The Dead Kennedys strike gold

Gold record sales, that is, for their debut album Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables.

I was surprised to see that it's not the band's first gold record award. The odds & sods collection Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death was certified gold by the RIAA more than fifteen years ago.

Good on them!

I recall it also took decades for "Violent Femmes" and "Ramones" to finally go gold. Wonder what's the record for longest release-to-gold time?

According to the RIAA, Violent Femmes took four years to reach gold sales, and another four to reach platinum. (The band's best-of disc, Add It Up, also has racked up a gold record.)

Ramones took 38 years to "earn" a gold record. Like the Femmes, the Ramones reached gold status with a comp as well.

No idea who holds the record for the longest wait for a gold certification -- the RIAA web site doesn't specify, and it doesn't make the search quite that easy. But at 43 years, I'd say the DKs are a strong contender for the title.

Well, If you gotta have one "Hardcore" album, that's the one to have. It's the only one in my Record Cell.

Former TP subscriber [81, 82, 83, 84]

[postpunkmonk.com]
For further rumination on the Fresh New Sound of Yesterday®

Thanks for the link Delvin, you sure sent me down the rabbit hole. Pretty interesting.

-Black Flag: no hits, not even any for Henry Rollins. Well, not much point in looking up any other first-wave American punk, then…

-Sex Pistols: “Never Mind…” took a decade to go gold, but only an additional 5 years to then go platinum. Wonder why sales doubled during that period?

-Devo: “Whip It” went gold in only 4 months, but it only JUST went platinum this month, joining the DKs in the 43-year Club.
(“Are We Not Men?” went gold in ‘01, “Freedom of Choice”: gold in 6 months, platinum 6 years later)

-was happy to see The Clash repped with 6 releases, “Rock the Casbah” and “Combat Rock” both went double-platinum. Why “London Calling” sold only 1 mil and not at least 10 mil is a mystery for the ages.

-Pere Ubu: no results, not that I was expecting anything, haha

-Brian Eno: no results, but I am a bit surprised this time

-Velvet Underground: no hits, really?! I thought “VU+Nico” would have at least gone gold by now.

-Lou Reed: “New York” and “Rock and Roll Animal” went gold, not “Transformer”?!

-no Joy Division, but New Order’s “Republic” and “Technique” went gold, 2 albums I could not name a single song off of; at least the excellent “Substance” comp went platinum.

-both the Stooges, and Iggy Pop: “UNFORTUNATELY THAT SEARCH PRODUCED NO CERTIFICATIONS.” Oh, come ON…

-no Joy Division, but New Order’s “Republic” and “Technique” went gold, 2 albums I could not name a single song off of; at least the excellent “Substance” comp went platinum.

Republic had "Regret" on it, which was New Order's only U.S. top 40 hit, so I would imagine that's how it managed to go gold. For Technique, I would have to guess it got a bump from being their first album after the release of Substance, which had been the entry point for a lot of people who then went out and bought the new New Order album now that they felt all caught up. Plus, it's the only New Order album where John Denver gets a writing credit!

breno Wrote:
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>
> Republic had "Regret" on it, which was New
> Order's only U.S. top 40 hit

So that business about “Blue Monday” being the biggest selling 12” of all time is some kind of urban legend?

Sadly, the Greg Ginn theory could be true. Back when gangsters were running labels they would do stuff like that. “Party records” queen Rusty Warren of “Bounce Your Boobies” fame sold millions- those records are in every thrift store and record shop - but never appeared on a Billboard chart.

Nah, "Blue Monday" being the biggest selling 12" of all time is probably not an urban legend. But very few of those 12" got sold in the U.S., which is what the RIAA measures. It very likely is a gold record in other territories, but the RIAA website won't reflect that.

"Blue Monday" sure as hell never got any U.S. top 40 airplay in 1983, while "Regret" got plenty a decade later.

At this point, looking up Spotify streams is probably a better way of judging current popularity. I saw a breakdown of Velvet Underground sales, and while I expected VU + NICO to qualify for a gold album by now, it's only sold about 400,000 albums. Still, "Pale Blue Eyes" and "Sunday Morning" have more than 100 million streams. Surprisingly, "Oh! Sweet Nothin' " is their third biggest song on Spotify.

A pet theory: Greg Ginn deliberately hasn't had any SST albums certified gold because the band members would sue him for royalties if they knew exactly how well they sold. I'd be amazed if DAMAGED hasn't sold 500,000 copies, and Ginn has said I AGAINST I is the label's best seller.

"Oh! Sweet Nothin'" featured prominently in a pivotal scene in the second season of Loki, so I imagine that's what goosed its streams on Spotify.

It kind of irritated me, because the scene took place in the early 80s and they went to the trouble of showing what would've been an era-appropriate copy of the album to be in a used record store at the time, but then implied (but didn't explicitly show the character listening to it putting the needle down so there's wiggle room) that "Oh! Sweet Nothin'" was the first song on the album. Feh!

Happy to see "I'm Sticking with You" - the one VU song that I actively and fiercely loathe - only barely makes their top 20 most streamed songs. Fortunately, Juno came and went before the age of Spotify, otherwise that crap would likely be much higher. It still has been streamed nearly 3 times more often than "Sister Ray," so I have to issue a pox on anyone who's ever intentionally queued it up anyhow, but it's not as bad as I feared it would be.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/22/2023 06:39AM by breno.

I am fairly astounded that "Blue Monday" didn't chart in the US. That song was frikken EVERYWHERE. (Still is - can't hardly have an "'80s Night" without it.) That floppy-disk lookin' sleeve seemed to be in many a collection. Maybe just a regional thing? Did any of my fellow geezers in other cities not hear it much?

"Blue Monday" received frequent airplay on the radio stations in Colorado that embraced a "modern rock" format. And it was a guaranteed dance-floor-packer at the clubs.

The fact that the original 12" single came out on Factory, not a US major label, probably doomed its changes of getting played anywhere in America except dance clubs.

Given that alternative radio in St. Louis in the early 80s consisted of a community college station that reached about three miles beyond the confines of the campus before a Christian station bled into and overwhelmed it, and a midnight to 4 a.m. Saturday new wave show on the local NPR station, "Blue Monday" was not a significant part of the local zeitgeist in 1983.

I'm honestly pretty sure I was the only person I knew who listened to New Order at the time. My fellow art majors at college were a reasonably progressive bunch, but I definitely was the JD/NO evangelist amongst my peers. I wuz kewl.