D'sCoffee Cup - Commercial Exploitation

Subject: D'sCoffee Cup - Commercial Exploitation
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 29 Jun 05 - 08:23 PM

Do you wish you could be 'Commercially Eploited' as a 'Folk Singer'?

Oh - and I posted the full text because - WARNING - Bad Pun Alert!


http://www.thecouriermail.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,15772975%255E
952,00.html

Dylan no has-been in cafe culture
Matthew Condon
30jun05

When he sang "One more cup of coffee 'fore I go, to the valley below", did iconic counterculture songster Bob Dylan possibly have in mind taking a Starbucks' Decaf Komodo Dragon Blend or its Arabian Mocha Sanani?

Children of the 1960s, hippies and folk music fans around the world gagged on their organic produce yesterday at news that anti-establishment pin-up boy Dylan had signed a deal with the global coffee chain to sell a CD of some of his rare recordings.

Bob Dylan: Live at the Gaslight 1962 will soon sit beside chicken and leek pies and chocolate muffins in thousands of Starbucks stores.

The album features material recorded in the Gaslight Cafe in New York's Greenwich Village more than 40 years ago. For true fans, it has been the elusive Moby Dick of Dylan recordings.

How the Starbucks corporation ­ which opens three to four stores a day somewhere in the world ­ made the commercial connection with selling the Dylan rarity doesn't take a genius to work out.

It was recorded in a cafe, so you sell it in a cafe (or thousands of replicated cafes, in the case of Starbucks.)

How Dylan allowed his work to be off-loaded in a coffee shop chain is less clear. Is he looking toward a guaranteed pension? Under Starbucks' Hear Music initiative, the late Ray Charles's album Genius Loves Company sold more than 700,000 copies through the chain.

Starbucks says the Dylan recording "captures an important moment in the history of the coffee house culture" and offered a "unique perspective on Dylan when he was an emerging artist".

So what does this have to do with a bag of Elephant Kinjia coffee beans grown on the slopes of an extinct volcano in Tanzania?

Poor Bob. He was once counterculture. He is now, literally, counter culture.

Subject: RE: D'sCoffee Cup - Commercial Exploitation
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 29 Jun 05 - 10:09 PM

We already have one thread (82526) on this subject- or do you just want to be alone?
Starbucks and Dylan

Subject: RE: D'sCoffee Cup - Commercial Exploitation
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 29 Jun 05 - 11:36 PM

Well, Q, I think we'll have to forgive Robin in this instance since that other thread had already fallen off the page by the time he started this one. Twenty-five posts in a little over three hours and then sank like a rock holding onto a cannonball.

Subject: RE: D'sCoffee Cup - Commercial Exploitation
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 30 Jun 05 - 01:20 AM

What thread?

Whoooooshhh!

Sorry guys... I don't open every thread...

Subject: RE: D'sCoffee Cup - Commercial Exploitation
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 30 Jun 05 - 05:18 AM

A few months ago, a headline in my local news rag caught my eye:

                  DYLAN WON'T SELL OUT

Of course I thought - "that's obvious."

                  "Man of principle."

                  "Good for Dylan."

It turns out that what they meant was that not enough tickets were sold for his performance in "the big arena," and his act was being moved across the street to a grubby little bar.

BS = BIG SIGH...

John

Subject: RE: D'sCoffee Cup - Commercial Exploitation
From: GUEST,sixtiesdecaflatte
Date: 30 Jun 05 - 03:56 PM

It sounds to me like a brilliant marketing strategy for both Starbucks and Dylan. Starbucks promotes an edgier, classier image, Dylan's mythic mainstream status gets ratcheted up another notch, and both enrich their coffers. So what else is new?

Ya don't have to buy the former's burnt-tasting coffee (called char-bucks in these parts) and ya don't have to buy the latter's CD if either offend thee.

M.

Subject: RE: D'sCoffee Cup - Commercial Exploitation
From: GUEST,Liz the Squeak
Date: 01 Jul 05 - 04:26 AM

There are only two valid reasons for going to a Starbucks....

The first is mocha chocolate frappe with extra cream and the other is to use the toilet.

The ability to buy Dylan (or Dvorak) in a Starbucks has been around ever since the book chain Borders included a Yourbucks coffee house in their bookshops.

LTS