Temporary Tempest

 

 

Real Dylan fans don’t go to the Temporary Tempest store to buy their copy of The Tempest, Dylan’s fantastic new record. They went to Rebel Records on September 7^th, the Friday before it was released on September 11 and the Temporary Tempest Store opened, late afternoon on September 10.

 

I like supporting the few record stores, especially independent record stores left. The “Pop Up” retail store would be offensive ifthere were more record stores (besides Rebel, I shop at JR Music and I know there are a couple of others but you don’t exactly have to take off your shoes to count the survivors) left it would be taking business away from. Bob Dylan had a history of supporting independent record stores, in the late 90s he ran two special give always. Print out a coupon from the Internet, go to an independent store and you got a free CD of recent live recordings. Yes I have them both. But how can that sort of promotion be effective when the outlets are so few and everybody just downloads the songs anyway.

There was no new music, or exclusive music available (how about selling the bonus disc from Tell Tale Signs which was in a deluxe package that cost more than a hundred bucks!) from the Pop Up store, just memorabilia like Dylan hats and T-shirts and posters, basically stuff you get off his website if you so desire (I do not). It’s easy to pick on Dylan or any artist for doing something so blatantly commercial, but it does ignore the fact. The retail industry for music is in the crapper. A few years go he released a 1961 concert Live at the Gaslight and a selection of other people’s songs that he wrote some lively liner notes for exclusively through Starbucks and some critics said he was aligning himself with a corporation, as if Starbucks is the equivalent of Halliburton or if independent coffee shops have enough of a distribution network to sell CDs. The Pop Up Store was selling the Gaslight CD, now available on Amazon.

The guy behind the counter said his company does pop ups. There’s a lot of empty spaces in cities, and with the turnover in commercial tenants, these spaces are basically turnkey, little to no modification to the space is required for the retailer to operate, beyond a coat of paint and one wall here was exposed brick. The pop ups have been used for other purposes – art galleriesare an obvious example – also it is targetted promotion. I remember a city in Florida during the height of winter did a pop up promotion for a few days in NYC, publiczing weekend getaways. I also remember one for a new energy beverage. It’s an outgrowth of Guerrilla Marketing, which creates the sought after buzz by paying low wages to people who promote one-on-one with consumers. One example is giving out free samples in busy places, hoping for word of mouth to spread, especically to social media outlets and blogs (dammit, I’ve been bamboozled again!)

Bob Dylan is not responsible for the demise of record stores or the effectiveness of pop up stores as part of a sales promotion. Not only does the pop up promote the new album, but it moves merchandise, probably enough to pay for the store themselves.

You can take pictures, said the chap behind the counter, but not of the back area.

Behind the counter there were opened boxes of T-shirts and the posters and other knick-knacks.

From writing a protest song that was adopted by a movement to touring into 70s, Dylan has always been unprecedented. But this pop up store isn’t that unprecedented for an artist as active as Dylan. He tours through the year, has been doing so since the 80s. His voice may be shot, the live arrangements are drastically dissimilar to the recordings, but he is one of the most successful touring acts today. His new records get Grammy award nominations, and while campaigning for the Nobel Prize in Literature is a perennial Bob Dylan fan wish, he is a working musician putting out great music and deserves the marketing support of his record label.

 

 

 

 

 

The Temporary Tempest is in the revitalized meat packing district and by revitalized I mean a developer fueled metamorphosis from druggy sewer to a high priced game preserve for the Trust Fundarati. Bob Dylan’s new marketing experiment being smack dab there in the middle of this particular neighborhood is both fitting for the environs while also living up to Dylan’s relentless, often inscrutable, half century of subversion.