alone.
The author:
- Last Five Years, Jason Robert Brown: $80. Price of entry to a close-to-perfect musical.
- Like Drawing Blood, Gotye. $55.50: Gotta support a great local bedroom-produced album.
- Automatic for the People, REM: Zip. $2 for every use of Everybody Hurts as backdrop to teenage angst minus money for time spent trying to figure out lyrics to The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite.
- True Blue, Madonna: $40. The cost of Speak Spanish for Beginners. Not Madonna’s best album but got first Spanish lesson thanks to La Isla Bonita. Feel the urbanity.
- Quelqu’un m’a dit, Carla Bruni: Zero. She’s already had a career as a top model. Now she proves pretty adept at the whole singer songwriter bag. How much more does she want?
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