Yankovic is not the first person to celebrate rapid release of songs - John Lennon released "Give Peace a Chance" roughly a month after recording it - but modern digital technology and distribution supports more rapid release of songs, without having to worry about pressing the discs and shipping the stuff to your local Licorice Pizza - whoops, I mean WalMart.
I mentioned it in passing again in this tymshft post from today:
For my younger readers, I should explain that these cases hold something known as “compact discs.” You see, back before iTunes or Amazon Music or any of those services, if you wanted to buy music, you would actually have to go to a physical store (kinda like a 7 Eleven, but these stores had names like “Tower Records” and “Licorice Pizza”), get a physical item like a compact disc or a tape or a vinyl platter, take it home (or, in some cases, to your car), insert the physical item into a player, and play the music that way.
But I didn't really know much about Licorice Pizza - it wasn't until recently that I realized that the store name referred to the color of a vinyl record - so I read up on it a bit.
Licorice Pizza, based in Glendale, opened its first store in Long Beach in 1969. Founder James Greenwood borrowed the company's name from remarks made in a comedy sketch on an album by '60s folk singers Bud and Travis. The entertainers mused about sprinkling their records with sesame seeds and selling them as licorice pizzas.
By 1986, Licorice Pizza was deriving more of its income from video rentals than from selling music. That was the year that Licorice Pizza was sold to Musicland, and the stores were rebranded as Sam Goody a year later.
Of course, 1987 was a long time ago...
