Every Day Is Record Store Day

I usually try to avoid any comment here on the annual commercial circus that record Store Day has become. Everyone’s sick of that griping right? And the IDEA is noble – “hey, let’s celebrate and draw attention to independent record stores by having a day that gets people into the shops who might not otherwise visit them.”

But when the effects appear to be more and more detrimental to both smaller independent record stores and to smaller independent record labels and those people start voicing their concerns… well, let’s just say it’s all getting interesting.

The issue was summarised in an excellent commentary on Twitter recently from Repressed Records in Sydney, Australia – which is both a small Independent Record Store AND a small Independent Record Label. Here’s a summary of their comments:

Limited Edition Record Store Day pressing = 1000 copies
Ambitious run for majority of great current day bands = 500

There’s a serious problem with attention given to most great music of today. It is less likely to be considered ‘relevant’ unless it has a legacy.

True Independent Music Culture is getting squeezed out of its own habitat.

Record Store Day could be done better & foster true independent Music Culture better as Independent Record Stores are, or can be, so important, creating an alternative dialogue & visibility for untainted music.

I agree with all of these. So do Howling Owl Records in this splendidly Quixotic venting. Not sure what to do about it though. I have enjoyed spending previous Record Store Days at my local record store. They couldn’t afford to be part of the official day or order any of the official RSD titles but they had the shop full of customers enjoying the day for the sake of it. That’s something more small stores seem to be doing – an ‘Anti-RSD’ movement. Which will probably be just as effective (and a lot more fun) than the speculator-led crush at RSD stores.

My own experiences over the past few years have caused me to be concerned about what RSD has become. I run Fishrider Records, a small independent record label. The most recent release – an album from Dunedin electronic dance/trance post-punk trio Death And The Maiden – initially expected late December or early January – was held up due to pressing plant delays in the UK contributed to by high priority RSD jobs. LPs were finally delivered in March. That put us (it’s a co-release in the UK with Occultation Recordings) in the difficult position of deciding whether to schedule the UK release prior to RSD on 18 April or after.

We knew stores reduced or stopped ordering regular releases prior to RSD, particularly smaller stores with financial and space constraints. But we also knew stores took a while to recover financially after RSD from non-returnable payment up-front RSD stock purchases. We didn’t know how long we would need to wait for stores to recover and return to ‘normal’. This well-researched and balanced article from the For Folk’s Sake website explains the issues small stores face around RSD.

We opted to release the album in the UK pre-RSD in early April. Store orders to the distributor were way down on previous releases. Understandable when credit limits are tight and a store is faced with a choice between a new release from a new band and hyped RSD ‘limited editions’ from established or ‘legacy’ artists that will hopefully have customers queuing down the street on RSD.

As an aside, even without the pre-RSD hype circus dominating music media, it is more difficult now for true independent labels to get access even to online media, competing for attention against well-funded establishment PR campaigns. That’s one of the reasons you see mostly the same releases and names across all the main online media. And that’s one of the reasons I do PopLib. In its insignificant way it it may help draw some attention to worthwhile music people are unlikely to find out about otherwise.

The label I run releases an album roughly every 6 months. Over the past 3 years each release has taken a month longer to get pressed than the previous one. This has a huge effect on small labels for planning releases (including timing promotion, publicity and tours) and on cash-flow. The delays between paying for vinyl and receiving income from their sale is lengthening with each release. That in turn makes it harder to fund future releases or assist bands with recording or touring.

Ever-increasing delays resulting from demand out-stripping production capacity are a sign of success for the vinyl music format. However, half the year now is dominated extra delays caused by pre-Christmas and then pre-RSD (2nd Christmas!) pressing runs. As a consequence, minimum pressing volumes (many plants are now turning away jobs under 500 copies), release date planning uncertainty and the stretched out cash-flow implications of ever-lengthening turnaround times all make it more difficult for new labels who want to release music in the preferred physical format to start up or survive.

I suspect that direct-to-customer mail-order sales keep most small labels going now. Ironically, that is something Independent Record Stores complain about. For the other 364 days of the year those independent record stores rely on a steady stream of customers seeking new releases (and new re-issues). Some of those customers now prefer to buy direct from labels – better prices, better deals. Unfortunately some (a disturbingly significant percentage I believe) prefer to buy from Am*z*n. Sometimes because the shops don’t stock those releases (see my comments above). It’s a vicious circle of cause and effect.

Independent record labels (and self-releasing artists) are releasing the most interesting and risk-taking new music, and developing new artists, a few of whom will carry on to be the ‘legacy artists’ of the future. When that symbiotic relationship between small labels (including self-release artists) and independent record stores is damaged the ecology of the independent music culture sector is damaged. As Repressed Records said: “True Independent Music Culture is getting squeezed out of its own habitat.”

I’m not sure what the answer is. What is happening is just a supply and demand capitalist business thing. RSD represents a chance for stores and some labels to make some money. That’s business. But it is unfortunate that something created with noble intentions of supporting independent stores has been manipulated into an artificial supply & demand scarcity trick. It has turned what started as a good idea into a major commercially-driven music industry event which has grown so big and ugly some now believe is causing damage to the wider independent music culture sector.

Time for a re-think if those behind RSD truly care about Independent Record Stores and the wider Independent Music Culture they are part of. That’s my RSD War Dance.

‘Dim the Droog’ by Mavis Gary

Out of nowhere (or downtown Dunedin – same difference) comes latest Dunedin pop underground luminary Mavis Gary.

What? I have my ear to the ground in this town and I’d never heard of Mavis. Suddenly there’s a single and an album ready for release on cassette via The Attic (Dunedin’s top floor ‘underground’ arts/ music, general loafing cooperative space).

Turns out Mavis Gary is the name given to a side-project of shy Dunedin DIY pop auteur Adrian Ng. As I’ve seen Adrian almost every week this year, and he’s spent days at my place recording the debut album by his main band, Trick Mammoth, I’m surprised I knew nothing about this. Although he did ask if he could borrow a bass guitar a couple of weeks ago and he has hung onto my SM57 microphone for months – an upgrade from his old SingStar microphone, famously used for those Trick Mammoth demos

The combination of a creative flood of songs and being bored now that the Trick Mammoth album recording has finished meant he used his mid-term break week to self-record an album as Mavis Gary. I’ve heard the whole thing now – it’s extraordinary. There’s a whole new dark side of what I can only describe as post-punk glam rock plus more of the glorious woozy melodic pop I know and love from Trick Mammoth. In fact Mavis Gary even covers three Trick Mammoth songs – two old ones and one new one (‘Candy Darling’ the ‘B-side’ to the ‘Dim the Droog’ single).

I presume Mavis Gary is named after the Charlize Theron character in the 2011 film ‘Young Adult’ – a cynical feel-bad movie about the delusions of early adulthood. Some of the songs seem metaphors for the sickly-sweet jumbled up confusion and dark undercurrents of life lived halfway between a cheerful and positive surface image and a darker clandestine reality.

‘Dim the Droog’ is one of the songs that stuck out most on first listen, possibly because it strays far from Adrian’s usual palette of songwriting. It is dark, angular, mysterious and brooding, but in a kind of saturated colour cartoon kind of way. I love it. As always he uses the contrast between rhythm guitar chords and chiming lead parts and there’s the expected killer pop hook chorus.

The ‘B-side’ ‘Candy Darling’ is a song that Trick Mammoth have been playing live for the past month or two. Another cracker, and Mavis Gary does tend to blur the lines between a kind of testing ground for emerging Trick mammoth songs as well as an outlet for Adrian’s darker, skewed pop.

I’m looking forward to the cassette. Not often I say that these days…

‘Mr Biscuits’ by Mr Biscuits

Here’s my New Zealand Music Month bandcamp purchase for 2 May. ‘Mr Biscuits’ by Mr Biscuits… this is one of THE Great Lost Dunedin albums (there’s a lot of those). OK, it’s a mini album, but all the same it’s stupendously great. In a much more interesting parallel universe than the one we live in I can imagine Mr Biscuits signing to Kill Rock Star records (yes, it is in the parallel universe too) and this being a massive ‘Nevermind’ style hit all over the world. My favourite part may be the way Sarah pronounces the word ‘arse’ in ‘My Plums are Ripe’. Hard to believe half this band is now 2/3 of Trick Mammoth.

This from the Mr Biscuits Facebook page:
“The dynamic is unstable, and there is a lot of existing tension from old issues. We used to hang out a lot but lately things have been much more difficult. We’re simultaneously each others best friends and worst enemies. We love each other but there have been heaps of fights and meltdowns. We’ve even broken up more than a few times but that’s part of what we are about. Without the tension you wouldn’t get the passion that we hopefully convey.”

– Sam, in an unpublished interview with UTR in early 2011.

Recorded nearly three years ago, our self-titled debut album is finally available via the link below. There are many imperfections, but ultimately, it is a document of the band we once were.

Our true home will always be in the seemingly hundreds of shows we played during our active lifetime, but we are extremely proud to finally present our only collection of studio recordings.

We’re sorry it took so long.”

Richard and Sam play in this band: Males

Adrian and Sam play in this band now: Trick Mammoth

A Good Place to Start

…is generally at the beginning. But I’m going to start this story in the middle and work forwards and backwards from here.

I’ve been putting off starting a ‘music blog’ for several years. What the world doesn’t need is another music blog. Even one by someone who has been listening to ‘weird music’ from beyond the mainstream for more years then he cares to remember. Someone who used to write about music for years. Someone who started a record label – www.fishriderrecords.com – because music he wanted to hear wasn’t being released. What a fool’s errand that has turned out to be, by the way. Not that I regret a moment of it though, don’t get me wrong.

But someone recently said ‘start a music blog and save a musician’ or something, which is a cool way of saying that those of us who are still excited by music, and who still value the creativity of crazy people driven to make and release unpopular pop music, need to do something to help other music lovers find it.  Telling people ‘you have to listen to this’ is what I’ve been doing most of my life. So this is that.

Why ‘Pop Lib”?

‘Pop Lib’ was the title of the very first Puddle EP on Flying Nun Records in 1986.  Pop Lib is a kind of motto for what I imagine I do with Fishrider Records… the liberation of “pop” music.

What do I imagine “pop” needs to be liberated from?

Well,  it should be liberated from dependence. Dependence on the plastic formula created by anonymous artificial taste-makers. Dependence on large corporate record labels driven by the desire to maximise shareholder profits at the expense of listener experiences.  Dependence on the narrow conventions of mainstream media who dictate and prescribe the limits of what you are informed about and what you listen to.

Popular music should be made by the people for the people.  There are no rules – just the common desire to warm the heart, nourish the soul and enlighten the mind. And a whole lot more. This blog may feature some new stuff some obscure stuff and will also revisit some old stuff too.  There’s a decade or so of album reviews and interviews I did in a previous life as a music writer. It might be fun to revisit those. It might not. Watch this space…

The cover of ‘Pop Lib’ by The Puddle, released on Flying Nun Records in 1986.