By H.E. Pennypacker
As a native of northern Maine, finding and obtaining my music of choice has never been an easy process. As a high school student without a driver’s license or a car, I usually had to resort to biking the 12 miles from Caribou to the Aroostook Centre Mall in Presque Isle in order to get my musical fix for the week. A couple of equally obsessive (and bored) friends and I would arrive at Record Town, out of breath and sweating, with one overriding purpose: to squander our last few dollars on the latest death metal or gangsta rap cassette.
After we made our purchases (which were often preceded by hours of deliberation and indecision), we would bike the 12 miles back to Caribou, eagerly awaiting the moment when we could blast the new Napalm Death or Spice-1 albums from our boom-boxes.
Although we complained about the huge ordeal we had to undertake in order to satisfy our musical needs, this ritual kept us fit, kept us out of trouble, and made us appreciate music in a profound way. And despite our complaints about the lack of a music store in Caribou, we only had to travel one town over to find almost any album we wanted.
Fast forward to 2010. FYE, the only store in the entire county specializing in music CDs, has just shut its doors. Although the FYE store in the Presque Isle mall was only one small store in a nationwide chain, its closing is the end of an era in Aroostook County. Suffice to say, Caribou residents will not be bicycling all the way to Bangor to purchase CDs from Borders or Bull Moose Records.
“So what?” you may ask. Who buys music these days, anyway? All of these albums are available free for the taking online. And even if someone has a moral issue with stealing copyrighted material, the iTunes store or services like eMusic have more music for sale than FYE could ever dream of keeping on their shelves.
The reality, however, is that fast internet connections, access to private computers, and technological knowledge are not as ubiquitous in northern Maine as most would assume. After all, Aroostook County is one of the poorest counties in the state, and the technology divide in the northern part of the state is the most pronounced.
Also, many people enjoy the act of searching for music in an actual music store: examining the cover art, browsing the track-listings, and asking for the opinions of fellow shoppers and the store’s staff. Doing all of your shopping online may be convenient, but it also leads to isolation and does not benefit anyone in your community.
That leaves only two choices: K-Mart or Wal-Mart. K-Mart’s music section doesn’t offer much, even for the casual music listener. I have also noticed K-Mart’s CD section has been shrinking as of late and is almost always devoid of customers. In reality, K-Mart is not a serious competitor in music sales – either locally or nationally – to Wal-Mart. In fact, Wal-Mart is now the leading seller of music in the United States.
My biggest concern with Wal-Mart’s music monopoly in Aroostook County is the mega-corporation’s “family values” agenda. Whereas FYE (and other chain music stores like Bull Moose Records, Strawberries, and Newbury Comics) allows the individual consumer to decide what he or she finds objectionable or offensive, Wal-Mart has opted not to carry any music album that is found inconsistent with their corporate morality.
You will be able to pick up Nirvana’s classic album In Utero at your local Wal-Mart, but you might not notice until you get home that Kurt Cobain’s anti-rape song “Rape Me” has been changed to “Waif Me”. John Cougar Mellencamp’s 1996 album Mr. Happy Go Lucky will be on the shelves, but images of Jesus and the devil have been airbrushed off the album cover in order for Wal-Mart to carry it.
Perhaps the oddest case was a Goo Goo Dolls album cover that was rejected because it pictured a young boy with blackberry juice on his face, which Wal-Mart execs claimed “promotes child abuse”. The decision not to carry one of Sheryl Crow’s albums was less ambiguous. She was denied placement on the shelves because one of her lyrics criticized Wal-Mart.
Of course Wal-Mart, like any other store, has the right to sell whatever they want. Edited albums are only sold if the artist provides radio-friendly versions of their CDs. Kurt Cobain could have refused to change In Utero on artistic grounds, like Sheryl Crow and Green Day have done. He made a conscious choice to water down his music in order to reach a wider audience.
So Wal-Mart’s practice does not fit the definition of “censorship”. They may not want to sell a specific artist or album, but they are not preventing customers from purchasing the products at another store. They are perfectly within their rights to promote a hypocritical version of morality which prevents the sale of an explicit album while stocking their shelves with the latest installment of the Saw movie series (unedited, of course). They can trumpet their concern for “family values” while preventing their employees from forming a union in order to better provide for their families.
This is a fair philosophy, of course, unless the captive consumer has no other viable options. Although illegal and legal downloading of music are partially to blame for this lack of options, Wal-Mart itself is also partially to blame.
The super-store is infamous for setting up shop in a small town and underselling all of the local businesses until they are forced to close. FYE is closed? No problem! Come to Wal-Mart and buy the latest Jay-Z album, minus the language Wal-Mart finds offensive. B. Dalton just went out of business? Cross that new Philip Roth novel off your gift list and opt for some Wal-Mart-approved apocalyptic Christian fiction instead!
Unless we create and encourage shopping alternatives to Wal-Mart in northern Maine, our county will continue in a monolithic, homogenous direction. With low prices and lots of smiley faces!
