Grand Royal To Auction Assets Online
Ad-Rock's auctioneer voice the most annoying thing ever

[Updated Tuesday, January 20th, 2004 02:00:00 Pitchfork Central Time]

If you're like me, you've often got 10, 20, even $30,000 just burning a hole right through the pocket of your Wranglers. Well, don't do what I did and blow it all on troll dolls on eBay. Instead, you can buy Grand Royal. That's right, the record label. I'm talkin' 'bout the one that used to release records by all those cool bands like At the Drive-In, Bis, and the Beastie Boys. The auction site Bid4Assets.com has the label listed as up for auction as of December 5th. If you need to bum some cash off of your parents to make the high bid, though, you'd better hurry. The auction ends on January 22nd.

According to the listing, potential record label moguls are bidding on "various master recordings, license agreements, recording agreements and misc. contracts available." Unfortunately, being the high bidder will not get you a date with Luscious Jackson's Gabby Glaser. It also does not grant you assets related to At the Drive-In, Ben Lee, Noise Addict, or Bran Van 3000 either (the listing actually specifies that, whereas I'm just speculating on the Gabby Glaser thing). You can view the entire contents of the auction via the listing-- there's a great deal of leftover merchandise included in the deal. This is certainly one way to beef up your CD collection, but your friends might consider it cheating if you brag that you've got 3000 CDs, then they find out that 2578 of them are Big Fat Love's Hell House.

Grand Royal was owned by the Beastie Boys, but closed its doors two years ago amongst a great deal of head-scratching from fans. Throughout its almost ten-year lifespan, the label released material from Ween, Ben Lee, Mr. Lif, Atari Teenage Riot, and many others, and even spawned Grand Royal Magazine.

Bid4Assets: http://www.bid4assets.com