Eighty-sixed

Given this week’s music stories, the nostalgia circuit ain’t what it used to be, leaving acts made in the ’80s to find a 21st century niche. The pioneering efforts of eccentric local fixture Jane Siberry to take the reins of her own distribution culminated in the shuttering of her online emporium last spring – a decade of juggling art and commerce may not have been fruitful. Now, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (via Boing Boing) picked up on the fact that, after some online soul-searching, unrestricted MP3s of all Siberry’s work have been unleashed, priced at a self-determined sum remitted at the listener’s leisure, ranging from free, to the industry standard 99 cents per track, or more. The praise heaped at Siberry’s liberation effort contrasts with a visit from aging Australian band INXS, inexorably parading their Mississauga-born, reality show-winning, Michael Hutchence-replacing, hunkalicious frontman J.D. Fortune before a hometown crowd – bellowing the national anthem at the hockey game, sharing dewy-eyed anecdotes about sleeping on the streets, and claiming the adulation has left him feeling "like the mayor". But can all this schlocky sentiment possibly sell records? The music business stopped throwing money at these PR blitzes for a reason, although recent coverage of Mr. Fortune’s fortune has temporarily drowned out consumer backlash leveled at INXS’s distributor Sony BMG for spiking all of their compact discs with that pesky computer-infecting rootkit.

INXS enjoys its good Fortune [Toronto Star]