End Of Empire Records

Well, friends, the apocalypse is upon us. Does this have anything to do with Matt Gaetz's forehead, you might ask? Another methane-releasing ice shelf collapse? A gleeful nationwide return to Jim Crow-era voter restriction laws? Nah. As it turns out, it's the fact that a Japanese CD of Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" just sold on Discogs (eBay for music) for $2,493. How much better does that same group of songs that powered every Twofer Tuesday on your local classic rock station for all of universal teendom sound than, say, a Columbia House Record Club CD you got along with 16 others for .1 cent in 1987? Not much. Still, hardly the end of the world. After all, the fake democracy we pretend to live in that is in fact a kleptocratic class system based almost entirely on a combination of random melanin and unearned cash, was brought about expressly to facilitate just this sort of unabashed waste of lucre. But the Wish You Were (soon to be impoverished) Here sale only saddled up the four horses of being Welcomed To The Machine. No, what sent them galloping off into our collective Chester Bennigan of Doom is that a demo CASSETTE by the band Xero likewise just sold for $2,662. Who is Xero, you may be wondering? Well, they were the scruffy, as yet un-genre'd quartet that would go on to become Nu Metal heroes Linkin Park. I'm fairly sure I would pay you $5,324 not to have to listen to Nu Metal in any context, on any format, and am further certain I would again double that amount to never, ever hear another Linkin Park song again for the rest of my life. Ah, well. As every society and culture throughout history has learned, from the gardens of Babylonia to the Court of Versailles, when wealth disparity is finally pushed past the neon mark of the genuinely absurd, machetes, mobs, barricades, and guillotines are soon to follow. I'm too old to run in the streets with anarchists, arsonists and bulls at this point, so I will be on the porch safely in the Pamplona of my mind, watching with a mug of tea and probably Billie Holiday static-ing out of the 1941 transistor radio in my lap, taking in the demise of empire like the parade it will surely be.