One of the best news I have heard in recent times – EMI-Virgin India plans to reduce prices of import music cds by almost 50%. Strangely, no official press releases have been made, but both Sangeet Saagar and Planet M salesmen showed me the same catalogue, a 30-page pamphlet of CD titles whose prices are coming down. The original prices were 350 INR for a single cd, anything between 595-700 for double-CD packs, and about 900-1100 for 3-CD packs. The revised prices are 199 INR for single CDs, and 350 and 540 for 2 and 3-CD packs.

The list that was shown to me has a lot of old titles, mixed with dozens of Western Classical albums and 80’s rock – I remember seeing artistes like Joan Baez, Mike Oldfield, Blur, Radiohead it, and even oddball albums like Monty Python collections ( yes, in audio! ), Laurel and Hardy collections, decidedly ancient albums like The Best of Marlene Dietrich. In short, everything a music fan dreamt of, every possible way of spending more money than one spends right now.

This was supposed to be in effect from May 1, but so far, I have seen two or three albums with the revised price tag, a Johnny Hatez Jazz collection and an Eddie Calvert album that Chandru prompty bought. The guy at Sangeet Saagar said that the stock might take some time to arrive. Hmm.

Of course, I couldn’t just come out without buying anything, so I got myself three nice albums. There was this offer going on, by which you can buy two albums and get one free, and I picked the cds of Singing In The Rain: Original Soundtrack and Caution Horses by Cowboy Junkies, and got Remo Fernandes’s Politicians Don’t Know How to Rock and Roll for free. Pretty good choices, as it turned out.

Singing In The Rain has a lot of extended and bonus material on the cd, different versions of the songs, which are highly enjoyable. It does not have the tap dancing sounds from the movie, but that does not affect the sheer energy of the songs. One of the best musicals ever, one of my favorite movies, and now one of my favourite Soundtracks too.

Remo’s album, strangely enough, does not sound as dated as it should – I love the guy. No pretentious accent in his English, and pretty fun lyrics and music. Starts off with this catchy and hilarious “Everybody wants to *Ugh* without the fear of AIDS”, then moves to a hardhitting “How Do You Feel”, addressed to Indian politicians. A slightly cliched “A Song For India”, with carnatic violins and the tabla, and words like “elephants” and “mysticism” popping up in the lyrics. “Don’t Kick Up The Rao” is a song dedicated to ex-PM PV Narasimha Rao – Remo, it seems, wrote a letter a letter of apology to PVNR about the song, and he got a tongue-in-cheek reply headed as “No Remo(rse)”. A good album.

I haven’t listened to the Cowboy Junkies CD completely yet, but the first track is just awesome.