Independence Days

by Alex; Ogg

  So why did Fried Egg close? “Crystal Theatre broke up in 1981 and I went off to work with The Penguin Cafe Orchestra management team in London for a few years,” says Leighton. “And it wasn’t making any money, the hope being that a Madness or a Costello would break through and become the cash cow. Without Mike Oldfield cash-flowing Virgin, they would never have made it to the major league. Various Artists could have made it; Trevor Horn came calling for them, but they turned him down! If the Electric Guitars had been one of the first signings rather than the last, we might have had a chance with them. You could just about break even if you got the pressing numbers right but by 1981 the indie distribution scene was getting slightly tougher and perhaps that particular golden indie era was in decline already and the buffoons were on their way back to gaining control again.” Wavelength, meanwhile, in addition to singles by The Spics (ex-Cortinas), Gardez Darkz, Joe Public and Colourtapes, issued three compilation albums designed specifically to promote local bands; The Bristol Recorder series. The idea, which came from Elbourne, Jonathan Arthur and Thos Brooman (who now runs WOMAD) was to incorporate a magazine filled by advertising to help with costs.

  After leaving Y, The Slits found a temporary berth with London independent Human Records. As early as 1977 Steve Melhuish had used the turnover from his Bonaparte Records shops to launch an eponymous record label [see chapter four]. By the early 80s he was ready to try again. “Human Records was far more commercially successful,” he recalls, “I had separate finance for that. We had the Slits and Dangerous Girls, and when I signed the Au Pairs, they hit the front page of the NME a week later, which was fantastic. Initially it was a 50-50 venture, going through a distribution company called Stage One Records. They were interested in distributing a label so they could get more independent labels to join. I knew the sales manager, then got to know the guy who owned it. He put the hard cash up and we ran it from our shop in King’s Cross, which was Bonaparte’s London office.” On the staff at Human were Saul Galpern and Chris Youle, who in a previous life has been MD at RSO Records, home of the Bee Gees and Eric Clapton. “Chris added the ‘professional’ experience to enable me to sign a higher calibre of artist”, notes Melhuish.

  “They were talking about putting out records, and I wanted to be part of that side of things,” Galpern recalls. “I remember there was a couple of rooms upstairs from the shop, and they turned them into a room where myself and Chris did the label, and they brought in a girl to do press, Versa Manos. She’s worked for the Pistols, which I thought was really cool. The first thing we came across was the Au Pairs from Birmingham. And the first album did very well – Playing With A Different Sex was a cool record; very well received, good press. I think they could have been a bigger band, but they were a bit destructive – credit for their politics, but they were very uncompromising.”

  At one stage, Human was successful enough to open international outlets. “I’ve got a picture of Gang Of Four doing a gig in our New York shop, which my brother Guy ran,” recalls Melhuish, “the only independent English record store there at the time. I’ve also got a copy of the independent charts from 20 December 1980 for that particular week. We released four singles and three of them got into the charts; The Au Pairs, with ‘Diet’, The Slits with ‘Animal Space’ and then The Dangerous Girls ‘Man In The Glass’. Which is not bad when you start up a new label.”

  However, the Slits deal (their management shared the building in Bonaparte’s King’s Cross branch) proved a one-off. “Obviously I did think about doing lots more with them,” concedes Melhuish, “but we didn’t have that opportunity. They were betwixt deals, and their Island album had always sold really well for us. I remember speaking to the Associates and Billy MacKenzie in a lot of depth. I was a huge Billy MacKenzie fan, and I remember him coming into the shop at King’s Cross with Alan Rankine. I was that near to signing The Associates and Beggars pipped me to the post, cos Martin Mills had some money coming in from Warners. I had a beer with Martin Mills about three weeks ago at an AIM meeting. He’s worth millions and I’m worth about half a crown, but that’s neither here nor there!”

  Human ended when Melhuish’s 50 per cent partner “decided to pass on the company to a person who shall remain nameless, and that person I couldn’t deal with, so I moved out of it.” He was tempted to start a third label, but in the end, declined. “I had, at the time, nearly 100 people working for me. I had an office in New York and a shop, a warehouse in Los Angeles, a warehouse in Montreal and six shops. I spent a lot of my time on planes and I found sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll was beginning to get to me by the mid-80s. It wasn’t to be.” But old habits die hard. “The irony now is that I’ve set up a record label at Christchurch, Greenwich and Westminster University where I now lecture. I’m still working with bands.”

  “All I remember,” says Galpern, “is that one minute we were doing Human, and the next we were being told to go to a new office in Victoria to start a new label.” That label would be Kamera Records, whose roster included The Dancing Did, Charge and Blood And Roses. There were also two albums by The Fall sandwiched between their spells with Rough Trade and the second Au Pairs long player. “Kamera was Chris Youle,” states Galpern. “One of the bands that was interesting was Aerial FX – that was Chris Hufford and Bryce Edge, later managers of Radiohead.” Galpern can’t remember, however, how it all came to an end. “I think it was financial stuff. There was something strange there, but I just remember having to focus on getting a proper job. So I went to a major label and then started Nude (which would enjoy huge mainstream success with Suede throughout the 90s). Human and Kamera had given me a good grounding in how things work.”

  Bill Gilliam’s adventures in music are extensive, but he is probably best known as commissar of the UK branch of Alternative Tentacles and the man who brought parent group Dead Kennedys to international notoriety. “I used to be a booking agent for people like Sham 69,” he recalled, speaking to me in 1996. “And while I was doing Sham 69 and stuff, I was sniffing round this band from the States with this silly name. I just thought it would be fun to get them over here. Eventually I got them the deal with Cherry Red. Before that I got thrown out of just about ever record company without them even hearing the tapes.” Although Alternative Tentacles was inaugurated in America, it had its original base in London. “We set up in England first before the States. At the end of the first [DKs] tour, we worked out that there were plenty more groups in the American underground scene, like Dead Kennedys, that would be received well over here. And they were never, ever going to get record deals and record releases. So we decided to start the label in order to do this compilation, Let Them Eat Jellybeans; seventeen tracks from the US underground scene. We had some good names on there. Quite a few who did go on to do well. But we started that here. All that got going in the States was the mail order first of all, because it was a lot easier to start a label over here in those days. The distribution problems in America were, and still are, a nightmare.” When AT did get a footing in America in 1983, it’s significant that it was through Mordam, set up by ex-Rough Trade US employee (and Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll co-founder) Ruth Schwarz.

  Early AT releases included classic North American punk/hardcore from DOA, Fipper, Black Flag et al. But Gilliam passed on a proposed 7 Seconds release. “Only because of the cover,” he recalled. “The US 7-inch had this guy with what is now an extremely fashionable haircut, but in those days would have been interpreted as a skinhead. And he had this aggressive thing with his fist up to the camera – this striking image on the cover. You’ve got to get past that and get people to read the lyrics. When you’re in Central Europe and you’re talking to kids that have dropped out of school early, expecting to read American slang? It wasn’t always successful. I remember when we were in Stockholm and this big guy came up with a swastika on his shirt and said, ‘Yeah, we’re Nazis too! So come out to our house…’ It was just the cover, what with the Oi! thing still going.” 1981’s Strength
Thru Oi! compilation, apart from corrupting a Nazi slogan for its title, also featured Nicky Crane, a particularly violent member of various far right denominations, in a similarly aggressive pose. “The whole notion of Oi! and skinheads,” Gilliam continues, “having spent a couple of years with Sham 69, I knew about skinheads. I just figured it was something that Alternative Tentacles didn’t need to do.”

  As the label evolved, activities were split between the transatlantic bases, with the London operation starting out in Kensington Square Gardens before moving to King’s Cross and finally Finsbury Park. There, visitors were greeted with a sober notice on the door featuring Winston Smith’s famous bat logo demanding ‘No junk mail, no religious weirdos’. Throughout, Dead Kennedys singer Jello Biafra called the A&R shots. “Biafra has always had this thing about needing to see a band before we did anything with them,” Gilliam confirmed. “And he needed to know he got on all right with them as people. We could certainly have had a more busy release schedule if Biafra didn’t have those rules of engagement.” And yet, surveying undisturbed stacks of albums by Hungarian primeval hardcore group Galloping Coroners, or the much talked about but less frequently purchased schizophrenic-savant recordings of Wesley Willis, Gilliam would admit to a touch of bemusement at how me might be expected to retail some of Biafra’s more esoteric tastes.

  Prior to formalising Alternative Tentacles in 1982, Gilliam had formed Upright Artists the year previously as a booking and management agency, working with the Meteors among others. This, too, eventually became a label. Upright’s first release was by The Meteors in all but name – the Clapham South Escalators’ ‘Get Me To The World On Time’ came about when Island A&R director Andrew Lauder refused to release a single to promote their album, leading manager Nick Garrard to smuggle the masters to Gilliam. From there Gilliam would build a roster around Serious Drinking, The Higsons, Yeah Jazz, Benjamin Zephaniah and the Bluberry Hellbellies.

  There was further crossover between Gilliam’s interests. For example, the Beatnigs, featuring Michael Franti and Rono Tse, made their debut on Alternative Tentacles before transferring to Gilliam’s next label, Workers Playtime, by which time they had evolved into Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy. Worker’s Playtime also released material by Welsh language punks Anhrefn, Brit hardcore deconstructionalists Snuff as well as former Upright staples Serious Drinking and The Higsons. All took place while he continued to run Alternative Tentacles’ London base. Eventually, however, Gilliam’s relationship with Biafra would sour, and he has latterly retired from the music industry.

  One of the ‘progressive’ forces that grew out of punk, if you accept the pejorative, was founded on the oft-brittle entrepreneurial instincts of Dan Treacy of the Television Personalities. ‘14th Floor’ had appeared on Teen 78 Records in 1978, followed by the ‘Where’s Bill Grundy’ EP on another custom label, King’s Road. Thereafter Treacy took a sabbatical, before being coaxed out of retirement by Geoff Travis to cut a handful of records for Rough Trade. His long-term collaborator Ed Ball, meanwhile, had established Clockwork Records. It only released two singles, The Teenage Film Stars’ (There’s A) ‘Cloud Over Liverpool’, which was the first record to feature Treacy and Ball with future long-term collaborator Joe Foster, and Dry Rib’s ‘Alaska’. However, it did offer something of a continuation of the original King’s Road/TVPs/’O’ Level aesthetic, a blend of art pop and stylised, peculiarly English psychedelia. The Teenage Film Stars’ second single, ‘I Helped Patrick McGoohan Escape’, would reaffirm those whimsical sixties reference points, though it emerged on yet another Ball imprint, Fab Listening.

  Treacy and Ball subsequently formed Whaam! in 1981, its title taken from a Roy Lichtenstein painting. “We had problems at Rough Trade over the Dutch tour,” Treacy would explain to Slow Dazzle fanzine. “They put it together at the last minute just to keep us happy, and it was an absolute disaster. They didn’t book hotels or anything and I got ill and came home and they took £600 out of my royalties for gigs that we didn’t do which was totally wrong, so I just went, ‘Oh, I’ve had enough’. So me and Edward set up Whaam!” The label lasted for three years, its catalogue spanning 15 singles and ten albums (though some never reached the pressing plant). Many were TVPs-related releases. “The launching of Whaam! was mainly about The Times,” notes Ball, “who were my band with Dan playing with me. We played live as The Times before Dan reverted back to the TVPs name for our first album releases.”

  “We didn’t have any money, we just went and recorded a single each,” Treacy would say of Whaam!, which was distributed through Rough Trade. “We didn’t make anything on those first two records, then the Marine Girls record that we put out (their Beach Party LP) sold so many and made so much money it funded the label.” Treacy would intermittently record for both Rough Trade and Illuminated during this period, the latter releasing the TVPs’ The Painted Word after Treacy failed to settle his bills at the pressing plant. But then Illuminated went under itself just after its release. Whaam! too would eventually close after an out of court settlement made by George Michael’s pop group, who had unknowingly appropriated the name. As Ball adds, The Times’ debut album Pop Goes Art! (and Whaam! itself) furnished Alan McGee’s Creation “with an immediate vision” – a fact McGee has acknowledged openly. And a vision that Ball, as a key contributor to that label (he became Creation’s label spokesman in 1988 as well as a recording artist), would help bring to fruition.

  Dreamworld was founded as Whaam!’s successor in 1985 by Treacy and Emelee Brown, Ball having left Whaam! to concentrate on The Times and his new Rough Trade imprint, Artpop! The original intention was for Dreamworld to reissue deleted TVPs repertoire, but it gradually drew into its release schedule the likes of Hangman’s Beautiful Daughters, 1,000 Violins and Mighty Lemon Drops. Anything that Treacy turned his hand to was, however, unlikely to be founded on sound financial principles. Dave Newton of the Lemon Drops found that out to his cost. “No, we never got paid a penny, and that was despite recording our single, ‘Like An Angel’, for about £96 and it doing very well (selling an estimated 15,000 copies). Sometimes we’d stay at Dan’s flat, and we’d all be flaked out after a night on the town. Then Dan would disappear behind a curtain and suddenly be ready to go again…” Ed Ball concurs. “It’s true – by the time I’d moved on Dan’s working methods were, shall we say, far more cavalier. I’m tempted to suggest that our working partnership instilled disciplines in both of us, and that perhaps Dan was influenced by the wrong people after parting.” Dreamtime collapsed in 1988 after which, doubtless wisely, the remainder of Treacy’s troubled but always fascinating pop career was accommodated via a variety of third party labels.

  Glass Records was a one-man effort initially run from an office in Kilburn by Essex-born Dave Barker, a product controller for PolyGram from 1979 to 1983 who had previously been a typesetter and paste-up artist. His decision to set up Glass grew out of admiration for Rough Trade and Cherry Red, though Pat Fish [aka Glass mainstay The Jazz Butcher] would teasingly assert that Barker only started a record label to give himself more album covers to design. “Not true,” Barker responds. “But funny.” In fact, Glass was originally started to document Barker’s band of the same name. Glass-1, their June 1980 single ‘New Colours’, had its b-side produced by old college friend John McGeoch of Magazine, while the second release was a solo effort by Glass songwriter Ciaran Harte. The record label grew from there under Barker’s auspices, with distribution support via Illuminated and subsequently Pinnacle and Nine Mile. The P&D deal with Nine Mile allowed Barker freedom to release pretty much what he wanted thereafter. With minimal resources, he talked himself into the good books of the London print media, to the extent that he was able to organise American tours for his artists and even sign US acts for European distribution. Though it was widely held that he was financially ‘clueless’, he tempers that as “financially naive, maybe. I did run a label for eight fucking years after all! But no, I was not remotely interested in the financi
al side of the ‘business’. Definitely.”

  Barker was able to preside over a catalogue of close on a hundred releases on Glass, including Where’s Lisse?, Religious Overdose, In Embrace, The Servants and inevitably The Membranes, boosted by sympathetic fanzine coverage. Blam!, one of the finest examples of early 80s xerox culture, seemed an in-house Glass publication at one point. Robert Hampson subsequently joined Barker as assistant, until his band Loop began to take off, convincing Barker to sign The Pastels, who became the label’s best selling act alongside The Jazz Butcher. But like so many others Glass would be knee-capped by the end of Red Rhino, to whom Barker had signed following Nine Mile’s merger with Rough Trade. Six months later Red Rhino collapsed. By that time Glass had notched up arguably its most enduring releases; Spacemen 3’s Sound Of Confusion (1986) and The Perfect Prescription (1987), though Barker maintains they hardly caused a sensation at the time. “The best record I ever released on Glass,” Barker adds, “was Upwind of Disaster, Downwind of Atonement by The Walking Seeds in 1989.” He cites Robespierre’s Velvet Basement, by Nikki Sudden and Dave Kusworth’s Jacobites, as his next proudest offering. The 1986 compilation 50,000 Glass Fans Can’t Be Wrong retains enormous appeal as a sampler, too.