CD Corner : ‘Just Say Mao’ Bucks ‘Formula’ of Billboard Albums’ Charts

The weekly Top 30 CD sales charts in Billboard magazine generally contain pretty much the same albums that are found near the top of the trade publication’s list of the week’s overall 200 best-sellers, a ranking that includes vinyl, cassette and CD album sales.

This has meant in recent weeks that one has found such familiar, mainstream pop-rock figures as Prince (“Batman” sound track), Tom Petty (“Full Moon Fever”) and Richard Marx (“Repeat Offender”) on both charts.

But one album crept onto the Top 30 CD charts this month that is nowhere to be found on the overall Top 200 list: a compilation album featuring tracks by such new and/or largely unknown British and American artists as Nasa, Figures on a Beach, Danielle Dax, the Ocean Blue and Underworld.

The album is “Just Say Mao,” the third installment in a Sire Records series of budget CDs ($7.98 in most stores) designed to tempt adventurous fans into listening to these new Sire acts by teasing them with some rare, remixed or previously unreleased material by such label favorites as Depeche Mode, Lou Reed, the Replacements, Erasure and Morrissey.

Howie Klein, general manager of Sire and executive producer of the series, said the first album in the series only sold about 30,000 but interest has grown to the point where he expects this 17-track collection to top the 100,000 mark.

“We spend so much time (in the record industry) trying to convince radio to give our new groups a shot, and even then only a small percentage of new acts get anywhere the exposure they deserve,” Klein said.

“So we thought we would bypass radio and try to go directly to the consumer with these promotional CDs. We put on a track by a band or artist the fan is familiar with and then follow it in most cases with something in the same vein.” Among other artists featured in “Just Say Mao”: L.A. rapper Ice-T, country maverick k.d. lang and Talking Heads’ spin-off Tom Tom Club.