2nd
At any minute, John Darnielle’s official site will announce when and where copies of Satanic Messiah will be available, and Wesley, along with the rest of Mountain Goats Nation, is desperate for the information. Darnielle actually set up the EP for digital download last week on his website; fans could purchase the record via PayPal, and pay what they want. Wesley paid $20 and has already listened to all four songs over twenty times each, but you can’t hold digital in your hands. “I have to own the ephemera, the tangible thing, too,” he says.
What interests me about this passage is that the tangible thing (in this case, a seven-inch record) is now the ephemera. The real thing is the song, the intangible digital file, which will always be available; the record comes and goes, will not be available for long, and doesn’t matter in the same way. The physical record is like a concert poster; it matters to the fetishists. The casual fan goes to the show and listens to the mp3s; the serious fan buys (or otherwise acquires) the poster and the album.
