Robert Baird

`Tis the season and yeah, I’ve been self–gifting, so what? At this time of the year, when you should be out there, fighting the credit card clutching crowds, thinking of others, trying to buy things that will surprise and delight your loved ones, it’s nearly impossible not to find a few things that you want as well right? That process just got a whole lot easier this week when the Music Direct catalog arrived. If you’re a gear or music geek, it doesn’t get much better than this annual 200 page tome, which this year has a really killer photo of young Bruce on the cover and a John Varvatos ad with a shot of Ringo Starr on the flip side. The catalog is, of course, filled with a mass of temptations, from the Avid Acutus Reference SP Turntable ($26,995 sans tonearm and cartridge) to the 180 gram LP imports of the Nick Cave catalog ($39.99). There are more than 50 pages of LPs and SACDs alone. Let someone else mind your credit cards and PayPal password whilst you browse. And in yet another troubling sign that it’s not 1974 anymore, licensing that cover shot of Bruce, while I’m sure that it did come cheap even now, would have been priced beyond all reason twenty years ago. That’s the Springsteen we all fell in love with, back in the Greetings and The Wild, The Innocent & the E Street Shuffle days.