Just Can Get Enough

Homeless, please help

If you have listened to terrestrial radio in the past, oh, five years, you know that "certified pre-owned" vehicles are all the rage right now. What these are, of course, are used cars, but dealerships have gotten wise to the idea of making a buck by selling the same car twice, and they realize the best way to do this is to convince you, the purchaser, that because they are an authentic BMVWillac dealer, they would never risk their reputation (or BMVWillac's) by selling you a lemon. In fact we are assured that each vehicle has been through a rigorous 1,711-point inspection, and that the previous owner drove the car exclusively on roads made of velvet and changed the oil every 50 miles or so. In fact, it may be superior to a new car, because, hey, somebody drove it before you did, and they're still alive, right? Survivability guaranteed!

There are no known certified pre-owned programs for used CDs, but if there were, I can think of two major artists who would be well served by participating. Since joining LaLa.com, a sort of clearing house for trading in your used CDs for other people's used CDs, I have requested roughly 100 CDs and executed 112 trades (CDs sent + CDs received) and I have never had requests fulfilled faster or more often than those for Depeche Mode or Steely Dan albums. I'm telling you, it's like people are sitting there, index fingers cocked and ready over their left mouse buttons, just waiting until another sucker member requests Some Great Reward or Can't Buy a Thrill. You can almost hear the sonic boom these people create flying to the mailbox.

I've experienced this supply/demand imbalance myself, you see. I received two copies of Steely Dan's The Royal Scam; one arrived more than 14 days after it was requested, which is the threshold at which you are supposed to report a CD as never having arrived, and another user can send you another copy. This process protects you from being assessed the nominal $1 plus 75 cents shipping charge incurred for each album sent to you, in case the goods are damaged or don't arrive at all. Of course, the replacement album was on its way within an hour of reporting the first copy overdue, and then I waited and waited and waited for weeks to offload the extra. The market, it seems, is saturated.

But what is it about Depeche Mode and Steely Dan that make them eminently recyclable? Both groups are extremely popular with enduring critical legacies, and in any case it seems to make little difference if the requested album was a classic (Black Celebration) or a dud (Songs of Faith & Devotion).

In the case of Depeche Mode, I think there are three key reasons for this seemingly undeserved bargain bin-dom:

1. The people who lapped up Depeche Mode albums in their heyday are getting old. They're generally offloading CDs anyway, and since their fandom and DM's creative/commercial peak coincided with the ascension of the medium, they have a lot of CDs to offload (most of my LaLa copies are first pressings). I bet a lot of it is the embarrassment factor as well; in the mid-'80s DM was usually associated with uncool goth-y behavior and open fandom could make someone a ridicule magnet (apparently Cure fans received similar treatment). I'm sure that more than a few thirtysomethings have parted ways with their DM collections after being teased by a spouse/significant other.
2. Depeche Mode's catalogue is in the midst of a significant reissue campaign (perhaps this is the music industry's equivalent of certified pre-owned: selling people the same album twice). I mean, once you have an awesome remastered CD/DVD two disc set of Speak and Spell, what the hell do you need your old and likely scratched up CD copy for? Personal disclaimer: I'm guilty of this wasteful and patently ridiculous consumerist behavior too.
3. Songs of Faith & Devotion. This album probably accounts for at least half of the used DM albums currently in circulation. It's a turd, and I would get rid of it if I possibly could (see Royal Scam above). Chris Ott cites SoF&D as the 16th most common used CD in his anecdotally-assembled used top 50; if anything, it probably should be higher.

With Steely Dan, I would say the problem is that all Steely Dan albums sound pretty much the same. They're all great (at least the '70s releases) but if I played you a random assortment of Dan albums, I don't think that anyone outside of a superfan could tell me with any degree of accuracy which albums came when chronologically. It's also hard to imagine a lot of people having especially strong feelings about Steely Dan; most of it sounds like an extremely clinical examination of the outer limits of sarcasm set to a now-unfashionable brand of jazzpop. Old people, well, they need room I guess, and just like ma selling your comic books or baseball cards, they sell their CDs. Still, it's tough to imagine someone tossing aside copies of the White Album like they do Pretzel Logic.

Anyhow, here's a toast to used bin dwellers past, present, and future: