Independence Days

by Alex; Ogg

  Mason eventually revived Rot after the split from Rondelet and his own band, expanding the roster with The Varukers, English Dogs etc (the punk labels of the early 80s swapped ‘assets’ frequently). Rot continued until its distributor Red Rhino folded, Mason going on to sell second-hand cars, though he would also oversee the bootleg LP series Punk Lives Let’s Slam and faced a court action from Picture Frame Seduction over the return of master tapes.

  Mark Brennan, bass player with The Business, and Lol Pryor, previously owner of Syndicate and Wonderful World Records, were behind Link Records. Their first project was the compilation album Oi! The Resurrection, alongside releases by Section 5 and Vicious Rumours. Combining this output with material by more venerable/name-recognisable groups such as The Business and 4-Skins to get themselves into the racks of record stores, they concurrently established Dojo in their capacity as consultants to reissue specialist Castle Records. With Pryor’s focus increasingly leading him in that direction, Brennan took a breather before setting up Captain Oi!, a punk reissue independent which gave a welcome lick of paint to reissue projects in a genre previously notable for the short shrift afforded it by the majors.

  Never fashionable with the media, beyond partisan support from Garry Bushell at Sounds and to a lesser extent Carol Clerk at Melody Maker, this rump of independent labels, if it did reflect a retrenchment from the original punk vision, also sold in huge quantities. As one Bristolian musician told me, reflecting on the adventures of Riot City, “We were all sitting around The Moon Club one day, All of us had been in arty bands on the local scene. All of whom got a lot of press. And there was Shane there from Vice Squad, who always used to get the piss taken out of them a bit. They weren’t arty or whatever. But then someone said, ‘Yeah, but Shane’s the only one who ever sold any records.’ And that shut everyone up.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Get Rid Of These Things

  The Cartel, its labels, and the building of an independent infrastructure

  If 1979 was boom time for UK independents, that was in stark contrast to the fortunes of the record industry generally. It was a terrible year for the majors. American sales slumped 11% to $3.7 billion, which was the first decline since World War II, and the fallout spread to the UK. “Until 1979, the business was judged recession-proof,” wrote Fredric Dannen in Hit Men. “You couldn’t make too many bad mistakes, because sales growth covered them up. So it seemed, anyway, to an industry drunk on the disco craze.” In fact, while independents such as Rough Trade blossomed, savage cutbacks were the order of the day across corporate boardrooms. The majors claimed that video games such as Space Invaders were robbing them of teenage coinage. Just as with the downloading scares of the new millennium, there is always, seemingly, a good reason unrelated to their own deficiencies, for revenue woes.

  The US independent sector’s response to the new paradigm of music was both slower and more piecemeal. Independent distribution in the US declined steadily through the 1970s and quite precipitously after 1980. And although independent R&B labels continued to launch American chart hits right through the birth of hip-hop, not one of the punk or new wave imprints (or bands) left a lasting impression on the industry. For example, Dead Kennedys, the pre-eminent American punk band, were forced to release their debut album through a small British independent (Cherry Red), leaving groups such as The Avengers frustrated in their wake. Indeed, it could be argued, and Biafra concedes elsewhere, Dead Kennedys became America’s pre-eminent punk band because of the exposure a European profile gave them. There were specific reasons for this: Stateside geography in particular. On the one hand this made it all but impossible for a new band to tour profitably. Yet on the other it allowed innumerable smaller acts to claim local chart honours, especially during the breakout phases of the R&B, doo-wop, soul and garage band scenes.

  There were a handful of established indie labels such as Greg Shaw’s Bomp!, the Titan and Power Play labels for power-pop, the Bay Area’s Beserkley and Ralph, and LA’s punk label nonpareil, Dangerhouse – each of whom might sell a thousand copies of most releases. Yet not one of them ever ‘graduated’ an artist to national chart status or, indeed, served as a stepping stone to a successful major label contract, with the possible exception of X (Dangerhouse then Slash to Elektra). Hundreds of smaller labels and one-off indie 45s were distributed with at least modest success by Bomp! in Los Angeles, Pig Productions in Ontario and Disques du Monde in New York. Local ‘one-stops’ and the dominant import distributor, Jem, carried some indie LPs, although their markets were limited and hits, if any, happened on a strictly local level.

  Malcolm McLaren’s lack of success with the New York Dolls and the cooler reception afforded acts such as Patti Smith, Pere Ubu, and The Ramones in their own backyards further reinforced the general consensus that, by the late 1970s, any form of innovative American music was commercial poison. Seymour Stein’s visionary signings to Sire excited minimal sales in the States, but did much better in the UK. But the most sustained investment in American indie bands may have come from Miles Copeland’s Faulty Products sub-label (for IRS acts who failed to get distribution via A&M). Even as Copeland’s British signings went on to multiple hits, however, the Faulty label and distribution network folded after two years.

  “The main culprits in America’s ‘indie failure’, if you’re looking for them,” notes Hyped2Death’s Chuck Warner, “were the lack of a monolithic national music press, and the geographical isolation of its major musical scenes. Rolling Stone was useless, Creem couldn’t fix on a coherent identity, and the rest were just fanzines. Meanwhile, the UK music papers’ constant anxiety and haste to beat each other to the next best thing [who were almost by definition unsigned or on an indie label] gave everyone a fair blast of free publicity. And where in the UK a new band could sign on to an established act’s tour and play every night for two weeks across the country, the logistics for travel and available venues in the US were prohibitive. Bands with aspirations to something bigger could emigrate to San Francisco or LA or New York, where they might at least eke out a living, but major label stardom remained pure fantasy. That’s another reason the mainstream music press was so reluctant to take chances on new trends or scenes, and why everyone from Bomp to Trouser Press to New York Rocker to Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll organised themselves by ‘scene reports’.”

  “When we did ‘Spiral Scratch’,” recalls Richard Boon, “the independent distribution infrastructure really wasn’t in place. And it was probably a spur to it being put in place or developing. Gradually, Rough Trade expanded from mail order to actually contacting similarly minded regional shops, supplying them directly, which of course led to the Cartel. There were lots of conversations. One thing that opened up was the beginning of an informal network of activists, if you like. There were lots of ideas being tossed around all the time, but they were in a position to develop it. Richard Scott played the fundamental role.”

  “I’d started with the mail-order,” Scott confirms, “and everything just grew out of everything else. There were people coming into the shop and asking to buy for their shops. You got mail orders that turned out to be from overseas shops, from Amsterdam and so on, who wanted to buy in bulk. It grew from day one. Spotting the exact moment when it turned from mail order to wholesale would be very difficult. Everything was done on the fly. We talked about it a lot, but there was never a plan.” Those discussions were held among “whoever was there”. At the end of each day, “we’d just sit at the table in the rear and talk about it. Initially it was Geoff and I taking orders and pulling them, then we got in a couple of people to help out. There wasn’t all that much room at Kensington Park Road, so we built a shed in the yard – I got a builder friend of mine to do that. He came and built that, and that became our main wholesale base. And the fire escape from the synagogue next door opened straight into it.”

  Initially the principle of the 50-50 contract that Scott had first advocated for the Rough Trade label continued to b
e the operating premise for distribution. But that soon shifted. “We ended up doing more generous deals. The 50-50 thing fell apart fairly early on. It was maintained in spirit, but my original two-sentence contract was quickly expanded to cover all sorts of other criteria.”

  Established in 1982, its arch name suggested by Geoff Travis, The Cartel was a natural extension of Scott’s activities organising Rough Trade’s distribution. It resulted in Rough Trade co-ordinating the efforts of five outlying branches in addition to its own home turf, London; Fast Forward in Edinburgh, Revolver in Bristol, Red Rhino in York, Backs in Norwich and Probe in Liverpool. “The Cartel started because there wasn’t sufficient room in the back room of Rough Trade to service everyone,” explains Scott. “The only way to deal with it was to box up stuff to send out to the good regional shops so they could deal with the other shops in their area. It was a spatial problem. I also thought it was important to try to set up centres where labels and shops could focus regionally rather than be in London – that was politically important. I saw London as being over-important.” The Cartel was formally inaugurated at a meeting convened at a hotel overlooking the Clifton Suspension Bridge near Bristol, though discussions about the enterprise were well advanced by the time it was rubber-stamped. An associated chain of retailers with sympathetic principles and synergistic ambitions, given the title The Chain With No Name, also grew out of these meetings.

  The strength of the original Cartel was its regional diversity. It brought into alliance retail-focused personnel who had grasped the breakthrough of the late 70s and were committed to establishing an alternative to major label distribution systems, arguably the final stumbling block denying independents a level playing field. Scott’s intention was to provide a new backbone to the system that was sustainable, cohesive and accountable. “I was central to that,” says Scott. “I chose the shops, but it was a fairly straightforward choice. We were selling more to those shops than any others, and they knew the material and they knew their market, and they were selling a lot. Anything that was half-decent in those days could sell 10,000. But there were never any contracts between Cartel members. We just met every quarter.”

  Scott’s first lieutenant – though at this stage there was still no demarcation in either salary or hierarchy between Rough Trade personnel, was Simon Edwards. “I brought him in because he worked at Inferno Records in Birmingham, whom we dealt with a lot,” says Scott. “They were the biggest importers of Jamaican music at the time. When their Inferno van came by, we’d buy five or ten thousand pounds’ worth of vinyl off them. And we could turn that round straight away – it would sell. He wasn’t my deputy – he was just a very important part of the team, not least because of his A&R overview.” He too would liase with constituent Cartel members. “When I was still doing New Hormones in Manchester,” recalls Richard Boon, “I’d had a meeting with Simon and he’d said, ‘This is what we’re trying to do. Rather than coming to Rough Trade directly, you should be dealing with Geoff Davies at Probe, the north-west member. And use him to ship things around.”

  Although there were initially six full members of The Cartel, there were also unofficial second and third tiers. For example, Jungle Distribution, recently co-founded by Alan Hauser with other former Fresh Distribution personnel, helped independent records reach mainstream outlets. “Fresh had just started an account with a small chain that turned into Our Price,” Hauser recalls. “Rough Trade had started distribution by then, but they didn’t want to deal with Our Price because they were too ‘corporate’. So when we started Jungle, they were happy for us to supply that chain. Rough Trade were the boring social worker-type bureaucrats, and we were the rock ‘n’ roll revolutionaries – well, that’s simplifying things a bit, but we had more fun than they did! Our Price went quickly from fifty shops to two hundred. Then Rough Trade made arrangements with regional distributors in each area as The Cartel. We were unofficial members. We couldn’t be official members, because we were in London, and that was Rough Trade’s patch. So when Our Price got to two hundred shops, we were out-selling most of the other Cartel members; getting Depeche Mode sometimes direct from Mute and New Order and The Smiths from Rough Trade and putting these into the chain. Then we got squeezed. Our Price, as chains do, wanted a returns facility, and insisted that all their suppliers gave them that. Rough Trade refused to let us have a returns facility with them, because now the Our Price contract was so big, they wanted it. And so we were buying from them and our returns pile was building up. We managed it for a while, trying to turn a blind eye to it. We were actually going to form a new wholesaler fifty-fifty with Rough Trade; there were legal agreements drawn up, but John Knight, who ran our distribution, back-pedalled on it, he didn’t want to do it. So we sat on it for a year. Eventually Rough Trade got their way and the Our Price account and, of course, gave them their returns facility. John left the company and then met up with John Loder from Southern and started SRD (Southern Record Distribution).”

  Like Fresh/Jungle, each of the constituent Cartel members had their own back-story. Geoff Davies’ Probe Plus would become the most significant Liverpool label of the 80s, while the Probe shop from whence it grew had its own distinguished history. Davies was another shopkeeper who had strong links to the hippy era, having personally met the Dala Llama – though he can’t remember much about it. Indeed, the first incarnation of Probe was as a ‘head’ shop that was once busted for stocking Oz. “I started Probe in January 1971,” he remembers. “It was a weird, specialised, cut-price record shop – we used the expression ‘head shop’. I was a bit of a hippy-ish type. It was the first shop of its type in the sense of its attitude, which all came from me, and it was completely unlike any normal record shop. And the stock reflected my taste, which was rock ‘n’ roll, and reggae, world music, folk, country, jazz and blues. Anything I liked, really. It was a weird looking shop. I never used to even have a till, just a box. We’d do second-hand and cut the price of new records. That was a novelty. Virgin mail order had started up then, but it was completely unheard of to cut the recommended retail price. The first goal had been to do a good second-hand shop, but as the plan formulated, it was obvious I wasn’t going to be able to get enough stock.”

  Davies set about creating his own personal ideal of what a record shop should be. “It was run by people with similar tastes and attitudes,” he continues. “It was very carefree. People could sit on stools in front of the counter. A couple of regular tramps would come in – though sometimes they’d be there for too long. And that shop was near Liverpool University. That was a success. We then opened a place in a hippy emporium horribly called Silly Billy’s, with our records in the basement. That was successful too, and by October 1976, we opened up in town, just round the corner from the Cavern Club, Button Street, which turns into Matthew Street.” Davies had seen The Beatles play the Cavern several times, and the location was within a stone’s throw of Roger Eagle’s Eric’s club. “We got in on the punk thing, even though I was a bit old for it,” Davies admits, “I was in my mid-30s. But we were the first shop in the north-west selling independent punk singles. All the Stiff stuff, imports, the first Television single, etc. I loved the punk attitude – not too keen on the stuff that came later. But that period of punk, ’76 to ’79, was just great.”

  The shop’s outer steps would host every local vinyl nut, musician and scene wannabe. More often than not the true apostles and architects of Liverpool’s punk revolution could be found inside, serving, in the very loosest terms, behind the counter. Probe became synonymous in the punk era for the acerbic staff members, with Pete Burns and wife Lynne as tormentors in chief. As one-time customer Mick Mada recalled: “This queen was a bitch. If they didn’t like you or your choice of record, neither Geoff nor Pete would serve you unless you had a letter from God. Tactics ranged from the ever popular ‘Fuck off, you blurt, buy that shit at WH Smiths,’ to the fantastic ‘Yes, son, I’ll get that from the back.’ They’d then hide in the back, have a c
up of tea, go the pub… No way would they come out until you left the shop.”

  Davies, however, maintains that the shop actually had a strong spirit of camaraderie. “Some people would come in every day. And they’d say sorry when you were locking up, but they’d be late tomorrow, cos they had to sign on first.” Davies had left school at 14 and worked in ‘conventional’ retail, developing something of a hard shell as a result. “So it was quite likely that if someone was obnoxious, you’d be sarcastic or give them some lip back. I know Julian Cope says something in his book [Head On] that is actually not quite true – that someone asked for a Rush record and I wouldn’t sell it to them. We did have borderline records by the likes of Rush or Deep Purple that I didn’t like, but some of our customers did. I would sell those records. I wouldn’t lose a sale! But I’d just make some sarcastic remark. Being in the centre of town you’d get a mix of people; punks, rockabillies, skinheads – they were a fucking nuisance – all the black people cos we had so much good reggae and we were the only place in the north-west for Jamaican imports. Occasionally I’d have to ask people to leave sometimes. I employed Gary Dwyer of Teardrop Explodes at one point, unsuccessfully, to move people out of the shop when it got crowded. Gary was a big lad, but a terrible doorman. He looked the part, but he was useless, so I ended up doing the job myself.”