Some casual observations…on the day we acknowledge the guy who didn’t discover America

An old friend sends me the music charts every week and I usually just take a quick scan. Last week’s were interesting in that I needed to blink my eyes a few times to make sure that I hadn’t stepped into Professor Peabody’s Wayback Machine by mistake.

At the top of last week’s chart was Barbra Streisand and next week it’ll likely be Kiss. Alice In Chains and Pearl Jam are in the top ten and Whitney Houston, Harry Connick, Jr. and Lynyrd Skynard aren’t too far behind. The Beatles’ slew of remasters sold 2.5 million units worldwide in their first five days of release last month and Michael Jackson’s new song from the grave will likely be the biggest download ever digitized. And of course we’re all on the edge of our seats as the Dylan Christmas release is also destined for a top five debut in another week or so.

One bright note…the Avett Brothers came in just north of 40,000 units at the number 16 spot. Nice to see that since you’ll have to travel pretty far down the charts to find any other artists that are usually mentioned hereabouts. By contrast, Monsters of Folk debuted the week prior at about 31,000 units and the second week it dropped to 13,000.

In the Americana “old guy” catagory, Robert Earl Keen sold 6600 of his latest the first week out, Kris Kristofferson did about 3000 and Guy Clark had a two week total of 4100. Patti Loveless’ new bluegrass release hits at 6200 which is far from what she sold of the first one several years back.

And just for the heck of it, over at the P2P site Pirate Bay, Jay-Z’s Blueprint is the most shared followed by Paramour, Muse, Black Eyed Peas, Kings of Leon, Michael Jackson and the Beatles.

Finally, here’s an unrelated subject change…Wal Mart has decided to cut back rather drastically on their DVD selection. The Wall Street Journal reports: The move comes as major film studios are reeling from declines in revenue from DVD sales as cash-strapped consumers turn to low-cost rental services and digital downloads for home movies. “We think the new strategy implies Wal-Mart no longer sees DVDs and Blu-ray discs as traffic drivers,” J.P. Morgan analyst Imran Khan said.