A Crying Lightning Rod for Charity

We've all heard of charity concerts and are familiar with rock stars doing their part to help. But the recent move by the UK band the Arctic Monkeys is a novel one along these lines. According to the UK's Independent, two days ago the band released a new vinyl single, "Crying Lightning," through a network of secondhand charity shops.

The group, a mainstay of the English alternative rock scene, is set to headline two upcoming music festivals in Reading and Leeds. Two of the vinyl singles for sale contain pairs of tickets to these concerts; somewhere in the UK there are two very lucky charity shoppers.

Oxfam shops are a fixture of "high street" (main street, to us Americans) in towns across the UK, with nearly 700 operating throughout the country. The stores sell secondhand items and use the proceeds to fund Oxfam's poverty-reduction programs around the world.

The shops do a brisk business in music, selling around $10 million in albums every year, enough to provide 8 million people in developing countries with safe water. The Independent quotes David McCullough, Oxfam's director of trading, as mentioning that "Oxfam shops have always been one of the best places on the high street to pick up a musical bargain."

To help Oxfam continue that fine tradition, Arctic Monkeys is encouraging fans to donate any unwanted albums to the shops when they come in to buy the band's single.

For a listen to the song in question, see the video below:

Photo courtesy of net_efkts, via Flickr