Rock vets Godsmack rolling with the times

The New England-based rockers in Godsmack first got together in the mid-'90s, back when the Internet was just learning to walk. Now they see it as the smartest kid in class.

The band, touring in support of its 2006 release, "IV," is fully plugged into the changing nature of the industry — and the big questions those changes bring. At times, drummer Shannon Larkin speaks with excitement about the band's online opportunities. But other times, he's left feeling nostalgic.

"The market now, sales-wise and all that, is just crazy," Larkin said earlier this month from tour rehearsals. "You can have a band like Fall Out Boy debut at No. 1 with 80,000 (records) sold or something."

Fall Out Boy's "Infinity On High" actually sold 260,000 copies in its debut week, but Larkin's point is valid — Modest Mouse, for instance, had a No. 1 album with "We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank," which moved just 129,000 copies. And the numbers will continue to sink, Larkin said.

"(Soon) there'll be no more CDs to sell," Larkin said. "You'll just walk in the store, swipe your card and plug your MP3 player in."

Such a future has its conveniences, Larkin said, but it abandons an important part of the record-buying experience: holding a new album in your hands and admiring the cover art.

"It's sad to me, the whole art thing," he said. "If I go and swipe the new Godsmack record, I've got the music in my iPod and maybe a (cover) image that's 2-by-2 inches," Larkin said. "It seems like my kids are going to miss out on that beautiful part of my youth."

Larkin says that everyone with an interest in seeing the industry survive needs to join forces now.

"Bands and labels and management companies and agents, everybody's going to have to work together," he said. "It's a whole new era of access. (Kids don't) walk to the record store and buy a CD, they don't turn on the radio and hear a song. They go online and somebody says, 'Oh, you gotta go to MySpace and check out this song."'

By way of response, Larkin says his band has worked hard to create a quality Web site: www.godsmack.com. The band has a couple of MySpace pages as well.

But for the time being, CD sales still are important. The band hopes this summer tour drives "IV" to platinum status. Beyond that, the questions start again.

"Who knows?" Larkin said. "If we take a couple years to make the 'V' record, it might not even be a record we're putting out."